"90% of every art form is garbage - dance and stand-up, painting and music. Focus on the 10% that's good, suck it up, and drive on.""George Bush is not stupid. He's evil. OK? There's a huge difference between stupid and evil.""I hate all sidekicks.""I have some shorter stories coming out in other books early next year. I might be pitching a re-vamp of Ghost Rider in the spring. We'll see.""I have to drink this much to be as unfunny as you.""I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.""I mean, the death in the late eighties and early nineties really shook out a lot of hacks. The pond just sort of dried up for a lot of really bad comedians.""I think I realized it was an art form at the beginning, but it took me a really long time before I was able to view what I was performing myself as an art form.""I think right now is the best time for stand-up, ever. I sincerely do.""I'm not familiar with the metric system.""I've hung out in the writer's room a few times, but the fact is we've got such a good writing staff, I don't want to get my peanut butter fingerprints on anything.""If you hit a midget on the head with a stick, he turns into 40 gold coins.""It's like our country is being run by a bunch of bad alcoholic dads right now.""Yeah, there were a few years in the early nineties where I really began to hate what was valued as funny and just sort of what was valued in stand-up, period."
Oswalt was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, to Carla and Larry J. Oswalt, a career US Marine Corps Officer. He grew up in Sterling, Virginia and is a 1987 graduate of Broad Run High School in Ashburn, Virginia. He attended the College of William and Mary, where he majored in English and was initiated into the Alpha Theta Chapter of the Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity.
Oswalt married writer Michelle Eileen McNamara on September 24, 2005. Their daughter, Alice Rigney Oswalt, was born on April 15, 2009.
Oswalt first began performing standup comedy in the late 1980s or early 1990s, by his own reckoning.
After writing for MADtv and starring in his own 1996 comedy special for HBO, he went on to garner notable roles in films and television shows. His most prominent and long-running role was as Spence Olchin on The King of Queens. His first starring film role was as the voice of Remy, the lead character in the 2007 Pixar film Ratatouille. He has also appeared in smaller roles in such films as Magnolia and Escape 2 Africa. He lent his voice as in the video game San Andreas as a caller on the WTCR show "The Tight End Zone", and was the voice of a caller on "Chatterbox" on LCFR in the PlayStation Portable game Liberty City Stories. He was also the voice of a reporter on "New World Order", a radio show on VCPR in Vice City Stories.
Oswalt wrote the comic book story "JLA: Welcome to the Working Week", a backup story in Batman #600; a story for Dwight T. Albatross's The Goon Noir #01 and a story for Masks: Too Hot for TV. Expanding his voice artist repertoire, he began voicing the villainous character "Tobey" on PBS Kids GO! series WordGirl in 2007. He also appeared on the Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner. In August 2007, he appeared on the Comedy Central Roast of Flavor Flav. In 2007, he appeared on an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, "The Original Fry Cook", as Jim. He also appears as Carl, the Corndog Hut's mascot in American Hi-Fi's music video for "Another Perfect Day". He also appears in an episode of Static Shock. On June 27, 2007, Oswalt was a special guest on the Emeril Live program on the Food Network to promote Ratatouille. Other recent appearances include an episode of Venture Bros. where he voiced an aging boy adventurer Robin parody and a re-occurring role on United States of Tara on Showtime as Neil, an employee of Four Winds Landscaping.
In 2009, Oswalt played Paul Aufiero- the leading role in Robert D. Siegel's 2009 directorial debut, Big Fan. He was to star in a 2010 Broadway revival of Lips Together, Teeth Apart. However, the show was postponed then eventually canceled due to Megan Mullally's departure from the production when the director denied her request to replace Oswalt due to his lack of stage experience. So, Patton then took his talents to the set of Dwight H. Little's production of Marked for Death with co-star Steven Seagal. There, Patton made the leap from comedy to drama as the Hamburglar.
He currently stars in the Showtime drama The United States of Tara as Neil.
Stand-up comedy
Oswalt's stand-up comedy covers topics ranging from pop culture frivolity such as comic book supervillains and 1980s glam metal to deeper social issues like American excess, materialism, Mesopotamian cuneiform script, foreign policy and religion. He also discusses his atheism in his stand-up.
In 2004, Oswalt released a comedy album entitled Feelin' Kinda Patton and later that year a longer, unedited version of the same performance entitled 222, both through the United Musicians collective, and a stand-up special, No Reason to Complain. He is also on a split EP called Patton vs. Alcohol vs. Zach vs. Patton with Zach Galifianakis and is featured on two Un-Cabaret compilations, "The Un & Only" and "The Good, the Bad and the Drugly". On July 10, 2007, Patton released his second CD Werewolves and Lollipops on Sub Pop records.
In 2004, Oswalt put together the Comedians of Comedy tour, made up of modern alt-comics Zach Galifinakis, Brian Posehn and Maria Bamford. The tour performed at smaller, more intimate indie rock venues instead of traditional (and expensive) comedy clubs. The Fall 2004 tour was documented in a 2005 film of the same name, and was followed by a six-episode Comedy Central series based on the Summer 2005 tour. This tour featured special guest appearances from comedians such as Blaine Capatch, David Cross, Bobby Tisdale and Todd Barry. Subsequent incarnations of the tour have included Eugene Mirman and Morgan Murphy.
Oswalt appeared several times as a "lawyer" on Lewis Black's Root of All Evil. In the episode Ultimate Fighting Vs. Blogging, he argued that the popular influence of the blogging has been evil, and, in his closing argument, he performed a rick roll on the audience. He also provided the stand-up comedy for the closing ceremony.
On February 26, 2009, Patton recorded his third comedy album at the Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University in Washington D.C. It premiered on Comedy Central as Patton Oswalt: My Weakness is Strong on August 23, 2009, and was released on DVD August 25, 2009. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award.
