Academy Award winner and consulting producer Steven Wright has an upcoming comedy show at UC Davis’s Mondavi Center on Sept. 17.

“I’m gonna talk about women, the universe, ADD… Just so many things. It’s almost like a Mosaic painting you know?” Wright said. “There’s so many fragments of stuff and hopefully I’ll discuss them in a way that the audience thinks it’s funny. I won’t be coming out and start naming things, like cars, fetus, spaceships. Although, maybe I should try that.”

Written with his friend, Mike Armstrong, “The Appointments of Dennis Jennings” won an Academy Award for live action short film in 1988.

“It’s very amazing. Imagine having an Academy Award! Now I walk in my house and there’s this table…There’s other stuff on there like books, notebooks, cups and everything. And then there’s an Academy Award in there,” Wright said. “It’s just weird ‘cause you know you usually see it on TV you know? And then there it is.”

Wright has wanted to be a comedian since he was a teenager because he grew up watching The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.

“I watched Johnny Carson and I would see him and all the other great comedians he had on like Richard Pryor, George Carlin and so many other great comedians. And that’s why I wanted to be a comedian, because of that show,” Wright said.

In addition to doing stand-up comedy shows, Wright is also a consulting producer on FX’s “Louie.”

“There’s five seasons so far, but it’s pretty much about how real Louis C.K.’s struggle is,” said sophomore chemistry student Nikki Aceituno. “It’s about him raising his kids in New York City. At the same time, it shows him doing stand-up comedy shows.”

The FX show covers many topics that surround C.K.’s life including divorce, sex and depression.

“Louis is a genius. He’s a stand-up [comedian], writer, actor, director, editor; he’s just a brilliant mind,” Wright said. “I’ve never done anything like [being a consulting producer]. He bounces off story ideas and asks if something is funny or not. Then I go to the editing, watch and discuss all the sections with him.”

Wright started to work with C.K. on the show after two years of unofficial consulting.

“I was living there temporarily, spending a few months there and we started hanging out. He started showing me different cuts of the show and everything. And then the next year, we would do it all again,” Wright said. “I guess he liked our discussions about them… and one day, out of the blue, he asked me ‘Do you wanna work on the show?’”

As a consulting producer, Wright helps C.K. decide if segments are funny or not.

“I love ‘Louie’ because the show completely makes fun of his life. He acknowledges his privileges, his shortcomings, his everything,” said senior public relations student Tiffani Gillespi. “But it’s not just funny, it also gets very honest and deep. He struggles with raising his kids, being divorced, and being a true comedian. The show is very funny and intelligent.”

One of Wright’s first stand-up performances was when he went to a comedy club in Boston, Massachusetts at 23 years old. He has been performing ever since.

“You only learn from being out on the stage and presenting the material you’ve written,” Wright said. “You can think about it all you want, but unless you go out there and do it….The more you do it, the better you get at doing it.”