Larry Doyle's wife says he's funny only when he's talking to someone other than her.
Luckily, he should be talking to hundreds of theatergoers at Center Stage tonight for Stoop Storytelling, the popular stage series featuring Baltimoreans relating their tales of Charm City.
Doyle, author of the Thurber Prize-winning novel I Love You, Beth Cooper, headlines opening night of the 2009 edition, Baltimoored: Summer in the City, A Live Radio Show. (Maryland's first lady, Katie O'Malley, will take over the top spot Friday night, followed by Wire star Clarke Peters and Rain Pryor, the writer-performer of Fried Chicken and Latkes, on closing night.)
Doyle has also written the screenplay and served as an executive producer for the movie version of his novel, which opens nationwide Friday. (The director is Chris Columbus, who made the first two Harry Potter pictures.)
It should be a heady time even for a 50-year-old, formerly L.A.-based veteran who has won two Emmy awards and one Annie for his work on The Simpsons. In fact, it should be a heady time even for a writer who has had two solo credits on produced original scripts, Duplex and Looney Tunes: Back in Action, in an era when solo writing credits are rare for potential franchises like Looney Tunes - and original scripts tend to be regarded as anathema.
But over the phone from a hotel lobby in Tribeca (he planned to attend a "special screening" of Beth Cooper in New York on Tuesday night), he remained refreshingly down to earth, with a dry sense of humor.
"That's Vincent D'Onofrio walking by," he interrupts himself to say, "looking ... kind of ... fat."
Doyle is especially unpretentious about his performing talent. He doesn't think he has displayed any great propensity for off-the-cuff storytelling in his relatively few years as a Baltimorean. He figures he got asked to participate in Stoop Storytelling because he appeared on Aaron Henkin's WYPR show The Signal twice - once when his book came out in spring, 2007, and once when it won the Thurber Prize for American humor last fall - and Jessica Henkin, co-founder of the Stoop series, is Aaron Henkin's wife.
"It might work out just fine," Doyle muses. "I should be able to get some easy laughs about how hot it is in Baltimore."
