Constable: Bob Odenkirk realizes his life in Naperville and beyond is all good, man
Having spent nearly 13 years portraying Saul Goodman, a strip-mall lawyer with a knack for fixing things, Bob Odenkirk agrees to this interview provided we take care of a little problem for him.
"Do me a favor," pleads Odenkirk, 59, the "Better Call Saul" star. "Help me correct this, would you?"
In an interview about a decade ago, Odenkirk talked about how his teenage self wanted to leave Naperville to explore Chicago and the world. "Yeah, when I was 15, I couldn't wait to leave. And that became, 'Odenkirk hates Naperville,'" Odenkirk says, alluding to a Daily Herald headline that read, "'Breaking Bad' star just wanted out of 'Nowheresville.'"
"I was 15," wails Odenkirk, who says that teen sentiment doesn't represent how he felt as a child, or as an adult.
"I loved growing up in Naperville. I still go to Naperville all the time. My mother (Barbara) passed away a few months ago. She lived there. Two of my sisters still live there," says Odenkirk. He and his wife of nearly 25 years, comedy manager Naomi Odenkirk, have taken their son, Nate, now 23, and daughter, Erin, now 21, swimming in the city's Centennial Beach.
"I go back probably twice a year, every year. It's a great town. It's a GREAT town," Odenkirk says. "It's just if you're 15 years old and you want to discover the world, you potentially might find it claustrophobic or a little quiet."
Quiet doesn't fit the man who came to Chicago hoping to be a comedian and had his life changed by a bookstore encounter in 1983 with Del Close, the iconic mentor to comedians such as John Belushi, John Candy and Bill Murray.
"Del's disconnected monologue made everything I secretly hoped for seem possible," Odenkirk writes in his new autobiography, "Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama."
"I was so happy afterward. I wanted that. I wanted lots of people and ideas and offbeat things to happen to me in my life, more than I wanted to play golf or drive a big car or tell people to take their shoes off when they came into my house."
The ideas and offbeat things started immediately and haven't stopped. Odenkirk is a comedian, writer, director, producer and actor. He wrote and acted for Second City, won Emmy Awards writing for "Saturday Night Live" and "The Ben Stiller Show," teamed with David Cross for the sketch comedy cult favorite "Mr. Show," starred in "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul," directed three films, been a key player and producer for "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!," acted in acclaimed movies such as "Little Women" and "Nebraska," and starred in the action thriller "Nobody," about a mild-mannered suburban dad who returns to his violent ways after robbers break into his house.
"The amount of people who liked 'Nobody' is probably a bigger audience, and off on its own. They don't know 'Better Call Saul' or any of the comedy," says Odenkirk. He's OK with people thinking of him as an action hero, even if his IMBD page gives him 41 writer credits, 122 actor credits, 25 producer credits and 21 director credits, and doesn't mention all the stuff he worked on that never came to fruition, or how he auditioned for the boss role on "The Office" that went to Steve Carell instead.
At Second City, Odenkirk became a good friend of Chris Farley and wrote the "Matt Foley, Motivation Speaker" character that Farley made famous on "Saturday Night Live" as the guy who lived in a van down by the river.
"When I grew up in Naperville, there was a group of hippie types who hung out by the bridge over the sluggish, brown DuPage River, and I pictured that very spot for a desperate middle-aged loser to park his van and contemplate his empty, broken life," Odenkirk writes in his book.
An observant Catholic boy and Boy Scout growing up, Odenkirk was a good student, and talked his middle school teachers into letting him put on comedy sketches for reports of Abraham Lincoln or the Great Chicago Fire. After graduating from Naperville North High School, he spent a year at the College of DuPage and a year at Marquette University before attending Southern Illinois University, where he did a college radio show called "The Prime Time Special." He left for Chicago three credits shy of graduating, but he did earn his SIU diploma through Columbia College Chicago.
As a boy, he performed comedy around the dinner table for his mom and six siblings. "My dad was rough and too intense, and those were his good qualities," Odenkirk writes. "He was never around, and when he was, there was tension in the air. The older I got, the more thankful I was that he was gone most of the time."
After his parents separated for good when he was 15, "I was delighted," he says. His dad died when Odenkirk was 22.
"Saying goodbye to him was a shrugging affair," Odenkirk says.
He did inherit his father's "supercharged emotional latitude," allowing him to go from calm to "sputtering, red-faced, dynamite" in an instant. "It's a sweet superpower to become enraged quickly," says Odenkirk, noting that he'd have chosen the ability to fly if given a choice. "This can be useful in acting. In real life, it can be unnerving."
In July, while filming the final season of "Better Call Saul," the actor collapsed and had no pulse. He needed three shocks from a defibrillator to restart his heart.
"I hope that it will change the way I approach things. But it hasn't so far because I wasn't really a part of it in the way that you hear people tell a near-death experience. I wasn't conscious for it at all," says Odenkirk, who has no memory of his week in the hospital. It wasn't until a couple of days after he was released that he realized he had almost died.
"One of the first things it made me think was I've got a pretty goddamn good life. A lot of times you might look for something you want to change substantially because you almost died. 'I don't want to keep going down this road or that road,'" Odenkirk says. "I'd say I like the road I'm on. This is a very, very good, sweet life that I'm being gifted with by the universe."
All the characters Odenkirk writes or portrays have depth.
"I don't think you can say, 'I'm going to take this character and make them empathetic.' I think you can only take this character and make them so you see their point of view," Odenkirk says. "If you do that, they should be somewhat empathetic."
He rejects the "play to your intelligence" rule taught in improvisation.
"There's not much that's more fun than a dumb character, and a super dumb character can be loads of fun," Odenkirk says. "I think the real rule is never forget your character's dignity. It's not intelligence, it's dignity. It's the character's genuine belief that they are doing the right thing."
Even though he can see how people thought he had "a death wish" for putting all his eggs in the showbiz basket, he had "a faith that it's going to be OK, which is what I've always felt inside me," Odenkirk says. "Even when I was struggling, it still felt like, 'Wow. I'm in the best place to be to rediscover something new that I can share with people.'"
Show business has given him room to explore.
"It seems to me like a really good place to put your energy because you have so many chances," Odenkirk says. "It values new ideas. Since I'm a person who likes to do fresh things, it just seems like a great place for me. It might even be a safe place for me to spend my time."
His acting on "Better Call Saul" has earned him five Emmy and four Golden Globe nominations for outstanding lead actor in a drama series, but he's a comedian at heart.
"Doing a part in drama, it feels like an achievement, an effort, a challenge that's neat. But it's not as much fun as comedy," Odenkirk says. "I love sketch comedy above all."
His passion and dogged determination are evident, whether Odenkirk is the cover story for The New York Times Magazine last Sunday, or sharing the front page of the Daily Herald today.
"It's all the same. I mean it's crazy to be on the cover of the Times magazine," says Odenkirk, who grasps one more chance to correct any misunderstandings. "But you know, look, I'm from Naperville. I spent my childhood there. The town means a lot to me."
Misunderstanding corrected. It's all good, man.
Bob Odenkirk appearances
What: “Saturday Night Live” alums Bob Odenkirk and Tim Meadows
Where: Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave., Chicago
When: 7-8 p.m. March 2
Tickets: Waiting list only
Extra: Odenkirk’s new book “Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama” can be ordered for $30
For information:
chicagohumanities.orgWhat: Bob Odenkirk talks about his bookWhere: Anderson’s Bookshop at Yellow Box Auditorium, 1635 Emerson Lane, NapervilleWhen: 7 p.m. March 3Cost: $40, which includes copy of “Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama”For information: