By Jerry Fink

Wed, May 16, 2007 (7:16 a.m.)

Who: Steven Wright

When: 8 p.m., Thursday through Sunday

Where: Orleans Showroom

Tickets: $24.95 and up; 365-7075

His humor slays me.

"What's another word for Thesaurus?"

Short. To the point. Stripped of all unnecessary verbiage.

Sometimes you have to stop and think about what he said, and by then he's off on a tangent.

Steven Wright's one-liners are usually funny in-and-of themselves, but the humor is driven by the deadpan delivery.

He seems perpetually stoned, spaced out, bored - delivering an endless assortment of zingers in a patented monotone.

The zingers don't have any overt relevance to one another, coming out of his singular mind in a stream-of-consciousness form with jokes careening around like a pinball.

"I bought some batteries, but they weren't included - so I had to buy them again."

Wright will perform at the Orleans from Thursday through Sunday .

In April he released "When the Leaves Blow Away," a DVD that includes his 2006 performance at a Toronto nightclub, footage of a 1988 club date and his 1999 short film, "One Soldier," an artsy, surrealistic story that takes place at the end of the Civil War.

The Sun spoke to Wright from his home in Massachusetts.

I was a very introverted kid. I was an introverted person, but I had this conflict of wanting to go onstage and be a comedian, so when I went out there I was very, very scared. So that's why I had the straight face. I was just trying to remember the material I was saying - so I was concentrating on that really hard, and that's what happened. And then, even later, when I got more relaxed, I still was just concentrating on what I was doing and it became a style. It wasn't a thing I did on purpose.

How do you come up with your material? Are you constantly writing? Are you constantly on the alert for these little ironies, these little tidbits you come up with?

I don't sit down and try to write. I did that in the first year I was doing it, I guess. Maybe two years. But after that I just would notice things. Jokes would just come into my head from me noticing things and then I would write them down. I think my subconscious is scanning for material and I don't even know it, you know, 'cause all of a sudden I just have some joke in my head. It's just from noticing things - see a word over here, see some technological things that can be an easy twist and become a joke. I don't sit down at a desk and write them. I just wander through my life and then they come into my head sometimes.

When they do come into your head, do you have to write them down immediately or do they pretty much stay there and you're able to pull them up on command?

I don't carry a notebook or anything with me, so I can remember two or three or five, if that many, till I get home and then I write them down in my notebook.

Do you actively look for things that are funny or has it become instinctive?

I'm not looking for it. If something is a joke I will notice it. I'm just very aware. Like, the jokes, there's all this information we all experience and jokes are like putting some of the information together that wasn't put together before. I just notice things. I can't sit down and write a joke on purpose.

You don't tell normal jokes. You're more like a George Carlin, seeing the oddities of life.

Yeah. He was a big influence on me. He was one of my favorite comedians, even now. He was one of the reasons I even wanted to do this. He influenced me, definitely, about noticing the little things in life that people don't usually talk about. That's what I do , too. I do something different with it, but it's the same as far as noticing small things. I loved Carlin and I loved Woody Allen's stand-up albums he made before he did movies. I think he affected me in the writing.

Is there a structure to your performance, or is it stream of consciousness?

I figure the order out before I go out onstage. I used to move it around as I would go, but then it got too complicated. I mean, I'm changing the subject every five seconds but in my mind it's as connected as a play from the beginning all the way to the end.

Is every performance drastically different or just slightly different from show to show?

It basically slowly changes. If you saw me one night and then next week you might just notice one or two jokes changed. But if you saw me a year later, there would be lot of changes. It's like a painting. It's like I'm painting on one canvas that I don't ever put to the side. I'm always working on it so you see this painting and there's some trees there and a year later the trees are gone but there's a fence and house that are still there and the road. It just slowly evolves.

Have you always wanted to be a comedian?

Since I was 14 or 15. I used to watch "The Tonight Show" all the time. I loved Johnny Carson, absolutely loved him - and the comedians he would have on. And on Sunday nights there was a radio show that played two comedy albums every Sunday. I would have the radio in bed with me every Sunday. This guy had every album. Mel Brooks and "The 2000-year-old man." David Frye.

So I heard every album and I was studying it. I think I was studying comedy without knowing it. The only other thing I wanted to do was to be a painter or some type of visual artist. I almost went to art school when I got out of high school, but I changed my mind.

The short film, "One Soldier." It's a little strange, like something I would have seen in a San Francisco art house back in the '60s.

Good. I take that as a compliment.

You've made a couple of films. Are you an aspiring filmmaker?

When I was doing stand-up for many years I thought of what it would be like to put some of my thoughts into that medium rather than through a microphone. I made a short film in 1988 that won an Academy Award. It was called "The Appointments of Dennis Jennings." That was my first attempt of trying to get these thoughts into a film setting. And then, nine years later I just started thinking about (making another film) , I just had an urge to make another one and I loved the time period of right after the Civil War. I love how it looks visually, what the technology was at that time - here and in England. I love the Charles Dickens time.

So I wanted to make a movie taking place at that time, but everything discussed in the movie - other than the Civil War - could be in any time period. I had all these random thoughts and I just went out and filmed. I would film for two days and then I wouldn't film for like six months. Then I'd film two days, then three months later film a little more and then I had all these thoughts filmed and then, with the editor, I tried to hammer it into some kind of story.

The film raised some very profound questions about life and death and responsibility and war.

I always think about why we're here and all that. You know, the usual things that can't be answered.

Do you anticipate doing more of these short films?

I would like to do a full-length movie. I've written all this stuff, but it's not into a full script yet.

Would it be in the style of "One Soldier" or mainstream?

More like "One Soldier." More like a combination of funny silly things but mixed in with giant questions.

Your humor - do you amaze yourself sometimes with the connections you make? Do you ever stop and say, "Damn. That's funny."

Sometimes I'll think of something and think, "Wow. That's hilarious." But I never know if the audience is going to laugh at it though. I have to try it out. I can't tell even now which ones are going to work or not. But the question you asked me, the closest I can come to what you're saying is if I don't do stand-up for a while and then listen to a tape - I tape every night, audiotape - so if I have not done a show in a few months I'll listen to the last time I did do a show to see where I left off and then I'll hear these jokes. They're not fresh in my head. Sometimes then I go, "Jesus, that's so weird." I like that. When I'm making it up, it's not as weird.

You've played Vegas many times. Is it your kind of town?

Yeah. The audience I draw is good there. I like to joke to people that it's the only place I play where outside the theater is weirder than what I'm talking about. I love how bizarre it is. The mixture of families and strip clubs. Weird buildings. I like how weird it is.