I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-Up Comedy's Golden Era

by William Knoedelseder

  The women comics weren’t bothered so much about not being invited—coke was mostly a guy thing back then—as they were about the fact that Mitzi participated. In the winter of 1979, the so-called women’s movement was in full roar. All across the country, supporters were pushing hard for states to ratify an equal rights amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And yet, here was a woman in a unique position of power, supposedly the champion of female stand-up comedy, having affairs and sharing drugs with her male employees, one of whom, Mike Binder, wasn’t even old enough to drink legally. These weren’t the sort of equal rights they had in mind. If Mitzi were a man, they’d want her arrested.

  What’s more, Shore’s grand plan for providing female comics with a level playing field in the form of the “ladies-only” Belly Room wasn’t working out as originally envisioned.

  With seating for about fifty and its own entrance from the parking, the Belly Room looked pretty much like the rest of the 135

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  Comedy Store—black on black on black—with the exception of a red satin heart that Shore affixed to one wall. When the heart disappeared one day, Shore posted a notice on the Comedy Store bulletin board announcing that it had been stolen by her daughter, Sandi. “And I want it returned,” she wrote. “So if anyone sees her, tell her to put it back.”

  There were about twenty women who worked the Belly Room regularly. Elayne Boosler and Marsha Warfield, the two women with the most polished acts, kept their vows not to perform there.

  For some of the others, the Belly Room proved to be pretty much what Mitzi had promised: a space removed from the rat-a-tat-tat, rim-shot rhythm of the Original Room, where they could find a distinctly female voice and develop a unique style at a comfortable pace. It was a room where they could be bad, fall down, and fail without fear of wrecking their careers. In fact, Judy Carter did fall down onstage one night, twisting her ankle so badly that she had trouble getting up. In pain, she called out to the audience for help but people just sat there smiling, waiting to see how the bit was going to pay off. The Belly Room was more free-form than the Original Room, more experimental.

  “It was a jazzy atmosphere,” Sandra Bernhard told writer Law -

  rence Christon years later. “The great thing about that space is that people looked for the unusual. It gave me the opportunity to explore and express myself.”

  Bernhard and Lotus Weinstock were the two performers who used the Belly Room to the best advantage. As the eldest comic in residence, Weinstock functioned as the room’s soulful den mother, sometimes emceeing in her bathrobe. Bernhard was her onstage opposite, the brash (to say the least) young newcomer whose intentionally obnoxious persona had often caused walkouts when she performed in the Original Room. The opposites eventually attracted, and the two teamed up to produce some memorable moments in the Belly Room.

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  “I’ve spent fifteen years transcending my anger, and dealing with you it all comes back in one night,” Weinstock would say as they launched into a ferocious onstage cat fight—grabbing onto one another, pulling hair, yowling, wrestling to the floor, and rolling around on the stage. Then, Bernhard would suddenly leap to her feet and say breathlessly, “I feel so close to you.”

  Shore loved the two of them, especially Bernhard, whom she thought was destined for stardom because she was so different from anyone else, and she let them have as much stage time as they wanted. On weekends, they often did an hour-long set, which didn’t sit well with their comedy sisters because it meant fewer time slots to go around, and most of the women hadn’t been given any spots in either the Original Room or at Westwood since the Belly Room opened. Only Elayne Boosler, Marsha Warfield, Shirley Hemphill, and Lois Bromfield, another Mitzi favorite, were getting spots in the bigger rooms, which males now dominated even more than before. The Belly Room was functioning as an overflow space. When the other rooms were full, the doormen directed people up the back stairs to be entertained by the females until the next show of male comics began. Many of the women thought they were being treated as a third-rate attraction (at least the belly dancers of yesteryear got paid). Intentionally or not, in the name of equality, they were being discriminated against.

  The growing disenchantment among the women about opportunity dovetailed with that of the men over the issue of pay. And it all came together in a series of unexpected phone calls that invariably went something like this:

  “There’s going to be a meeting of all the comics on Thursday at the union hall [International Alliance of Theater and Stage Employees] on Sunset.”

  “All the comics? What for? ”

  “As many as we can get. We’re gonna talk about getting paid for our performances at the Store.”

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  “Wow! What time Thursday? ”

  “Two o’clock.”

  (Pause)

  “Is that a.m. or p.m.? ”

  About seventy-five comics, including nearly all the women, showed up that Thursday afternoon for what may have been the largest-ever gathering of stand-ups outside of a Friars Club roast.

  Alison Arngrim cut her afternoon classes at Hollywood High to attend. She figured that a meeting of comedians trying to get organized about anything was bound to be hilarious, like spending the afternoon in a great big fuckup class. Her comrades didn’t disappoint her. Chaos reigned at the outset, with everyone shouting and trying to talk at the same time. When someone called out,

  “Order please,” half a dozen voices from around the room hollered back in unison, “Cheeseburger, fries, and a coke.”

  Jay Leno tried to frame the discussion but couldn’t keep from telling jokes or refrain from responding to heckles. It was a repeat of what happened at Boosler’s apartment, but much worse, ca-cophony cubed. Finally, Tom Dreesen couldn’t take it any more.

  He got up from his seat and walked to where Leno stood in the front of the room. Raising his hand for attention, he started talking above the din.

  “Guys, guys, I know it’s a lot of fun being all together like this, but we really have some important things to talk about today, and it would be better and more effective if we got a little organized about it and spoke one at a time,” he said.

  Knowing the basics of Roberts Rules of Order, he tried to apply them to get the crowd quieted down and focused. “Okay, the chair recognizes Jay Leno. Jay, you have the floor; make your point. Gallagher, please sit down and be quiet.”

  Dreesen’s stature as the most experienced comic in the room and his reputation as a mensch helped overcome the fact that Leno stood behind him throughout the meeting, miming his every 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 139

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  word and gesture as if signing for the deaf. The meeting was ostensibly about money, but the discussion turned mostly on Mitzi, with opinion quickly dividing into two camps. The she-owes-us group argued, “She’s making millions and should share some of it with us.” The we-owe-her faction countered with, “We should just be grateful that she lets us perform at the Store.”

  After a couple of hours and several motions along the lines of

  “I move you go fuck yourself,” money won out over gratitude when a majority voted to send a delegation to Shore to broach the idea of getting paid a modest amount, as little as $5 a set. It was moved, seconded, and carried that Dreesen would head the delegation and pick the others to go with him.

  Dreesen wondered what he’d gotten himself into. He hadn’t figured on becoming a spokesman for the group. Looking out over the room, he couldn’t help thinking he was the keynote speaker at an ADD convention. Still, it would be a short booking, he thought, maybe even a o
ne-nighter. Like nearly everyone else, he was sure that Mitzi would see the reasonableness of their position.

  Sure, she’d probably get all weepy and do the Jewish (or Catholic) mother trip—after all I’ve done for you kids, this is the thanks I get?—but in the end she’d go along with it.

  Just to be sure, he picked his fellow delegates carefully. He wanted people whom Mitzi liked personally and professionally, people she felt comfortable with, who had no animosity toward her and wouldn’t antagonize her. She loved Jay, of course, but Jay always wanted to be the center of attention, and he couldn’t be serious for more than a few minutes at a time. Robin Williams couldn’t be serious even that long, and besides, he hadn’t come to the meeting. Mitzi also loved Dave Letterman, but Dave would never do it; he wouldn’t feel comfortable being that involved.

  Elayne Boosler was a leader among the women, but Dreesen didn’t know if Mitzi respected her or, for that matter, any of the women.

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  He decided on Paul Mooney, who was part of Richard Pryor’s inner circle; Tim Thomerson, a handsome budding actor who had invented the “surfer dude” character on the Comedy Store stage; and George Miller, the only comic that Dreesen had ever seen make Mitzi laugh at herself. On stage one night, with Mitzi in the audience, George launched into an impersonation of her, saying, “That Tom Dreesen! He called me the other day while I was in the kitchen scrubbing out the sink . . . with my hair.” The only person who laughed harder than Mitzi was Marsha Warfield, who appeared to pass the better part of a drink through her nose.

  All four men genuinely liked Shore, were grateful for the break she’d given them, and felt they were in her debt. Dreesen figured if they just approached her with respect and affection, she’d agree to their proposal. How could she not?

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  Diary of a Young Comic

  Richard Lewis didn’t attend the comics meeting, but he had a good excuse. He was caught up in the biggest break of his career.

  It came about in the usual way, which was almost a cliché at that point. He had just finished his set at the Improv and was having a drink at the bar one night when a stranger walked up and introduced himself. “Hi, my name is Bennett Tramer. I’m a big fan of yours. I’m writing a show for NBC and producer Lorne Michaels, and I think you’d be great for the lead part.”

  “Oh, good, I thought you were a bill collector,” Lewis quipped.

  Tramer explained that he was writing the screenplay for a feature film called Poison Ivy to be directed by Gary Weis, a young director who’d made a name for himself with his short films on Saturday Night Live. Weis also had a deal with Michaels and NBC

  to make ninety-minute specials that would air periodically in SNL’s time slot, and he wanted to do a film about a young comic from New York trying to make it in Los Angeles. “Your act would fit into it,” Tramer said. “We could include a lot of your performance and shoot it right here.”

  Tramer brought Weis to the Improv the following night, and Lewis made their presence part of his act. “There’s a little pressure 141

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  on me tonight,” he told the audience as he paced back and forth across the stage, running his hands nervously through his long hair. “There are people here to see me, but I don’t want you to worry about it. I’m going to come through for you. I’m going to come through for myself.” Then, he went into a rant about his grandpa Yikva who, he explained, “was named for a Jewish expression that means ‘killed by an avalanche.’”

  Afterwards, Weis told him, “You remind me of Woody Allen,”

  and offered him the starring role. Lewis agreed to do it if he could be part of the writing process as well. Done.

  Lewis and Tramer crafted a loosely autobiographical script, titled Diary of a Young Comic, in which the hero, Billy Gondola, leaves his Jewish family (including Grandpa Yikva) in New York to try for stardom in LA. “We gotta write a scene for my friend Steve,” Lewis told Tramer. “It’ll be a favor but he’ll earn it.” They wrote a scene in which Steve Lubetkin and Susan Evans were to be part of an acting class that Billy attends, and they gave them both lines. Finally, Lewis thought, he could pay Steve back for his help in those early days when they swore a blood oath on a street corner in Greenwich Village.

  But hard luck hit Lubetkin once again. Two weeks before filming was to begin, director Weis and the NBC production executives decided they had to cut some scenes from the script to conform to the ninety-minute format, and the acting class scene was among those that had to go. Lewis pleaded for it to be left in, but they had a fifteen-day shoot with a $230,000 budget, the acting class scene was peripheral to the storyline, and none of the people in it (with the exception of Billy) were in any other scene. So, it was the easiest and most logical thing to cut. This was a production decision pure and simple, and Lewis was powerless to do anything about it.

  He was sick at heart that his good fortune was going to cause his friend more pain. Here was the double-edged sword of making it in Hollywood, today’s entry in the real diary of a young comic.

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  He was going to have to tell Steve that he wasn’t invited to the party after all.

  They met for coffee at a little restaurant across the alley from Steve’s apartment where they often got together. Not five seconds after they sat down, Lewis blurted out, “I’m so fucking disappointed, man, but they had to make edits when they were finaliz-ing the shooting schedule, they saw how long it was, and they had to make cuts, and they are taking out your scene, and I can’t get them to put it back in.”

  Whatever disappointment he felt, Lubetkin didn’t show it.

  “That’s cool,” he said. “I know you did the best you could. Don’t worry about it.” He told Lewis that he was working on his solo stand-up act again and was getting good feedback from Mitzi Shore and good time slots at Westwood. He had some great new bits he was doing, including a Jewish pimp wearing a fedora fes-tooned with bagels and shuffling around the stage muttering in an alter kocker voice, “Hustle, hustle,” and a “quick impression” of a Polish pope giving the papal blessing by holding his arm in place while moving his body in the sign of the cross. In fact, Mitzi had booked him to play the San Diego Store, and Susan was going down with him to stay for a few days, he said. So things were looking up.

  Diary was shot at a handful of locations around Los Angeles.

  A cheap motel in the shade of the Santa Monica freeway recalled the hooker haven next door to Lewis’s first LA apartment, down to the detail of the “used” condoms from the prop department lying around on the ground. A health food store was the setting for Billy to pick up Nina van Pallandt. And the Improv was the scene of Billy’s triumph, complete with Budd Friedman bounding onto the stage just as he did after Lewis’s first performance at the New York club, proclaiming to the audience, “We’ve found the rookie of the year.”

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  Improv and seemed fine. He chatted up Bennett Tramer, who thought he was a really sweet, funny guy. Apparently, there’d been no harm done. At least, that’s what Richard wanted to believe. But in his heart he knew better. Steve always kept his fears and frustrations hidden. On stage he walked with a swagger, ex-uding confidence, a man’s man, but inside he was still a scared little boy who missed his mom and desperately wanted to impress his dad.

  As the air date for Diary neared, Lewis was swept up in the network’s promotional push. NBC’s p
ublicity department set up a score of interviews for him, ranging from Daily Variety to the Washington Post to The Today Show. They even booked him on The Tonight Show, where he killed. Maybe it was the fact that Johnny Carson wasn’t sitting there judging him (Gabe Kaplan was guest hosting that night), or maybe he was just on a sustained roll with all the hoopla surrounding Diary, but it was his best Tonight Show appearance ever. The audience was still applauding as he sat down on the couch next to ABC sportscaster Dick Schapp, who leaned over and said to him, “That’s the hardest I’ve laughed since the last time I saw my old friend Lenny Bruce playing in Greenwich Village.” Lewis would have been hard-pressed to conjure a higher compliment.

  NBC flew him to New York first class for his appearance on The Today Show and put him up at the Plaza Hotel. On the ride from the airport, his limo driver suggested that he stop at a particular men’s clothing store and charge whatever he wanted to the network’s account, indicating that others before him had done so, and nobody knew the difference. Lewis declined, but he felt great later when he took his mother and her boyfriend to dinner at the Plaza’s famous Oak Room and with a flourish signed the check to his room.

  On The Today Show the next morning, he chatted with cohosts Tom Brokaw and Jane Pauley and introduced a clip from Diary in which Billy Gondola’s sister Shirley joins a weird cult 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 145

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  that reduces everything, including language, to its essence, so that Shirley becomes simply “Shi” and her boyfriend, Fred, is called “Fre.” The bit went over so well on the studio set that at the end of the broadcast, the cohosts cracked Lewis up by signing off as “Tom Bro” and “Jane Pau.”

  Diary of a Young Comic received generally good reviews. Even the critics who noted its production shortcomings and occasionally flat moments lauded its originality and sense of fun. The Washington Post’s Tom Shales pronounced it “a pretty darn funny movie” and listed among its highlights a scene in which Billy Gondola goes to a celebrity shrink who has eight-by-ten photos of his famous patients on the wall with black tape over their eyes to disguise their identities. Still, Billy is able to recognize one patient. “Isn’t that Flipper? ”