I second Cartooniverse description of Pauley as “sullen.” I met him backstage at a performance in Anchorage.
Pauly’s FATHER may be closer to why he keeps getting chances. The old man is a pretty good club comedian who used to open Elvis’ Vegas act (and appeared on Sullivan way back when and now occasionally opens his son’s act).
No doubt Pauly got his hook ups from his parents, but put things in perspective.
He is all one giant act, and he makes no bones about it (unlike that Jesse freak on MTV recently), he plays a silly caricature. People understand this, and while it wore thin fast on MTV it still can be squeezed in for camp value among other comdeic tools in movies, and eventually cameos. Like most actors who play one character it gets dumb without any material to go with it. Considering the only place where many see him is doing his gimmick on MTV and in small parts in movies you presume he is one ongoing sight gag with no jokes, just antics. I have seen him in a couple of stand up bits where he was fairly funny (better than Lucille Ball) because his jokes were decent and delivered well, the character didn’t have a whole lot to do with it. Most people with a scrap of intelligence aren’t going to laugh at a idiot bouncing around like a monkey, but if the monkey tells a couple of original jokes, you’ll laugh.
Basically the bite sized method of dispensing media in today’s zero attention span consumers don’t alow for much more than a fool jumping around, so the Pauly Shores get the press and the Carlins and Kleins of comedy get forgotten.
Who is Pauli Shore?