Id like to ask about your stint on The Young and the Restless. Tell me about Izzy.

Being on a soap opera was never something I had set out to do as a young actor. I had plenty of serious acting classes, but my specialty was comedy and rarely did I go out on anything but auditions for comedic roles. Izzy was a weasel, so that interested me. He was the sidekick to the villain on the show, David Kimble and it seemed like a juicy role. Originally the role was supposed to be just two days, but they expanded it because they liked what I did and kept finding new bad deeds to help David with. I don't think a day went by when they didn't use the word weasel, rat, or ferret in the script when David was talking to my character. Much fun.

Readers would like to know; was there any dirt on the set? You know, catfights, orgies, that sort of thing?

On the set? Nothing that comes to mind. Y&R is a very successful show and there was a pretty good feeling that permeated the set. For the most part the cast and crew were some of the best people I've ever worked with. I did read awhile back that two of the stars of the show got into a real fist fight in their dressing room, but I missed all that kind of fun. The real dirt was more of what happened to me in real life because of the show. Soap opera fans are very loyal, and a few are very obsessed. More than one time I can remember being somewhere in public and having strangers come up and start yelling at me for something Izzy did on the show. It sounds funny, but it was always a little scary...I mean, how far are they going to take this? I even had people calling my home phone number to yell at me, but I was used to that because I've dated some real psychotic women.

Freshman Dorm was a TV series that didn't quite make it. What was the plotline and how did you fit into it?

It was a very short lived series and my involvement with it was basically one episode as a minor character. Don't remember much about it except the female stars were much too good looking to have anything to do with my character.

It seems that the focus early on in your career was acting, then you moved more into writing and comedy. Why the change?

Not exactly the case. I was always the traditional class clown. My college days were spent pursuing acting, but even then I was working with a comedy group on the side. We would do some outrageous street theater type stuff - once, before a big football game (Central Michigan University) we staged a show outside the stadium which started with me screaming incoherently as I walked down into a deep pond and became completely submerged. When I moved to Los Angeles I did a couple of stage plays, but also worked with Improv groups, as well as doing standup. For me, I need to do it all. There is so much drama in comedy that the two are much more symbiotic than one would imagine. In just about everything I do now, including my standup act, I try to find a way to mix the funny with the pathos. Acting is my first love and when I do standup I try to give one long "Brad Monologue." Writing is another tool I developed early on. At first it was to provide a way for me to perform more - I would write characters in my plays that were tailor made for my talents. I got tired of auditioning for projects that weren't right for me. The skills I developed early on provided me opportunities for paying writing jobs when I moved to Los Angeles.

You are an Actor, Writer and Comedian. Now, you’ve entered the Twilight Zone and a character played by Burgess Meredith is forcing you to choose among those professions. Which would you pick?

Great question. Since it's a Twilight Zone episode and there would have to be a twist, I'd probably clone myself and each part of my being would pursue each of those disciplines. It's a choice I hope I never have to make in this world of alleged reality since I like doing all three. But if Dumbest TV put a gun to my head...I'd have to cave in and go with acting. Damn you!

You run Bitter is Better Productions. Bitter is Better? Why?

I named my production company Bitter is Better because I learned early in life not to trust anyone who seems too positive. It usually means that they either haven't lived enough in life to understand that shit happens, or they have just been released from some kind of religious cult. The word "bitter" is much maligned. To me the word is synonymous with "realistic" or "driven." Usually, if someone is labeled 'bitter" it means that they have had some bad experiences and it eats away at them. That's true to a point, but in this business bitterness can drive people to do great things. Call it revenge, anger, or just plain ego bruising, it doesn't matter. I've always said "What doesn't kill us makes us bitter!" And when we're bitter, our lives can become better.

I played one of the dead people in Thorton Wilder’s “Our Town” The company that published the script was Samuel French. I mention that because they also published your work “Class Action”. How does it feel to be a published author?

Nice segue. Thorton Wilder was fairly bitter himself. I remember reading somewhere that when he used the phrase "People were born to live 2 by 2..." in the play he was being sarcastic, that the entire play was making fun of 'normal" people. Not sure if this is really true, but it makes sense. Publishing a play is not easy and I've been fortunate enough to publish quite a few. Class Action is done throughout the world and I really felt like I had arrived as a playwright when the publisher sent me a copy of my play printed in a foreign language. Someone once told me they did my play in Bosnia during the war. That's pretty heavy. Some easy joke about bombing comes to mind, but...

What is the dumbest thing on television?

Any show I'm not on. Oh, and Touched by an Angel.

Thanks for visiting with us. You get the final word here. Please shamelessly promote yourself and tell the readers anything you’d like.

How nice of you to offer that. Like most of the people in show business I have a number of projects I'm hoping will ignite and take me to the next level. Right now I'm working on a new stage play, performing with a sketch group, doing standup, preparing to shoot an independent movie that I wrote and will star in, and am working the second season as a producer on a popular game show. My career is like Hoover vacuum, I feel I need a lot of attachments to make it happen...my biggest hope is that I don't suck.

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