Let’s all take a deep breath and allow a moment for the truth to sink in … Pauly Shore is alive. Next come the follow-up questions: “Really?” and “What the hell has he been doing for the past decade?” Surprisingly, he’s actually been doing a lot.
“I’m like Puff Daddy now. I’m living in my million dollar house with the bling bling,” Shore says in an interview with The Muse, in that trademark weasel-esque voice, before getting serious. “It’s funny because people always assume that if you’re not starring in a movie, then you’re not working. I’m working more now than I was before, I’m just doing different things.” Although he has stayed involved in comedy with his mockumentary, Pauly Shore Is Dead, his TBS show Minding The Store and his frequent stints in stand up, Shore has broadened his horizons considerably since his last big film, 1996’s Bio-Dome.
“I’ve been doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff. I just bought another house; I’m doing a lot of real estate stuff. The money that I made, I saved and I just invested it,” Shore says.
Though he has rarely appeared on screen in the past decade, Shore has never strayed far from his stand up comedy roots.
“I love to do stand up. True stand-ups have to always do it because it’s in their blood,” says Shore, whose inspiration comes from classic comedians such as Richard Pryor and Sam Kinison, whom he grew up watching in his family’s famous Los Angeles comedy club, The Comedy Store.
Bostonians will soon get a taste of Shore’s stand up when he performs at the Comedy Connection April 7 and 9, but it may not be the same Shore they remember from his days on MTV.
“It’s all new-age,” says Shore about his act, which contains subject matter ranging from trying to hook up with Lindsay Lohan to wanting to beat up Tucker Carlson to how he can’t party like he used to.
Aside from stand up, fans can expect to see more from Shore – current projects include two DVDs (a best of, and a “Punk’d meets Jackass meets Chappelle’s Show” series called Natural Born Komics), an animation pilot for MTV about his life before stardom and a making of Pauly Shore Is Dead (“A documentary for the mockumentary!”).
And while it may be sad for children of the ’80s and ’90s to see “The Weasel” grown up, he’s quick to reassure that there’s still a little of the old Pauly left in him … kind of.
“Definitely yes, but definitely no. I’m a lot more chill,” he says, before getting philosophical. “I think it’s like residue on a bong. It still kind of exists, it’s just not really there.”
Pauly Shore will be at the Comedy
Connection on April 7.
