Every Silver Lining Has Its Cloud : Profile: Comedian Dana Gould, who opens a six-night stand in Brea this evening, finds amusement in pessimism.

By RICK VANDERKNYFF

June 4, 1991 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Dana Gould is not one to let a little unhappiness bother him. In fact, it’s happiness that has him worried.

“I was never one of those people who feels that I have to be happy all the time,” the comic tells his audiences. “If I’m happy, that usually means that I’ve forgotten something really important.”

Gould opens a six-night stand at the Improvisation in Brea tonight, toting his dark-edged vignettes and assorted musings on the downside of life.

“The way I see it,” Gould says, “we enter this life naked, bloody and screaming, and it doesn’t have to end there if you know how to live right.”

This is comedy forged from pain. “I talk about the things I feel most deeply about,” the Los Angeles-based comic says in a phone interview. “I get really bored with the standard-issue topics. I don’t think we need to hear anymore about express lines in grocery stores. I think that’s been covered really well.”

So, instead, Gould offers a mock-rosy reflection of that long-ago Christmas when Mom’s gift to the kids was a nervous breakdown-- meltdown might be a better description--and a remembrance of the slightly touched uncle who could “choke a pony with one hand.”

There are ruminations on the side effects of personal depression, from insomnia (“Nothing is happening in my life, and my brain makes sure I don’t miss a minute of it”) to overly perky friends who try to cheer him up (telling him, earnestly, to “take a great big swim in Lake You”).

Gould even offers a poem, of sorts. He calls it “Now That You’ve Left Me, I Have Someone to Hate More Than Myself.”

Isn’t this all a bit too much woe for a 26-year-old? Gould says it’s for real, insisting his material comes from life and that he isn’t just taking on a sad-sack stage persona. And, he says, the laughs he gets come from recognition, not from the sheer spectacle of someone playing out their neuroses on stage.

The act is “an amalgam of different people and different events that I think everyone can relate to in some way,” Gould says. “At least, I hope so. If my life sucks, why shouldn’t theirs?”

It would seem that Gould’s recent comedy career, at least, should give him something to smile about. He has been headlining comedy clubs for the past two years, and his first one-man comedy special (titled “Panic, Lust and Confusion”) aired on Showtime last month.

Before turning to comedy, Gould spent two years as a theater major at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He says he got “absolutely nothing” out of the experience, except the opportunity to “hang around with the future unemployed and smell their clove cigarettes. . . . I know what a proscenium arch is, and that’s not going to get me very far.”

So he moved to Boston, where he lived in a “large house with no heat,” took a day job in a college bookstore and, slowly, honed his comic skills at open-mike nights. It was a time of experimentation. “You try on a bunch of different hats (as a performer) to see what fits,” Gould says. “Finally, I think I settled on Jack Carter.”

In 1986, he moved to San Francisco to try to advance his career, but he sputtered at first and found himself spiraling into depression.

“You know how they say you take two steps back and three steps forward? Well, I took eight steps back and nine steps forward,” Gould says.

Ironically, things started to improve when he began talking about his problems on stage.

“I just bottomed out and started talking about it because I didn’t care,” he says. “And it worked.”

He began touring heavily as an emcee and middle act, largely in the South, but suddenly graduated to headlining status in a quick six-month burst after moving to Los Angeles.

“And now it’s all falling apart for me,” he quips, ever leery of fortune. “This gig in Brea is about it for me.”

The Showtime special happened because of his appearance at the Montreal International Comedy Festival, which was broadcast by the cable network. “It was good for me in the sense that it’s great to have the whole nation see you confuse (festival host) Bob Newhart,” Gould says with a laugh. “He was a great guy, but he really was confused by what I was doing.”

Permitting himself an optimistic glance into the future, Gould says that he would love to write and direct short films, and maybe even features.

“I’ll somehow get caught on this juggernaut I can’t control and crash spectacularly,” Gould jokes. And if not? “I’ll get a job in a bank, if only for the clothes.”

Dana Gould and Karen Anderson perform tonight through Sunday at the Improvisation in Brea, 945 E. Birch St. Shows are 8:30 p.m. today, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday; 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. Friday; 8 and 10:30 p.m. Saturday. Tickets: $7 to $10. Information: (714) 529-7878.