Why Colin Quinn’s Potent Mix Of Tarantino, Oprah And Mark Twain Entertains And Inspires

Colin Quinn is a comedy icon who combines the best of Quentin Tarantino, Oprah and Mark Twain. Like Tarantino, Quinn’s work is filled to the brim with pop culture references. Like Oprah, he makes potentially dry subjects accessible to all. And like Twain, he pokes fun at our differences in an affectionate, not condescending, way.

Last week via Zoom, Quinn and I discussed his new book, Overstated: A Coast-to-Coast Roast of 50 States (St. Martin’s Press) and why he is so passionate about making history come alive.

Weinstein: Did you enjoy studying history and government in school?

Colin Quinn: No. I was very lazy. I was always looking for shortcuts. I'm ashamed to say it took me until later in life to really focus. I love to talk. That's why I became a comedian.

Weinstein: On the back cover of your book, The New York Times calls you a “barstool philosopher.” Is that you see yourself?

Quinn: No, but I'm assuming that that's not a left-handed compliment. It's something to be wary of, because on the one hand you're like, “Oh, it's somebody who's down to earth who can break it down simply.” On the other hand it reminds you of that scene in the movie Joe [where a tortured character on a barstool brags about committing violence.].

Weinstein: To me, you’re not a barstool philosopher. You’re Quentin Tarantino, Oprah and Mark Twain rolled into one.

For example, there’s an essay Mark Twain wrote called “The Awful German Language.” He makes fun of it but not in a mean-spirited way. Your humor also pokes fun at things affectionately. In Overstated, when you say things like, “Everybody in Texas says this, and nobody does that,” you’re using superlatives, but there's no contempt behind it.

Quinn: Yeah. I don't feel contemptuous. I feel we have the same good qualities and the same bad qualities, but comedy talks about bad qualities.

Weinstein: And like Oprah, you take a potentially dry and boring subject like history, and you make it accessible. Since you’ve visited every state in the country, would you say that overall people share values or have different values from state to state?

Quinn: I think that they have the same values but different ideas about how to express them, how those values get manifested.

Weinstein: Can you cite an example?

Quinn: Everybody believes in family values but they differ about what that means. Everybody believes in justice, but they have different interpretations of it. Both are legitimate in different ways. But if you say that today, people go, “You're a both-sideser,” which is apparently the worst thing you can be in society. But to me what it means is that you don’t want to see bloodshed in the streets. You're trying to find a way for people to compromise.

Weinstein: At the end of your book, you write, “[H]opefully we will be able to find a way to compromise and go forward. Maybe you have forty states that are pro-choice and ten states that aren't. Forty states that are pro-gun and ten states where you get life in prison for possession of a gun. Maybe we try that with a bunch of laws and see which ones turn out best. And if the country has to break up even after that, then we walk away with dignity. And whatever happens, we can always say, ‘We used to be America.’”

Then you quote Abraham Lincoln. The last line of that quotation is, “As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.” So in your view, which of those two paths are we going to go down?

Quinn: We’re going down the suicide one, but what drives me crazy about this country is that there is never any talk of a modern constitutional convention. We keep doing the same things and waiting for some miracle and these elections, instead of saying, “No, we gotta do something different.” We have to have a serious conversation with serious people, and everyone's not allowed to weigh in on it until it's over, just like the original constitutional convention.

And have a summerlong, sit-down meditation on what we are and how to get through this. And nobody will do that. So I don't take this country seriously about trying to fix itself. It's going to be suicidal right now. It's gonna be a civil war. And then people are going to go, ‘We need to sit down,’ afterwards.

Weinstein: Before we get to the bloodshed, I know somebody who could facilitate that discussion. Someone who has fans on both the left and the right, who would attract a lot of media attention and who could turn that discussion into a documentary or a town hall meeting that’s shown on different networks. I know the person to do this.

Quinn: Is it a barstool philosopher? [Laughs]

Weinstein: It’s you! I'm serious. You should do this. It would be great, and you can make it happen.

Quinn: Well, I actually pitched going to different town halls around the country, but there were no takers on it. The entertainment side wasn’t interested, and the news side couldn’t afford it.

I’m talking about a meeting where you get all the heavy thinkers into a room, like the constitutional convention, and you just sit down, but here's the other side of it. The public has to be in it completely too, because they're part of the problem.

So unless everyone agrees to shut up and not tweet and not comment for two months, not use their platform for two months, until people can get some serious thoughts out of the way, it'll never work. In the original constitutional convention, they banned the press. But now the press is everybody.

Weinstein: Why are you so passionate about this?

Quinn: Because I feel bad that it has to come to this. You think, “Life goes on and we get more sophisticated,” you never think it'll come down to something as horrible as a civil war, but it could happen.

Weinstein: One of the reasons I wanted to interview you for this leadership column is that you evince humility, one of the crucial qualities of high-character leaders.

In a TimesTalks interview with Dave Itzkoff, you discussed your solo Off-Broadway show Colin Quinn: The New York Story, which Jerry Seinfeld directed. You talked about how his direction involved a lot more than merely telling you where to stand on stage. He helped you shaped the material. You not only accepted criticism or feedback, you welcomed it.

Quinn: There are people that have bad motives when they criticize you and have their own issues. But there is always a little something you can pick up from most people. They love you. They're trying to tell you something. If you hear something a bunch of different times from different people, then you just start really looking at it. There's probably something there.

Weinstein: The other thing about humility that's worth talking about in leadership terms is that it makes people likable. For example, in your earlier book, The Coloring Book: A Comedian Solves Race Relations in America, you tell a cringe-inducing story about how you bombed while trying to entertain Robert De Niro at his birthday party.

When people read something like that, they say, “Hey, he makes mistakes too. I can relate to him. I’ve been in that situation, and it lets me off the hook. We all make mistakes.”

I listened to the entire audiobook, but that story is the one I remember. What did you learn from that experience?

Quinn: I learned to listen. When somebody says, “Hey, we'd love you to come and do something,” don't try to make it about you and what you think it should be. You're not doing her a favor by taking her thing and going, “No, I'll do you one better.” Just do what somebody asks you to do.

That’s when you're doing it for your own self-serving motives, which is really what I was doing.

Weinstein: What's one question I did not ask you that you'd like to answer?

Quinn: How about, "What was your real life dream?" Like every other guy, I wanted to be a point guard for a major college in the Big East and then move on. Then the Knicks don't draft me. After two years I return home and they have to take me on the team as a conquering champion.

This interview was condensed and edited for clarity. Originally published in Forbes on September 21, 2020.