I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-Up Comedy's Golden Era by William Knoedelseder by William Knoedelseder Page B
Authors: William Knoedelseder
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“Atlanta? Hey, 404. Lansing? 517. Sierra Madre? What, are you kidding me? 818.” Boosler was amazed that the bit rarely failed to save his butt from bombing.
On nights Boosler wasn’t with her fellow comics, she would hang at the Tropicana coffee shop on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood with a group of musicians that included Tom Waits and Chuck E. Weiss. Her regular routine was to have dinner with friends until around 10:00 p.m., head back to her apartment to do her hair and makeup, hit the Comedy Store for her set at 11:00 or 12:00, then hang out with the guys until dawn. Being one of the few females running with a pack of randy young men meant that she didn’t lack for male attention. After breaking up with Andy Kaufman (they remained close friends until his death from a rare form of lung cancer in 1984), she had brief, friendly flings with both Letterman and Leno, then a more serious romance with Robin Williams that ended in heartbreak when she learned that he was simultaneously engaged to dancer Valerie Velardi, whom 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 74
74
William Knoedelseder
he eventually married. Boosler’s liaisons with four of the fastest-rising young comics only added to her reputation in the comedy community. As Tom Dreesen joked, “Maybe we should all start dating Elayne.”
Boosler worked as hard as she played. As a client of Jimmie Walker’s Ebony Genius Management, along with Leno and Letterman, she booked any paying gig she could get, from country club lunches to movie studio promotional parties. When Grease opened, Paramount threw a huge party on the lot with little pockets of entertainment scattered around the grounds for the strolling guests. Boosler sat on a stool at her assigned station and launched into her act whenever people passed by. “I feel kind of like a mental patient on the street,” she cracked.
She was hired several times as a secret backup for young female guest stars in sitcoms who’d landed the parts for reasons other than their acting ability. She was paid to sit in a room near the soundstage and watch rehearsals on closed-circuit TV. If the actress in question didn’t cut it, Boosler was expected to step into the role for the run-through with the rest of the cast. She never had to, but that was okay because she got paid anyway. Everything is an adventure, she told herself. Nothing is bad because it’s all going somewhere.
Though she was hardly a household name, Boosler was quickly becoming a role model to a growing number of young female stand-ups. They were trickling into Los Angeles from around the country at a ratio of about one to twenty of their male counterparts. They saw her success as proof that they didn’t have to be Phyllis Diller or Joan Rivers, that maybe there could be a female Mort Sahl, that there was more to women’s comedy than vacuum cleaners and visits to the gynecologist.
Dottie Archibald was a thirty-year-old housewife living in Ojai, California, an artsy little community in the Santa Monica Moun-tains between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. One night after 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 75
I’m Dying Up Here
75
watching David Brenner on The Tonight Show , she announced to her startled husband, “I’m going to become a stand-up comic.” She wrote up a five-minute act about being a housewife in Ojai and invited all the doctors, lawyers, and neighbors she knew in Ojai to come see her try out on a Monday night at the Comedy Store.
Onstage for the first time in her life, she rushed through her five minutes of material in about a minute and a half and didn’t get a single laugh, not even an embarrassed giggle. The crowd applauded politely when she was done, and her husband jumped up from his seat to present her with a bouquet of roses, but she knew that she’d bombed beyond hideously and thought it would be a mercy to die right then and there.
Instead, she went back twelve more
“Atlanta? Hey, 404. Lansing? 517. Sierra Madre? What, are you kidding me? 818.” Boosler was amazed that the bit rarely failed to save his butt from bombing.
On nights Boosler wasn’t with her fellow comics, she would hang at the Tropicana coffee shop on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood with a group of musicians that included Tom Waits and Chuck E. Weiss. Her regular routine was to have dinner with friends until around 10:00 p.m., head back to her apartment to do her hair and makeup, hit the Comedy Store for her set at 11:00 or 12:00, then hang out with the guys until dawn. Being one of the few females running with a pack of randy young men meant that she didn’t lack for male attention. After breaking up with Andy Kaufman (they remained close friends until his death from a rare form of lung cancer in 1984), she had brief, friendly flings with both Letterman and Leno, then a more serious romance with Robin Williams that ended in heartbreak when she learned that he was simultaneously engaged to dancer Valerie Velardi, whom 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 74
74
William Knoedelseder
he eventually married. Boosler’s liaisons with four of the fastest-rising young comics only added to her reputation in the comedy community. As Tom Dreesen joked, “Maybe we should all start dating Elayne.”
Boosler worked as hard as she played. As a client of Jimmie Walker’s Ebony Genius Management, along with Leno and Letterman, she booked any paying gig she could get, from country club lunches to movie studio promotional parties. When Grease opened, Paramount threw a huge party on the lot with little pockets of entertainment scattered around the grounds for the strolling guests. Boosler sat on a stool at her assigned station and launched into her act whenever people passed by. “I feel kind of like a mental patient on the street,” she cracked.
She was hired several times as a secret backup for young female guest stars in sitcoms who’d landed the parts for reasons other than their acting ability. She was paid to sit in a room near the soundstage and watch rehearsals on closed-circuit TV. If the actress in question didn’t cut it, Boosler was expected to step into the role for the run-through with the rest of the cast. She never had to, but that was okay because she got paid anyway. Everything is an adventure, she told herself. Nothing is bad because it’s all going somewhere.
Though she was hardly a household name, Boosler was quickly becoming a role model to a growing number of young female stand-ups. They were trickling into Los Angeles from around the country at a ratio of about one to twenty of their male counterparts. They saw her success as proof that they didn’t have to be Phyllis Diller or Joan Rivers, that maybe there could be a female Mort Sahl, that there was more to women’s comedy than vacuum cleaners and visits to the gynecologist.
Dottie Archibald was a thirty-year-old housewife living in Ojai, California, an artsy little community in the Santa Monica Moun-tains between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. One night after 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 75
I’m Dying Up Here
75
watching David Brenner on The Tonight Show , she announced to her startled husband, “I’m going to become a stand-up comic.” She wrote up a five-minute act about being a housewife in Ojai and invited all the doctors, lawyers, and neighbors she knew in Ojai to come see her try out on a Monday night at the Comedy Store.
Onstage for the first time in her life, she rushed through her five minutes of material in about a minute and a half and didn’t get a single laugh, not even an embarrassed giggle. The crowd applauded politely when she was done, and her husband jumped up from his seat to present her with a bouquet of roses, but she knew that she’d bombed beyond hideously and thought it would be a mercy to die right then and there.
Instead, she went back twelve more
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