I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-Up Comedy's Golden Era
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Callie counseled the comics who worked for him to be careful what they wished for, saying of the CFC, “I’m afraid they are opening up a can of worms. The idea of showcase acts being paid is an idea whose time has come, but if Mitzi has to pay all those acts, then she is going to have to run that club as a business. Before, she didn’t. And if they thought she had too much power before, just wait ’til they see how much she has now. Once Mitzi has to start paying, she’ll have to figure, Why should I pay some kid who has ten minutes of material? It’s going to cut off the kids at the bottom, the ones that really need to work. They won’t get the 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 217
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time slots, and they won’t develop.” His words would prove prophetic in the weeks to come.
In its search for new venues, the CFC approached Shore’s former partners in the original Comedy Store in the San Diego area.
Wayne Blackman and T. D. Hayes had operated a Comedy Store branch in the basement of their Pacific Beach restaurant from 1976 to 1978, after which they parted ways with Shore because of disagreements over admission prices and expenses. Blackman and Hayes then opened another small club, featuring one paid comic a night along with singers and magicians. Shore promptly opened the La Jolla Store and launched a campaign to run Blackman and Hayes out of business. All the comics who had signed on with them suddenly backed out, telling Blackman and Hayes that Mitzi had decreed if they worked for them, then they couldn’t work for her. Shore dispatched her comics to the competitors’
parking lot on opening night to hand out Comedy Store fliers.
The new club quickly failed for lack of professional-grade comics.
So, when the CFC asked Blackman if he would reopen the club if they got 150 comics to work there, he replied, “Only one way: If Mitzi Shore wasn’t operating in San Diego, and if she wrote me a letter giving her blessings. I don’t want to compete with her,” he said, “because she is tough, and we’re not that tough. She is the law—judge, jury and legislature.”
Shore may have blinked in her fight with the CFC, but she didn’t buckle. Upon receiving the news that the comics had rejected her offer, she went to court and obtained an injunction limiting the picketing outside the club to twenty people, with no more than two picketers allowed within ten feet of the entrance.
The following day, the CFC presented her with a counterpro-posal to her “final offer.” As announced simultaneously by Ken Browning, it went along with Shore’s proposed $25 per set in the Original Room but called for equal payment at Westwood, with a guaranteed eighteen paid spots and two unpaid newcomer spots on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday nights and eleven 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 218
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paid sets (and no unpaid sets) on Friday and Saturday nights. In addition, the comics wanted a guarantee of eight $25-sets per night in the Belly Room and 50 percent of cover charges in the Main Room. Browning said the proposal represented a “substantial reduction” compared to the comics’ previous demands. For Shore, it represented a substantial increase in labor costs, from nothing to at least $3,500 a week. She wasted little time rejecting the comics’ proposal. In a letter addressed to Dreesen and Leno (whom she perceived to be the strike’s ringleaders) and posted on the Comedy Store bulletin board, she announced a new pay policy at Westwood and Sunset. The clubs “will remain workshops and showcases during the week,” she said, but on weekends, “because of the professional levels the Stores have attained, all performers will be paid.” The pay would be $25 per set. In the Belly Room, one featured act would be paid for two sets per night on the weekend, while all other performances would be unpaid.
Shore invited all comedians who were willing to work under the new policy to call in with their availability. She said there would be no further negotiations with the CFC.
In announcing the new pay policy, Estelle Endler indicated that Shore felt she had been sandbagged by the CFC, which had led her to believe her previous offer would be accepted. “She made the offer to stop the dissension and get back to business,”
Endler said.
Dreesen was frustrated by the turn of events, which he blamed on the comics who had crossed the picket line. “If it hadn’t been for those sixteen guys and one girl, this whole thing would have been over in twenty-four hours,” he fumed. Now, with her new pay policy, Mitzi was going to try to break the strike one comic at a time, dangling time slots and money in front of them. On the picket line that night, he told anyone who would listen that the new CFC-sanctioned clubs were the best hope for the comics’ future. “And all those who crossed our picket line won’t be booked 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 219
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into Jerry Van Dyke’s, Humperdinck’s, and Plaza Four,” he said. “I believe that our membership would walk off the stage if any of those people were placed in the line up. That’s how emotional they are about it.”
Through the first three weeks of the strike, Mike Binder had avoided taking sides officially, either by walking the picket line or crossing it. He was working long hours on a made-for-TV movie called Can You Hear the Laughter? The Freddie Prinze Story, playing the role of Freddie’s good friend Alan Bursky. Most of the production was being shot on a set in a building on Doheny Boulevard, but several days of shooting were scheduled for inside the Sunset store, including a couple of scenes with Freddie and Alan interacting.
When the interior shooting got underway, Binder was able to enter and leave the club without incurring the wrath of the picketers. “It’s okay; he’s working on the movie,” someone would call out whenever an uninformed striker challenged him. The access put him in the unique position of having a foot in each camp. At night, he was hanging out with Leno and other CFC members at Canter’s or at Leno’s house, where the talk was invariably anti-Mitzi, and Leno, his big brother, never missed a chance to hammer home the message, “Don’t do it, Mikey. Do not cross the line, because if you do, you will regret it for the rest of your life.” During the day, however, Binder was in the bunker with Mitzi and her boys, listening to the pickets shouting slogans and insults. It felt a little like being in Dr. Frankenstein’s castle, surrounded by all the townspeople with their torches and pitchforks.
By all rights, Binder should have been having the time of his life. A month shy of his nineteenth birthday, dubbed “Kid Comedy” by his peers, he was being well paid to act in a movie about a Comedy Store icon, playing a fellow Comedy Store comic in the company of his Comedy Store pals. And yet, he was miserable.
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anything to him about it, but he could see how sad, how really low, she was. She’d been like a mother to him, and now the CFC
was talking about destroying her. They were doing a pretty good job of it, too, from what he could see. At 10:00 p.m., the place contained all the joy of a funeral parlor. There were only fifteen customers in the Original Room when Argus Hamilton came to him just as he finished his shooting for the day. “You’ve got to do it,” Argus said for the umpteenth time. “Mitzi really needs you to go on.” This time, Binder was defenseless. To ease the pressure, to please Mitzi, to hear the laughter, he agreed to perform.
Outside on the sidewalk, where pickets could see through the front window the back of whoever was performing, someone called out, “Binder’s on.” All eyes looked up, and sure enough, there he was doing a set, his red hair unmistakable. “That little fucker.”
When he came off the stage twenty minutes later, Binder didn’t feel the usual elation at having done well. Seated in her booth just inside the front door, Mitzi thanked him for what he had done and then launched
into a bitter diatribe about all the ungrateful comics out on the picket line, naming Leno, Boosler, and Dreesen among those whose careers she had fostered but who had repaid her kindness with betrayal. It was a side of Mitzi that Binder had not seen before, dark and mean, and as he listened to the bile pour out of her mouth, he was hit by a sickening reali zation. “I’ve made a terrible mistake,” he thought. “I took the wrong side.”
There was no way out of the club but past the pickets. As Binder exited, the first person he saw was Leno, who apparently had just arrived.
“These guys are saying you went on, but you didn’t, did you?”
Leno said, almost pleading for Binder to say no. But Mike couldn’t bring himself to answer because he could tell by the look on Jay’s face just how badly he’d let him down.
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were now looking at him as if he had leprosy. The shunning had already begun.
Binder called Leno at home later that night to apologize again and try to patch things up, but Jay would have none of it. He told Binder not to call or come by anymore. It would never be the same between them.
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Jay’s Big Flop
Mitzi Shore’s new pay policy did not produce its intended effect.
Comics did not rush across the picket line to pick up their $25
checks. After Mike Binder, the number of strikebreakers held steady at eighteen.
With the injunction in effect, the picketing became less bois-terous, to the point of growing almost mundane. Jay Leno, Tom Dreesen, Elayne Boosler, and George Miller were out in front most every night, but the news vans and reporters dwindled.
What had started as a sidewalk celebration of comic solidarity gradually turned into a chore to check off on every CFC member’s daily to-do list. For the most part, the strikebreakers came and went without provoking screaming invective. The confrontation devolved into a kind of trench warfare, a grinding stalemate.
For the CFC leaders, the work of striking became mostly drudgery. As Mark Lonow had predicted, keeping the picket line going turned out to be a Sisyphean exercise of relentless phone calling.
“We need three more people at 6 p.m. Can you make it?” And the calls kept them in constant contact with the members’ complaints and fears: What’s going on? When will this thing be settled? Are you even talking to the other side? Have you signed up any more 223
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clubs? Why haven’t I been given any time slots this week? It was hard to stay motivated in the face of such discontent.
Steve Lubetkin was one member on the executive committee whose sense of purpose never seemed to flag. His devotion to the cause at times bordered on obsession. When not on the phone or the picket line, he was putting his passion on paper in the form of manifestos, such as the one he wrote titled “What the CFC Is All About”:
The CFC is an organization of comedians who have come together to work for fairness.
But what does fairness mean?
There are approximately 220 million people in America. For the sake of argument let us say there are about 220 comedians.
Therefore, each one of us is literally—ONE IN A MILLION.
There are absolutely no restrictions as to who can become a comedian. And yet, only one in a million has had the determina-tion, the talent and the guts to do it. So how has this special group of one in a million been treated? They’ve been grossly un-derpaid and been so manipulated that they’ll stab each other in the back for a gig while the manipulators make all the money.
In any other profession, if you could do something that only one in a million could do, you would have power and protection and medical plans and dignity and respect and substantial compensation. But not when there are artificial barriers.
Stand-up comedy is a profession that is so special, so market -
able, so in demand that comedy clubs have had lines around the block to get in to see the performers. Why? Well, it’s simple. Lots of people want to laugh. Lots of people need to laugh. Lots of people are willing to pay money to laugh. So, why aren’t lots of people sharing that money. When the public lines up to see the club owners perform, then they can keep it all. Until then—share the wealth!
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Our purpose is to open up the industry and resist “divide and conquer” tactics that leave us at the mercy of others. Audiences will always be the ultimate judge of talent, but people committed to fairness will now be in charge of getting the comedian and the audience together, with the comedian’s best interest at heart.
Because of their strange backgrounds and influences, comedians have always been the square pegs in a world of round holes.
But now, due to an exciting and unexpected series of events, all the square pegs have gotten together and the world is about to marvel at what we can do.
Privately, he was much more downbeat, telling Susan he was afraid that even if they prevailed in the strike, Mitzi would try to destroy him and prevent him from getting work. “Evil is winning,” he wrote.
As the strike moved into its fifth week, Shore reopened the Main Room on the weekends, featuring a seven-member improvisational act called the Comedy Store Players. Neither the club marquee nor the press materials about the players contained any form of the word “improvisation,” however, because Shore for-bade its use lest anyone think she had drawn any creative inspiration from her arch enemy, Budd Friedman. In Mitzi’s world, the art of improv was called “group comedy.”
Shore planned to have the new group alternate weekends with the “Best of the Comedy Store” revue of comics picked from among those appearing in the Original Room. In announcing the new weekend shows, Comedy Store spokeswoman Estelle Endler acknowledged that Shore’s bottom line “certainly has felt the strain of the dissenters; she wants to stay in business.”
But even the loyalists gathered around her in the club wondered how she was going to manage that with only eighteen comics—most of whom did not have a polished twenty minutes’
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than one hundred. It seemed like she’d need to pull off some sort of loaves-and-fishes miracle. And meanwhile, the pickets in front were handing out flyers headlined “Where Have All the Comics Gone?” listing the lineups at the competing CFC-sponsored clubs where patrons could actually see the comics whose names were inscribed on the entrance to the Sunset building.
And if that wasn’t enough to worry about, on April 27, AGVA went before the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and obtained a strike sanction against the Comedy Store on behalf of the CFC, meaning that all the 4A unions recognized AGVA’s right to represent the comics in the dispute and that all their members were now prohibited from crossing the picket line. In announcing the sanction, AGVA’s executive vice president, Alan Jay Nelson, said, “There is evidence that several performers working at the club are 4A members.” Nelson also said AGVA had petitioned the Teamsters and the waiters and bartenders union to support the strike.
This was bad news for Shore and her supporters, but it wasn’t exactly good news for the CFC, which was trying to avoid AGVA’s chilly embrace. Tom Dreesen, Jo Anne Astrow, and Mark Lonow had made overtures to the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, practically begging their leadership to take the comics under their wing to give the CFC some legal
standing. Both unions were sympathetic to the comics’ cause but weren’t sure what they could do because they lacked jurisdiction. The CFC leaders pressed for at least a public statement of support, and AFTRA responded by inviting them to address its annual regional convention on May 1 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. AFTRA also invited representatives from the Comedy Store to present their side of the dispute.
About one hundred delegates were gathered in one of the hotel’s banquet rooms when Dreesen, Astrow, and Lonow arrived.
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were there to speak on behalf of the Comedy Store. They’d been expecting one of Mitzi’s lawyers or maybe Steve Landesberg or Argus Hamilton. Maynard in particular seemed a poor choice because he was virulently antiunion. Dreesen and Astrow were going to speak for their side, and they were pretty sure they had an edge because AFTRA’s national executive secretary, Bud Wolff, had taken a liking to Astrow, a knockout blonde who had done nothing to dampen his enthusiasm, confiding to her cohorts, including her husband, that she was “working it” for the cause.
As it turned out, they didn’t need the edge. Maynard made his pitch first, and after an impassioned testimonial to all that Mitzi Shore had done for comedy and the young comedians who performed at her clubs, he told the delegates that stand-up comedians were not “workers” but “artists,” drawing the distinction in a way that suggested he thought the two were mutually exclusive and that artists did not require the same sort of union protection as, say, pipe fitters. There was an audible gasp from the audience, followed by an offended murmuring that momentarily drowned out whatever else Maynard was saying. Dreesen, Astrow, and Lonow had to put their hands over their mouths to keep from laughing. Talk about misreading the room! As Maynard struggled through the rest of his presentation, they kept their eyes fixed on the floor because it was too painful to watch him dying up there at the lectern.