Brian Frazer, "Hyper-Chondriac" author: Mr. Media Interview, Part 2 (Return to Part 1)

BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: How would you describe, in a sentence or two, what you ultimately decided was the problem?

BRIAN FRAZER: The problem was basically me. I have so much rage, and I always blamed it on other people, but I realized that it’s not a coincidence that there’s always a problem when I’m around. The Zoloft kind of elevated me up into the heavens, and it allowed me to look down and observe myself and observe my behavior. And it wasn’t as exemplary as I had once thought. And the title of the book also -- a lot of people confuse hypochondria with the title of my book, which is Hyper-Chondriac, and basically, hyperchondriac, all of my diseases are real. A hypochondriac thinks that they’re sick. They go to the doctor, but they’re not really sick. They don’t find anything. I think I’m sick. I go to the doctor, and they find a lot of stuff, but it’s all created within. And it’s also on my website, hyper-chondriac.com, also explains a lot.

ANDELMAN: You did bodybuilding for 10 or 12 years. You were a stand-up comedian. At about the point that you started doing stand-up, I was thinking to myself okay, he’s in college, but I’m not getting any indication here how this guy is ever going to wind up as a writer at the end of the story. And then this kind of twist of fate in college puts you up in front of a class doing material. Which career is more psychically damaging, stand-up comedy or bodybuilding?





FRAZER: I think bodybuilding you can control because it’s not really an audience. There is an audience when you compete, but they’re not going to heckle you and say, “Hey, bad abs!” And if you work hard at bodybuilding, and you eat right, and you train hard, and you have some genetics, you’ll turn out okay whereas stand-up, you just never know what’s going to happen even if you’re prepared. Sometimes I’ve gone up and gotten huge laughs even though I know that my rhythm in everything is a little off, which upsets me because I haven’t done my job even though I’ve made people laugh. And then other times, everything’s perfect, and the lines are delivered perfectly and not a peep and heckling, and it is a disaster. So, yeah, stand-up is very, very, very difficult, and had I not gotten into it so early, I would’ve had more to think about. But because it happened so accidentally -- it was like being pushed into water. I didn’t realize how insane it was.

ANDELMAN: Have you found, in the year since the book came out, that there is a community of people like you that you didn’t know about before, or were you already finding each other at that point?

FRAZER: No. I didn’t find anybody until through MySpace and Facebook and hyperchondriac.com cause there’s a web address at the back of the book. I’ve had all sorts of people. And the odd thing is, and maybe it’s because women seem to buy more books, but I would say 60 or 70 percent of the respondents, even on Amazon.com, have been women and the rage in the women. I had originally thought it was more of a very male book, but the response from women and not women who are with angry men. These are angry women on their own who have rage. So that has surprised me cause I thought it would be like two-thirds men and one-third women, and it’s been just the opposite.

ANDELMAN: What do you follow this book with? Do you go in another direction? I haven’t met anyone who has written a book who hasn’t been thinking about another one. Will you write about more health issues? Are you thinking about going in another direction? Have you already done another book?

FRAZER: In fact, I just handed the proposal in today. It’s basically about not having children so it’s also non-fiction, but it’s about not having children and being fine with it. And my wife and I have been married for coming up on six years, and we’re fine.

ANDELMAN: And that’s not stunt journalism either, right?

FRAZER: No. That’s not stunt journalism, no. No, it’s not like I’m only gonna date people named Laura for a year. No, no.






ANDELMAN: I have this strong sense that you keep referring to stunt journalism. I have this feeling of A.J. Jacobs coming up in conversation.

FRAZER: Oh no, not at all, not at all. I actually know him well, and he’s a great guy, so it’s certainly not aimed toward him. It’s just all the stuff I’ve been reading in Newsweek and Time and stuff like that that kind of is poking fun at the stunt journalism. But I don’t recall reading his name in that so that’s certainly not the case. But, no, I’ve just gotten questions on shows before about people think that this book is a gimmick, which it’s not, so I’m referring to myself and not to anybody else really.

ANDELMAN: Now I have to say I’ve never read anything like this. To a certain point in the book, it seems like every page there’s just something that makes you go oh, this poor guy, and at the same time, you present it in a way that it’s funny. That’s why I said earlier I felt a little guilty for laughing at times.

FRAZER: No, no. You shouldn’t feel guilty for laughing. No, I didn’t want to make it too jokey, but I also didn’t want to make it too serious cause if anything’s too serious like this, then people feel bad for you.

ANDELMAN: I guess one of the big turning points in your life was when you got the gig writing for the TV show “Blind Date,” which is where I guess you met your future wife, Nancy. Is that right?

FRAZER: That’s right. And again, another accidental thing that happened in that I was writing on another show, and the person that I was writing with in the conference room was turning on this new show called “Blind Date.” And it had just been on the air for like a week, and it looked really fun so I went home, and I didn’t have an agent, and I froze the credits. This is back in the days of VCR only. I froze the credits and wrote everybody’s name down, and I didn’t have an agent. And I just kept calling and calling and calling different people, and I befriended the secretary at “Blind Date,” and she told me who to speak with, and I wound up snaking myself in and getting an interview there. And then I get a sample date, and then I wound up working there. So it’s, again, just an accidental thing, but, yeah, that’s where I met Nancy. We wrote thought bubbles, and we kept it a secret from everybody for a year.

ANDELMAN: One of my secrets is that I actually watch that show, and I always find it funny. And I think there was another show called “The Fifth Wheel.”

FRAZER: Oh, “The Fifth Wheel,” same company, yeah. I hated “The Fifth Wheel” because every single person on the show… There’s basically five people. There’s like three guys and two women or three women and two guys. All the guys wore the same outfit, and they looked the same. And I actually called the producers one day and said why don’t you assign one guy to wear the red shirt or one guy wears black? Everybody dressed in black all the time, and it was just a massive confusion watching that show.

ANDELMAN: I want you to take me behind the scenes of “Blind Date.” Is the writing staff spending most of the time just cracking up at the people on the show? It seems like that’s the fun of it.

FRAZER: It’s actually a very time-intensive job, if you can believe it. It’s about 60 or 70 hours a week, five or six days a week. You have to cut down the date. It’s more scientific than maybe it should be, but you have to cut down the date. Then you have to write a script. Then you have to meet with executives, and they approve your script. And then you go to graphics department. So there’s not as much laughing until the end of the week cause everybody has to hand in a finished date every Friday. So Fridays were good, and there were a lot of laughs. But I’m not so sure that Monday through Thursday there were that many.





ANDELMAN: What would be an example of some pop-ups that were memorable? If you were in the industry of writing for “Blind Date,” what were some memorable pop-ups?

FRAZER: Oh, God, it’s been about three years. I couldn’t answer that. But when Nancy and I got married, our rabbi was a big “Blind Date” fan, and he actually kept making like thought bubble jokes throughout the wedding, which I thought was kind of odd. But it’s been years and he hasn’t converted to Episcopalianism since. so that’s good.

ANDELMAN: I think while I’m confessing to this, I also found “Cheaters” to be a guilty pleasure. I like that one, too.

FRAZER: I’ve never seen that. I’ve never seen it. It’s a great title for the show.

ANDELMAN: You’ve got to watch it once. And I thought of it because I think we have an on-demand channel called “Outrageous on Demand,” and I saw that an uncensored “Cheaters” was on there. And I thought now that’s something I could spend an hour with. I don’t know.

FRAZER: That’s so funny, “Outrageous on Demand.”

ANDELMAN: What are you doing today? You mentioned you turned in a book proposal. Are you living off the first book? Are you doing other things? What’s kind of ahead for you?

FRAZER: I write for a bunch of magazines so I have a monthly column in Los Angeles Magazine. It’s the back page. It’s called “Hollywoodland.” I write for Esquire and ESPN magazines, occasionally Vanity Fair, and I just keep myself busy that way. Every once in a while I do some TV stuff so I keep myself pretty busy.

ANDELMAN: And I guess from the proposal, children are not in the future, but what do you and Nancy have in your plans? What do you want to do in the coming years?

FRAZER: We just like being creative people and being creatively stimulated and taking care of ourselves, basically. A lot of times when people have children, they have to kind of put themselves on hold and sometimes once the kids have left the nest, it’s hard to pick up where you left off.

© 2008 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Labels: A.J. Jacobs, anger management, Blind Date, bodybuilding, Brian Frazer, Hyper-Chondriac, hypochondriac, standup comedian, Zoloft

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