Richard Lewis is the other Man in Black—the comedian who starts his autobiography by explaining how he chose “applause over tears and booze over fears,” and whose stand-up is about staring directly into the abyss until one or the other of them cracks a smile. After dominating the ‘80s—not least because of his blank-from-hell device, which he likely invented, thus allowing you yourself to complain plenty about your own boss or boyfriend or roommate from hell—he got a millennium bounce thanks to buddy Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, where he matched David neurosis for corrosive neurosis. Now after decades of hard living and eventual redemption, Lewis has … well, not exactly seen the light so much as found a little light within himself. As he puts it in his book: “Still crazy, but finally with a bit of hopefulness.”
July 26-29, 2012
