I"m Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-Up Comedy"s Golden Era
Price 11.29 - 14.95 USD
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 all across the country migrated en masse to Los Angeles, the new home of Johnny Carsonâs Tonight Show. There, in a late-night world of sex, drugs, dreams and laughter, they created an artistic community unlike any before or since. It was Comedy Camelotâbut it couldnât last. William Knoedelseder, then a cub reporter covering the scene for the Los Angeles Times, was there when the comediansâwho were not paid for performingâtried to change the system and incidentally tore apart their own close-knit community. In Iâm Dying Up Here he tells the whole story of that golden age, of the strike that ended it, and of how those days still resonate in the lives of those who were there.