Like it or not (and many people don’t, but we caught up with it recently, and it played much better on second viewing), “Funny People” is probably near the top of the list of movies made about stand-up comedy – it just seems to be a hard thing to capture on film, even for the few that have tried. Someone else is taking a stab though, in the form of Tom Hanks, who’s already made one attempt in the form of “Punchline.”
According to the usually-ahead-of-the-curve Pajiba, Hanks’ Playtone Productions is developing a film based on the book “I’m Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-up Comedy’s Golden Era,” by author William Knoedelseder, which focuses on The Comedy Store in LA around 1978, and its founder Mitzi Shore (who is the mother of faded comedy idiot Pauly Shore). The club, which paid host to the likes of Eddie Murphy, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Tim Allen, Chevy Chase and Jim Carrey, was famous for not paying its acts – Shore believed that it was a training ground for young comics, and as such only gave them free drinks.
The comedians famously went on strike, culminating in comic Steve Lubetkin, who was banned by Shore from performing at the club, killing himself, leaving a note saying “My name is Steve Lubetkin. I used to work at the Comedy Store.” It sounds like a pretty fascinating story, and, so long as it doesn’t descent into the Apatow gang impersonating their famous predecessors (no one wants to see Jason Segal’s Chevy Chase impression, thank you), it could be a gripping film. The project’s out to writers now, so it’s a few years off yet, though.