Actor has a blast as goofy dad

For comic actor Ty Burrell, playing goofy, oblivious, tries-too-hard dad Phil Dunphy on ABC's "Modern Family" (9 p.m. Wednesday on WTVG-TV, Channel 13, in Toledo) is a breeze.

"I get so much pleasure out of playing Phil," he said in a recent phone interview from Shreveport, La., where he was making the movie "Butter."

"At first I thought it was because I was like Phil. I am an idiot. I'm certainly oblivious in some ways. In fact, the more I play him, the more I realize it's because in the most fundamental way I'm not like Phil. I am fundamentally a kind of neurotic person. It's like going on vacation to play Phil. His brain is like a meadow. His brain is like those sound machines you get for the bedside table. It's like the sound of waves crashing, like a babbling brook and wind in the trees. Phil is just so wonderfully empty-minded, empty-brained and when I'm done working I always feel like I've been at the spa."

There's been a dearth of quality comedies in recent years while strong dramas have prevailed. Burrell had his own brushes with failed sitcoms in the recent past, including CBS's "Out of Practice" and Fox's "Back to You."

Burrell acknowledged that he expected Back to You would run for a while because of the big names on-screen and behind the-scenes - stars Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton and executive producers Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd, the forces behind "Modern Family."

Burrell said with hindsight that most people who worked on Back to You think it would have survived on CBS, a network more hospitable to live-action comedy series.

Burrell has his own theory on the recent comedy drought. "Rightly or wrongly, I strongly believe there are no new stories," he said. "I think it's all the same song, different singer and how well they're told.

"The other thing is during that stretch a lot of the comedy that was trying to make it and not making it was incredibly ironic and ultra-clever and ultimately a little bit detached. I think that maybe part of the resurgence is that it has a little heart injected back into it.

"I really do think good writing prevails and one of the things with the drought that we benefited from is a lot of good writers looking for work. Our ("Modern Family") writing staff is just completely the cream of the crop in comedy right now."

In the upcoming movie "Butter," Burrell plays a world-champion butter sculptor who has won the national title 15 years in a row and steps aside at the behest of the judging committee. His wife (Jennifer Garner) can't accept that and decides to compete herself.

"It's a little bit of a political satire and I'm sort of a Bill Clinton figure," Burrell said. "(Garner's character) has aspirations I'll run for governor and all of these things and so she decides she's going to win it so she steps in to take my place, because I wimped out, in her mind, and then the film becomes about her and this young girl and their battle."

Sounds like a perfect hiatus movie for the man who plays Phil Dunphy.

The Block News Alliance consists of The Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Rob Owen is a writer for the Post-Gazette.

Contact him at:

rowen@post-gazette.com