It was the Sunday of Columbus Day weekend 1982, and several hundred Washington staffers were packed in at Garvin's Laugh-Inn on Connecticut Avenue in Woodley Park. They had come to see headliner Rita Rudner, but were treated to an opening act by stand-up rookie Richard Paul, who killed, as they say. A recent graduate of AU, Paul would parlay this auspicious debut in the professional comedy world into a long tenure with the Capitol Steps and D.C.-area radio.
Paul had decided at age 16, while growing up in Fairfield, Conn., that he wanted to do three things: work in network broadcasting, work in the highest levels of the federal government, and be a professional entertainer. He came to AU, graduated from the School of Communication in 1981 and, by age 26, had done all three things.
But he can't tell you what he majored in here.
"I honestly do not know what I got a degree in," Paul said, laughing. Though the 1981 Talon yearbook lists a BA in visual media next to his afro'd head and wide smile, Paul is skeptical about what he actually received. What really mattered, though, is the time he spent outside of the classroom.
"The great thing about AU is, because of where it is geographically, it gives you the opportunity to do internships like no other place on Earth," he said.
Paul interned on Capitol Hill, at Channel 5 and for "Charlie Rose." He also worked at the student-run WAMU-AM (now WVAU) producing a comedy show and an evening news broadcast, and hosting his own talk show on Sunday nights.
Paul remembers classmates with whom he worked. Turn the page in the 1981 Talon and see bright-eyed Anthony Perkins - now the weather guy on "Good Morning, America" - who was also a host and DJ on WAMU-AM. Flip back and find Derek McGinty, who now hosts the 5 p.m. news on Channel 9. There was also Wendy Rieger, who anchors the 7 p.m. news on Channel 4. Paul worked with all of them.
"All of these people were totally into radio," Paul said. "I spent hours and hours of my time at the radio station."
TAKING THE STEPS
After graduation, Paul worked in a variety of jobs around Washington for the next two decades - stringing cables under desks on Capitol Hill for NBC as an audio technician, turning knobs on the sound board at WKYS 93.9 FM, producing the Diane Rehm Show, creating the local news magazine Metro Connection for WAMU 88.5 FM. Now, he runs his own independent radio production company, rlpaulproductions.
But it was during the three years after graduation that Paul honed his chops doing stand-up.
"It was an amazing time, the early '80s," Paul said. "There wasn't cable yet - CNN and HBO had both gone on the air two years ago. Nobody owned VCRs yet. So if you wanted to do comedy, you went to a comedy club."
Washington was a major market for comedy, Paul said, so places like Garvin's saw Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Yakov Smirnoff and Eddie Murphy come through on their way to the big time.
Paul's first big bit involved a little ventriloquism. He used a Ronald Reagan dummy and archived sound clips from NBC to have a conversation with the former president. The bit was necessitated after Paul found a sound clip of Reagan saying, "I've never seen melons so big" while giving a speech to a farmers group. Around the same time, he wrote a parody of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run."
"I've been getting laughs with song parodies as long as I've been a stand-up," Paul said.
In the years he did stand-up, Paul started hanging around with the crowd that would eventually become the Capitol Steps - staffers on the Hill who would use their lunch breaks to meet at the nearby apartment of Steps founder Elaina Newport. Paul wrote songs for them starting in 1983, and a year later joined as a performer.
"The reason I was so happy to move to the Capitol Steps from doing stand-up was because when you're doing stand-up, you are out there all by yourself," Paul said. "You wrote the material, and if it succeeds, it succeeds, and if it doesn't work, you're the one who gets little foil ashtrays thrown at you," he said, referring to Garvin's crowds' habit of hurling matter at bombing comics.
In 1992, the Capitol Steps heard about a new comedy troupe called The Capitol Escalators, whose tagline was, "Why take the Steps?" The Escalators were spoofing the spoofers. The Steps, intrigued, went to one of their shows.
"I went to see this show and it was hysterical," Paul said, laughing.
Ren?e Calarco, now Paul's wife of 11 years, was one of the performers. Calarco remembers hearing a distinct, loud laugh in the audience.
"It turns out the guy that was laughing so crazy in the audience was Richard," Calarco recalled. "I remember seeing Richard and thinking, 'This guy is completely out of control.'"
The Steps introduced themselves after the show, Paul called up Calarco the following Monday, asked her out, and were married the next year. They now live in Tenleytown.
"He's very passionate about everything," said Calarco, who teaches improv at Theatre Lab and is a technical writer for the Red Cross. "He's not out of control - he's just in love with life. He's just a lot of fun."
SHOWTIME
An hour before a sold-out Friday night show at the Ronald Reagan Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, Paul and fellow performers sat in a back room, munching on snacks and rehearsing. And rehearsing for the Capitol Steps means talking in shorthand, settling on lyrics and final notes, and remembering who's doing what and when. It's all accomplished in about 10 minutes of banter.
Every so often, Paul's strident laugh cuts through the room. Lanky, lean-faced - the college afro tamed into short, close-cropped spikes - Paul is in his element with six other like-minded performers.
"He's a wonderful producer," said Delores Williams, a six-year member of the Steps who has done voiceover work for Paul.
Fellow performer Brad Van Grack has also done voiceovers for Paul.
"He seems to really know what he wants," Van Grack said. "He has a real, clear picture. It makes for a good producer."
Paul's latest documentary with rlpaulproductions, "The President and the Economy," was broadcast nationally in September. When he's not in the booth or on the stage, Paul is often running. He and Calarco ran their first Army Ten-Miler together Sunday.
But then it's showtime, and Paul dons a leopard-print shirt and black wig to play Kyle, from "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," in a sketch called "Gay Dean Believer." He goes on to play the Sunni half of Sunni and Cher, Code Red in Tom Ridge's terror alert choir and one of his trademarks, Bush Sr.
Speaking of Bush, the Steps writers are quickly preparing two sets of songs for post-election material, and Paul hints at which candidate would be better for business.
"What works for us is not what works best for America," Paul said. "We need a president that will hire a lot of really bizarre people for his cabinet. So a government that operates like a well-oiled machine is not good for the Capitol Steps. So we just need a president who fits the bill, otherwise we'll be doing songs about Paris Hilton"
