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

• Publisher:   PublicAffairs
• Number Of Pages:   304
• Publication Date:   2009-08-25
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   158648317X
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9781586483173

Letterman, Leno, Robin Williams, Andy Kaufman, Richard Lewis, Garry Shandling, and many other soon-to-be-stars were once young, broke, and funny in 1970s L.A. They were also friends...until one event changed everything.

I'm Dying Up Here chronicles the collective coming of age of the standup comedians who defined American humor during the past three decades. Born early in the Baby Boom, they grew up watching The Tonight Show, went to school during Viet Nam and Watergate, migrated en masse to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s and created an artistic community unlike any before or since. They were arguably the funniest people of their generation, living in a late-night world of sex, drugs, dreams and laughter. For one brief shining moment, standup comics were as revered as rock stars. It was Comedy Camelot but, of course, it couldn't last. In the late 1970s William Knoedelseder was a cub reporter assigned to cover the burgeoning local comedy scene for the Los Angeles Times. He wrote the first major newspaper profiles of Leno, Letterman, Andy Kaufman, and others. He got to know many of them well. And so he covered the scene too when the comedians-who were not paid for performing at the career-making-or-breaking venue called The Comedy Store-tried to change an exploitative system and incidentally tore apart their own close-knit community.

Now Knoedelseder has gone back to interview the major participants to tell the whole story of that golden age and of the strike that ended it. Full of revealing portraits of many of the best-known comedic talents of our age, I'm Dying Up Here is also a poignant tale of the price of success and the terrible cost of failure-professional and moral.

This book does a wonderful job of humanizing people we know only as performers - David Letterman, Tom Dreesen, Richard Lewis and many other well-known comedians. You see them off stage, as real people in real and often difficult situations. It's also one of the best books I've ever read about the cut-throat business side of "show business." If you have any interest at all in the history of stand-up comedy (not how to do it - you won't find that here) and what makes comedians do what they do, I highly recommend this book. If you're looking for laughs, you'll find a few here, but there are equal parts tragedy, so don't pick it up expecting big yuks on every page.

This is a wonderful book that captures the feel, the significance and the emotions of the era. While it is exciting to read about Dave and Jay's origins, it is the stories of Richard Lewis, Tom Dressen and Steve Lubetkin that give this book so much heart (a heart that The Washington Post's reviewer must not have). As noted in another review, there are errors and I hope that they are corrected in future editions (e.g. Howie Mandel's name is spelled wrong and Howard Cosell's variety show was on ABC and not NBC).

I'm quite a devotee of stand-up comedy and comedians of the 1970s in particular, so I was quite keen to read this account of the Comedy Store's impact on the industry, as well as a peek into the career origins of such well-known people as Letterman, Leno, Richard Lewis, etc. The book is a very easy read, the author does have an engaging style that doesn't get too bogged down in minute details that don't add anything to the story. That said, I have to point out two things. First, that not once, but twice, the author credits Billy Crystal with being in the cast of 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.' To the best of my knowledge, and after searching the internet, I can find no reference of this. If this is indeed wrong (as I suspect), then it's pretty sloppy. Secondly, George Miller (frequent talk-show guest and fine comedian) is mentioned a number of times, including near the end when the book mentions his memorial service; yet we are never told how he died, although from the references to Miller throughout, drugs were probably involved. Great read for fans of stand-up, and especially interesting to see the seeds being sown for meteoric careers like that of Letterman. It's sad that stand-up comedy isn't quite the same today as it was back in the "good old days."

"I'm Dying Up Here" is a great yarn--a funny and moving story, suspenseful, even, in its depiction of a tightknit community that eventually unravels. The jokes, the riffs, the gags are there--there are hilarious moments throughout. But Bill Knoedelseder has done a fine job of awakening these figures who are either unknown to most of us or (more of a challenge, I think), too well known. He gives them dimension and dignity and, best of all, he gives them real human frailty. This book has made me think a lot about the recurrent spiral of ecstatic coherence and heartbreaking dissolution that every band of brothers and sisters dances through. It's Camelot, it's the Beatles, it's every great run that comes to an end, it's what we keep looking for when it's not there, that feeling of "we chosen few" that can't last but is never forgotten. Knoedelseder has delivered a solid read, a captivating tale, and an honest tribute to those who take on the heroic and essential task of making us laugh.

Once in a great while, a writer will manage to cast in a new and fascinating light, what we think of as familiar territory. In this fabulous chronicle, Bill Knoedelseder takes a cast of characters well known to -- and loved by -- most of us (Leno, Letterman, Richard Lewis, Robin Williams, et al) all at the beginning of their respective rises to iconic pop culture status, and spins a yarn around an (until now) little ballyhooed, but pivotal moment in their respective lives...the Comedy Strike of 1979. Set against the backdrop of the birth of the contemporary stand-up comedy scene in Los Angeles, Knoedelseder writes with a strong and sure voice about the lives of some of our favorite comic icons as they intersected in and around a little Sunset Blvd. club called the Comedy Store. With a true insider's knowledge, he tells us of the loves, failures, successes, and rivalries, of a tight-knit family of performers, riven by their opposition -- or allegiance -- to the reigning diva of the LA comedy scene at the time, Mitzi Shore. Don't miss this! You will never think of stand up comedy the same way again.

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