Tim Allen is back on the boards
After the sold-out tours, the top-rated television shows, the box office smashes and the best-selling books, Tim Allen still remembers the moment and place comedy became a calling. And like so many parts of stand-up lore, it started with Richard Pryor.
“I’ve never felt something like that,” Allen recalls about seeing the late comic in Detroit. “It’s not even ... an affection or any emotion like that — I laughed so hard at Pryor that it was life-changing. I didn’t say, ‘I want to do that,’ I just wanted to be a part of it.”
Decades after that moment, the Tim Allen who comes to the Paramount Theatre in Oakland on Saturday, March 10, can certainly say he’s done his part. Now in the midst of a national tour he started in 2017, the 64-year-old comic is back on the road performing in parts of the country he hasn’t seen in years, and he says there’s still a thrill in being onstage that he can’t go without.
“When I can get a large group of people rolling, like Pryor got me rolling at the Fox Theater in Detroit,” he says, “then I get much more out of it than the audience does.”
Though he started in standup during the 1970s, Allen is most closely tied to the comedy boom of the 1980s and early ’90s, when a television special or a five-minute set on “The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson” could easily be a steppingstone to a sitcom; “Seinfeld,” “Roseanne,” “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Mad About You,” among others, took comics from behind microphones to TV soundstages. Allen’s contribution to that list, “Home Improvement,” needs little introduction, having run for eight seasons on ABC and in perpetuity in syndication.
But while he’s continued his stand-up career when possible over the busy years (he’s a regular at the Mirage in Las Vegas and will drop in at one of the Sunset Strip’s comedy clubs on occasion in Los Angeles), it was the March 2017 cancellation of his most recent ABC sitcom, “Last Man Standing,” after six seasons that freed up the time for a national jaunt.
“Now I’m back touring more, pitching movies, and I’ll start ‘Toy Story 4’ soon,” says the voice of Buzz Lightyear. “I’m back to where I was — it’s like déjà vu — seven years ago, before I started ‘Last Man Standing.’ ”
Since the cancellation, Allen has found himself in the news as much for his politics as his comedy. Some supporters of “Last Man Standing” believe, despite denials from ABC network executives, that the show was shut down for being “too conservative.” He’s signed on to a film produced by right-wing radio host Dennis Prager about free speech on college campuses.
But while his personal politics do lean to the right of most in the deep-blue Bay Area, he says he’s not in the business of lecturing from the stage.
“Basically, my act is about young versus old, male and female, children and adults,” he says. “Political humor is a specific category of stand-up comedy. My personal opinion is that it’s drifted into political satire — it’s not even comedy anymore.”