Comedian Richard Lewis tackles one problem that isn't a joke
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Here's the problem with being Richard Lewis:
Well, just a second - there are a lot of problems, if even the titles of his acclaimed cable specials are any indication: "I'm In Pain." "I'm Exhausted." "I'm Doomed." "The Magical Misery Tour."
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Not to mention the title of his new memoir, "The Other Great Depression" ($23, PublicAffairs) whose rambling, Lewis-esque subtitle is, "How I'm Overcoming, on a Daily Basis, at Least a Million Addictions and Dysfunctions and Finding a Spiritual (Sometimes) Life."
We were getting around to the point.
What if the shtick on which you had built your formidable comic career was your myriad of problems? And then you want to be earnest about one: being an alcoholic.
In a phone conversation from his house in the Hollywood Hills, Lewis, 53, talks about coming clean in his book and his current comedy tour, and being the occasional sidekick to his longtime pal, "Seinfeld" writer Larry David, on HBO's uncomfortably hilarious "Curb Your Enthusiasm."
"I wrote the book because I really felt I had to come clean, and I also felt I never really went as high in the honesty level as, say, (Richard) Pryor and (Lenny) Bruce did onstage." Not that he's comparing himself to them, he quickly adds; but he could have cranked his own act up a notch, and he has.
The funny thing was, he'd become known for comic revelations - about dates from hell and all things intimate - which routinely caused David Letterman and the like to squirm on his frequent talk-show stints.
"I came on like, 'What you see is what you get,' but in truth I wasn't being totally honest with myself." So Lewis said he felt a need to square himself with his audience. "And probably, on a deeper and more important level, to come clean as a human being - that I was also the date from hell, and I was such a screwball that I wasn't the victim all the time."
Ironically, in 1995, Lewis starred in the film "Drunks" and appeared in Nicolas Cage's Oscar-winning suicide-by-cocktail, "Leaving Las Vegas."
"I was only sober about eight months when I made ("Drunks"). I was a basket case when I was shooting it," he recalls. "I couldn't have been more raw than I was. I was so newly sober when I made that movie. I was teetering on the brink when I was making it."
Lewis says he hit bottom when he found himself in a hospital emergency room, after too much liquor and cocaine. To get sober, he went to self-help groups, saw a drug-and-alcohol specialist that he continues to see, and, he says, "I sought out people who were sober who I brought into my life as good friends to help me feel more comfortable living a life sober."
It's his recent work on his old friend David's HBO series that has gained Lewis a few instant-classic moments, after sitcom work on "Anything But Love" and "Hiller and Diller." He demands, showdown style, that an unrepentant David apologize for remarks to his girlfriend. The two of them are roped into moving a blind man's furniture. They get in a wrestling match over a piece of jewelry.
"We only could do it twice," Lewis recalls of the scuffle. "Because I almost dislocated his shoulder. I broke his glasses and I think he tore a ligament in my wrist. We didn't speak for about an hour after the fight. We were like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford."
The shows all have tight story lines, but are otherwise ad-libbed - although there's tedium in ad-libbing ad nauseum.
"He does a lot of takes; I call him Citizen David as a joke. He's the Stanley Kubrick of the sitcom now," Lewis says.
He's confident that "Curb Your Enthusiasm" will return for another season. Meanwhile, a sobered-up Lewis says he's more on his game than ever - woe be it to hecklers - and is also releasing a new comedy album, "Live From Hell."
But has all of this therapeutic self-revelation made Lewis' act overearnest and preachy?
"It's opened up a whole arena for me for humor and honesty," he says. "So I'm much more honest onstage, and I'm much clearer. In fact I'm so clear about it that in some regards I despise myself even more."