I'm Dying Up Here (Hardcover) ~ William Knoedelseder (Author) Cover Art

I'm Dying Up Here (Hardcover)

By: William Knoedelseder (Author)

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Review

"Knoedelseder skillfully layers powerful dramatic details, and readers will shelve the book alongside...other key classics on comedy..." (starred review)

Publisher's note

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.

Annotation

As the proprietor of The Comedy Store in Los Angeles during the 1970s, Mitzi Shore helped launch the careers of Jay Leno, David Letterman, Andy Kaufman and Richard Lewis, but, as William Knoedelseder reports, she will forever be remembered for her role in sending one disturbed performer spiraling in the other direction. By the time Shore took full ownership of the club, as a result of her divorce settlement, The Comedy Store was a hot spot generating huge revenue, but she stubbornly refused to pay any of her entertainers, claiming that the club was a training ground for young comedians. In 1979, a group of comedians formed a labor union and picketed the club, and the dispute became so heated that several of the strikers were barred from performing at the club, even after the settlement. In the middle of the fray was comedian Steve Lubetkin, a former friend of Shore's, who was so distraught at having been banned that he committed suicide by leaping from the Hyatt Hotel next door to The Comedy Store, apparently attempting to land on the club. Knoedelseder, who covered the club as a Los Angeles Times entertainment reporter, provides the compelling full story, which illuminates the dark heart lurking behind the laughter of the comedy business.

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