He’s Not Just Blowing a Lot of Hot Air

Fritz Coleman hopes the outlook for the reprisal of his one-man show is as bright and sunny as the post-El Nin~o Southern California weather he forecasts each night on KNBC-TV Channel 4.

“It’s touching, personal moments strung together with stand-up, and people seem to relate to the peaks and valleys of emotion,” Coleman says. “I wouldn’t put myself through this, and I wouldn’t put my family through this, if it wasn’t resonating with people.”

The veteran weatherman plays himself in “It’s Me! Dad!,” a one-man show that showcases his extensive experience as a stand-up comic with honest reflections about his life. The production opened last weekend for a four-week stint at the 280-seat Coronet Theatre after a nearly yearlong run at the Actor’s Forum Theatre, a 45-seat venue in North Hollywood.

Wearing stylish round glasses and a chambray shirt, Coleman appears relaxed as he talks about events three years ago that spurred the project he wrote and performs. His father’s death, a recent divorce and middle age (he’s now 50) spawned a desire to relate his personal history to his young sons, then ages 8 and 6.

“It started as a videotape time capsule for my children, to be opened in the year 2005,” he says. “I wanted a tongue-in-cheek explanation of my life.”

Sprinkling the biography with his observations on issues ranging from war to religion to plastic surgery, he thought the piece might translate well to the stage and decided to make his musings public. A natural showman and storyteller, Coleman says he has no problem divulging his innermost thoughts onstage.

“I don’t have trouble exposing my personal life,” he says frankly. “Actually, it’s easier for me to pour my heart out in public than one on one. You might call it a fear of intimacy.”

At North Hollywood’s Chez Nous restaurant, Coleman exchanges warm greetings with several people who stop to say hello to the tall, angular figure who’s been a fixture at Channel 4 for the past 15 years.

Becoming a weatherman was largely a stroke of luck, he says, at a time when his primary passion was stand-up comedy. After working as on-air talent at a Buffalo, N.Y., radio station, he and his “killer 10 minutes” of comedy moved to Los Angeles in 1980 to chase his dream--by day he worked as a deejay at a country western radio station, at night he played the Improv, the Ice House and other clubs on the comedy circuit.

After a performance in 1983, an NBC station manager happened to be in the audience and invited him to apply as a weekend weather-caster. Within two years he was promoted to weekday weather-caster, and he’s been predicting mostly clear skies and sunshine four times a day ever since.

Although Coleman never planned a career as a weatherman, he says he loves his job and has no trouble juggling the stage show with his on-camera duties.

“I finish the weather at 6, do the show from 8 to 9:30 and head back to the studio for the final broadcast at 11,” he says. “No problem.”

He continues to do stand-up as a host of variety specials and in clubs, but he says performing “It’s Me! Dad!” provides an outlet for his more sober thoughts.

“Stand-up comedy is like eating fast food: It’s intensely satisfying at the time and then tapers off,” he says. “I was reaching the point in stand-up that I wanted to talk about reality in a way I couldn’t at a nightclub.”

As a stand-up comic with no acting experience, he originally delivered his humorous and tender monologue seated behind a desk and facing a video camera at center stage. That has changed since he brought actor-director Richard Kline on board.

In January of this year, the men, who knew each other from various charity functions, bumped into each other at Jerry’s Deli in Studio City and started talking. “I went to see the show and I was very much taken by the play,” Kline recalls. “But as a director, I thought it was a little static and said [to Coleman], ‘I have a whole bunch of ideas.’ ”

Two lunches later, they agreed to work together to refine Coleman’s early efforts. “In that first meeting I was so protective of my material,” Coleman remembers. “But [Kline] was so astute and had only my good interests in mind. He knows the art of comedy and understands the rhythm of humor.”

Over the past eight months, Kline has been helping Coleman’s work evolve, streamlining the monologue, blocking his movements onstage, coaching him with acting exercises and tinkering with the set and lighting.

“I physicalized it a lot,” Kline says. “My forte is comedy and especially physical comedy, so I got him out from behind the desk.”

Best known for playing Larry Dallas on the ABC sitcom “Three’s Company,” Kline has directed eight stage productions and continues to act on the stage, most recently as co-star in the musical “Hello Again” in Hollywood.

He says the biggest challenge of a one-man show is “making a single performer interesting to look at for 90 minutes and making one’s journey our journey, which I think we’re successful at doing.”

The current show is 30 minutes shorter, more physical and infinitely better, Coleman says. “I had the comedy experience, but I needed theatrical advice. [Kline] took an inexperienced actor and really helped shape the monologue and made it three-dimensional. He taught me that each movement in theater has to have meaning,” he says. “He’s such a godsend.”

Kline returns the admiration, lauding Coleman’s natural story-telling abilities. “For someone with no acting experience, Fritz is a very fine actor. He’s truthful and direct and natural,” he says. “He’s so direct and straightforward, it’s like gold. He’s not hiding behind anything.”

For his part, Coleman is enjoying acting and hopes to do more of it; he adds that his stage monologue offers both freedoms and challenges his experience with other types of performance donot.

“In TV, I’m like a neighbor; there’s a familiarity with me coming into your home,” he says. “In the theater you face your enemy; you know immediately how you’re doing.”

Enjoying his time onstage, Coleman hopes to continue performing his one-man show at various times, but he still intends to give the project to his boys, now 11 and 9, when they’re in their late teens. He hopes they won’t mind the public exposure.

“When they realize it’s done out of love, they’ll see I stay true to the spirit of love for them,” he says. “I’m simply letting the audience in on my expression of that love.”

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“IT’S ME! DAD!” Coronet Theatre, 366 N. La Cienega Blvd. Dates: Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m. (except Sept. 19, 7 p.m.); Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends Sept. 20. Prices: Fridays and Saturdays, $28; Sundays, $22.50. Phone: (310) 657-7377.