Brad Garrett shakes up ’70s comedy scene drama ‘I’m Dying Up Here’
I’m a stand-up comedy nerd. Always have been.
Give me a book (Steve Martin’s “Born Standing Up,” Judd Apatow’s “Sick in the Head,” etc.), special (Netflix’s “Jerry Before Seinfeld”) or most anything about the inner workings of telling jokes for a living, and I’m happier than, well, most stand-up comedians, who are a notoriously miserable collection of human beings.
That’s why I couldn’t wait to see Showtime’s “I’m Dying Up Here.”
Based on William Knoedelseder’s historical account of some of comedy’s biggest names and their battle with Comedy Store owner Mitzi “Mother of Pauly” Shore for money and respect — mostly money — the series hails from executive producer Jim Carrey.
Then I actually saw “I’m Dying Up Here.”
It’s fine for a binge on a weekend if, say, your car’s in the shop or you’re nursing a cold. But a few days later, I couldn’t remember much about it.
Set in L.A.’s fictional Goldie’s comedy club, with Melissa Leo portraying Goldie, a loose interpretation of Shore, the series offered a mix of interesting characters — assuming you didn’t know that the Comedy Store was home to such outsize personalities as Robin Williams, Steve Martin and Andy Kaufman.
Armed with that knowledge, “I’m Dying Up Here” came off as safe, if not a little dull. It was basically HBO’s “Vinyl” with somewhat less cocaine.
This season, which debuts at 10 p.m. Sunday, kicks things up a notch with the arrival of Brad Garrett as legendary Las Vegas comic Roy Martin. Roy shows up as the face of the Vegas mob, which is looking to take over Goldie’s. “It’s Vegas, Goldie. It’s not the welcome wagon dropping by,” he warns. “Take the dough.”
But Garrett, who knows a little something about running a comedy club, having opened Brad Garrett’s Comedy Club at the MGM Grand in 2012, adds a sense of gravitas to the proceedings. Compared with the wide-eyed newbies at Goldie’s, Garrett’s Roy has seen it all — and forgotten most of it.
“I don’t remember what anything feels like anymore,” he laments. “My mother died 10 years ago. Cancer. I took the red-eye out the night before her funeral, I buried her, and I did two shows that night at the Flamingo. And I don’t remember (expletive).”
If, like me, you’re more interested in what happened at the actual Comedy Store, check out Judd Apatow’s excellent documentary “The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling” on HBO’s on-demand platforms.
“I would go to the Comedy Store, and I would watch. I’d just sit in the back and watch,” the late comedic genius says. “And I thought, ‘My God, who has the nerve to do that?’ ”
Shore was so powerful as the gatekeeper of the hottest comedy club on the planet, she was able to cast doubt in one of the funniest minds in history. “Mitzi used to say to me, ‘I think you’re a writer. I don’t think you’re a performer. I think you’re a writer.’ ”
Shandling grew so frustrated when he was starting out, he called Shore an obscenity — in a letter written to his parents.
Carrey is interviewed about those days at the Comedy Store, and his responses feel more real than anything in “I’m Dying Up Here.”
And, as opposed to the characters in the Showtime comedy, who always seem to hang out together, Shandling was having none of that.
“I didn’t feel a part of that fraternity,” he says when talking about Comedy Store regulars including Martin, Kaufman, Richard Pryor and David Letterman. “It’s like high school, where I sort of did my work and moved on.”
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567. Follow @life_onthecouch on Twitter.
