This was published 7 years ago
Pulling no punchlines: Jim Carrey turns the lens on the stand-up stage
In the 1970s Los Angeles' iconic Sunset Strip served as the birthplace of a generation of comedians: George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, Dave Letterman, Albert Brooks, Jay Leno and Robin Williams among them.
That world, and the camaraderie and competitive spirit of the eclectic personalities who inhabited it, is the basis of a new television series from comedian Jim Carrey, I'm Dying Up Here.
Alfred Molina as Carl and Melissa Leo as Goldie in 'I'm Dying Up Here'. Credit: Justina Mintz/SHOWTIME
The series, which was based on the book of the same name by William Knoedelseder, opens up a world in the midst of enormous transition, Carrey, who is producing the series, says.
"We were coming out of the 1960s, we were coming out of Vietnam and Nixon and it was a very intense time," Carrey says. "That helped give birth to a new attitude and a new desire to express yourself and say those edgy things and those edgy truths. And changed comedy."
The series stars Melissa Leo as comedy club owner Goldie Herschlag – a character loosely based on a real-life club owner Mitzi Shore – as well as Ari Graynor, Clark Duke, Michael Angarano, Stephen Guarino, Erik Griffin, R.J. Cyler and Al Madrigal as comedians.
For Carrey the series is about paying "the greatest respect and love and admiration for the people whose ministry it is to free the world from concern," he says.
"I think it's really important to recognise it," Carrey adds. "At that time there was a beam that could catapult people to the stars and that was The Tonight Show. And we all came out and gathered around the heat of that and were hoping for the best."
The series is on the whole, he assures, an accurate snapshot of that world. "I had so many incredible experiences, I'm lucky to be alive really," Carrey adds, smiling. "I had so many unbelievable experiences and wonderful circumstances."
One plot point – two of the characters live in a space which amounts to little more than a walk-in closet – is based on Carrey's own experience.
"I met somebody at the Improv who said they had a room and it turned out to be a closet so for the first year or so I was here, I lived in that closet," Carrey says.
"And I woke up the next morning, the very first morning that I lived in the house, to walk out in the kitchen and find a beautiful young girl making bacon with no pants on and I went, wow."
Carrey is a co-executive producer on the series but describes his role in the production process more as someone who "comes in and downloads". Day to day control of the series resides with co-producers Michael Aguilar and Dave Flebotte.
Aguilar says Carrey's great strength is that he is a storyteller.
"It started first with me and Dave [Flebotte], he would just tell us stories," Aguilar says. "There are things as specific as the closet or a story that Jim told us about getting, and then losing, The Tonight Show. He's telling these stories and you almost see an episode come together."
Carrey also helped the show's writers get a sense of the "big picture"; "the emotions, the feelings of chasing that dream and the pressures of chasing that dream and what it means and why and the pain and all of that," says Aguilar. "He shared everything with us."
While the book is set firmly in the 1970s, Aguilar says there was never any discussion of moving it to either another, or a recent, time frame.
"We always talked about doing it in this moment because it's the birth of the most important era in stand-up comedy," Aguilar says. "This is when comedy changed, when it went from set-up/punch line jokes to storytelling, to therapy, to creating characters. And it really took off."
Aguilar says the series is set on the cusp of that shift.
"This was the moment, this was when [Johnny] Carson moved The Tonight Show to LA and that became the scene," he says. "[When] it shifted from New York to LA everything changed and these guys were the kings of the Sunset Strip. So it's a much more interesting time for us."
One of the most challenging aspects of the series, Flebotte says, is writing the stand-up sequences for the show.
"We have a great writing staff, and we kind of give them a paradigm of the stand-up and we go over it and over it," he says. "And when you watch a lot of the early 70s stand-up, by today's standards you might not laugh."
The series also captures the "camaraderie and competition" between stand-ups, Carrey adds.
"They really captured the feeling of the smart ass quality of being a comic," he says. "Often times it wasn't who was funniest on stage, it was who was funniest at the bar or who was funniest in the parking lot. That's what mattered to comics. And they've so captured the feeling."
WHAT I'm Dying Up Here
WHEN Stan