Pauly Shore Talks Going Viral For His 'Yassified' Version Of Pinocchio

Earlier this year, actor and comedian Pauly Shore, perhaps best known for movies like Encino Man, Bio-Dome and the MTV series Totally Pauly, went viral after the trailer for Pinocchio: A True Story dropped. Shore voices the titular character Pinocchio in the film and viewers immediately fell in love with the way he unintentionally yassified the character, leading to thousands of lip dubs and memes playing off of Pinocchio's voice. We spoke with Shore to learn more about his role in the movie, find out his reaction to going viral and discuss his online content creation.

Q: For those who might not know you, can you introduce yourself?

A:I'm Pauly Shore, born and raised in Los Angeles, California, currently reside in Vegas, back and forth actor-comedian, grew up at The Comedy Store, my parents got me into the business. My mom, Mitzi Shore, started it with my father. I have two brothers and a sister and I live with my dog, Buster. I like telling jokes and I love the business

Q: Your shows Totally Pauly is still pretty popular online. What was Totally Pauly?

A:Totally Pauly was, I think, kind of the first reality-type kind of show that had its own name on MTV ever. It started in the early '90s, and it was kind of an on-location show, me talking with people on the street and messing with people. It was kind of Curb [Your Enthusiasm] before Curb, a little semi-scripted video show, and it was on for several years on MTV. I'm trying to bring it back right now, Totally Pauly 30 years later, but it won't be called Totally Pauly, it'll be called, "Totally Crusty Bro."

Q: Why do you think so many of the quotes and lines from that show have stuck with people for so long?

A: It's kind of like my own language. It was something that I created many years ago through growing up in Southern California and it's kind of who I was, it wasn't really an act. I was born and raised on the Sunset Strip, went to Beverly Hills High School. Nicholas Cage is my neighbor here who went to Beverly Hills High School. I'm gonna be seeing him tomorrow. I'm gonna take him some red wine tomorrow and we're gonna have a good old time and then we're gonna meet up with Woody Harrelson and we're just gonna have a kind of a peace meeting, you know what I mean? I don't know, I just grew up where I grew up and it kinda influenced me. We're all kind of products of our environment.

Q: What is it you love about comedy and "the business" so much?

A:I love the business. I got into it at a pretty young age and it makes me happy to make people happy. Like my oldest brother, Scott is like, "Why do you still do this?" which is a great question. I'm 54, I've been doing it, what, 25, 30 years. The reason why I do it is because I love being on stage. All the travel and driving cars and hotels and all that stuff kinda gets trumped by the second I hit the stage. So yeah, I just love that audience.

Q: When and why did you decide to start creating content independently on YouTube?

A: Well, the business has shifted to the stuff that we're doing. So since that's where everything is going, I wanted to go where everything was going. I can create whatever [I want] as long as I have the right cameraman, the editor, the graphics, sound, get good people around me, good concept. So that's really what it's about. The old days, if you wanted to come up with an idea and you actually got it produced, you wouldn't see that idea for two years, maybe three years and now you have an idea, you wanna produce it, you could see it literally that day. That's what's cool with the stuff online. I'm very proud of the stuff I've done on my YouTube page. If you really dig into it, you could see I do a lot of different things.

Q: One of those series is a workout series called "Sweating With the Wiez." What inspired that?

A: Sometimes on Twitter, [people will] be like, "Dude, you should do the Richard Simmons biopic. You'd be perfect for the Richard Simmons biopic." So instead of me being disappointed that they say that, I embraced it and so then I said, "Hey, I should do a workout video called 'Sweating with the Wiez.' I work out in real life and I've been dancing my whole life and so I came up with this concept and I had some girlfriends out here in Vegas and we just did Sweatin' With the Wiez. So it's like a three to five-minute workout. I've retired that series though, I'm not gonna do it again. All the episodes are on my YouTube, so if you wanna work out with me, you can go Sweat with the Wiez.

Q: How did you get the role of Pinocchio in Pinocchio: A True Story?

A: Through Grindstone and LionsGate, they called me up and they offered me the role of Pinocchio. I went and I recorded it. When I saw the boy [Pinocchio], I kind of just played the role of what I felt that the boy was when I do my voice-over stuff. And then from there, you kinda say goodbye and you move on.

Then I get a call from my friend Joey and he's like, "Dude, this thing's going viral, your video. Everyone's kind of acting like you." I'm like, "Huh?" I didn't know. So then I went online and like all these TikTokers are all saying that Pinocchio is… The yassification of Pinocchio, which is cool. I didn't plan it that way. It kind of how I saw the character.

Q: What were people saying about Pinocchio? What kind of content were you seeing?

A: It was mostly just people being elated that Pinocchio is… Can you say the word gay? And then all the gay people were like, "Oh wow, Pinocchio's… He's homosexual," and I'm like, "Alright," and I just went with it. [chuckle] So I was honored and I thought it was actually kind of cool because I'm like, I didn't see it that way, but I'm glad that people did see it that way because it made sense that he was that way. So I thought it was cool.

Especially these days, everyone's more accepted, every gender. I was raised at The Comedy Store, so I was raised by gay people, so I've never been the one that was ever anti-anything. I was always like, "Hey, as long as you're not hurting anyone and as long as you're a good person, you could do whatever you want. You can marry a turnip for all I care." So some people could be like, "Oh, I love you, Turnip. Let's get married. I wanna be with you forever, Turnip." So it's all good.

I would have to give all the kudos or the acknowledgement to the editor at LionsGate that edited the trailer. Whoever edited the trailer, they're the ones that picked up on that. So I didn't pick up on that. I didn't think of anything different. I mean throughout the whole movie, I just kind of acted how I saw it. So the kudos and the acknowledgement should go to the editor that edited the trailer.

Q: Do you think the memes helped the movie's promotion or hurt it?

A: I guess that no press is bad press. The fact that it caught fire online and people were interested in it, and then Rolling Stone called me up and they asked me about it, you're asking me about it. We all in the business, we do things and then we move on from these things. Then after that, they have their own life. I mean, even in The Goofy Movie, Leaning Tower of Cheeza, which is 20, 30 years later, still a very popular phrase. But even then when I did it, I didn't go into it thinking, "Oh, this is gonna be a phenomenon." But sure enough, people love it, so…

Q: Is there any way to predict what might be a hit or not?

A: You don't know. It's just like a band writing a song, it's like you can ask Dave Grohl like, "Hey, how did you come up with… " "Oh, I came up with this song in two minutes and then all of a sudden it was the biggest hit in the world. I worked really hard on this song for 10 years and no one cared." So you don't know. You just don't know. You put your heart into it and you do the best you can, you do your job, and then you say goodbye to it. Then that's it, it's out of your hands.

Q: Did you know what 'yassification' meant before the meme?

A: Well, I didn't know what it meant[…] It's the flamboyant version of Pinocchio, right? Is that the right word, flamboyant? Like the playful or, I don't know, the feminine version. There's no harm in it. Everyone had a good time and people enjoyed it.

Q: When did you first find out that Lionsgate had sort of embraced the meme for marketing? Have you gone viral before this?

A: I saw it just like you saw it. I saw that they embraced it and I was like, "Oh wow, that's cool." Then I saw what everyone else was doing, so I'm like, "I'm gonna hop on this bandwagon," and then I did my own version of it too. I've gone viral before. There's other videos that I've done that have gone viral. I don't know if you ever saw me getting punched on stage. That was when I got beat up on stage in Texas, but then I showed everyone that that was phony and it was fake, it was a hoax. So that went viral. Then for Funny or Die, I did a Stephen Miller character, and that went millions of views and then CNN called me and wanted to talk to me about that.

The internet is like wildfire. People share stuff and if they enjoy it or whatever, they share it with their friends, and then everyone starts talking about it. So it's pretty cool.

Q: Was the Pinocchio meme your biggest viral moment?

A: Probably this one or the Stephen Miller one. The Stephen Miller one was pretty big because he was… It's kinda like when Alec Baldwin was doing Trump on Saturday Night Live a lot and then no one on Saturday Night Live did Stephen Miller, then Pauly Shore did it and it went on Funny Or Die, which was a really great sketch, and then that went viral and that was dope. I was happy that picked up.

Q: What was your reaction to seeing all this Pinocchio content?

A: I was just kind of flattered, I was just mostly, "Wow, oh my God, I can't believe people are talking about this, I didn't plan this. This is really wild." It was more like just me being honoured and flattered that people liked it. That's the thing, it's like you do these… I don't wanna say to try to get noticed, but we do these things to put them out there and hopefully people like them and then when someone notices them and talks about them, it makes you feel good. So it made me feel good. I was happy that people liked it.

Q: How would you say your Pinocchio stacks up against other Pinocchios?

A: My Pinocchio is mostly for little kids. So it's mostly for 5 or 10-year-olds, I think the other Pinocchios are more like rated R or something, I'm not sure though.

Q: Do you have nay favorite memes that spawned from the movie?

A: They all kind of smorgasbord into just one crazy run of memes, so it wasn't like, oh, this one guy did it better than this, or this one person, it was just like all of these people were doing it. I haven't watched [the movie] since it came out a month or two ago. I would have to review the clips and let you know, oh, this one or that one, but I just remember it was just like an onslaught of just all these people, it was pretty funny. I bet you a lot of people didn't even know who I was, which is kind of cool, like younger TikTok generation. A lot of them don't know me.

Q: How have the memes effected your following and fans? Did the popularity on TikTok help introduce you to a younger audience?

A: Yeah, I noticed it on stage too, when I'm doing stand up and I talk about Pinocchio going viral and then people yell it out. It's cool. You look at comments online, every tenth comment is, "Daddy, when am I gonna be on my own, I got the whole world to see." I'm like, "Oh my God."

Q: You're working on a series on YouTube called "Day in the Life of Pauly Shore in Las Vegas." What is it?

A: Well I love Curb Your Enthusiasm, and I just loved loosely scripted stuff. So I've been becoming close with people out here, so the Asian kid, Mike, is one of my assistants and he's also a comedian and I liked working with him, so I kinda direct him and direct these clips kinda based in reality. It's like a day in the life of Pauly Shore in Las Vegas and it's all fake, but it's all kind of played real. You know what I mean? So it's loosely scripted, very Curb Your Enthusiasm and I don't know what else to say, that's it. It's just every Monday, we release another clip.

Q: Are you thinking about starting up another podcast any time soon?

A: I'll do a podcast with Jam in the Van. They're kind of like MTV, they're like a website and they do music. Check them out, they're really cool. So I might help them with the podcast. I might do another podcast at The Comedy Store with this guy Argus, so I'm just kinda like, everything is kind of up in the air right now.

Q: What advice do you have to give people who want to do comedy or get into the entertainment business?

A: Well my advice to anyone else that's doing whatever it is that I'm doing is just put your heart into it, have fun with it, don't be mean, and hopefully people will pick up on it, share it and go viral. That's my philosophy. Just put your heart into whatever it is that you're doing.

A lot of people are always like, "Don't get in the business unless your heart's into it." This business is something that gets you out of bed. Like everyday, there's a reason why I get out of bed, it's because of the entertainment business and it has to be that way to you otherwise, get out of the business. If it physically doesn't get you out of bed, then you're in the wrong business. So put your heart into it, have a good time, and create good stuff for people and for yourself.

That's why I like the band [I'm in], my Crusty's. It's just fun. It's just me and some old guys that are good musicians and we like to play music and that's pretty much it. I'm not a singer, but I act like I'm a singer and I commit to singing and I have fun and it's just another form of the arts, really. There's singing, there's dancing, there's acting, there's reality, there's stand-up, there's podcasting. So the singing is just something, it's just a different way to express yourself.

If you want to keep up with and support Pauly Shore, subscribe to him on YouTube, follow him on TikTok and Instagram and check out his recent projects including Pinocchio: A True Story and My Sweet Monster.