Town meeting: Stephen Colbert (l.), Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello

Wacky, tacky Wigfield
Three author/performers create & inhabit a make-believe town

By CELIA McGEE
May 23rd, 2003
Original Article

But wait! Sedaris — also known as the sister half to her brother David in comic duo the Talent Family — has been joined by two really, really, really (no, really) handsome guys, Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello. They are her creative partners on such endeavors as the Comedy Central series "Exit 57" and "Strangers With Candy."

They debate the merits of omelettes with or without lox.

"I love Amy Sedaris," says the manager, who loves Amy Sedaris — and probably would love Colbert if she recognized him as a correspondent on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," and Dinello as a borrowed-motorcycle-riding screenwriter who admits to doing his own laundry.

But that's on 10th Ave.

In the quaint burg of Wigfield, the diner manager wouldn't get excited at all, even though the three people at the table have a cult following based on their skit work and on the undying hope that they will one day finish the screenplay for the movie of "Strangers With Candy."

That's because Wigfield doesn't exist.

Wigfield is what a high-school English teacher might label a figment of the trio's imagination. (Wigfield, by the way, doesn't have a high school, or any other kind.)

It's a fictional town, population of around 50 and "most of them transients," says Dinello, a town that Sedaris, 42, Colbert, 39, and he, 40, made up for their new book, "Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just May Not."

A spoof of every cliché-crammed paean to disappearing small-town American life, it is lavishly illustrated with 19 fuzzy black-and-white photographs of the authors dressed as Wigfield's various leading citizens, most of whom make their living as used-tire salesmen, strippers, elected officials (there are three mayors), bartenders or all of the above.

Todd Oldham took the pictures. "He has a great sensibility," says Colbert. "He finds the same things funny."

A great deal of the book is devoted to its make-believe chronicler, Russell Hokes — last-known job: "painting the center lines on interstates." Hokes is clearly struggling to meet the 50,000-word requirement stipulated in his overly generous publishing contract.

"If I could find three words to describe Wigfield," he writes, "I would. But I can't." That's 14 down, 49,986 to go.

Unlike Hokes, the authors aren't all hoax. Colbert, for instance, actually encountered a town in West Virginia that inspired Wigfield.

"The mayor had come up with a tax dodge that involved dissolving the town," he recalls, "and there was a strip club in the town hall."

Second City slickers

Dinello, for his part, remembers his first impression of Colbert when they met as members of the Second City comedy troupe 15 years ago: "I thought he was serious and cold. I still do."

Colbert says he discerned in Dinello "an illiterate thug. I still do."

They both thought Sedaris' stage presence was, says Colbert, "great and daring. We were young and impressionable."

Such mutually high opinions keep them together as performers. Right now they are venturing out of New York to tour the country with a dramatic evening of excerpts from "Wigfield."

"With our next book," Sedaris says, "we won't have to worry so much about meeting the word count, because we'll include recipes." She often whips up cheese balls or cupcakes to sell at her performances during intermission.

There is — so far — no next book.