RUSSIAN EVOLUTION
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BARBARA L. JOHNSTON/Inquirer Staff Photographer
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The Philadelphia Inquirer - Wednesday, April 26, 2006
RUSSIAN EVOLUTION
Yakov Smirnoff's back-philosophically speaking
By Tirdad Derakhshani
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
There's a new Yakov Smirnoff in town, and his name is...Philosopher.
Like the little caterpillar that could, the '80s comedian has reemerged as a guru on a mission: to heal our broken souls with his Metaphysics of Laughter.
"Falling in love is a chemical reaction," Smirnoff says. "But it wears off in a year. That's why you need a strong line of communication, which includes laughter," he continues, explaining the dialogic role of laughter in relationships.
Yakov Smirnoff?
Dialogic?
We're in Bizarro World.
This isn't the same wide-eyed Soviet-out-of-water jester who 20 years ago constantly sprang up like an impossibly cheerful "What a Country!" jack-in-the-box all over the tube.
Smirnoff, who will graduate next month with a master's degree in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, is in town for his final classes.
Smirnoff, M. S. Psych?
No, he doesn't plan to put up a shingle as a family therapist. Smirnoff has a mission: To use his act and his books to help launch what he calls the "Age of Enlaughterment," a family-friendly era where love and laughter heal all us.
Sporting professorial garb and a neatly trimmed beard, grad student Smirnoff fits in beautifully with the UPenn campus. He's wired and animated, a brainier version of Dr. Phil, keen on discussing hormones, the nature of love, and how to run a business.
And an interview that began as a postmortem about an '80s one-trick comic (Yakov Smirnoff, Where is he now?) soon turns into an intellectual affaire de l'esprit with a genuinely likable, smart guy and his new calling.
In his Cold War heyday, the Odessa-born comedian costarred with Robin Williams in Moscow on the Hudson and was invited to perform at the White House.
"I was this non-threatening funny guy who contrasted the image of the Brezhnevs and the Reagans of the world," he says.
He was even invited to write a Russian-related joke for President Reagan to use for his first meeting with Gorbachev.
Shedding his Soviet persona in the post-Berlin Wall era, in 1993 Smirnoff moved to Branson, Missouri, which hosts shows by the likes of Andy Williams, Glen Campbell, Bobby Vinton, and Mickey Gilley.
The comedian, who shares custody of his two children, Natasha, 15, and Alexander, 13, with his ex-wife, lives close to his mother, a retired Russian-lit teacher. (His father died 18 months ago.)
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Comedian Yakov Smirnoff poses with a
notable wit of old Philadelphia, Ben
Franklin, on the Penn campus.
BARBARA L. JOHNSTON/Inquirer
Staff Photographer
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Smirnoff, who plays 230 shows for 250,000 fans a year, says it's his Branson fans-solid, middle-America folk-who inspired his mission "to experience happiness and teach it with passion through comedy and sensitivity."
Fortuitously, Smirnoff came across a Time magazine story about Penn's Martin Seligman, founder of the field of positive psychology, which, according to his Authentic Happiness Website (www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu), "focuses on the empirical study of such things as positive emotions" to show "that it is possible to be happier... find more meaning... probably even laugh and smile more."
Fascinated by Seligman's work, Smirnoff contacted the famous scholar, who invited him to join the inaugural class in his newly designed positive-psychology graduate program. Student Smirnoff quickly became a true convert.
"I've seen the results of this approach in couples I've talked with," says Smirnoff, whose master's thesis is on love and laughter. "And it's such a simple approach, and it's related to laughter."
Guru Yakov is on a roll. In his zone.
Like a latter-day Norman Vincent Peale, he explains how his positive-thinking formula can help in any area of life: Whether you're selling cars or proposing marriage, understand your social role in (dialogic) relation to the other person's role, and focus on the other's feelings.
Smirnoff, who's at work on a new humor-and-self-help book, Living Happily Ever Laughter, is passionate about "helping people understand how [a] simple philosophy can change lives-and relationships."
When it comes to marriage, laughter is the canary in the coal mine, he says. And its demise "telegraphs to you way in advance-way before you have problems with sex-that your marriage is in trouble."
"I find the quest I'm on allows me to reach different levels of intelligence and sophistication," multifaceted Smirnoff says. "I can take those global ideas [about love and laughter] and boil them down to simplicity."
"And I believe that I can make a difference."
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