There’s a saying that’s it better to laugh than it is to cry. Richard Lewis lived a life where he turned his own personal pain and neurosis into comedy. Just like another famous comic named Richard (as in Richard Pryor), we laughed because he made us want to laugh.
To call Lewis neurotic with his comedy is an understatement. His trademark was to touch his temple and throw up his hands as he rambled on in a self-deprecating comic tone. He looked like Jon Stewart’s more eccentric uncle and was more frank and open with his observations than Jerry Seinfield.
Like a lot of comedians of the era, he rode the wave in the 1970s and 1980s that sprung up after Pryor and George Carlin were pushing the envelope especially after the court rulings their comedy wasn’t obscene. From 1974 to 1922, he appeared 22 times on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and was on Late Night With David Letterman twice as much over 11 years.
And it was only a matter of time before he would appear in movies. The first movie is The Wrong Guys in which he plays a neurotic dentist named Richard Lewis, who meets up with his old Club Scouts friends 30 years later for a camping trip. He co-starred with Louie Anderson, Richard Belzer, Franklin Ajaye and Tim Thomerson (all using their real names). Yet they get confused for a FBI unit tracking a criminal played by John Goodman and his associates. The movie came and went in the spring of 1988 that it’s mostly forgotten.
Yet, Lewis would appear alongside Jamie Lee Curtis in Anything But Love which was about the lives of people working at a magazine in Chicago. The recent Oscar-winning actress was the one who recommended Lewis come in to read for the pilot that didn’t work, but was retooled when both of them had good chemistry. The series ran for four seasons. At the same time, he appeared in Once Upon a Crime playing a struggling actor in a comedy ensemble who find themselves connected to the murder of a wealthy woman in the French Rivera. He would also be cast as Prince John who had a mole that moved all over his face in Mel Brook’s Robin Hood: Men in Tights. He would co-star with his Crime co-star John Candy in Wagons East. (Incidentally, Candy would die of a heart attack during the filming on March 4, 1994).
Reports have indicated that Lewis, who was suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, passed away on Feb. 28 of a heart attack, nearly 30 years near the anniversary of Candy’s death. Unfortunately, most of his movies in the early 1990s weren’t successful. Both Crime and Wagons didn’t make much money at the box office and got bad reviews. Robin Hood was a modest hit despite mixed reviews. Audiences would favor it more with Brooks saying it was one of his top-selling DVDs.
At the same time, Lewis was struggling with alcohol and drug addiction with cocaine and crystal meth. He stopped performing for three years from 1991 to 1994. The death of Candy, Lewis said, made him begin to start re-evaluating his life. He was also struggling and in 1994 ending up in the emergency room following a cocaine overdose. Curtis said it was Lewis who helped her overcome her alcoholic problem.
In the mid-1990s, he appeared in the Showtime TV movie Drunks focusing on people meeting at an Alcoholics Anonymous. He also appeared alongside Nicholas Cage in his Oscar-winning role in Leaving Las Vegas. He would continue to work in other movies, but found fame playing a fictional version of himself on the HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm appearing in 41 of the show’s 114 episodes from its first to final season.
He mostly appeared in black clothing and had a stressed constant expression on his face. But those who know him said he was a lot different than what he showed the public. David had gone up with Lewis as they had been born days apart at the same hotel. David said Lewis was more like a brother to him than a friend. “He had that rare combination of being the funniest person and also the sweetest,” David wrote on his Instagram page. “But today he made me sob and for that I’ll never forgive him.”
Curtis explained that even though his history was in stand-up before a live audience, he didn’t like appeared before one for the tapings of Anything But Love. He would hide his script and lines around the set. “I thought he was handsome,” she stated. “He made me laugh, which is the one thing that a strong, capable woman, can’t really do for herself. He got the part when I snort laughed when he mispronounced the word Bundt cake.”
Curtis echoed David’s comments on his sweet demeanor, writing online, “Rest in laughter.”
What was your favorite movie or TV show of his? Please comment.
Zane Says 