The angst-ridden voice on the other end of the phone was instantly recognizable, even though the caller hadn’t dialed up my number in more than a decade.
Yet anyone who savored his beguiling work opposite Jamie Lee Curtis in the ABC sitcom “Anything But Love,” anyone who relished his gloriously neurotic HBO comedy specials (“I’m Doomed,” “I’m Exhausted”), anyone who first saw him prowling the cramped stage of Zanies, on North Wells Street, in the early ’80s, when he was still a hustling, little-known comic, would know instantly that Richard Lewis was on the line.
“Man, so much has been going on in my life, I’ve got to tell you some of the stuff I’ve been through in the past 12 or 13 years, it’s been pretty amazing, but, wait, I hope you’re well and healthy and things are cooking, and, it sure makes a lot of sense that we’re talking again, it’s a kind of poetic justice,” Lewis began, as if picking up, in mid-phrase, where he had left off in 1984.
Back then, Lewis was just another struggling comic trying to make a buck, though he was smarter, quicker, more literate and more original than most of his hungry young peers. He also was a little more desperate than they, already having spent roughly a decade living off the nickels and dimes that club owners were paying the growing legions of would-be comics.
Yet when Lewis stepped into the spotlight at Zanies in March of ’84, for his first featured Chicago performance, the utter originality of his act caught at least one member of the audience by surprise. And it wasn’t simply because of his nervous energy, his wildman hairdo, his funereal wardrobe (black on black), his tendency to litter the stage with pieces of paper on which he had jotted ideas and to which he would refer throughout his show.
More important, Lewis quickly established himself as the most hard-driving, fast-talking, self-obsessed and maniacal wordsmith since Lenny Bruce. Like Bruce, Lewis pushed well beyond the easy laughs and the glib one-liners to try to say something real about himself, his life and the insane world he lived in.
In Lewis’ case, this wasn’t so much a comedy set as it was a one-man couch session open for public viewing.
“Let me tell you what happened,” continued Lewis, who was still near the bottom of the heap in ’84, when he played his first date at Zanies.
“I went 14, 15 years without catching a break. I mean, I was working and making a living in the arts, finally, but that was about all. I had been a comic for all those years, I had done about 8 billion shows practically for free, I did not have much money in the bank.”
And those were the least of his problems.
As Lewis told me between sets in ’84, “The state fairs I played . . . were the worst. I’d stand onstage at 4 in the afternoon with 9,000 people in the audience sitting a quarter of a mile away. They looked like dots on a Seurat painting. Meanwhile, there’s this animal parade going on in front of me–you know, the `Freaks of Africa’ revue.
“The Ferris wheel would be spinning in the background, so I’d have to time my punch lines to fall between the shrieks. That’s when I realized this is not a forum for my work, it was just an experience from hell.”
Yet the headliners that Lewis met along the way encouraged him to hang in. David Brenner openly referred to him as “star material” and helped him get engagements. David Letterman was seduced by his ravings and frequently booked him on his late-night show.
And by 1988, the Brooklyn-born comic finally, belatedly, joyously hit the big-time.
“What happened is this,” he recounted on the phone.
“I have a nice, three-minute audition with Jamie Lee Curtis in Los Angeles, and when I’m done reading, she jumps up and French kisses me out of happiness for finding her Marty , and the show runs for four seasons, and now it plays in reruns all over the world, so that some guy in Central Park with a turban recently tells me I’m the Jerry Lewis of Calcutta, because `Anything But Love’ is really big in India, although I think they call it `Anything But Couscous,’ or something like that.
“But then the studio canceled us; I guess they figured ABC wouldn’t renew us the next year, so why not save some bread? And I understand it economically, but from a pure artistic standpoint, and for all the years we worked on it, and all the blood and sweat, for the cast it was like blood was pouring out of our eyes. I mean, we were destroyed.
“So then after appearing on `David Letterman’ more than anyone else in the world, and after doing specials, after playing practically every college and every nightclub and every venue, ever, anywhere, I got burned out.
“And then in the last two-and-a-half years, either by design or by mistake or by bad luck, I found myself in a sitcom that didn’t have the right sensibility and simply failed , a few successive movies that weren’t exactly box-office hits, though I thought `Robin Hood: Men in Tights’ had a lot of big laughs, and kids love it, and I’m glad I did it. However, it wasn’t like being in `Midnight Cowboy.’
“And the movie I did in Mexico two years ago with a wonderful cast and an old friend, John Candy, rest his soul, we didn’t know . We didn’t know what we had. We were howling the whole time we were making it.
“So then I looked in the mirror, and I went: `Wow. God. What now?’ “
Which brings Lewis to the purpose of his phone call: to explain why a comic who has sold out Carnegie Hall, who has been on both Letterman’s and Jay Leno’s shows more times than he can remember, not only is going back on the road but is opening his “Magical Misery Tour” in the same tiny club where he first seduced this town with his long-running list of neuroses, Zanies.
Why, after nearly a quarter century in the business, is a 48-year-old show-business veteran returning to ground zero (with sets Wednesday through Friday at Zanies on North Wells Street, and July 15-16 at Zanies in Vernon Hills)?
“So there I am,” continues Lewis, “saying to myself: `What now?’
“And I finally made a decision last year. I said to myself, `I’m going back on stage where I can control my own words.’
“Because dare I be so bold to say my own words have done well for me for 23 years, and I’ll throw the dice with my words instead of somebody else’s.
“So I told my manager, I want to hold the microphone again. Listen–I had offers to do big auditoriums, but why? I mean, I want to go back to where I started, 25 years later, and warm up. I need some batting practice, man.
“And I just hope that the people in Chicago will understand that I will have my pieces of paper out there, I’ve been working thousands of hours, and I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m terrified and excited.”
Regardless of how Lewis’ shows unfold–and there’s every indication that he has a lot more to say about life and show business today than ever before–one doubts he’ll be quite as jittery as he was the first time around, in ’84.
“I’m not reaching for anything, I don’t project anymore,” he says.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, man. I’ve got friends dying, the world’s all screwed up, and the one thing I know is that I love making people laugh,” adds Lewis, who’s buoyed, perhaps, by the knowledge that he has two potentially important films in the can and ready to be released later this year: “Drunks,” an independent, John Cassavetes-like drama co-starring Amanda Plummer, Faye Dunaway and Spalding Gray; and “Weekend in the Country,” another small film, with Lewis playing a comedian opposite Jack Lemmon.
“It’s like what happened the other day,” Lewis continues. “There was this kid in New York who got bar mitzvahed. He was in a real reform, hip family–he had an earring instead of a yarmulke.
“And I got a letter from an executive at HBO, saying: `If you go to this kid’s bar mitzvah, it’ll blow his mind.’
“So I happened to have a shrink appointment down the block that day, so I told the shrink I had to cut out early. I always cut the shrink off anyway, because I’m sort of a control freak, and I hate when you spend the bread and he gets to say when we stop.
“So I go to this bar mitzvah, the kid sees me, starts to weep openly, and drapes his arms around me. And I’ll tell you, man, it was very moving.
“And he said, `I cannot believe you did this,’ and he was crying. And there are like 300 people there, and I just started slapping him around like Bud Abbott to Lou , and I said: `You’re embarrassing yourself, you’re supposed to be a man today,’ and I started to make him laugh.
“And then I told his parents: `You better take some pictures fast, because this is not my day, it’s your son’s day, and I want to get out of here.
“And I was only there for a minute, the bar mitzvah was held at a cafe, not at a temple, it was pretty cool.
“Anyway, I turn around, and 300 people who were invited start applauding me. And I felt like, `Wow, man, this feels good.’ After 25 years in the business, these people knew me, it meant a lot to the kid, they knew that, and that’s about as good as it gets, believe me.”
Richard, you’ve got to call more often.
LEWIS PACKS HIS JOKES WITH POWER
Howard Reich first reviewed Richard Lewis in March 1984. Here are excerpts from his review.
Compared to the lightweight jokesmiths of the ’80s, Richard Lewis is an unexpected powerhouse of ironic wit and comedic tension.
His standup routine at Zanies, which no fan of the one-liner should miss, in a way sums up a large chunk of American humor. The bittersweet Jewish pathos of Woody Allen, the satiric fury of Lenny Bruce, the manic tempo of Rodney Dangerfield and other well-chosen influences course through Lewis’ act.
Yet for all the stylistic borrowings, Lewis is ultimately his own man, and a fantastically driven one at that.
He paces Zanies’ cramped stage ceaselessly throughout his routine, walking and talking and palming down his hair as though this were a volatile visit with his shrink. The material pours out of him confessional-style, and not a word sounds rehearsed or manipulated for laughs.
Yet the laughs are there–and in unbelievable abundance–because Lewis’ material rings of high craft and because the scenarios he laments go much deeper emotionally than one expects from one-liners.
It’s no exaggeration to say that, as a standup comic, Lewis seems to have all the requisite gifts. His lines are instinctively funny, and his perception of his own life is rich enough to make us interested in it.
As a stage performer, he is pure energy, and he can communicate more with twisted body language than most comics can with words.
He is the rare kind of comedian who broadens the art.
