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

From Barnes & Noble

Golden ages are usually only identified in retrospect. The wizards of silent comedy, for example, were much too busy cranking out two-reelers to realize that they were comic geniuses. Similarly, the young stand-up L.A. comics of the mid-'70s who became the Lettermans, Lenos, and Robin Williamses we now all know. William Knoedelseder, the author of this book, wasn't just there during these rowdy, creative days; as a Los Angeles Times cub reporter, he was assigned to cover the city's burgeoning comedy club scene. I'm Dying Up Here benefits not only from those articles and memories but also from extensive interviews with many of the main participants. A soulful mix of laugh-out-loud jokes and bittersweet nostalgia.

From the Publisher

In the mid-1970s, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Andy Kaufman, Richard Lewis, Robin Williams, Elayne Boosler, Tom Dreesen, and several hundred other shameless showoffs and incorrigible cutups from across the country migrated en masse to Los Angeles, the new home of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. There, in a late-night world of sex, drugs, dreams and laughter, they created an artistic community unlike any before or since. It was Comedy Camelot—but it couldn’t last.

William Knoedelseder was then a cub reporter covering the burgeoning local comedy scene for the Los Angeles Times. He wrote the first major newspaper profiles of several of the future stars. And he was there when the comedians—who were not paid by the clubs where they performed— tried to change the system and incidentally tore apart their own close-knit community. In I’m Dying Up Here he tells the whole story of that golden age, of the strike that ended it, and of how those days still resonate in the lives of those who were there. As comedy clubs and cable TV began to boom, many would achieve stardom.... but success had its price.

The New York Times - Ada Calhoun

…[an] illuminating book about the West Coast comedy boom of the mid-1970s, which [Knoedelseder] covered for The Los Angeles Times

Publishers Weekly

In 1978, Knoedelseder (Stiffed: A True Story of MCA, the Music Business, and the Mafia) was a journalist assigned to cover newcomers transforming the comedy clubs: "For the next two years, I had stage-side seats at the best show in show business.... I met and wrote about Jay Leno, David Letterman and Richard Lewis before the world knew who they were." Mitzi Shore, recently labeled "the Norma Desmond of Comedy" by the Los Angeles Times, took over L.A.'s Comedy Store in 1973 with a no-pay policy because she saw it as "a training ground, a workshop, a college." It became a focal point for local comics, including Lewis, his friend Steve Lubetkin, Elayne Boosler, Tom Dreesen, Letterman, Leno and many more. Some were in desperate circumstances, surviving by living in their cars and eating bar condiments. Driving a silver Jaguar to her "massive, cash-generating laugh factory," Shore was seen as "cunningly manipulative," and her unfair payment policies led to an organized strike in 1979 by the CFC (Comedians for Compensation). This confrontation of comics vs. club owner ("Not... one... red... fucking... cent") is the core of the book, with the suicide of Lubetkin taking the tone from comedy to tragedy. Filmmakers will eye this as a potential property similar to Bill Carter's The Late Shift(1996), about Letterman and Leno. Knoedelseder skillfully layers powerful dramatic details, and readers will shelve the book alongside those other key classics on comedy: Steve Allen's The Funny Men and Janet Coleman's The Compass. (Aug. 24)

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Table of Contents