Man with no secrets tells all

Rick Reynolds is a seasoned performer -- in comedy clubs, off-Broadway and on television -- but he also writes his own material.

So it's natural the Petaluma comic would offer to write the lead-in for his interview, and here it is:

"Rick Reynolds, a strikingly handsome young man, is doing a show of pure genius, for a pittance. Are you taking this down? This is golden!"

Did we mention that he's modest, too?

But you can't blame him for pitching his new live comedy show, playing later this month in Petaluma. And give him the credit he deserves for helping pioneer an art form.

Autobiographical one-man shows created by stand-up comedians are commonplace today, but when Reynolds opened "Only the Truth Is Funny" in the early 1990s, he was opening up new territory.

Combining surprisingly serious personal history with polished comedic delivery, Reynolds spilled the details about his dysfunctional family's secrets and his own adolescent angst and flirtations with suicide, eventually covering his own marriage and fatherhood.

"It's what I do in my own life," Reynolds said of his tell-all approach to the show. "A compliment that I get often, and don't deserve, is that I'm brave. That has nothing to do with it. I tell these stories to anybody who listens to me. I truly am a guy with no secrets. It's almost annoying to know me, so I foist it off on an unsuspecting public."

It helps, of course, that his stories are not exactly routine. His father robbed banks. His mother underwent electro-shock therapy.

"I thought it was a pretty unusual life, but I made a discovery I hadn't expected," Reynolds said. "Thousands of people would come up to me after the show and say, 'I had that same life,' but I think they meant in other ways. Everybody seems able to relate."

The show ran for two years in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, and aired as a comedy special on Showtime cable TV, earning him an Emmy nomination.

Reynolds created two more one-man shows -- "All Grown Up and No Place to Go" in 1995 and "Happiness" in 2006. "Life . . . and Stuff," the TV series he developed from his first two stage shows, ran as a summer replacement on CBS in 1997.

Now Reynolds, at 57, is back with his newly revised "Only the Truth Is Funny -- 2009," opening a brief run Jan. 28 at Petaluma's Cinnabar Theater, partly as a showcase for backers who might be inspired to take the updated version out on the road again.

"I retooled the show, added about 40 minutes and took a bunch of stuff out. I added in the really boffo things from my other two shows and then I wrote a bunch of new stuff," Reynolds said.

"I added the story about my father going to prison from 'All Grown Up and No Place to Go,' which NPR played several times. A friend of mine put it up on YouTube and it has gotten hundreds of thousands of hits. So I worked that into 'Only the Truth Is Funny -- 2009,' and it actually fits better."

Personal updates in the revamped version of the show include Reynolds' divorce, and the older of his two sons turning 18.

"I talk about that in the show. I deal with everything," Reynolds said. "I don't really play anybody else. It's just me."

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com.