Down and Dirty With Saget: That Ain’t Right

When I met Bob Saget, I said, more or less, what everyone else says: “Wow. Full House. I’m such a fan—such a memorable part of my childhood. Thank you for that.” He nodded politely, agreeing to take a picture and mumbling a few words between sips of his martini.

My rather serendipitous rendezvous with Danny Tanner occurred back in November when Saget’s face was plastered on at least one in every 20 New York cabs. In a departure from the screen, America’s cheesiest dad was now starring as “Man in Chair” in Broadway’s Drowsy Chaperone.

“It’s just incredible. The show truly is a love letter to the Broadway musical, and it’s one of the best shows I’ve seen, which is why I wanted to do it,” Saget said.
“The producers at Drowsy Chaperone made a phone call, and said ‘We want you to do this, and we’ll wait for you. We’ll make it fit your schedule because we think you’re perfect,’” he said. “In show business, you wait for the phone to ring, but sometimes things just happen.”

Flash forward four months later—Saget is currently on a stand-up comedy tour, and he talked to me long-distance from a Hard Rock in Vegas. Drowsy bowed on the Great White Way just prior to the New Year, and Saget has since relocated back to the West Coast.

Still a little bedazzled by his Broadway experience—for which he received a coveted caricature at Sardi’s—he said that his time on the New York stage is “about the best I’ve ever had ... definitely as an actor.” The roles that he’s played—both the “Man in Chair” in Drowsy, and an insider trader in Second Stage Theatre’s Privilege—“were very clear characters, which were completely not me,” he said. “That was what I enjoyed.”

While it’s been over 10 years since the final episodes of both Full House and America’s Funniest Home Videos aired on national television, these two shows continue to define Saget’s acting career. He’s often pigeonholed as a wholesome, family-friendly guy—nothing more.

But earlier in the fall of 2007, HBO aired his stand-up comedy show, tail-spinning the Tanner image for good. To many, it seemed as if all the bubblegum optimism and cherry-topped clichés had finally succeeded in giving Saget a nasty cavity.

Revolutionizing his commercial appeal, Saget added lewd and crass comedian to his squeaky-clean rep. His Web site page opens to an animated version of himself smoking, as “Rollin’ With Saget” blasts through your speakers. And accompanying himself on the acoustic guitar, the closing act of his one-man show is “Danny Tanner Is Not Gay,” a delightful parody of the Backstreet Boys’ 1999 hit, “I Want It That Way.”

“At the end of my show when the audience walks out, there is that element of, ‘Wow, he wasn’t that funny on the video show. I can’t believe that that was so much fun,’” Saget said. “And that’s what I love about doing stand-up. There’s nobody telling you what to do, it’s your own circus tent.”

“The bottom line is, I get funny, and can sustain for more than 90 seconds,” Saget said. “When I was 23, I was doing 2-hour, 3-hour sets in college, and so I better be able to now. That’s what I’ve always done for 30 plus years.”

Capitalizing on that viable Full House fan base, the HBO special is entitled, Good Guy Gone Wrong: Bob Saget, That Ain’t Right. What’s surprising, though, is that he so often chooses to use Full House characters as a spring board for his jokes. A good portion of his quips relate to the sitcom in some capacity.

“Yeah, that’s accurate,” Saget admitted when I pointed this out.

“I’m just going through my own kind of evolution with my own work. I’m noticing, you know, that these people grew up watching the show,” he said. “So after so many disclaimers, I kind of do it to please the audience.”

Upon his return to Los Angeles, Saget said that he was writing some new material and trying to stray away from any Full House bits.

“I still make references to it because people love it,” he said. “It’s for the same reason that they loved The Brady Bunch and Happy Days ... I think people really like the two-dimensionality of it, you know.”

So perhaps he hasn’t abandoned the Joni and Chachi mentally completely, but upped the ante just a little bit. Even Saget’s newest game show, 1 vs. 100—now airing in its second season on NBC—“got a parental guidance rating because of my adult comments,” he said. Following a format similar to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, it’s a trivia challenge between the contestant and 100 members of “the mob.”

“The questions are written by Writers Guild members, and they know my style, so they’ll try to write as many penis jokes as they can for me,” he said, laughing. “We put in as much irreverent stuff as we can.”

It’s this kind of colorful transgression that seems to add nuance to Saget’s persona and keep his projects in check. “The key to selling anything comedic is to make it as real as you can and commit to it,” he said.

Before I hung up, I made sure to tell him that I really enjoyed Farce of the Penguins, sort of in hopes of redeeming myself from my Full House dud of a comment. Farce was a spoof that he wrote, directed, voiced-over, and produced in 2006 with a number of big name celebs.

“Thank you. It took a year to make that,” he said. “We worked really very hard on it. It’s kind of a stoner movie, though ... Everyone kind of went nuts when we made it. We were all pretty silly.”

I told him that I watched it one night in a friend of a friend’s college dorm room as some kids played a round of beer pong.

“I am honored,” he said. “I gotta tell you, I’m really honored.”