Contemporary Authors

• The Dangerous Animals Club ( memoir) Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2012
• My Adventures with God ( memoir) Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2017

1. My adventures with God LCCN 2017287702 Type of material Book Personal name Tobolowsky, Stephen, 1951- author. Main title My adventures with God / Stephen Tobolowsky. Edition First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition. Published/Produced New York : Simon & Schuster, 2017. ©2017 Description x, 353 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm ISBN 9781476766461 (hardcover) 1476766460 (hardcover) CALL NUMBER Not available Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 2. The dangerous animals club LCCN 2011277873 Type of material Book Personal name Tobolowsky, Stephen, 1951- Main title The dangerous animals club / Stephen Tobolowsky. Edition 1st Simon & Schuster hardcover ed. Published/Created New York : Simon & Schuster, 2012. Description viii, 338 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. ISBN 9781451633153 1451633157 Links Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1307/2011277873-b.html Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1307/2011277873-d.html Sample text http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1307/2011277873-s.html CALL NUMBER PN2287.T5745 A3 2012 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• Simon & Schuster - http://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Stephen-Tobolowsky/19571451

  Stephen Tobolowsky
  Stephen Tobolowsky has appeared in more than 100 movies and 200 television shows, including unforgettable roles in Mississippi Burning, Groundhog Day, and Memento. He is the author of The Dangerous Animals Club and My Adventures with God. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and sons.

• Stephen Tobolowsky Home Page - http://stephentobolowsky.com/about/

  Stephen Tobolowsky is one of the leading character actors in film today. USA Today listed Stephen as the 9th most frequently seen actor in movies; he has appeared over 200 movies and television shows. See here for credits.

  He is best known for playing Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day, Sammy Jankis in Memento, Werner Brandes in Sneakers, Happy Chapman in Garfield, and Mr. Bates in Freaky Friday. On television, he played Tor Ekland on Seinfeld, Hugo Jarry on Deadwood, Bob Bishop on Heroes, Sandy Ryerson on Glee and Stu Beggs on Californication. He is currently on screen in Silicon Valley and The Goldbergs. Stephen will also appear in Netflix's new series by Norman Lear, One Day at a Time (a new generation remake!); season 2 starts filming in June.

  He wrote and performed Stephen Tobolowsky's Birthday Party and The Primary Instinct, and wrote True Stories with David Byrne and Beth Henley.

  His podcast with David Chen “The Tobolowsky Files” is available at Slashfilm.com and on iTunes, and also previously broadcast on KUOW 94.9 in Seattle, on WFPL in Louisville, KY and many stations through Public Radio International (PRI).*

  His first book of stories, The Dangerous Animals Club, is published by Simon & Schuster September 25, 2012. His second book, My Adventures with God, will be available April 17, 2017, also published by Simon & Schuster.

  Fun Facts:

  He performed with Stevie Ray Vaughn when Stevie was 14 and cut the first songs Stevie ever performed.

  *David Chen's update on /Film: Public Radio International Announces a New Radio Show Based on The Tobolowsky Files.

  For the last 10 years, Stephen has taught Classes in Improv and Comedy offered through Kalmenson & Kalmenson.

  If you are wondering where you might have seen him, Stephen's many television and film credits are listed here: Stephen Tobolowsky at IMDb

  Representation:

  Steven Levy at Framework Entertainment
  (310) 858-0333

  David Rose at Innovative Artists
  (310) 553-5200

  Jud Laghi (Literary) at Jud Laghi Agency
  (718) 285-0798

  Craig Kroh (Autograph Shows)
  (440) 670-4873

  Speaking Engagements:
  The Lavin Agency
  info@thelavinagency.com

• IMDB - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0864997/

  Stephen Tobolowsky
  Biography
  Showing all 34 items
  Jump to: Overview (3) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (1) | Trade Mark (2) | Trivia (19) | Personal Quotes (8)
  Overview (3)
  Born May 30, 1951 in Dallas, Texas, USA
  Birth Name Stephen Harold Tobolowsky
  Height 6' 2" (1.88 m)
  Mini Bio (1)
  Character actor Stephen Tobolowsky was born on May 30, 1951 in Dallas, Texas. Over the past three decades, Tobolowsky has racked up a lengthy list of roles in movies and television across many different genres.

  While Tobolowsky initially attended Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas with the intention of studying geology, he was quickly drawn in to acting there. He later attended the University of Illinois for one year.

  Tobolowsky worked primarily in theater during his early career, and wrote and directed a few plays including "Two Idiots in Hollywood" and "True Stories". His film career took off in the 1980s, though, thanks to roles in The Philadelphia Experiment (1984), Nobody's Fool (1986), Spaceballs (1987), and Mississippi Burning (1988). Since then, Tobolowsky has appeared in many popular movies including Bird on a Wire (1990), Basic Instinct (1992), Groundhog Day (1993), Radioland Murders (1994), Murder in the First (1995), Mr. Magoo (1997), The Insider (1999), Memento (2000), Freaky Friday (2003), Garfield (2004) and Wild Hogs (2007). He has also done a substantial amount of voice work, most recently taking on the role of Uncle Ubb in The Lorax (2012).

  Tobolowsky has been even more prolific in television over the past few decades. He's appeared on a diverse range of shows including Seinfeld (1989), Mad About You (1992), Chicago Hope (1994), The Practice (1997) and Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000), and has had recurring roles on CSI: Miami (2002), Deadwood (2004), Heroes (2006), Californication (2007) and Glee (2009).

  Tobolowsky is married to fellow actor Ann Hearn.
  - IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous

  Spouse (1)
  Ann Hearn (27 December 1988 - present) (2 children)
  Trade Mark (2)
  He usually plays annoying business men-types that the heroes or villains loathe to deal with.
  Often plays egomaniacal characters
  Trivia (19)
  He played Principal Flutie in the unaired Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) pilot episode.
  Attended Kimball High School. High School Debate champ.
  Turned down the role of Al on Home Improvement (1991).
  Attended Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, with actress Patricia Richardson and playwright Beth Henley during late 1960s and early 1970s.
  Once held hostage at gunpoint at a supermarket in Snyder Plaza in Dallas.
  Was almost murdered twice in one week in Hartford, Connecticut by different people. As he admitted, "That's unusual." The first instance occurred when he was in a pub with Beth Henley. After a brawl with a man who was attacking Henley, he was held at gunpoint at the pub. Later that week, when he and Henley went to a pizza parlor next to the pub, where he was stabbed. Fortunately, the knife only partly penetrated his belt buckle.
  Surfing channels in Vancouver recently, he watched himself getting older and balder in old episodes of Seinfeld (1989), the film Thelma & Louise (1991) and the made-for-TV movie The Marla Hanson Story (1991).
  One of the actor's heroes is his late aunt, 'Hermine Tobolowsky', known as the "mother of the Texas Equal Rights Amendment".
  Was nominated for a Tony award in 2002 as Best Featured Actor in a Play for his role in the revival of "Morning's At Seven".
  Edwin Tobolowsky is his third cousin.
  His name is pronounced tow-buh-law-skee.
  Was the lead singer in the first band formed by guitar legend Stevie Ray Vaughan. They went to school together in Dallas.

  Not true. Please change to: In 1970, Tobolowsky recorded two songs on an album of Dallas garage bands called "A New Hi." Stevie Ray Vaughan played lead guitar with them. It was Stevie's first studio recording.
  To develop a plotline for the 1986 film True Stories (1986) he and rocker David Byrne once stared wordlessly for two hours at Byrne's wall. On the wall were hundreds of pencil drawings of ideas for the film by Byrne. That very night, he wrote a thirty-page treatment for the film and was soon hired as a writer.
  His aunt was the head librarian at Ben Franklin Junior High School in Dallas (now Hillcrest High School) for many years.
  Broke his neck in five places while horseback riding in Iceland underneath an active volcano after the wind picked he and the horse up off the ground and blew them off the road. He was required to wear a neck brace for three and a half months and maintains that the experience has taught him to cherish every day.
  Very good friends with cinematographer/director Robert Brinkmann.
  Played two characters with the last name "Ryerson". "Ned Ryerson" in Groundhog Day (1993) (movie) and "Sandy Ryerson" in Glee (2009) (TV).
  Inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame on March 7, 2013 in Austin, Texas.
  Has a form of ESP he calls "hearing tones". While working with David Byrne on his film "True Stories", he told Byrne about his gift, who was inspired to write the song "Radio Head" about him. The band Radiohead took its name from this song.
  Personal Quotes (8)
  There was a part on Broadway...wow still hurts to talk about it. I flew to New York on my own dime. I had no career. But there was this part. I knew the playwright. He told me the role was perfect for me. I worked on the audition like crazy...I went in and killed on the audition. It was great. I got congrats from a lot of people. I was told I would be called back for final auditions in three weeks. I said I would be there. It meant me buying another plane ticket but I believed in myself and the play. I worked on the part for the next three weeks...then four weeks...then five...no phone call. Finally someone saw me with the script and asked what I was doing. I explained with some pride that I was going back to New York for a final call back on a Broadway show. She broke the news to me that the show had been in rehearsal for the last two weeks...ouch. I guess if I didn't run into that girl I would still be working on that audition! [on losing an important role]
  My first day on Groundhog Day (1993), Bill Murray shook hands with me and said, "Hello, nice to meet you - now show me what you're going to do". I jumped into a few enormously energetic moments of "Ned Ryerson" and Bill held up his hand. "Fine, fine, you can do that", he said. "It's funny". Bill walked away. I then asked the director, Harold Ramis, if I should play "Ned" a little more down to earth. Harold laughed and said: "No. Bill is the lead. He's the stew. When you are a supporting character, you are the spice in the stew. Have fun".
  The very best character actors are made of equal parts discipline and madness, and the fact that our faces are more familiar than our names is not our curse, but our blessing. The character actor's goal, after all, is not to earn the adulation of the public; it is to give lives to a hundred nameless spirits who make us laugh or cry, who are both familiar and new, who show us that their journey is our journey, and who, like everyone in the audience, never get to kiss Renée Zellweger.
  [2011] Swing Shift (1984) was the first movie where I had a make-up person start to draw in hair on my head because I looked too bald. I had no idea what she was doing, and she said, "Honey, I can see your skull". And that's when it dawned on me that I was going to end up being one of those bald character actors. But that was the first film where they started drawing hair. They still thought it was worth the effort to draw in the hair.
  [2011, on landing Basic Instinct (1992)] I had auditioned for Paul Verhoeven three months before to play some different part in the movie. And Howard Feuer, the casting director who did Groundhog Day (1993) and cast me in In Country (1989). He was also the casting director of Basic Instinct (1992). Again, in terms of a crime of opportunity, Howard Feuer called me up at home and said, "Stephen, are you a fast study?" and I said, "I think so", and he said, "Well, we have this part that shoots tomorrow, and we have no one to play it. Mr. Verhoeven liked your original audition three months ago for some other part, and said it would be okay if you could play it. Can you come in and read this part for Paul Verhoeven, again, and see if he okays it?" So I drove over to the studio, and they threw the part at me, and it was a huge kind of expository speech, and whenever I get those things, I try to channel Robert Duvall, because he is the greatest expository actor that ever could be. I don't know how he's done it. He's done it for years, where he gets all of the speeches where he kind of explains to "Michael Corleone" about how the laws work and everything like this, and it's fascinating. And this was a speech that said basically nothing, as I recall. I think I say that the principal, Sharon Stone, was either a murderer pretending to be crazy, or that she was crazy pretending to be a murderer. The speech didn't make a ton of sense, but I think that's what it was, and I tried to channel Mr. Duvall. I don't remember a lot about that film. Except I was doing another film, and that was one of the few times I did two films in the same week. I did that movie on Monday, and then on Wednesday, I did Where the Day Takes You (1991).
  [2011, on Where the Day Takes You (1991)] My first pedophilic role. First of many, with Balthazar Getty. I worked with dear [director] Mark Rocco, who also has passed away now, way too young. And he also cast me later in Murder in the First (1995), another crime of opportunity, because Oliver Stone didn't show up to do a stunt-casting role they had had for him in the movie, "Murder in the First". So Mark called me up that morning and said, "Can you get to the studio and play Oliver Stone's part? We shoot it today". So, I ran over there and tried to learn the lines, and shot what we did that day. "Where the Day Takes You" was unusual, because I remember I told Mark, "Well, you know, I play the piano some. What if I do a scene, with Balthazar Getty, where I kind of play the piano and do the scene talking to him?" not knowing the hell I just volunteered myself for, of having to do the scene from many different angles, playing the piano and having it land at the same time. Mark was a pretty inventive filmmaker, and he got around it somehow, because I certainly wasn't good enough to act and play the piano exactly the same way in every shot. So Mark cut around that and made it work, and I think it is a great scene in the movie. That's one of those "Where are They Now?" films. We had Ricki Lake before she had her talk show, and we had Sean Astin there, before he went off to New Zealand. Also Balthazar Getty. It was a phenomenal cast...Will Smith was in the movie. I think it was his first film. When he was a rapper. It was splendid cinematography for that film. We did the entire film for $2 million. It was far richer and more troubling... I mean, it's a very worthwhile movie. And again, it makes me think of poor Mark Rocco. Way too young. Way too young, my goodness.
  [2011, on working with Steven Seagal on The Glimmer Man (1996)] So I show up at Steven's home on Stone Canyon Road. My audition was at 10 a.m. And I sat in his living room, which was filled with saddles. Saddles. All over the place. Like, ornate saddles. And I waited until 12:30. Steven came downstairs. He had been asleep. And at that point, I was kind of... What do you call it? You know, when waiting to do an audition, you develop a certain amount of stress. Like athletes who build up lactic acid in their body. At that time, I was still with lactic acid. Or whatever. My body became a toxic-waste dump. So I really don't remember the audition too much, because I was so traumatized-there's the trauma - I was traumatized by waiting to audition. They wanted me to shoot one of the first days of shooting. They called me at 7 in the morning, which I'm used to, but the crew call was 9. So I came in two hours early. The reason they wanted me two hours early was that they wanted to discuss hair with the hairdresser. But because I was bald, the hairdresser didn't come in, so I was stuck waiting in the parking lot for someone to show up for two hours. When, finally, people showed up, John Gray came in and told me in a panic that Steven Seagal wanted to rewrite the script. He decided it was bad for his karma to constantly be killing people in movies, so he didn't want to kill me, anymore. And I said, "Well, it's important in the script that he kills me, because I'm, like, a serial killer". And he said, "Don't get into it with him. He believes it hurts his karmic development if he were to kill people". And Warner Brothers is furious, because they told Steven, "Steven, we hired you because you're good at killing people. And you know, you dance with who brought you. We're not casting you to do a peace-loving cop, we're casting you to murder people". So, we got in to rehearse our scene, and Steven says, "You wanna go over the lines?" And I go, "Sure". "By the way, I should mention I think we should change the end, because I shouldn't kill you". And John Gray is standing behind us doing the ix-nay sign, with his finger going across his throat, like, "Don't talk, don't talk, don't talk. Don't say anything". I said, "Steven, that is an amazing argument. I never really thought of that before. But coming from my character's perspective, I am trapped in hell, being a serial killer. It is the worst thing that I could imagine. So if you were to kill me, you would actually be freeing me to come back in a reincarnational form as something better, and I would be able to atone for my sins here on Earth. So I think you would be doing me a huge favor". And Steven said, "I never thought of it that way". So we shot the scene where he shoots me. We put in the prosthetics where my whole chest explodes when he shoots me, and then he walks up with the gun smoking, and looks down at me. We do this whole scene where I hold a priest hostage. He looks down at me, smoking, and John patted me on the back, and he said, "Thank you, Stephen, for getting us out of that one". Fade out. Fade in. Two and a half months later, I get a phone call from John Gray. He said, "Oh, dear. We're in trouble. Steven Seagal started ad-libbing in another scene about, "Thank God I didn't kill the guy in the church". So we have to find some way to add some lines to indicate that you're not dead. So can you come in and look at the scene and see if we can put something into the film to indicate that you are still alive?" So I'm watching the film. Keenen Ivory Wayans walks in to watch the scene. We do the whole scene where I'm holding the priest, Steven shoots me, my chest explodes in slow-motion! I mean, the entire chest cavity goes! I fall out of frame, Steven walks up with the smoking gun. And John Gray said, "Maybe you can add a line off-camera here". And I said, "Like what? What would I add? Like, 'You missed me!' or, 'Thank God it's just a flesh wound', or 'Oh no! I'm injured!'" I mean, my whole chest exploded. Keenen Ivory Wayans just rolls his eyes and walks out of the room. So I added, off-camera, "Finish me. Finish me off, you son of a bitch! Finish me!" It's ludicrous! And I don't know what they ended up showing. I don't know if they ended up cutting that entirely, cutting me getting shot, cutting what I said, but I knew we were in the area of high comedy at that point.
  [2011] The most difficult role I've ever had, but one of the most rewarding, was Memento (2000). I'll mention that because we had no lines in the script, and Chris [Christopher Nolan, writer-director] wanted us to improvise our part. I was playing someone with amnesia, which means you can't remember what you're doing, and Chris was going to cover it from different angles. So part of my brain had to remember what it was doing, and another part had to not remember what I was doing. And that was certainly the most difficult thing that I'd ever done. So that film was the most difficult, and in terms of script to stage, one of the most successful, in that when I read the script, I thought, "This could be the greatest scripts I've ever read", and when I saw the film, I thought, "This is an absolutely amazing film, and it lives up to the promises of the script". Ninety percent of the time, the final product of the film falls somewhat short of your reading of the script. And a few... Groundhog Day (1993) was an example of a script where I read it and the process and shooting of the film was superior to the original script. But "Memento" started off as a brilliant piece of writing, and ended up as a brilliant movie.

  Filmography

  Jump to: Actor | Writer | Soundtrack | Director | Composer | Producer | Miscellaneous Crew | Thanks | Self | Archive footage
  Hide HideActor (256 credits)
  2017 Dream Flight (Short) (post-production)
  Pilot
  2017 Fifty Minutes (Short) (completed)
  Dr. Bell
  2017 Monsters at Large (completed)
  Mr. Phillips
  2017 Strange Nature (completed)
  Mayor Paulson
  2017 Butterfly in the Typewriter (pre-production)
  The Abbot
  2016 The Loss of Lillian (Short) (completed)
  Dr. Taylor
  Loners (post-production)
  Mr. Tessman
  2017-2018 One Day at a Time (TV Series)
  Dr. Leslie Berkowitz
  - Episode #2.4 (2018) ... Dr. Leslie Berkowitz
  - Episode #2.6 (2018) ... Dr. Leslie Berkowitz
  - Episode #2.5 (2018) ... Dr. Leslie Berkowitz
  - Hold, Please (2017) ... Dr. Leslie Berkowitz
  - No Mass (2017) ... Dr. Leslie Berkowitz
  Show all 17 episodes
  2017-2018 White Famous (TV Series)
  Stu Beggs
  - Episode #1.10 (2018) ... Stu Beggs
  - Appetites (2017) ... Stu Beggs
  - Pilot (2017) ... Stu Beggs
  2014-2017 The Goldbergs (TV Series)
  Principal Ball
  - Hogan Is My Grandfather (2017) ... Principal Ball
  - Graduation Day (2017) ... Principal Ball
  - Han Ukkah Solo (2016) ... Principal Ball
  - The Greatest Musical Ever Written (2016) ... Principal Ball
  - Crazy Calls (2016) ... Principal Ball
  Show all 19 episodes
  2016-2017 Silicon Valley (TV Series)
  Jack Barker
  - Server Error (2017) ... Jack Barker
  - Hooli-Con (2017) ... Jack Barker
  - The Keenan Vortex (2017) ... Jack Barker
  - The Patent Troll (2017) ... Jack Barker (credit only)
  - Customer Service (2017) ... Jack Barker (credit only)
  Show all 17 episodes
  2017 Mamaboy
  Reverend Weld
  2017 The Loud House (TV Series)
  Principal Huggins
  - Pets Peeved/Pulp Friction (2017) ... Principal Huggins (voice)
  - No Such Luck/Frog Wild (2017) ... Principal Huggins (voice)
  2017 Shady Glen (Short)
  Mr. Galloway
  2017 Scooby-Doo! Shaggy's Showdown (Video)
  Andy Gunderson (voice, as Steven Tobolowsky)
  2016-2017 Justice League Action (TV Series)
  Professor Martin Stein
  - The Cube Root (2017) ... Professor Martin Stein (voice)
  - Garden of Evil (2017) ... Professor Martin Stein (voice)
  - Mxy's Mix-Up (2017) ... Professor Martin Stein (voice)
  - Double Cross (2017) ... Professor Martin Stein (voice)
  - Freezer Burn (2017) ... Professor Martin Stein (voice)
  Show all 8 episodes
  2016 Blunt Talk (TV Series)
  Daniel Rudolph
  - Walter Has to Look After Walter (2016) ... Daniel Rudolph
  2016 6 Love Stories
  Professor John Dobler
  2016 Bad Internet (TV Series)
  Dad
  - Secrets of the Mom Web (2016) ... Dad
  2016 Welcome to the Men's Group
  Carl
  2016 Guys and Girls Can't Be Friends
  Andy
  2016 The Confirmation
  Father Lyons
  2016 Fuller House (TV Series)
  Mr. Gerald
  - The Not-So-Great Escape (2016) ... Mr. Gerald
  2012-2015 The Mindy Project (TV Series)
  Marc Shulman
  - When Mindy Met Danny (2015) ... Marc Shulman
  - Two to One (2012) ... Marc Shulman (voice)
  - Hiring and Firing (2012) ... Marc Shulman
  - Pilot (2012) ... Marc Shulman
  2015 Dr. Ken (TV Series)
  Joe
  - Pilot (2015) ... Joe
  2015 Another Period (TV Series)
  Thomas Edison
  - Reject's Beach (2015) ... Thomas Edison
  2015 Hollywood Adventures
  Wronald Wright
  2015 Big Time in Hollywood, FL (TV Series)
  Alan
  - Art Imitates Death (2015) ... Alan
  - Monkey Largo (2015) ... Alan
  - What Dreams May Come (2015) ... Alan
  - Separate But Equal (2015) ... Alan
  - A Night In (2015) ... Alan
  Show all 8 episodes
  2014 Hello Ladies (TV Series)
  Alan
  - Hello Ladies: The Movie (2014) ... Alan
  2014 Christian Mingle
  Douglas 'The Admiral' McCarver
  2014/II The Barber
  Chief Gary Hardaway
  2014 Atlas Shrugged: Who Is John Galt?
  Dr. Hugh Akston
  2014 The Hotwives of Orlando (TV Series)
  Phil
  - The Reunion (2014) ... Phil
  - Vow Renewals (2014) ... Phil
  - Staycation (2014) ... Phil
  - Intervention Party (2014) ... Phil
  - Say You, Séance (2014) ... Phil
  Show all 7 episodes
  2011-2014 Californication (TV Series)
  Stu Beggs
  - Grace (2014) ... Stu Beggs
  - Daughter (2014) ... Stu Beggs
  - Dinner with Friends (2014) ... Stu Beggs
  - 30 Minutes or Less (2014) ... Stu Beggs
  - Smile (2014) ... Stu Beggs
  Show all 30 episodes
  2014 Next Time on Lonny (TV Series)
  Dr. Grant
  - The Lonny Experiment (2014) ... Dr. Grant
  2014 Friends with Better Lives (TV Series)
  Dr. Adleman
  - Game Sext Match (2014) ... Dr. Adleman
  2014 Mr. Peabody & Sherman
  Principal Purdy (voice)
  2013 Batman: Arkham Origins (Video Game)
  Mobsters / Joker Thugs (voice)
  2013 Toy Story of Terror (TV Short)
  Ron the Manager (voice)
  2012-2013 Justified (TV Series)
  FBI Agent Jerry Barkley
  - Kin (2013) ... FBI Agent Jerry Barkley
  - Watching the Detectives (2012) ... FBI Agent Jerry Barkley
  - The Man Behind the Curtain (2012) ... FBI Agent Jerry Barkley
  2013 The Flipside (TV Series short)
  James
  - The Hitchhiker (2013) ... James
  2012 A Little Something on the Side (Short)
  Larry
  2012 Pearblossom Hwy
  Rick Lawler
  2012 IM Nowruz (Short)
  Interviewer
  2012 The Lorax
  Uncle Ubb (voice)
  2012 Work It (TV Series)
  Dr. David Deutsch
  - Shake Your Moneymaker (2012) ... Dr. David Deutsch
  2011 Hail Mary (TV Movie)
  2011 Magnificat (Short)
  Neighbor
  2011 Pound Puppies (TV Series)
  Mr. Geekman
  - Taboo (2011) ... Mr. Geekman (voice)
  2009-2011 Glee (TV Series)
  Sandy Ryerson
  - A Night of Neglect (2011) ... Sandy Ryerson
  - Funk (2010) ... Sandy Ryerson
  - Bad Reputation (2010) ... Sandy Ryerson
  - Wheels (2009) ... Sandy Ryerson
  - The Rhodes Not Taken (2009) ... Sandy Ryerson
  Show all 8 episodes
  2011 Community (TV Series)
  Professor Peter Sheffield
  - Competitive Wine Tasting (2011) ... Professor Peter Sheffield
  2011 You May Not Kiss the Bride
  Plumber
  2011 The Defenders (TV Series)
  Judge Gelineau
  - Nevada v. Wayne (2011) ... Judge Gelineau
  2011 The Last Ride
  Ray
  2010 Hard Breakers
  Max
  2010 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (TV Series)
  Edwin Adelson
  - Bullseye (2010) ... Edwin Adelson
  2010 Peep World
  Ephraim
  2010 True Jackson, VP (TV Series)
  Lars Balthazar
  - Saving Snackleberry (2010) ... Lars Balthazar
  2010 The Sarah Silverman Program. (TV Series)
  Bill Fantastimart
  - A Fairly Attractive Mind (2010) ... Bill Fantastimart
  2010 Buried
  Alan Davenport (voice)
  2010 Clara's Carma (Short)
  Dr. Simmons
  2009 Glee: Director's Cut Pilot Episode (TV Movie)
  Sandy Ryerson
  2009 The Time Traveler's Wife
  Dr. Kendrick
  2009 The New Adventures of Old Christine (TV Series)
  Principal James Merrow
  - Hair (2009) ... Principal James Merrow
  - Notes on a 7th Grade Scandal (2009) ... Principal James Merrow
  2009 Rita Rocks (TV Series)
  Bill Bowman
  - Get Off Off of My Cloud (2009) ... Bill Bowman
  2009 He Likes Guys
  Alan (segment "Waiting for Yvette")
  2008 Beethoven's Big Break (Video)
  Sal
  2007-2008 Heroes (TV Series)
  Bob Bishop
  - Chapter Two 'The Butterfly Effect' (2008) ... Bob Bishop
  - Chapter Eleven 'Powerless' (2007) ... Bob Bishop
  - Chapter Ten 'Truth & Consequences' (2007) ... Bob Bishop
  - Chapter Nine: Cautionary Tales (2007) ... Bob Bishop
  - Chapter Eight 'Four Months Ago...' (2007) ... Bob Bishop
  Show all 11 episodes
  2008 The Rainbow Tribe
  Principal Sands
  2008 Waiting for Yvette (Short)
  Alan
  2008 CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (TV Series)
  Spencer Freiberg
  - Two and a Half Deaths (2008) ... Spencer Freiberg
  2007 John from Cincinnati (TV Series)
  Mark Lewinsky
  - His Visit: Day Seven (2007) ... Mark Lewinsky
  - His Visit: Day Six (2007) ... Mark Lewinsky
  - His Visit: Day Three (2007) ... Mark Lewinsky
  2007 Entourage (TV Series)
  Mayor of Beverly Hills
  - Sorry, Harvey (2007) ... Mayor of Beverly Hills
  2007 Loveless in Los Angeles
  Jon
  2007 Boxboarders!
  Dr. Stephen James
  2007 Totally Baked
  Jesco Rollins (Segment "American Farmer")
  2007 Raines (TV Series)
  Wally Anderson
  - Stone Dead (2007) ... Wally Anderson
  2007 Wild Hogs
  Charley
  2007 Boston Legal (TV Series)
  Dr. Alvin Azinabinacroft
  - The Good Lawyer (2007) ... Dr. Alvin Azinabinacroft
  2007 Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (TV Series)
  Joe
  - The Friday Night Slaughter (2007) ... Joe
  2006-2007 Big Day (TV Series)
  The Garf
  - The Ceremony (2007) ... The Garf
  - Magic Hour (2007) ... The Garf
  - The Unstable Minister (2007) ... The Garf
  - Stolen Vows (2006) ... The Garf
  - Skobo and Alice Hooked Up (2006) ... The Garf
  Show all 6 episodes
  2007 The Valley of Light (TV Movie)
  Littlefield
  2006 American Men (TV Movie)
  Sterling Moss
  2005-2006 Deadwood (TV Series)
  Hugo Jarry
  - The Catbird Seat (2006) ... Hugo Jarry
  - A Constant Throb (2006) ... Hugo Jarry
  - Amateur Night (2006) ... Hugo Jarry
  - Boy-the-Earth-Talks-To (2005) ... Hugo Jarry
  - The Whores Can Come (2005) ... Hugo Jarry
  Show all 9 episodes
  2006 Blind Dating
  Dr. Perkins
  2006 Desperate Housewives (TV Series)
  Bud Penrod
  - No One Is Alone (2006) ... Bud Penrod
  2006 Pope Dreams
  Carl Venable
  2006 Love Hollywood Style
  Marty Greenbaum / Devil
  2006 Failure to Launch
  Bud
  2006 Night Stalker (TV Series)
  Titus Berry
  - Timeless (2006) ... Titus Berry
  2006 Ghost Whisperer (TV Series)
  Dr. Peltier
  - Dead Man's Ridge (2006) ... Dr. Peltier
  2006 The Sasquatch Gang
  Dalrymple
  2005 Curb Your Enthusiasm (TV Series)
  Len Dunkel
  - The Seder (2005) ... Len Dunkel
  2005 Reba (TV Series)
  Judge
  - Grannies Gone Wild (2005) ... Judge
  2005 Living 'til the End
  Dr. Shaw
  2005 The Importance of Blind Dating (Short)
  Patrick
  2005 The Closer (TV Series)
  James Bloom
  - The Butler Did It (2005) ... James Bloom
  2005 McBride: The Doctor Is Out... Really Out (TV Movie)
  Harry Evers
  2003-2005 CSI: Miami (TV Series)
  Assistant State Attorney Don Haffman
  - Whacked (2005) ... Assistant State Attorney Don Haffman
  - Killer Date (2005) ... Assistant State Attorney Don Haffman
  - Pro Per (2004) ... Assistant State Attorney Don Haffman
  - Freaks and Tweaks (2003) ... Assistant State Attorney Don Haffman
  - Simple Man (2003) ... Assistant State Attorney Don Haffman
  2005 Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous
  Tom Abernathy
  2005 Robots
  Bigmouth Executive / Forge (voice)
  2005 American Dragon: Jake Long (TV Series)
  Troll
  - Adventures in Troll-Sitting (2005) ... Troll (voice)
  2004 Complete Savages (TV Series)
  Mr. Frehley
  - Voodude (2004) ... Mr. Frehley
  2004 Will & Grace (TV Series)
  Ned Weathers
  - Company (2004) ... Ned Weathers
  2004 Debating Robert Lee
  Debate Judge
  2004 Little Black Book
  Carl
  2004 Garfield
  Happy Chapman
  2004 According to Jim (TV Series)
  Dr. Ted
  - The Marriage Bank (2004) ... Dr. Ted
  2004 It's All Relative (TV Series)
  Roy
  - Philip in a China Shop (2004) ... Roy
  2004 Married to the Kellys (TV Series)
  Henry Conway
  - Talk Radio (2004) ... Henry Conway
  2004 Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!
  George Ruddy
  2004 The West Wing (TV Series)
  Dr. Max Milkman
  - The Stormy Present (2004) ... Dr. Max Milkman
  2003 Las Vegas (TV Series)
  Donny Rollins
  - Donny, We Hardly Knew Ye (2003) ... Donny Rollins
  2003 Frankie and Johnny Are Married
  Murray Mintz
  2003 Freaky Friday
  Mr. Bates
  2003 The Dead Zone (TV Series)
  Dr. Jim Pratt
  - Plague (2003) ... Dr. Jim Pratt
  2003 Oliver Beene (TV Series)
  Ringmaster Bob
  - Divorce-o-Rama (2003) ... Ringmaster Bob
  2003 View from the Top
  Frank Thomas (uncredited)
  2003 Lloyd in Space (TV Series)
  - At Home with the Bolts (2003)
  2003 Kingpin (TV Mini-Series)
  Dr. Klein's lawyer
  - Black Magic Woman (2003) ... Dr. Klein's lawyer
  2003 National Security
  Billy Narthax
  2003 Twins (TV Movie)
  2002 Adaptation.
  Ranger Steve Neely (scenes deleted)
  2002 Do Over (TV Series)
  Mr. Meyers
  - The Block Party (2002) ... Mr. Meyers
  2002 Law & Order: Criminal Intent (TV Series)
  Jim Halliwell
  - Malignant (2002) ... Jim Halliwell
  2002 Ritual
  Dr. Javitz (uncredited)
  2002 The Country Bears
  Norbert Barrington
  2002 Par 6
  T.T. Riley
  2002 Malcolm in the Middle (TV Series)
  Mr. Fisher
  - Lois' Makeover (2002) ... Mr. Fisher
  2002 Love Liza
  Tom Bailey
  2001 The Gene Pool (TV Movie)
  Walter Westfield
  2001 Off Centre (TV Series)
  Milt Flack
  - Swing Time (2001) ... Milt Flack
  2001 The Day the World Ended (TV Movie)
  Principal Ed Turner
  2001 Roswell (TV Series)
  Julius Walters
  - Secrets and Lies (2001) ... Julius Walters
  2001 Dead Last (TV Series)
  Ghost Doctor
  - Gastric Distress (2001) ... Ghost Doctor
  2001/I It Is What It Is
  Dr. Martin Ullberg
  2001 Black River (TV Movie)
  Mayor Tom Thompson
  2001 On the Edge (TV Movie)
  Tom (wraparound segments)
  2001 Freddy Got Fingered
  Uncle Neil (uncredited)
  2001 The Lone Gunmen (TV Series)
  Adam Burgess
  - Madam, I'm Adam (2001) ... Adam Burgess
  2001 King of the Hill (TV Series)
  Dr. Benson / Burt Halverstrom
  - The Exterminator (2001) ... Dr. Benson / Burt Halverstrom (voice)
  2001 Bull (TV Series)
  Mr. Siegel
  - Blood, Flopsweat and Tears (2001) ... Mr. Siegel
  2000 Urban Chaos Theory (Short)
  The Husband
  2000 Sleep Easy, Hutch Rimes
  Dewey Wise
  2000 Buzz Lightyear of Star Command (TV Series)
  Gil
  - Mindwarp (2000) ... Gil (voice)
  2000 That's Life (TV Series)
  Study Advisor Roger Robinson
  - The Screw-Up (2000) ... Study Advisor Roger Robinson (as Stephen Tobolowski)
  2000 Memento
  Sammy Jankis
  2000 The Prime Gig
  Mick
  2000 Hollywood Off-Ramp (TV Series)
  - Club Brigadoon (2000)
  2000 Stanley's Gig
  Abe Cohen
  2000 Alien Fury: Countdown to Invasion (TV Movie)
  B.J. McQueen
  1998-2000 Any Day Now (TV Series)
  Mr. Brinkman
  - The Toolshed Behind the Church (2000) ... (as Steven Tobolowsky)
  - Making Music with the Wrong Man (1998) ... Mr. Brinkman
  2000 The Operator
  Doc
  2000 Bossa Nova
  Trevor
  2000 Manhattan, AZ (TV Series)
  Dr. Bob
  - Bees Story (2000) ... Dr. Bob
  - Cattle Drive (2000) ... Dr. Bob
  - The Voyage Home (2000) ... Dr. Bob
  - Atticus Doesn't Live Here Anymore (2000) ... Dr. Bob
  - Episode #1.10 ... Dr. Bob
  Show all 6 episodes
  1999 Snoops (TV Series)
  Michael Bench
  - A Criminal Mind (1999) ... Michael Bench
  - Bedfellas (1999) ... Michael Bench
  - Singer in the Band (1999) ... Michael Bench
  1999 Odd Man Out (TV Series)
  Alan Carlson
  - In the Name of the Father (1999) ... Alan Carlson
  1999 Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place (TV Series)
  Father Viteri
  - Berg's New Roommate (1999) ... Father Viteri
  1999 The Insider
  Eric Kluster
  1999 That '70s Show (TV Series)
  The Professor
  - Laurie and the Professor (1999) ... The Professor
  1999 Don't Look Under the Bed (TV Movie)
  Michael McCausland
  1999 One Man's Hero
  Captain Gaine
  1999 The Practice (TV Series)
  Clyde Burrows
  - Closet Justice (1999) ... Clyde Burrows
  1999 Mad About You (TV Series)
  Principal Hocksacker
  - Uncle Phil Goes Back to High School (1999) ... Principal Hocksacker
  1998 Vengeance Unlimited (TV Series)
  Mayor Bob Laird
  - Eden (1998) ... Mayor Bob Laird
  1998 Suddenly Susan (TV Series)
  Dr. Gerken
  - Don't Tell (1998) ... Dr. Gerken
  1998 The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story (Video)
  Tabaqui (voice)
  1998 Around the Fire
  Doc
  1998 Hercules (TV Series)
  Numericles
  - Hercules and the Techno Greeks (1998) ... Numericles (voice)
  1998 The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars (Video)
  Calculator (voice, as Stephen Tobolowski)
  1998 Black Dog
  McClaren
  1997-1998 Life with Louie (TV Series)
  - Project: Mother's Day (1998) ... (voice)
  - Family Portrait (1997) ... (voice)
  1998 The Closer (TV Series)
  Phil
  - Morality Bites (1998) ... Phil
  1997 The Curse of Inferno
  Lonnie Martin
  1997 Mr. Magoo
  Agent Chuck Stupak
  1997 The Drew Carey Show (TV Series)
  Councilman
  - The Dog and Pony Show (1997) ... Councilman
  1997 Promised Land (TV Series)
  Fred Argyle
  - Par for the Course (1997) ... Fred Argyle
  1997 An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn
  Bill Bardo
  1997 Murder One (TV Series)
  Dr. Andross
  - Chapter Eighteen, Year Two (1997) ... Dr. Andross
  - Chapter Sixteen, Year Two (1997) ... Dr. Andross
  - Chapter Fifteen, Year Two (1997) ... Dr. Andross
  1997 The Naked Truth (TV Series)
  Vincent Hartford
  - The Birds (1997) ... Vincent Hartford
  1996-1997 Mr. Rhodes (TV Series)
  Ray Heary
  - The Valentine Show (1997) ... Ray Heary
  - Tom's Not Headmaster Show (1997) ... Ray Heary
  - The Welcome Back Show (1997) ... Ray Heary
  - The Italian Show (1997) ... Ray Heary
  - The Courtroom Show (1997) ... Ray Heary
  Show all 17 episodes
  1997 Boys Life 2
  Father John (segment "Trevor")
  1996 Night Visitors (TV Movie)
  Taylor
  1996 The Glimmer Man
  Christopher Maynard
  1996 Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV Series)
  Principal Flutie
  - Unaired Pilot (1996) ... Principal Flutie
  1996 The Pretender (TV Series)
  Dr. Alan Trader
  - Pilot (1996) ... Dr. Alan Trader
  1996 Power 98
  Rick Harris
  1996 Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco
  Bando (voice)
  1996 The Home Court (TV Series)
  Jeffrey Solomon
  - Touched by an Anger (1996) ... Jeffrey Solomon
  1995 Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde
  Oliver Mintz
  1995 Chicago Hope (TV Series)
  Dr. Ted Joseph
  - Songs from the Cuckoo Birds (1995) ... Dr. Ted Joseph
  - Full Moon (1995) ... Dr. Ted Joseph
  1995 Murder in the First
  Mr. Henkin
  1995 A Whole New Ballgame (TV Series)
  Dr. Warner Brakefield
  - They Say It's Yer Birthday (1995) ... Dr. Warner Brakefield
  - Opening Day (1995) ... Dr. Warner Brakefield
  1995 Dweebs (TV Series)
  Karl
  - The Noreen Sleeps with Warren Show (1995) ... Karl
  - The Karl's Crisis Show (1995) ... Karl
  - The Bad P.R. Show (1995) ... Karl
  - The Actress Show (1995) ... Karl
  - The Crush Show (1995) ... Karl
  Show all 10 episodes
  1994 Blue Skies (TV Series)
  Oak
  - The Girl, Bull and the Amenite Hat (1994) ... Oak
  - A Kiss Is Just a Mess (1994) ... Oak
  - Cat's in the Bag (1994) ... Oak
  - If You Knew Daddy Like I Know Daddy (1994) ... Oak
  - A Hatful of Pain (1994) ... Oak
  Show all 8 episodes
  1994 Radioland Murders
  Max Applewhite
  1994 Harts of the West (TV Series)
  Dave's former boss
  - Back in the Panties Again (1994) ... Dave's former boss
  1994 My Father the Hero
  Mike
  1994 Trevor (Short)
  Father Jon
  1993 Against the Grain (TV Series)
  Niles Hardeman
  - A House Is Not a Home (1993) ... Niles Hardeman
  - E Pluribus Unum (1993) ... Niles Hardeman
  - Two Minute Drill (1993) ... Niles Hardeman
  - Don't Be a Stranger (1993) ... Niles Hardeman
  - Respect (1993) ... Niles Hardeman
  Show all 8 episodes
  1993 Cafe Americain (TV Series)
  Roger
  - Toast of the Town (1993) ... Roger
  1993 Josh and S.A.M.
  Thom Whitney
  1993 Romeo Is Bleeding
  District Attorney (uncredited)
  1993 Calendar Girl
  Antonio Gallo
  1993 When Love Kills: The Seduction of John Hearn (TV Movie)
  Det. Keefe
  1993 The Pickle
  Mike Krakower
  1993 Civil Wars (TV Series)
  Eugene Paxton
  - A Liver Runs Through It (1993) ... Eugene Paxton
  1993 Picket Fences (TV Series)
  Ben Sasha
  - Be My Valentine (1993) ... Ben Sasha
  1993 Groundhog Day
  Ned
  1992/I Hero
  Wallace
  1992 Sneakers
  Dr. Werner Brandes
  1992 Single White Female
  Mitchell Myerson
  1992 Roadside Prophets
  Ranger Bob
  1992 Basic Instinct
  Dr. Lamott
  1992 Memoirs of an Invisible Man
  Warren Singleton
  1991 Where the Day Takes You
  Charles
  1991 Deadly Medicine (TV Movie)
  Ron Sutton
  1991 To the Moon, Alice (Short)
  Sitcom Producer
  1991 Thelma & Louise
  Max
  1991 Wedlock
  Warden Holliday
  1991 Seinfeld (TV Series)
  Tor
  - The Heart Attack (1991) ... Tor
  1991 Shannon's Deal (TV Series)
  Baker
  - Greed (1991) ... Baker
  1991 Baby Talk (TV Series)
  Dr. Ezra Farr
  - The Whiz Kid (1991) ... Dr. Ezra Farr
  1991 Down Home (TV Series)
  Honis
  - Mail Order Tran (1991) ... Honis
  1991 Tagget (TV Movie)
  Al Hentz
  1991 Perry Mason: The Case of the Maligned Mobster (TV Movie)
  Sergeant Phil Baranski
  1991 The Marla Hanson Story (TV Movie)
  Defense Attorney
  1990 Lifestories (TV Series)
  Josh Gant
  - Art Conforti (1990) ... Josh Gant
  1990 Mirror Mirror
  Mr. Anderson
  1990 Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael
  Mayor Bill Klepler (as Stephen Tobolowski)
  1990 Funny About Love
  Hugo
  1990 The Grifters
  Jeweler
  1990 Last Flight Out (TV Movie)
  Doctor Timothy Brandon
  1990 Bird on a Wire
  Joe Weyburn
  1989 L.A. Law (TV Series)
  Dr. Michael Segal
  - Lie Down and Deliver (1989) ... Dr. Michael Segal
  1989 In Country
  Pete
  1989 Breaking In
  District Attorney
  1989 Great Balls of Fire!
  Jud Phillips
  1989 Roe vs. Wade (TV Movie)
  Darryl Horwood
  1989 Checking Out
  Pharmacist
  1988 Mississippi Burning
  Clayton Townley
  1988 Two Idiots in Hollywood
  Prosecuting Attorney
  1987 Spaceballs
  Captain of the Guard
  1987 The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd (TV Series)
  Alex
  - Here's Why You Should Never Wear High Heels to the Bank (1987) ... Alex
  1986 Designing Women (TV Series)
  Boyd
  - Design House (1986) ... Boyd
  1986 Nobody's Fool
  Kirk
  1986 227 (TV Series)
  Professor
  - We the People (1986) ... Professor
  1985 Stir Crazy (TV Series)
  Salesman
  - Where's Mary? (1985) ... Salesman
  1985 Cagney & Lacey (TV Series)
  Russell Phelps
  - Ordinary Hero (1985) ... Russell Phelps
  1985 Falcon Crest (TV Series)
  Doctor
  - The Phoenix (1985) ... Doctor
  1985 Knots Landing (TV Series)
  Steve Comiskey
  - A Man of Good Will (1985) ... Steve Comiskey
  1985 Alice (TV Series)
  Caveman Carl
  - Vera, the Nightbird (1985) ... Caveman Carl
  1984 The Philadelphia Experiment
  Barney
  1984 Swing Shift
  French deMille / Documentary Narrator
  1983 Cocaine and Blue Eyes (TV Movie)
  TV Clerk
  1977 Keep My Grave Open
  Robert
  Show ShowWriter (3 credits)
  Show ShowSoundtrack (2 credits)
  Show ShowDirector (3 credits)
  Show ShowComposer (1 credit)
  Show ShowProducer (1 credit)
  Show ShowMiscellaneous Crew (1 credit)
  Show ShowThanks (5 credits)
  Show ShowSelf (22 credits)
  Show ShowArchive footage (4 credits)

• New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/books/tell-us-5-things-about-your-book-stephen-tobolowskys-my-adventures-with-god.html

  Tell Us 5 Things About
  Your Book: Stephen
  Tobolowsky’s ‘My
  Adventures With God’
  By JOHN WILLIAMS APRIL 16, 2017
  You might know the name Stephen Tobolowsky. If not, I promise you know his face.
  His more than 250 acting credits include dozens of TV series (including current work
  on “Silicon Valley” and “One Day at a Time”) and movies like “Mississippi Burning”
  and “Memento.” To fans of “Groundhog Day,” he is seared into memory (“Bing!”) as
  Ned Ryerson, the insurance salesman who repeatedly accosts Bill Murray’s Phil
  Connors. He’s also an author, and his new book, “My Adventures With God,” is the
  story of his lifelong relationship to spirituality, and particularly Judaism, told
  through reflections of his time growing up in Texas, his early years as an actor and
  his becoming a husband and father. Below, Mr. Tobolowsky tells us about the
  inspiration for the book, what he learned while writing it and more.
  When did you first get the idea to write this book?
  The real genesis of the book, so to speak, was probably 2008. I had a terrible
  accident, and I broke my neck in five places riding a horse on the side of an active
  volcano in Iceland. What could possibly have gone wrong? So I got back to America,
  and the doctor told me I had a fatal injury. Which is disturbing on many levels,
  including a terrible misuse of the word fatal. There’s not a lot you can do with a
  broken neck. So I’m at home waiting to recover, and I know it’s going to be a few
  months. And I thought: What if what the doctor told me was true? What if I had died
  8
  ARTICLES
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  10/15/2017 Tell Us 5 Things About Your Book: Stephen Tobolowsky’s ‘My Adventures With God’ - The New York Times
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  on that mountain in Iceland? What would I have wanted my sons to know about
  their father?
  Those stories became the podcast “The Tobolowsky Files,” and some of those
  found their way onto national radio. And then Simon & Schuster said, “Can we do a
  book of some of these stories?” That became “The Dangerous Animals Club.” After
  that, my editor, Ben Loehnen, called me up and said: “Several of the stories have a
  kind of spiritual resonance that we’re getting feedback on from people. Is it possible
  you could write another book of stories that are held together by the idea of spirit or
  belief or faith or something?” And I said, “Sure, not a problem.”
  What’s the most surprising thing you learned while writing it?
  I learned that I think I’m the luckiest person in the world. When I wrote these
  stories, I broke them into five “books,” each corresponding to a book of the Old
  Testament. But in each section, I was shocked at what a moron I was. As a child, I’m
  trying to catch water moccasins. In the end, I’m riding on a volcano. And nothing in
  between really changed. I not only courted disaster; I went on reality dating shows
  with disaster. At almost every juncture in my life, I was saved by love. I found it
  through my family when I was a child, and through my wife and children when I was
  older, and one thing that was constant throughout was the always-changing, everfascinating
  love with God.
  In what way is the book you wrote different from the book you set out to
  write?
  I wanted the book to follow the template of one of my favorite books, Richard
  Llewellyn’s “How Green Was My Valley.” He gradually weaves in the Welsh language
  and customs, so by the end of the book you feel you’re part of the town. I wanted to
  do the same thing with Jewish ideas and traditions. I wanted to go into the Torah
  and share lessons from the Talmud, and then things from the Midrash and the
  Zohar, these medieval texts that were commentaries. I was really getting into cool …
  Maimonides! I had a whole section on Maimonides. Nachmanides!
  But Ben warned me that 10,000-page books weren’t very fashionable, and I
  should probably change course. And I don’t regret it, because there are so many
  10/15/2017 Tell Us 5 Things About Your Book: Stephen Tobolowsky’s ‘My Adventures With God’ - The New York Times
  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/books/tell-us-5-things-about-your-book-stephen-tobolowskys-my-adventures-with-god.html 3/3
  scholars qualified to do that. So the book turned out to be very personal. I cut back
  on all that academic and historical and biblical, archaeological info. I kept it to just
  true stories from my life that have a spiritual component to them.
  Who is a creative person (not a writer) who has influenced you and
  your work?
  I’m sorry for this answer, but I think it’s true: my mother. My mother was
  creative with reality. She was creative with her imagination, with her endurance.
  Once I invited my fourth-grade class over to a party at my house, without telling my
  mother. There were about 25 kids in my class. I mentioned it as the first children
  arrived at the home. She had a look of panic on her face, but she proceeded to make
  up games and come up with prizes for the games, and I became the hero in my class.
  She never murdered me for it, never even considered murdering me for it. Because
  in a way, I think she appreciated being my hero.
  She had a unique sense of humor. If she found something funny, it would reemerge
  over the decades, at inappropriate times. She taught me that there was no
  expiration date on laughter.
  Persuade someone to read it in less than 50 words.
  These are true stories from my life. Most are funny. Some are not. They’re often
  unbelievable, occasionally creepy. Together they tell a bigger story of how we are
  shaped by the invisible. Something I call divine. Something I hope becomes wisdom.
  This interview has been condensed and edited.
  A version of this article appears in print on April 17, 2017, on Page C4 of the New York edition with the
  headline: An Actor’s ‘Always-Changing’ Bond With Faith.

• Texas Monthly - https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/groundhog-deus/

  Groundhog Deus
  Stephen Tobolowsky has appeared in hundreds of films, including one of the greatest movies ever made. But these days, he’s thinking—and writing—a lot about God.

  by DOMINGO MARTINEZAPRIL 20170 COMMENTS

  Stephen Tobolowsky at his home in Studio City, California, on February 22, 2017.
  PHOTOGRAPH BY LEANN MUELLER

  Press spacebar to see more share options.
  Even if the name Stephen Tobolowsky doesn’t ring a bell, his face probably does. The oft-bespectacled actor has appeared in dozens of television shows and more than two hundred films; he’s perhaps best known for his turn as the insurance salesman Ned Ryerson in the 1993 classic Groundhog Day. But in recent years the 65-year-old thespian has branched out into the world of podcasting (“The Tobolowsky Files”) and publishing; his 2012 book, The Dangerous Animals Club, is a collection of autobiographical essays inspired by his idyllic childhood in Dallas’s Oak Cliff neighborhood. His new book, My Adventures With God, will come out later this month.

  Domingo Martinez: How are things?

  Stephen Tobolowsky: Things are really—knock on wood—pretty good. Some neighbors found a wild rabbit out by the preschool, and they know that we like rabbits, so they called us down there and [my wife] Ann caught the rabbit and right now it’s running around outside. Yesterday I petted the rabbit for the first time.

  DM: Rabbits can be skittish. Be careful.

  ST: I’ll take that as a warning. But he seemed to enjoy the petting.

  DM: So how did this new book come about?

  ST: After The Dangerous Animals Club came out, Simon & Schuster called and said, “Could you write another book?” They had noticed this theme of spirituality in Dangerous Animals, so the specific request was “Could you write a book on faith?” Of course I said yes before I had any idea what I would write. And then after thinking about it, I realized that my life and the life of just about everybody I’ve met follows the template of the Old Testament.

  DM: Interesting.

  ST: For example, all of us have a Genesis story about where we came from—our families, where we originated. The first questions on a first date over a first glass of chardonnay are usually our Genesis. Who was your first teacher? How did you grow up? Then we all go into slavery, like in Exodus, except instead of building pyramids, we go into slavery with first love and first heartbreaks, with menial jobs that don’t fit our dreams. And then, like in the book of Exodus, we eventually become free, only to find that we’re still wandering in the wilderness. Then we all have this Leviticus moment in the middle of our life where we say, “Wait a minute. This is what I am.” For me, that’s when I met Ann. That’s when I had children. That’s when I said, “This is what my life is going to be.” And that’s when I found my way back to the synagogue. Then, like in the book of Numbers, we’re shaped by mortality. People we love pass away, and the visions of our own mortality begin to shape us. Finally, as in the book of Deuteronomy, we tell our stories like Moses told the children of Israel their stories, because they forgot what they were doing because they were wandering for decades in the wilderness. And we tell our stories to our children to try to make sense of our own journey.

  Tobolowsky at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, in 1974, soon after his graduation.
  PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF STEPHEN TOBOLOWSKY

  DM: From listening to your podcast, it doesn’t seem like faith was very present early on in your life. What changed?

  ST: In the middle of my life, when I came back to the synagogue, I found there was a comfort in the validation of tradition. I had one moment in the synagogue that completely turned me around. When I first started coming back, I went to a service one Saturday morning. I was the only person in the synagogue. No one had shown up but the old rabbi. And the rabbi said, “What, do you think it’s something I said?” And then he said, “Come on, come on up here with me. Are you afraid to pray with an old man?” I said, “Oh, I’m very afraid.” “You should be,” he said. “Listen, we’re going to take this opportunity to feel these prayers, to understand these prayers; the psalms are beautiful, you should understand the beauty of the psalms and enjoy them. Let’s just start this together, you and me.” And that is when I realized that the religious moment is a solitary moment, it’s not a group moment. If you look back through the Bible, every real experience someone has with God, they’re alone. You have Moses and the burning bush, you have Jesus at Gethsemane, you have Abraham looking out at the stars of the sky with “the stranger,” who might be the personage of God. And that’s when I realized, wait a minute, what we’re talking about when we talk about faith is an element of our life that changes through our life, just like my waistline. I found this comfort in tradition, and I felt like I was able to be a student again and study the Torah and the Talmud and the Mishnah.

  But then later in my life I started having catastrophes—I broke my neck, I had open-heart surgery. And in those moments my faith became something other than scholastic, and I began to feel the real power of the invisible and of faith, and the possibility of a miracle. A lot of times people like to think of miracles as something akin to a magic trick, but the way I see a miracle is when your mind suddenly changes and you see something that you never saw before.

  DM: How did you make the transition from acting to writing? I’ve met a lot of people who were phenomenal storytellers in person, but they couldn’t get that voice that was in their head onto a piece of paper.

  ST: I think I always had the ability to write. When I was an undergraduate at SMU, I made money by writing people’s master theses and Ph.D. dissertations. What I would do was, I would ask for a writing sample from them and use my acting instinct to inhabit their writing sample. I would write in their voice so it wouldn’t sound like somebody else wrote their paper. I got used to impersonating different voices, and I guess I was able to impersonate my own voice.

  DM: On your podcast you’ve mentioned the high you get after you write something or create something.

  ST: There’s really nothing like it. Sometimes, my “writer” is in. I’m there all day in front of the computer and I’m in ecstasy and I’m having so much fun and it’s so divine. And the days when the writer is not in, I realize, “Oh, it’s a day to do something different.” And I’ll go back and reread what I’ve written and try to correct words, try to change words around, try to refine what I’ve written. And if the writer is really not in at all—he’s gone fishing and put up a sign on the door saying, “Don’t even bother knocking”—what I do is, I go fishing too: for inspiration. So those are the days I’ll do research. I’ll read the Talmud. Or I’ll listen to music I’ve never listened to before. Or I’ll take a walk and try to get some input that maybe will stir something up. I put everything in service of the writing monster.

  DM: Any other writing tips?

  ST: In his books Creating a Role and Building a Character, [Konstantin] Stanislavski says that when you’re working on a part you should do light exercise—nothing heavy, nothing strenuous—because you need to be physically distracted a little bit to force your concentration to move into a more operative place. Maybe it’s the same thing with writing. Do dusting, walk to the park, observe people, clean dishes. That kind of thing. At our house, I think about things in the morning when I shuffle the cat litter.

  DM: And it works out.

  ST: I had dinner the other night with a friend who has just gotten through pancreatic cancer, and she’s alive and she’s in remission and she’s well. And she told me that she heard me perform “Conference Hour,” the story I wrote about the teacher in college who was trying to destroy me and how I survived that.

  DM: That’s a great story.

  ST: And she said that she heard me reading that story two weeks before she had to go in for surgery, and it changed her outlook. Now, I’ve heard several people say that they felt that that story was their story. But that story is not their story, you know? That was a story of a kid in school dealing with a brutal teacher. This woman is dealing with pancreatic cancer and possible life and death. But when you tell a true story, whatever that true story is, there’s a chance that someone will see their life in the truth of your story, even though it has nothing to do with their story. If you tell a clever story, maybe people will remember a joke or a line from it, but the odds are they aren’t going to see the truth of their life in it. Which is why I love telling a true story. That’s what I’m into the most, if I can tell it well.

  This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Tobolowsky, Stephen: MY ADVENTURES
WITH GOD
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Tobolowsky, Stephen MY ADVENTURES WITH GOD Simon & Schuster (Adult Nonfiction) $25.00 4, 18 ISBN:
978-1-4767-6646-1
A tale of two Tobolowskys, divided by a positive midlife crisis.In the author's latest, ostensibly a memoir but difficult
to characterize, prolific character actor Tobolowsky (The Dangerous Animals Club, 2012) revisits his past with an eye
toward finding some order, and some religion, in the chaos. The first half of the book follows the author's life from his
childhood in Dallas to the heady years of his burgeoning acting career in the 1980s. In the second half, Tobolowsky
focuses on people and concepts related, in some way or another, to his return to Judaism. The two halves are very
different in tone, subject matter, and approach. The author's banal account of his early career mirrors the sort of
hedonistic life story one might expect from a baby boomer in the entertainment world: drugs, parties, and money (or
the lack thereof) dominate many of the storylines. Readers will be only mildly amused by the time Tobolowsky quips,
"do you know how hard it is to spend $800 a week on yourself when you are not buying cocaine? In 1985 dollars?"
The concept of faith doesn't figure largely in the author's story until the mid-1990s and his rather sudden return to
traditional Judaism. At this point, the memoir gains more gravity but also becomes less streamlined, turning from a
TMZ-style tell-all to a collection of vignettes about faith, difficult decisions, and people important to him. To be sure,
Tobolowsky includes some truly worthwhile stories, not the least of which is a lengthy treatment of an Auschwitz
survivor he came to know and whose story he decided to share through film. The author succeeds as a writer in that his
prose captures the imagination and keeps readers' attention; as a memoir, however, the book is aimless, oddly
structured, and only tangentially related to his supposed theme. An uneven Hollywood memoir with a bit of divinity
thrown in.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Tobolowsky, Stephen: MY ADVENTURES WITH GOD." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2017. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480921768&it=r&asid=a437142739b74f2ec707982bfc84a43c.
Accessed 15 Oct. 2017.
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My Adventures with God
Publishers Weekly.
264.7 (Feb. 13, 2017): p70.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
My Adventures with God
Stephen Tobolowsky. Simon & Schuster, $25 (368p) ISBN 978-1-4767-6646-1
Character actor Tobolowsky (The Dangerous Animals Club) is best known for his roles in the 1987 sci-fi spoof
Spaceballs and the 1993 hit comedy Groundhog Day. Less known is his background as a Jewish Texan, on which these
new stories are based. Tobolowsky employs a unique Pentateuch narrative arc to examine his personal creation myth,
enslavement, a "Leviticus moment" of self-realization, a Numbers phase of losing friends and family, and a
Deuteronomy stage of making "sense of the journey." Through this device, a hilarious, poignant, complicated, and
cautionary tale unfolds. "My first experience with redemption had nothing to do with forgiveness or renewal. It had to
do with green stamps," he writes, explaining that his mother used the stamps as credits for helpful deeds that could be
later redeemed for prizes. Tobolowsky's fast-paced, precise, wide-ranging, and impressive book draws on the I Ching,
Talmud, Einstein, Grimms' Fairy Tales, and reruns of SportsCenter to create counterpoints when discussing his life of
faith. "Thoughts of God are intended to create doubt," he writes. "Doubt is integral to wisdom." This is a well-told
must-read for fans of Tobolowsky and for anyone interested in a comedic adventure with the divine. Agent: Jud Laghi,
Jud Laghi Agency. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"My Adventures with God." Publishers Weekly, 13 Feb. 2017, p. 70. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA482198239&it=r&asid=faca99ec3f3a769df9742e1fc468d35e.
Accessed 15 Oct. 2017.
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Tobolowsky, Stephen: THE DANGEROUS
ANIMALS CLUB
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 15, 2012):
COPYRIGHT 2012 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Tobolowsky, Stephen THE DANGEROUS ANIMALS CLUB Simon & Schuster (Adult Nonfiction) $24.00 8, 21
ISBN: 978-1-4516-3315-3
Veteran character actor Tobolowsky, perhaps best known for his role in Groundhog Day, offers a beguiling collection
of autobiographical essays detailing his experiences in and out of show business. The actor has plenty of rich material
to mine--he has been held hostage at gunpoint by a lunatic, suffered an apocalyptic infestation of fleas, barely eluded a
goring by a bull, and auditioned with a broken neck--but the delight of the book is the author's voice: wry, discursive
and full of generous spirit and curiosity. Tobolowsky recounts his various heartbreaks, struggles as a young artist and
status as a bemused member of the human race with unfailing wit and gratitude for the richness and strangeness of life,
marveling at the small miracles and surprising reversals that inform relationships and careers. Occasionally the author's
observations skirt along the fringe of New Age platitudes, but a leavening lack of pretention prevents the spiritual
content from curdling, and there is always another jaw-dropping anecdote around the corner to carry the proceedings.
Tobolowsky contributes intriguing insights into the absurdities of TV and film production (his description of acting
against a green screen is particularly amusing), the politics of graduate school life and the perils of pet ownership,
endowing both the most mundane and rarified endeavors with equally close attention and appreciation. His
reminiscences of the early days of the AIDS crisis and the decline and death of his mother provide the collection with
profound emotional ballast, but even in the heavier sections Tobolowsky's light touch and effortless empathy delight
and sustain readers' engagement. A copiously examined life rendered with humor and heart.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Tobolowsky, Stephen: THE DANGEROUS ANIMALS CLUB." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2012. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA292825505&it=r&asid=ace2a09d23094c044845f5f15bcccd87.
Accessed 15 Oct. 2017.
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Tobolowsky, Stephen. The Dangerous Animals
Club
Terry Bosky
Library Journal.
137.10 (June 1, 2012): p105.
COPYRIGHT 2012 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
* Tobolowsky, Stephen. The Dangerous Animals Club. S. & S. Aug. 2012. c.352p. ISBN 9781451633153. $24. TV
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Tobolowsky has appeared in hundreds of film and television roles (e.g., in Groundhog Day; Deadwood; Glee);
however, instead of being recognized as a movie star, he writes that he is often mistaken for an insurance salesman or
former science teacher. Perhaps it's this everyman quality that elevates his debut collection of essays. Rather than
presenting a mere compilation of anecdotes, Tobolowsky tells each story for a reason, creating a tapestry
encompassing catching tarantulas, broken hearts, Davy Crockett, the biblical story of Joseph, and dying twice on
Heroes. VERDICT Tobolowsky guides the reader along a hilarious, poignant, and haunting path. The end result is that
most magical of memoirs--one that illuminates the reader's life as much as the author's. Ignore the celebrity aspect and
put this book in the hands of your memoir readers. Lovers of good writing will welcome this powerful, compelling
voice.--Terry Bosky, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., FL
Bosky, Terry
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Bosky, Terry. "Tobolowsky, Stephen. The Dangerous Animals Club." Library Journal, 1 June 2012, p. 105+. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA292009517&it=r&asid=f19505c87b51fe3d94cf3c45953d2a72.
Accessed 15 Oct. 2017.
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The Dangerous Animals Club
Publishers Weekly.
259.22 (May 28, 2012): p83.
COPYRIGHT 2012 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Dangerous Animals Club
Stephen Tobolowsky. Simon & Schuster, $24 (352p) ISBN 978-1-4516-3315-3
You may not recognize his name, but you'd definitely be able to pick Tobolowsky out of a crowd from his character
roles in movies like Groundhog Dog and TV shows like Heroes. Tobolowsky puts his tales into his first book. The
result is autobiography told in vignette-style chapters delivered in somewhat chronological order. From his childhood
growing up in Texas through studying and teaching acting and theater to his ups and down in love and Hollywood,
Tobolowsky recounts stories that are quirky, funny, and sentimental. Whether he is remembering simple pleasures like
the joys of chasing snakes as a kid or repeatedly getting kneed in "the nuts" by Bridget Fonda in the film Single White
Female, Tobolowsky always ends on an educational or uplifting message--don't lie on a first date, "one should never
underestimate the lasting power of kindness." Each chapter may not be a star in its own right, but taken together they
add up to a curious account of an interesting life. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Dangerous Animals Club." Publishers Weekly, 28 May 2012, p. 83. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA291616405&it=r&asid=1ff38dfd01841c99ee166564d9f4cbbc.
Accessed 15 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A291616405

"Tobolowsky, Stephen: MY ADVENTURES WITH GOD." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480921768&it=r. Accessed 15 Oct. 2017. "My Adventures with God." Publishers Weekly, 13 Feb. 2017, p. 70. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA482198239&it=r. Accessed 15 Oct. 2017. "Tobolowsky, Stephen: THE DANGEROUS ANIMALS CLUB." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2012. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA292825505&it=r. Accessed 15 Oct. 2017. Bosky, Terry. "Tobolowsky, Stephen. The Dangerous Animals Club." Library Journal, 1 June 2012, p. 105+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA292009517&it=r. Accessed 15 Oct. 2017. "The Dangerous Animals Club." Publishers Weekly, 28 May 2012, p. 83. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA291616405&it=r. Accessed 15 Oct. 2017.

• Jewish Book Council
  https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/my-adventures-with-god
  Word count: 461

  My Adventures with God
  Stephen Tobolowksy

  Simon & Schuster 2017
  368 Pages $25
  ISBN: 978-1476766461
  amazon indiebound
  barnesandnoble
  Review by Philip K. Jason

  Premier character actor Stephen Tobolowsky offers a wide-ranging memoir in the form of a series of remarkable vignettes. He sees himself as a man of faith who remains a questioner, a man whose outlook involves an internal competition between experience and more formal modes of learning. Light doses of Torah and Talmud interact with memories of crises, illuminations, losses, and unalloyed satisfactions. Tobolowsky’s insights are often humorous, but never cruel. He takes us on a remarkable voyage – he is a sophisticated everyman, a committed yet somewhat restless Jew, and a profound and fluid storyteller.

  The overall story could be accurately labeled “The Making of a Mensch.”

  In telling his stories, Tobolowsky draws amazingly efficient portraits of those who meant the most to him: his parents and children, his first and second wives, his second-grade heartthrob, close friends, and rabbis and others from whom he gained understanding and solace. As a man trained to inhabit a character, he has an instinct for the telling detail. As a man trained to deliver his part of a scripted conversation, he has an ear for recreating the vivid and meaningful conversations of times gone by.

  The vignettes are grouped into several sections whose titles reinforce Tobolowsky’s development as a committed member of the Jewish community. You will recognize the echoes: Beginnings, Exodus: A Love Story, The Call, Wilderness, and The Words That Become Things. Within these sections, which hold between five and eight stories (in some cases linked stories), Tobolowsky displays his marvelous ability to draw meaningful comparisons between the distant past, today, and stops along the way. Though the plan is primarily chronological, it is not always so. Sometimes, episodes are linked by association rather than by chronology. Sometimes, it is necessary to proceed backwards.

  The author shares with us his interests and his explorations of books both sacred and secular. He attests to the importance of dreams in his life, which he tells us “whisper rather than roar.” He is a man open to epiphanies. He is a man open to the mysteries of science and the possible parallels, if not necessarily links, between scientific thought and religious experience.

  Tobolowsky’s use of the word “adventures” in the title suggests an attitude of openness, of seeking and accepting challenges. The book has a humorous tone. Throughout, it is this humor that floats the friendly scholarship, serious intent, and occasional desperation of an exemplary seeker. This book is good for the Jews. It’s good for those who appreciate wonderful stories.

• Dallas News
  https://www.dallasnews.com/arts/books/2017/04/12/dallas-stephen-tobolowsky-faith-new-book-everyones-old-testament-lives
  Word count: 1179

  Dallas-raised Stephen Tobolowsky on faith, his new book and everyone's Old Testament lives

  Profile image for Joyce Sáenz Harris
  Joyce Sáenz Harris, Special Contributor
  Connect with Joyce Sáenz Harris

  Stephen Tobolowsky, author of My Adventures With God.

  Even for fans who are well-acquainted with the work of Dallas native Stephen Tobolowsky, his new book, My Adventures with God, is a bit of a surprise: an exploration of his midlife return to the Jewish faith.
  Stephen Tobolowsky, author of My Adventures With God (

  Jim Britt

  )
  Stephen Tobolowsky, author of My Adventures With God
  (Jim Britt)

  Tobolowsky is a graduate of Justin F. Kimball High School and Southern Methodist University. In the past three decades, he has become a beloved character actor who displays both comedy and drama chops in more than 100 films as diverse as Groundhog Day and Mississippi Burning. He's been on more than 200 TV shows ranging from Deadwood to Glee, most recently Silicon Valley and The Goldbergs. He also tells stories on the popular podcast The Tobolowsky Files.

  Tobolowsky, who lives in Los Angeles, will return to his hometown to celebrate the publication of My Adventures With God (Simon & Schuster, $25) on Tuesday, April 18, with an appearance at the Dallas Museum of Art as part of Arts & Letters Live. He answered questions by email; here are highlights.

  Like your 2012 book The Dangerous Animals Club, My Adventures with God is a memoir with a lot of Dallas and many laugh-out-loud moments. But the spiritual aspect often takes it into a more serious realm.

  Simon and Schuster asked me if I could write a book on faith. When I was grasping for a premise for My Adventures with God, I came up with something that turned out to be truer than I first imagined: Our lives often fit the template of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament.

  We all have a Genesis. This is usually what we talk about on a first date: who we are, where we came from, our aspirations. Then, like in Exodus, we go into slavery. Instead of building pyramids, we lose ourselves in the desperation of first loves, first jobs. Some are trapped by drugs and alcohol, others by graduate school.

  Then we escape and have our Leviticus moment. We stop and say, "This is what I am." This is when I married Ann. When I became a father. When I returned to Judaism. Then we are shaped by mortality, as in the Book of Numbers, as we lose family and friends. And finally, we get to a place of perspective: Deuteronomy. It is here when we tell our stories to our children and try to make sense of the journey.
  My Adventures With God, by Stephen Tobolowsky.  (Getty Images)
  My Adventures With God, by Stephen Tobolowsky.
  (Getty Images)

  You were in seventh grade when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, and you write that "for those few days, history pulled back the curtain and showed us all how close we are to the edge of nothing." Have you had any other occasions like that, such as 9/11?

  Once you are aware of how delicate civilization is, you see its potential downfall everywhere. Usually in lies. They can be big lies from people in power — or the lies we tell ourselves. It doesn't take anything as cataclysmic as 9/11. As my mother said, "Don't break your word. You only get one. When you break it, it's hard to get it back again."

  I was slightly spooked by "A Voice from Another Room," the chapter in which you tell about being clairvoyant while a student at SMU. Did this psychic vibe vanish with age, or has it reappeared?

  It reappears. Not enough to get rich at the track, but enough to creep Ann out. I was in New York, and she called in a panic that she had lost a necklace. Could I use my ESP to help her find it? I thought for a second and told her the necklace was still in the house. In something soft. Surrounded by gold and purple. She found it in a zippered compartment of an LA Lakers (gold and purple) duffel bag in my son's closet.

  The second section of your book, "Exodus: A Love Story," is about your long relationship with playwright Beth Henley, whom you met at SMU. In it, you tell how you and Beth worked with the Talking Heads' David Byrne on his 1986 film True Stories. What are the connections between you, the film and the British band Radiohead?

  David told Beth and me he wanted to make a movie filled with characters whose lives were incredible but true. Beth said: "You should talk to my sweetie. He can hear tones." David thought this was funny. "You hear tones?" I told him the story of my psychic experiences in college (these are told in detail in My Adventures with God.) I was able to know things about people by hearing their "tones." (I know. It's crazy. But it happened.) David hired us to write the screenplay for True Stories; he rewrote it and added a character that heard tones like me and wrote the song "Radio Head" for him to sing. A few years later, the English band On A Friday, who were big Talking Heads fans, changed their name to Radiohead.

  Character actor Stephen Tobolowsky recalls his Dallas beginnings in his memoir, ‘The Dangerous Animals Club’

  You wrote that your mother treasured "the chance to give something life." Is that what acting does — give life to something that otherwise exists only on paper and in our heads?
  Yes. Absolutely. In fact, we have even seen beloved characters in film and television compete with their actors for existence. Carroll O'Connor battled Archie Bunker. Sean Connery tried to survive James Bond. In dramatic literature, James Tyrone in Long Day's Journey Into Night is an actor ruined by the popularity of the character he played on Broadway.

  What did it mean to you when your wife, Ann, decided to convert to Judaism?
  I had no idea she was planning on doing it. The moment was unforgettable. Heartbreaking. Beautiful. And then she said we should stop eating shrimp.

  Joyce Sáenz Harris is a Dallas freelance writer.

  🎙️ Podcast: Stephen Tobolowsky discusses his "Adventures With God" on KERA's THINK:
  Plan your life

  Stephen Tobolowsky will appear at 7:30 p.m. April 18 at the Dallas Museum of Art, 1717 N. Harwood St., as part of Arts & Letters Live. $40, with discounts for DMA members, students and educators. DMA.org/ALL or 214-922-1818.
  Actor-author Stephen Tobolowsky charms his hometown crowd at SMU

• Reviews by Amos Lassen
  http://reviewsbyamoslassen.com/?p=56785
  Word count: 548

  Books, Movies and Judaica and Random Thoughts About Whatever
  Skip to content

  “My Adventures with God” by Stephen Tobolowky— Love, Catastrophe and Triumph
  Leave a reply

  Tobolowsky, Stephen. “My Adventures with God”, Simon and Schuster, 2017.

  Love, Catastrophe and Triumph

  Amos Lassen

  God is the greatest mystery we have today and so many of us have a hard time dealing with the concept of a supreme being that we know so little about and who controls our every move and utterance. Character actor shares that very problem with us and he also shares how he forged a relationship with his God. I used to think that it would be easy to be an atheist since by not believing, I can push aside the concept of belief. I now see that it is, as Stephen Tobolowsky says, more difficult to believe in nothing than it is to believe in something and whether we are ready to admit it or not, we all do believe in something. It is easy to say that I believe that I will have lunch at noon instead of I do not know if I will have lunch at all. The idea that I have set a time, allows me to believe that it will happen rather than leave the option open.

  The fact that there is a greater power somewhere out there gives us a small sense of certainty and we regard that as invisible and unexplainable using faith to more or less define it.

  Tobolowsky’s “My Adventures with God” is a collection of short stories that explore the idea that most people’s lives seem to fit into what we read in the Hebrew Bible. We all have our own myths including one about the creation and we all have stories about when we were children and waged battles that we either won or lost. These are the genesis of lives that lead us to our own exodus in which, like the children of Israel wandering in the desert, find our fears and our hopes for the future. We eventually find our sense of freedom thus allowing us to say who we are. We have our Leviticus moments during which we are able to reconcile who we thought we would become with who we indeed did become. Our book of Numbers leads us to consider mortality as we lose family and friends and then as in the book of Deuteronomy, we repeat the stories we have lived through. I love the way Tobolowsky has taken the Bible and made it significant to our lives.

  Tobolowsky’s stories are about a boy growing up in the wilds of Texas, finding and losing love, losing and finding himself and they are told through looking at Torah and Talmud that are combined mixed with insights from science as seen through a child’s eyes. We not only learn about the life of one of Tobolowsky as an actor, he also gives us a structure to evaluate our own lives and relationship with God. His true stories look at how we and our lives are shaped by belief and they are funny and moving and very relatable.

• Pop Theology
  http://poptheology.com/my-adventures-with-god/
  Word count: 849

  Review: MY ADVENTURES WITH GOD
  by Ryan Parker
  May 4, 2017
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  Early in his new spiritual memoir, My Adventures With God, author and actor Stephen Tobolowski writes, “When you are telling a story about God you have an inherent difficulty. It is not the problem of belief. It is a problem with nouns.” Thankfully, Tobolowski doesn’t suffer greatly from that problem. In the genre, his is a book of rare beauty and, at times, profound theological insight.

  The first thing you notice about Tobolowski’s reflections is that they aren’t the typical stories that fill so many Hollywood memoirs. Sure, there are accounts of raucous parties full of nudity, drugs, and booze, but rather than sharing these to titillate, Tobolowsky mines them for their spiritual implications and what they say about our longing for something more out of life. He spends far more time unpacking relationships with his family members, friends, and marriages. He intentionally structures his writing to follow the themes of the Old Testament, which he identifies as creation, slavery, purpose, death, and perspective. Tobolowsky sums it up:“My Adventures With God is a collection of true stories from my life that attempts to trace the curve, to map the unseen face. Perhaps God is nothing more than the combination of the mystery of nouns. The result of imperfect knowledge that haunts us from birth to death and the love we feel along the way. Or perhaps it is the Divinity within us that makes us ask these questions.’

  Much of the appeal and beauty of Tobolowsky’s writing lies in the ways in which he holds his speculations and assertions with an open hand. Rather than trying to force his reader to see the world in a particular way, he guides us through his experiences and the lessons he’s learned from them. We’ve all shared in many of those experiences and, whether or not we’ve arrived at similar conclusions or assumptions, it’s impossible to deny the sincerity of Tobolowsky’s faith. Along the way, he writes on a variety of themes including love, death, the afterlife, suffering, miracles, and catastrophe.

  I am particularly appreciative of his interest in science, and how, throughout his life, he has held science and religion in conversation with one another. He titles one chapter “Dark Matter” and in it recalls a particular lecture that echoes the ways in which many theologians now talk about God. He writes about a lecture by Dr. Steven Weinberg: “[…He] was more prepared to describe what dark matter is not. It is not visible. It carries no electrical charge. It cannot decay, and yet, on occasion it must annihilate itself somehow, or it would overwhelm the universe. Physicists search for proof of its existence by finding traces of its annihilation.” There’s something of apophatic theology here to be sure.

  In another chapter, Tobolowsky writes at length about his experience with the Shema, the central prayer of Judaism, which begins, “Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Before leaving Los Angeles to shoot on location in Canada, Tobolowsky visited his rabbi for advice on spiritual practices to engage while away from his synagogue. His rabbi encouraged him to repeat the Shema whenever he encountered a positive experience or avoided a negative one. Tobolowsky notes the science behind humanity being hardwired for negativity as an evolutionary imperative. For him, prayer became a way to combat that and to foster positivity and, more importantly, a spirit of gratitude.

  Having grown up in a conservative evangelical environment, I’m usually wary of conversations about suffering and blessing and God’s role in them. Talk about “God working in mysterious ways” means something completely different from the perspective of individuals reflecting on their own suffering than it does from people telling me how I should feel about mine. Thankfully, Tobolowsky transcends typical theodicy talk and strives for something more universal in scope:

  I began to wonder if miracle and catastrophe are not two separate events occurring on the edge of probability, but are part of the same event–an event doesn’t exist outside of nature, but is a fundamental element of nature itself. A miracle could be the occasional injection of chaos that changes the course of events. It is the antidote to fate.

  I’m tempted to go on and on and to list all the highlights of this spectacular book. Instead, you should just really read it for yourself. It’s one that I recommend without reservation. Like religion has been to Tobolowsky, My Adventures with God will be a gift to his readers.

  You can download or order My Adventures with God (Simon & Schuster, 368 pgs.) here.

• Fresh Air
  https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=162223342
  Word count: 5701

  < Tobolowsky: An Actor's Life 'Low On The Totem Pole' October 3, 20122:39 PM ET 31:49 Download Facebook Twitter Email TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. You may not know Stephen Tobolowsky's name, but if you saw one of his appearances in his dozens of movies, you'd probably say: Oh yeah, that guy. Tobolowsky is a character actor who's appeared in more than 100 films and TV shows, including several recurring roles. He was the former choir director Sandy Ryerson on the Fox series "Glee," Hugo Jarry on HBO's "Deadwood," he plays Stu Beggs on the Showtime series "Californication" and plays Marc Shulman in Mindy Kaling's new series "The Mindy Project." Tobolowsky has written a very funny memoir about his life and career called "The Dangerous Animals Club." He spoke with FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies. They started with the role Stephen Tobolowsky's probably known for. In the film "Groundhog Day," he was Bill Murray's annoying high school friend Ned Ryerson. (SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "GROUNDHOG DAY") STEPHEN TOBOLOWSKY: (As Ned) Phil? Hey, Phil? Phil Connors? Phil Connors, I thought that was you. BILL MURRAY: (As Phil) Hi, how are you doing. Thanks for watching. TOBOLOWSKY: (As Ned) Hey, hey, now don't you tell me you don't remember me because I sure as heckfire remember you. MURRAY: (As Phil) Not a chance. TOBOLOWSKY: (As Ned) Ned Ryerson. Needle-nose Ned, Ned the Head, come on, buddy, Case Western High. Ned Ryerson, I did the whistling bellybutton trick at the high school talent show. Bing, Ned Ryerson, got the shingles real bad senior year, almost didn't graduate. Bing again, Ned Ryerson I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple times until you told me not to anymore. Well? MURRAY: (As Phil) Ned Ryerson? TOBOLOWSKY: (As Ned) Bing. MURRAY: (As Phil) Bing. So did you turn pro with that bellybutton thing, Ned, or what? TOBOLOWSKY: (As Ned) No, Phil, I sell insurance. MURRAY: (As Phil) What a shock. TOBOLOWSKY: (As Ned) Do you have life insurance? Because if you do, you could always use a little more. Am I right, or am I right, or am I right, right, right? DAVE DAVIES, HOST: Well, Stephen Tobolowsky, welcome to FRESH AIR. Good to have you, and I think there are probably Americans who know the name Ned Ryerson who can't name the vice president. (LAUGHTER) DAVIES: Tell - how'd you get that role? TOBOLOWSKY: Oh dear, Dave, that's a terrifying story. I was working in Perris, California. I often say just Perris to make people think I live like John Travolta. But I was in Perris, California. I was doing a movie there, and I got an audition for this show "Groundhog Day." I went in to audition, and I decided I'd play it big, and I actually read with Harold Ramis, the director. I mean, he read with me, which was a shock. I drove back to Perris and found out I got a callback for the part. The producers of the movie we were working on in Perris for the sake of economy put me up with the man who was playing my brother in the movie, his name was Kurt Fuller, and I asked Kurt, we were roomed together, what we were doing next up, what was next up on our lives. And Kurt said oh, he was playing the part of Ned Ryerson in a new movie "Groundhog Day" with Bill Murray. The part was written especially for him. I'm listening to this, put in the picture of someone's brain exploding. I had no idea what to do. I knew I couldn't tell Kurt that I had just auditioned for the part that he had been given. In fact, Kurt said that he had already had a reading with the entire cast. Well, I went back, I auditioned, I ended up getting the part. The premiere of "Groundhog Day," I was there, and who was there waiting for me in the lobby - was Kurt Fuller. Kurt hugged me, and he said: Well, man, you got my part, but at least you did it well. Good work. And I have to say out of all my experiences in Hollywood, that experience of Kurt coming to me and congratulating me at that particular time was setting the bar very high in terms of class and in terms of courage, and it's something that I've always endeavored to aim for, to be like Kurt. DAVIES: Your memoir, "The Dangerous Animal's Club," is both a personal and a professional recounting of your life. And I wanted you to read a section. This is where you're talking about the life of character actors, the people who work but have to keep hustling for work. And you remember a friend of yours. Will you just read this section here on Page 20? TOBOLOWSKY: Right, I was citing that one of the unusual things about me in my life is that I'm an actor but not only an actor but an actor who actually works in show business, which is even more unusual because you can never be too sure when an actor says they're working what they mean. Case in point, in 1972, my girlfriend Beth and I did summer stock in New York. We were doing a production of "Midsummer Night's Dream" when Jack, who shall remain nameless, left our company because he had gotten a job on Broadway in "Pippin." So we had a big goodbye celebration for him, and he said next time we were in the city, we should see the show and come back to the stage door afterwards and say hello. Well, we took him up on the offer a couple months later. Beth and I went to "Pippin," but Jack, Jack was nowhere to be seen. We went to the stage door and asked for him. The guard called back for Jack. He showed up wearing elbow-length black rubber gloves. I told him I enjoyed the show but missed seeing him onstage. I asked if he was in the chorus; Beth asked if he was disguised as a mushroom or a tree. Jack was not amused. He said he never claimed he was in the show. He said he worked on the show. He was in charge of giving enemas to the animals that appeared onstage so they wouldn't have an accident during a musical number and horrify the audience. (LAUGHTER) TOBOLOWSKY: Pause. Now there have been very few times in my life when I have been speechless. In this case it was the combination of horror, surprise and curiosity as to how much the job paid and if they offered it to me, would I take it. Now Jack was rightfully offended by whatever look we had on our faces, but we hit us with the now classic rejoinder: Hey, at least I'm on Broadway. But Jack and his rubber gloves taught me never to trust an actor when they say they're working. DAVIES: That is our guest, character actor Stephen Tobolowsky, from his new memoir "The Dangerous Animal's Club." You write a lot in this book about some of the parts you've had, and auditioning is a part of your life, and I don't suppose Dustin Hoffman has to audition that much, but you generally do, right? TOBOLOWSKY: Yes. Oh, dear. (LAUGHTER) DAVIES: And you write that there's - you know, you can - you don't always get a lot of information about the part sometimes. TOBOLOWSKY: Right, right, yeah, we have audition a lot of times, and we audition in terrible situations. I remember there was one audition I had, and I get a phone call from my agent, who handles commercials, and said: Stephen, we have an audition for you for a commercial. I said: Well, you know I don't do that stuff. She said: Well, this could be a seven-figure job. That is enough for me to make a U-turn over my priorities. I drove over to the casting office, and there in the room was every bald-headed, middle-aged guy I had ever known in Hollywood, and they're all lined up around the room sound asleep. So I figured they'd been here for hours and hours. Well, a lot of times for commercial auditions you don't get a script ahead of time, and sometimes there is no script at all, and they want you to improvise, and they give you what they call a storyboard. So I'm looking at the storyboard. The storyboard is about a family going to Universal Orlando vacation site, a little boy looking out the window, and the mother and father are asleep. They're asleep. DAVIES: That's your role. TOBOLOWSKY: That's my role, the father asleep. Now I realize that all these guys in the room, they're practicing. They're practicing their improv. DAVIES: Now you say there's a pecking order of roles, and you can tell by whether the characters have a first name or a last name or any name. TOBOLOWSKY: Oh dear, yes, yes. I found that when you read a script, you know how much time the writer has given thinking about a role by whether you have a name or not. Now people like Harrison Ford and Johnny Depp, they get two names, you know, Han Solo, Captain Jack Sparrow - he even has a title, you know, captain. But the ranking roles below that, you usually only get one name. If it's a comedy - now, this is not a hard-and-fast rule, but I've kind of found it to be true. If it's a comedy, you get your job description and your first name, like in "Wild Hogs" I played Sheriff Charlie. I played Ringmaster Bob, a lot of roles in which you get the job and your name. If you are playing a serious role, you get the job description and your last name, Detective McClaren, Agent Jones. Now, then there's a level below that, in which you get no name, you get no name. You just get your - sometimes your job description - homeless man, man on train, man with a limp. You get these. These are usually not very good roles. I think once I got the role of buttcrack plumber. (LAUGHTER) TOBOLOWSKY: And believe me, I was - don't laugh, I was happy to get that part except when the costumer said: All right, Stephen, could you get down on all fours, please? And I got down on all fours. He says: I don't really see a lot of crack there. No, no, neither do I. But there is, Dave, there's a level below buttcrack plumber if you can believe that, and that is when you get the kind of job description and a number like buttcrack plumber 2, homeless man 3, government man 4. And I've played all the - I've played all these parts, too. What made this particularly painful was that the director Rob Heydon called me up on the phone and said: Stephen, I've just written a part for you in my new film. So I was really excited, and then he sends me the script, and I open it up, and it says you're on Page 62, and it's buttcrack plumber. So he wrote that part with me in mind. DAVIES: And it all worked out. You figured out what your motivation was and gave a great performance? TOBOLOWSKY: I did that scene actually with the great Kathy Bates. I had several scenes with Kathy Bates, including one of the few bed scenes with Kathy Bates and I in the sack together. The scene wasn't really scripted, and the producers said, well, what are you guys going to do? And I said to Kathy, I said: Shall we just do it the way it's really done? And she said: Yes, Stephen, let's really do it the way it really happens in real life. So the producers are saying guys, guys, please, please. I said no, no, no, no, you're dealing with professionals here. So we got a bowl of Doritos, some dip, I got a TV changer, and Kathy and I just lay in bed and ate dip and were flipping channels through the TV and going: Baby, that was great. DAVIES: And that made it into the film? TOBOLOWSKY: You know, I haven't seen that. I haven't seen the film. (LAUGHTER) TOBOLOWSKY: You know, I can't, I can't - Dave, I don't have time to see everything I've been in, but I've heard it's quite a delightful film. DAVIES: And the name of the film is? TOBOLOWSKY: "You Must Not Kiss the Bride." DAVIES: "You Must Not Kiss the Bride," all right. In the book you describe being in the series "Heroes" and how difficult it was to figure out who your character was, whether it was a good guy or a bad guy. TOBOLOWSKY: Oh help me, yeah, it's just a nightmare. And I don't think the writers knew who I was. I certainly know the producers don't. Allan Arkush was one of our producers, a terrific director, terrific writer and producer. But I asked Allan who I was - playing Bob Bishop the man who could turn things into gold - who I actually was because they wouldn't show me a script because it was all so top secret. If you recall at that time, "Heroes" was such a sensational show. People were looking for little bits of anything to post on the Internet to be spoilers. So they wouldn't show even the actors the scripts. So Allan said, well, imagine that you're a good guy who's really a bad guy who's pretending to be a good who in actuality is a bad guy who may make a final turn to be a good guy. And the sad thing is, he wasn't kidding. (LAUGHTER) TOBOLOWSKY: I had no idea week to week to week who I was in that show until they - I knew they were going to kill me. I knew they were going to kill me, and I had done nine shows. I still didn't have a chair with my name on it. And when I asked for my chair, they gave me a metal folding chair, put a piece of duct tape on the back of it and with magic marker wrote cast. So I felt like that was probably near the end of the line for me. And Tim, the executive producer of the show, called me up later that week and said Stephen, we're going to kill you in the upcoming show. I said: Tim, well, I knew it was going to come sooner or later when I saw the chair with the duct tape. And said: Well, Stephen, it's going to be sooner. (LAUGHTER) TOBOLOWSKY: And it was. DAVIES: We're speaking with Stephen Tobolowsky. His new memoir is called "The Dangerous Animal's Club." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) DAVIES: If you're just joining us, our guest is actor Stephen Tobolowsky. He has a new memoir called "The Dangerous Animal's Club." You're known for a lot of comedic roles, but you say that one of your big breaks came in the movie "Mississippi Burning," where it was a serious role as a Ku Klux Klan leader. How'd you get that part? TOBOLOWSKY: I remember it was a really traumatic period in my life. I was - personally I was at one of the lowest ebbs of my life. My relationship with my girlfriend of years and years and years was coming to an end, and out of nowhere, you know how they say God closes a door and open a window? Suddenly I get the biggest career break in my life, a meeting with Alan Parker from "Mississippi Burning." Well, I was so miserable for my first audition, I didn't even know what I was doing. I went in the room, I looked out the window, there was a golf course. Alan was filming me. I went through my speech as Clayton Townley, the head of the Ku Klux Klan. I left the office, got a callback from my agent: Oh, they want to see you again. I went back, I did the same thing, got a callback saying they want to see you a third time. Now I was getting kind of nervous. Now I was going, like, my goodness whatever I'm doing I must be doing right of some sort. I went back to the office, and this time I was sitting there, and I was fretting a little bit. The secretary looked over and saw me nervous, and she said: You know, Stephen, they like you a lot in there. A lot of people have been reading this part, and they keep trying to be scary, but Alan thinks you're scary just as you are. (LAUGHTER) DAVIES: You know, one of the interesting things that you note in the book about getting that role in the movie "Mississippi Burning" is that you saw the guy as - that he saw himself as a good guy, like Abraham Lincoln, and that worked. TOBOLOWSKY: Well, this is true with a lot of things in acting. You need to ask questions, and you need to ask the right questions. Alan asked me how I saw the man, and I said I saw him as Abraham Lincoln. I don't see him as a villain. This man is a hero with his agenda, with his point of view. I did not intend to play Clayton Townley as one chromosome short of a human being like a lot of people will play various villains in movies. No one usually - except in James Bond movies. OK, in James Bond movies, villains see themselves as villains, but in real life, everybody kind of sees himself as a good guy doing what they're doing. They see themselves as a kind of hero, and I wanted to make sure that Clayton Townley had the kind of size and heroism and wasn't played as some sort of genetic miscreant. DAVIES: You know, when - my son, I spoke to him last night. When I told him I was interviewing Stephen Tobolowsky, he said, oh, yeah, I know who he is. And he remembered your role in "Spaceballs," the Mel Brooks film. (LAUGHTER) TOBOLOWSKY: Yes. DAVIES: And it was - he said it was a quick part where it's the big chase scene at the end where the princess is running around a spaceship, and then you realize that your men - you are some commander - and you say something like: Oh, you idiots, you've captured their stunt doubles. And so the woman turns around, and she's a guy with a moustache and all. And it struck me that, you know you get - some of these parts are longer and deeper and recurring roles, but some of them are pretty quick. And I know that you've done a lot of theater where you are the lead, I mean, you're in an Ibsen play, and you're carrying the theater for three hours. And when you do that, you really know what the character is. Is it harder to get a script where you've got a small part and figure out the character? TOBOLOWSKY: Oh, it's one of the real challenges. It's what people don't expect as a difficulty of being a character actor. When you go back to the roles that have two names - Harrison Ford, Johnny Depp, those guys - everything they do is in the script, their entire day. You see them drinking coffee, you see them taking a shower sometimes. Their entire throughline is in the script. If you play their buddy, or worse the plumber of their buddy, you have a day, too, and you have a throughline to your day, too, but you have to do that work outside of the script. If - I know a lot of actors listen to this show, and I want to bring this up. One of the quick ways I use as a character actor to get into any part is I ask two questions: What is my greatest hope? What is my greatest fear? And usually you don't have a lot of time as an actor to study your part, but if you can answer those two questions, they will form a tightrope upon which almost any other question in the script can be answered, and those are the two I go for. Yeah, that is the work of being a character actor, doing that work off-camera. DAVIES: And when you do it well, it shows. People remember you, and you get more jobs, I assume. TOBOLOWSKY: Well, you do, and - or at least you don't get cut out of the movie. DAVIES: OK. GROSS: Dave Davies will continue his interview with actor Stephen Tobolowsky in the second half of the show. Tobolowsky's new memoir is called "The Dangerous Animal's Club." I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the interview FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies recorded with character actor Stephen Tobolowsky. He has a new memoir called "The Dangerous Animals Club." Tobolowsky has been in over 100 movies and TV series, including recurring roles in "Heroes," "Deadwood," "Glee," "Californication" and Mindy Kaling's new series "The Mindy Project." DAVIES: We have to talk about "Deadwood." You had a recurring character there, Hugo Jarry, was that what the guy? What... TOBOLOWSKY: Yes. Hugo Jarry, the commissioner. Yes. DAVIES: Kind of a corrupt political operative, would you say? TOBOLOWSKY: I would say amoral. I would say amoral. He would - he went wherever the money was greenest. DAVIES: It was such a unique production. I mean... TOBOLOWSKY: Yes. DAVIES: They built the town and there were all these horses and extras and all of this stuff. And you tell a couple of remarkable stories. I mean there was the one of the shoot in the rain where you go when the saloon. You know what I'm talking about? TOBOLOWSKY: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. You're right "Deadwood" was the most mammoth production I've ever been a part of. In fact, and we had the top flight guys from all over Hollywood. We had the same camera crews that worked on "Mississippi Burning." I mean we had the top people working on "Deadwood." We not only built the town but we had an area where we kept livestock to have stampedes and cattle and wagons, we had hundreds of extras. But we shot under any and all conditions, and there were torrential rains happening in Los Angeles at that time. And my job in the scene was to come in from outside the street, through the barroom doors up to the bar to meet with Powers Booth and Garrett, to do a little bit of diabolical planning of what we were going to do - some chicanery. Well, there were always last-second improvisations that David Milch, the producer of that show, threw at us all the time. So you never really knew what a scene was going to turn out to be. So I was coming from outside in the rain, in this torrential rain, coming in. One of the extras on horseback was behind me. And one of the horses just said, I give up, I've had enough. So the horse ends up coming in behind me also. I walk up to the bar. The horse walks up to the bar. (LAUGHTER) TOBOLOWSKY: Powers starts talking and he thinks the horse being at the bar was the last second edition by David Milch. So Powers is planning all this evil we're going to do and he includes the horse as to what you're going to do. (LAUGHTER) TOBOLOWSKY: OK. I want you to go over this - and then after they called cut, Powers came up to me. He says, was the worst is added to the scene Tobo? And I said no, Powers. No. But I think that will be in the blooper reel that we'll see at the end of the year. DAVIES: So the horse was just sick of the rain and just walked up... TOBOLOWSKY: Just sick of the rain. Came in - and, of course, on "Deadwood" nobody knew. Nobody knew if it was something that David, out of his madness, said let's bring a horse into the bar. So, you know, we just shot everything. No one ever called cut. We just, I mean there was one scene where Tim Oliphant, I've been taken to - I got taken to jail a lot in that show. Tim Oliphant is taking me to jail and David Milch thought the street looked awfully empty so he put a gigantic yoked bull in front of us and Tim and I are supposed to walk and talk and do our scenes. And right in the middle of the scene the bull lifts his tail and does what bulls do in the middle of the street, except he did it all over my pants legs and my shoes. So I was squishing when I was walking. We called - they called cut at the end of the scene. Tim Oliphant starts busting a gut laughing. I start complaining that the bull had a pooh-pooh on me. And David Milch was saying you can't pay a bull to do something like that. It was perfect. And he did it right on cue. It's a print. It's perfect. And as I'm grumbling, walking back to my trailer, David says and Stephen, remember, we don't wash our clothes on "Deadwood" because we want the stains to be consistent week in and week out. And he was right. They never, never washed my pants. They never cleaned my shoes and that bull gave me a gift that kept on giving for months afterwards. DAVIES: I wanted to talk about your role in "Glee." TOBOLOWSKY: Yes. DAVIES: Sandy Ryerson. It was in the first few episodes. Is it a coincidence that this was another Ryerson, like Ned Ryerson? TOBOLOWSKY: Well, you know, I never had the nerve to ask the producers. It's spelled exactly the same as Ned Ryerson, so maybe they wanted it to be a callback or an homage to Ned. Maybe Ryan Murphy loved "Groundhog Day" beforehand. I just didn't want to jinx it by saying anything. I remember when I read for that. It was an interesting moment because I had just broken my neck. I had broken her neck three months before and the doctor said it was a fatal injury, which I thought was a terrible misuse of the word fatal, you know. (LAUGHTER) TOBOLOWSKY: I mean you don't tell a patient that, you know, son, you have a fatal injury. It means dead, you know, but I wasn't dead. Through a miracle of anatomy I ended up alive. I broke five vertebrae in my neck, but after three months or so I would be fine. DAVIES: And we should explain how this happened. It's an interesting story in itself, since we... TOBOLOWSKY: Oh, dear. Well, it's all miserable and horrible. I went horseback riding with my wife, Ann. And we were riding in Iceland and we were on a riding little party on the side of an active volcano. And go figure, it turned out to be dangerous. And while I'm riding, a gigantic wind came - and Iceland is noted for big winds - and lifted me and the horse - and the horse - off the ground, lifted us up and threw us onto the other side of the road. The horse I guess took this as God's way of saying gitty up, and he took off with me dangling off of the saddle, and apparently he threw me on the other side of the mountain onto a hardened lava flow. And I say apparently, because this is the stuff of legend, because when I hit I lost all kind of consciousness, even though I was awake. Apparently, the head of the riding troop ran over, saw me on the ground in a fetal position in the middle of this lava flow on the one piece of soft vegetation in the middle of all this hard rock. Apparently, I stood up, jumped on another horse and said let's go. Oh, wait a minute, I feel a little sick. He said well, maybe you were hurt from the fall. I said what fall? He said get off of the horse. DAVIES: Let's listen to a scene from "Glee." This is in the first episode where you're the guy who used to run the glee club and you're in this sort of bed and bath store, and you run into the teacher who now runs the glee club. That's Will Schuester. He's played by Matthew Morrison. Do you want to just say just a little bit about who your character is before we listen to this? TOBOLOWSKY: Yeah. Sandy Ryerson, as you said, was the head of - he had something like 30 complaints against him of him incidentally touching various members of the glee clubs beforehand, so he was destined to be fired soon anyway. I think that's enough. DAVIES: Well, let's listen when he's here and we hear him initially talking to one of the clerks at the bed and bath store. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "GLEE") TOBOLOWSKY: (as Sandy Ryerson) Of course, towels have a thread count, Mr. Sheets and Things. What do you do? I read catalogs. I know these things. Anything under a 400 thread count and I can break out in impetigo. It's simple to understand. William? MATTHEW MORRISON: (as Will Schuester) Sandy? Hey. TOBOLOWSKY: (as Sandy Ryerson) Well, hello. How are things? I hear you have taken over glee club. MORRISON: (as Will Schuester) Yeah. I hope you're not too upset. TOBOLOWSKY: (as Sandy Ryerson) Are you kidding? Getting out of that swirling eddy of despair, best thing that ever happened to me. (as Sandy Ryerson) Don't get me wrong. It wasn't easy at first. Being dismissed, and for what I was accused of, my long-distance girlfriend in Cleveland nearly broke up with me. Took me weeks to get over my nervous breakdown. MORRISON: (as Will Schuester) Did they put you on medication. TOBOLOWSKY: (as Sandy Ryerson) Better. Medical marijuana. It's genius. I just tell my Dr. Feel Good I'm having trouble sleeping and he gives me all of it I want. I'm finding the whole system quite lucrative. MORRISON: (as Will Schuester) You're a drug dealer? TOBOLOWSKY: (as Sandy Ryerson) Oh, yeah. Make five times more than when I was a teacher. I keep some for myself and then I take money baths in the rest. That scene was completely improvised with the clerk. That was - we improvised a lot on "Glee." And Ryan and the writers came up with great things to throw at me and say can you work this in? And that was one of the most fun shows I ever worked on. DAVIES: You want to tell the story of how you discovered comedy at a piano recital? TOBOLOWSKY: Well, I guess I fell in love with music when I was in second grade. It was in talent day, and a girl in our class, Claire Richards, played the piano, and she played "Pickin' Up Paw Paws" with such verve and such joy, I knew I wanted to be a musician at that point in time. And I learned over the next few years — I took piano lessons — that I was not that good. That talk about dream - the distance between the dream and what you want to defend - that I had the talent maybe to sound like I could play the piano, but I did not have the talent Claire did to elevate music to something that could transform the audience, that could elevate them to another level. I eventually got better and better and better at the piano. And one of my last recitals, I was playing a piece by Auguste Durand, a waltz in E-flat, which is a favorite recital piece - it has a lot of very familiar passages if you ever listen to the recording of it. Anyway, I sat down at the piano and the piece begins with three dramatic chords with arpeggios that go up, up the scale. But I played these three chords so well. And the arpeggios were perfect for once in my life. I decided on the spot, improvisationally, to add a fourth chord that would go even higher with an arpeggio that was even grander. And I ran out of keys and I fell off the end of the piano bench onto the floor. The audience was horrified. They were like, oh. I jumped up and picked up the music and turned it toward the audience and said, no, no, no - it's part of the piece. See, right here it says, pianist falls off bench. And they all start laughing and I said, now I continue. And I went down and I started playing the piano again and I realized while I was playing, I did just now what Claire was always able to do. I was able - first of all, I filled the audience with terror. Then I filled them with delight. And then I filled them with release and relief and elevated them. I did have talent - just not with music. And right after that, I auditioned for my first play, which was a comedy. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) DAVIES: Well, Stephen Tobolowsky, thanks so much for speaking with us. TOBOLOWSKY: My pleasure. Thank you so much, Dave. GROSS: Stephen Tobolowsky spoke with FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies. Tobolowsky's new memoir is called "The Dangerous Animals Project." You can read an excerpt on our website FRESH AIR.npr.org. Coming up, Ken Tucker reviews the second album by the band Low Cut Connie. He loved their first one. This is FRESH AIR. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

• Christian Science Monitor
  https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2012/0927/5-stories-from-Stephen-Tobolowsky-s-The-Dangerous-Animals-Club/Bat-communication
  Word count: 776

  5 stories from Stephen Tobolowsky's 'The Dangerous Animals Club'
  By Molly Driscoll, Staff Writer September 27, 2012

  Actor Stephen Tobolowsky has become known for his range of roles in movies and television over the past decades, from 'Groundhog Day' to the TV series 'Glee.' In his debut collection of essays, he reflects on everything from his childhood to trying to survive in Hollywood.
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  1. Bat communication

  On one family vacation, Tobolowsky was awoken by his son William, who told Tobolowsky that he had learned to speak with bats. Tobolowsky was confused, but followed his son outside, where William began squeaking. "Overhead I saw a dark circle forming," he wrote. "I couldn't believe it. It was clear that my son was doing something that engaged the bats on a critter level.... Occasionally a bat would swoop out of the sky and land on his shoulder. My reaction was a strange mix of pride and nausea. He was a genius. Kind of like the young Mozart, except instead of playing the piano blindfolded, he was a vermin magnet. Like any good father, I tried to calculate ways I could monetize this ability. The only options that came to mind involved the circus or the military."

  2. Ice cream crimes

  When Tobolowsky was 10 years old, his father brought him to the go-cart races for the Lions Club and made him head of the concession stand. "Talk about having the fox watch the hen house," he wrote. "I went through half a box of soft-serve cones within the first hour." The person in charge of the event went over to Tobolowsky and became angry, telling Tobolowsky that he was going to count the ice cream cones to make sure Tobolowsky wasn't eating any more. "I was scared," he wrote. "I was ashamed – for about seven minutes. Then I figured I could get around the prohibition on eating ice cream by just avoiding the cones altogether and dispensing the soft serve directly into my hand. No cone. No trail. No problem."

  3. Extra or actor

  When Tobolowsky was in Vancouver, a man came up to him in a bar while Tobolowsky was reading a script and asked him if he was an extra. Tobolowsky told him he was the main villain in the film in which he was acting. "Extras always say they're actors," the man told him, according to Tobolowsky. "I can't think of any other profession publicly hammered to the extent that acting is on a regular basis," Tobolowsky wrote. "I would never go up to someone and say, 'So you say you're a waiter? What restaurant do you work at? Nice place, or just a McDonald's? If it's a McDonald's, then you're not really a waiter. Do you do dinner or just lunch? Do you have a jacket with your name on it? Oh, you don't have a full bar – just wine, okay, okay. I get it.'"

  4. Dangerous hitchhiking

  During college, Tobolowsky and his then-girlfriend were on a bus which broke down more than two hours outside of Dallas, so Tobolowsky's girlfriend suggested they hitchhike home. Tobolowsky was nervous, but agreed. After waiting for a long time, a van pulled over and the door on the side opened up. He and his girlfriend jumped in quickly. Tobolowsky tried to make conversation, but no one would talk. "No one looked at Beth or me," he wrote. "It was tense. Now I wondered how this ride would end." The van pulled over eventually and the driver told them they had to get out. "Hey, thanks for the lift," Tobolowsky told the driver. "I was afraid no one would pick up hitchhikers anymore." "What?" the driver said. "You were hitchhiking? We never even saw you. We had just pulled over to change drivers. You jumped into the car and said, 'Drive us to Dallas.' We thought you were kidnappers."

  5. 'Heroes' audition

  Tobolowsky recalled getting a confusing set of emotions to act out for his audition for the television show "Heroes," on which he played a man who could turn items to gold. "They asked me to be threatening," he wrote. "I threw a chair. That threatened them for sure. They asked me to be 'mysterious,' whatever that is. Try being 'mysterious' sometime on your own and see what you end up with. At best you will look like a bad guy on 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' If you do it at work, your boss will think you're stealing office supplies."

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