Comic and actor Richard Lewis died last month from a heart attack while suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. For about 30 years, he had been mostly clean and sober as he battled alcoholism and drug abuse in his earlier life. The comic was known for his neurotic self-depreciating tone that was darker than other comics, such as Woody Allen.
The book is about 300 pages and the audio book is about nine and a half hours. Yet, both could’ve been slashed in half and still told the same message. Published in March 2008, the story really needed a better editor to organize the story and get Lewis to come more clean, so to speak. You can’t help but tell he holds some stuff back. Maybe it was because the legal department couldn’t get some stuff passed and maybe Lewis himself decided to not dig at old wounds too much after rebuilding some bridges he might have burnt.
Lewis was born the youngest of a Jewish family. His parents were distant and his mother never seemed to compliment or acknowledge any good work as he rose in the 1970s and 1980s on the comic circuit. Lewis transitioned to TV with Anything But Love alongside Jamie Lee Curtis and made movies (The Wrong Guys, Once Upon a Crime and Robin Hood: Men in Tights) all the time was battling booze, cocaine and crystal meth. It was an emergency room visit in 1994 that made him begin to change his life for good. It’s been reported it was also the death of John Candy, his co-star on Crime and Wagons East that had an effect on him. Candy died on March 4, 1994 while the movie was still in production. Candy himself had battled alcohol and cocaine addictions.
But if you’re looking to hear a comic tell old war stories about his other friends and comics, it’s not here. He only references Crime by saying he filmed a movie in Rome, where it does take place. Maybe it was because he didn’t want to throw too many names around that he feared the readers would get sidetracked. The subtitle of the book is How I’m overcoming, on a daily basis, at least a million addictions and disfunctions and finding a spiritual (sometimes) life. This is meant to be a book that focus more on inspiration while admitting all the stupid things he did while drunk and high.
But he never does really go for the jugular the way he should. He’s too restrained which is unlike Lewis. And he seems to just repeating the same thing but rephrasing it. There’s no structure here that it comes off as mindless rambling at some parts. (And yes, Lewis did do that in his acts, but there was a cadence and flow to it.) I listened to the audio book and it’s a good thing I did. I don’t think many people would’ve gotten past the first 100 pages.
There are some good deep moments in which Lewis discusses visiting his mother at a nursing home as her mind is gone. Or there was another scene where his father got so mad at him and his brother for acting out, he whipped them with a belt. And Lewis realized he was mostly doing his comedy for another addiction – attention. These are the stories you want to hear that make this book worth reading. Other than that, I felt Lewis in 2008 still wanted to eat lunch in Hollywood so he kept a lot of things quiet. He had a recurring role as a fictional version of himself on Curb Your Enthusiasm. He may not even have been able to do that if he spilled too much tea, regardless of his friendship with Larry David. You can say a lot in a group session of addicts knowing it probably won’t get beyond the meeting. But you can’t say a lot in a book without worrying if you’re going to get sued.
It’s also quite possible, Lewis just doesn’t remember a lot of those days nor does he want to. But by the time he wrote the book, he had been sober for over a decade. Yet, despite the book’s subtitle, there’s very little Lewis gives on his road to sobriety except making amends with his mother who can’t really understand who he is and saying he has accepted a faith of God but not an organized religion.
I guess I expected more. Lewis was the dark prince of stand-up comedy. He was called the prince of pain. There are snippets that show his style of humor. But this feels more like he talked into a recording and someone typed it on paper.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 