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

Fascinating and fun read

It's a funny, sad, look at the 70s comedy scene in Hollywood, when so many of the people who have become famous comedians were young and hungry compatriots. It's got a terrific plot, the characters are fascinating, but the facts are real. I especially appreciated the author's balanced telling, very much the way I remember journalism, when objectivity was a goal of the craft.

A fine if stilted tale of a seismic shift in the world of stand-up comedy.

Leno and Letterman, Lewis and Lubetkin: fixtures in the New York and Los Angeles comedy scenes in the late 1970s. The former have gone on to become household names as fixtures of late night TV; the latter are cautionary tales about the weight of fame and the expectations that come with it. Their tales intertwine in this book by William Knoedelseder, which follows the (forced) migration of comedians from New York to LA as they followed Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show, and their subsequent struggles against the Comedy Store and its owner Mitzi Shore. Despite the danger of the book being potentially slapstick or lowbrow considering its subject matter, Knoedelseder handles class struggle, personal deception, and untimely death with equal grace.

In fact, Knoedelseder even had personal relationships with some of the principals, which may result in the book's most notable shortcoming: its limited world-view. The action always stays with the select few - Tom Dreesen, Lewis, Shore, Leno, Letterman - and rarely provides the bigger picture; for example, once the Tonight Show moves west and the comedians follow, no real return to New York is made even as Saturday Night Live is getting off the ground. This also makes the reader feel as though part of the story is missing; other exciting stories are teased but never given a full explanation.

Though perhaps it has too narrow a focus, "I'm Dying Up Here" still tells a story that is by turns entertaining and dramatic, inspiring and bittersweet. With "cameo" appearances by Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Andy Kaufman, Richard Pryor, and Johnny Carson and old pictures of the comedians that would be blackmail material for anyone else, "I'm Dying Up Here" is worth the read, especially as a way to warm up to NBC's Jay-Leno-in-primetime experiment.

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