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. He wrote the first major newspaper profiles of several of the future stars. William Knoedelseder was then a cub reporter covering the burgeoning local comedy scene for the Los Angeles Times. It was Comedy Camelot-but it couldn’t last. There, in a late-night world of sex, drugs, dreams and laughter, they created an artistic community unlike any before or since. For a show about being authentic, “I’m Dying Up Here” too often comes off as remarkably fake.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. And that’s a fatal flaw that extends to the overwritten scripts as well. Too little of it feels lived-in or genuine. It doesn’t help that the whole thing looks like a bad comedy sketch, complete with gauzy lensing and exaggerated costumes designed to scream ‘70s. It’s sporadically entertaining and interesting, but cut up by wild tonal shifts, bad editing, and some worse writing. That’s the story of “I’m Dying Up Here” that I find interesting-the idea that comedians have to let down their guards and reveal themselves to be funny-but the show can’t commit to a throughline. At first, she’s stuck in the “Cellar” (the minor leagues for the main stage at Goldie’s) but when she starts to lean into her gender and background, she finds her voice. If there’s a lead in “I’m Dying Up Here” other than Leo it’s Ari Graynor’s Cassie Feder, a young woman who learns to use her tragedy-including one we see take place in the opening hour-as fuel for her comedy. Al Madrigal, Erik Griffin, Jon Daly-there are funny people floating around “I’m Dying Up Here,” but it’s surprising how rarely they’re allowed to actually be funny off-stage. RJ Cyler (“Me & Earl & the Dying Girl”) becomes one of the more welcome faces in the cast, especially as the writers allow him to start to play with the undercurrents of racism in the comedy. with so little in their pockets that they have to go on “Let’s Make a Deal” to try and win enough that they’ll be able to eat. Clark Duke and Michael Angarano are funny as a pair of Bostonians who come to L.A. The supporting cast makes out better, and it’s as they coalesce over subsequent episodes that the show finds moments that work. She is ruthless, protective, and a caricature, the kind of role that plays into Leo’s worst over-acting tendencies. She rules with an iron fist, as aggressive in the way she badgers her contact at “The Tonight Show” to get her talent on Carson’s couch as she is in how she punishes her comedians if they dare to take stage time anywhere else. Goldie is the sun in a solar system of supporting characters who all fight for stage time at her legendary L.A. This is a show that takes itself very seriously, which is surprising given it’s also a show about the art of comedy. In the premiere, Oscar-winner Melissa Leo’s Goldie compares her club to a church and actually tells a story to a rising comic about the Holocaust to make a point. These are people who self-describe as “narcissistic douchebags,” and the show starts to take on the same tone. “I’m Dying Up Here” takes as its mantra the famous Edmund Kean quote: “Dying is easy comedy is hard.” The writers of this look at the ‘70s comedy scene in Los Angeles place the struggle of the comedian artist on a pedestal that pushes through admiration to pretension.
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