I hope so, but over at PJMedia, I express my concerns:
…before Lenny Bruce became the “Bird” of comedy and inspired too many stand ups to shoot up, funny men had reputations as either twisted, self-destructive misanthropes or inconsolable Pagliaccii, too fragile and wounded to survive in a harsh, shallow world.
It’s a theme that runs through Always Leave Them Laughing (1949) and HBO’s Louie, and through The Comic (1969) to the Marc Maron “WTF” podcast.
The difference between those older pieces and contemporary ones is that, sometime in the 1960s, professional comedians no longer felt obligated to “turn their frowns upside down” when they went on stage, lest they disillusion their audiences.
That brand of artifice (and self-control) went out with the cheap tux and the Catskills.
