© 1988, Columbia All Rights Reserved

I just spent five days in Vegas in August. I wasn't working; I was on my way to Los Angeles. I got to hang out with a bunch of old comedy buddies. I got to see Carlin for free over at Bally's. I also got in to see Tom Jones for free. (If you ever get to see Tom Jones live, do it. I was eight years old when Burt Bachrach and Hal David were nominated for an Oscar for "What's New Pussycat?" It wasn't until 35 years later, watching Tom Jones do it live, that I realized they were robbed. Jesus, what a song! "Shadow Of Your Smile," my ass!)

Anyway, I got in free because the guy that was opening for Tom is an old friend. Max Alexander is a comic. As am I. I worked with Max exactly once in D.C. about 15 years ago when I was just a little comedy sprout. I'd seen him maybe four or five times since then, if you didn't count his appearances in a movie here or there, or his TV shots in the intervening years. It's like that with comics. You work together in the trenches once and you sorta bond. You pick up a conversation that you left hanging during the Reagan administration and it's like it was yesterday.

And maybe, after a polite request and a few phone calls the next day, you find yourself sitting next to the light and sound guys watching Tom Jones smoking a house of about 4,200. Max opens the show and does twenty minutes. He kills. He's been at this for twenty years, maybe a little more.

The only reason I mention Max in a review of "Punchline" is because he had a major/minor part in it. He was "Mr. Ball," the rotund comic who always bombed. I always mean to tell him that he owns the distinction of appearing in two of my least favorite movies, "Punchline" and "Roxanne." Fortunately, I always forget.

I certainly wish I could forget "Punchline." It haunts me. In an effort to exorcise the demon film, I went down to my local video store and bought it. (They let it go for $6.99...apparently it wasn't renting well.) I could no longer put off the inevitable. I would watch "Punchline" straight through once again, 12 years after I first witnessed it.

Back when it was released, standup comedy was on a hot streak. So hot that Sally Field and Tom Hanks actually consented to portray wannabe standup comics. Field was already golden by '88. Hanks was still in the "one step forward, two steps back" phase of his career. For every "Splash" he'd make two "Bachelor Parties." In the same year he did "Punchline," he also made "Big." A breakout year? ÊIn a way. In the next two years, however, he would be seen in "The 'Burbs," "Turner And Hooch" and "Joe Vs. The Volcano." And they say Joe Piscopo's the luckiest man in show business.

The release of "Punchline" was greeted with much anticipation in the standup community. We were all hopped up on standup comedy. We'd all just quit our day jobs in the previous five or six years. We were all prepared to see our lifestyle romanticized on the big screen. It wasn't enough that we were comedy gods in cities big and small all over the country every weekend. No, we wanted to pile on more myth and more romance with 123 minutes of Hollywood legend (128 minutes if you believe Leonard Maltin).

Doctors, soldiers, cowboys, are frequently portrayed in Panavision. Comics are relegated to some asshole that Annie Romano's dating on "One Day At A Time." Finally, the sprawling story would be told via cinema! No such luck. We were, to a man, horrified. It was a scandal among all in the standup comedy business.

They say you never realize how inaccurate the newspapers are until they report on something that you have personal knowledge of. The same is true of Hollywood. When those boys make a film about your profession, or your milieu, or your mother, it can take years for the cliches and the bad info to fade away...if they ever do. The ill effects of "Punchline" are still felt. When I watched it the other night, it all came flooding back to me.

I remember that an awful lot of comics saw it on the first day of release, at the afternoon matinee. (One tired cliche happened to be true at that time: an awful lot of us had nothing to do during the day!) There we were, slumped in our theater chairs in Syracuse and Saginaw and Lauderdale, mouths agape at this two-hour assault on our dream job.

Maltin was calling writer/director David Seltzer's script "compassionate and believable" and said that it managed "to avoid cliches and easy answers." We were telling anyone who would listen that it was total horseshit.

Hanks, flitting around in his 1988-tight pants and Field, unable to even make her eyeglasses believable, were an awkward pairing. The "donut" script (no center) wasn't funny enough to be a comedy, wasn't detailed or authentic enough to be interesting. It is my fervent hope that Sheila Benson (who, according to the video box, wept "while (her) sides still ached from laughing") has sufficiently adjusted her medication.

Seltzer wasted no time. During the OPENING CREDITS (!) he managed to insult every decent, hard-working standup comic of the modern era (1978 to present). He depicts Field's Lilah Krytsick buying jokes! Christ, man! NOBODY buys jokes anymore! Where the hell have you been? And 25 of them at a time! What the hell is she doing in this game if she's gotta buy 25 jokes?

And I remember that the thing we snickered about the most was the fact that, in the world of Seltzer, all standup comics had lockers at the club. "Lockers!" we snorted. "The comics all had lockers in a giant DRESSING ROOM!" This wasn't the most egregious error in the script, but it was one of the few that we could actually laugh about.

The script started bad and ended in a most unforgiveable manner: Krytsick manages to snag a spot on the Carson show by winning a contest. At the time, Carson was still four years away from retirement. An appearance on his show was the comic's Holy Grail, something for which we had to sweat many years to finally achieve. Krytsick managed to get there by winning a hokey contest. Yeesh!

By that point in the script, however, we were too battered and bruised by all the insulting inferences that all standup comics were, at their center, emotionally unstable AND the heaping helpings of mawkish dialogue. In more than one instance, Seltzer managed to combine both insult and mawk! (If that's not a word, it should be). Like when Hanks' Steven Gold tells the "talent scout" to hurry up with the big break, because "funny Steve is going under" (oh, brother!). Or when John Goodman's Mr. Krytsick tells his wife "It's like living with a goddamn junkie!" Or when club owner Romeo tells the assembled comedians, "You're all a bunch of fuckin' nuts!" (Actual quote!)

And I hate to nitpick...oh, wait a minute...I live to nitpick, but Seltzer was guilty of perpetuating some of the more pernicious and hackneyed cliches ever associated with standup. In an early scene, someone in the audience actually throws something at Mr. Ball while he's performing! I've been doing standup for 18 years and I've never seen anyone throw anything in the direction of the stage. And what's with the rimshots? Rimshots in 1988? And feedback? For some odd reason, the comics were plagued by feedback at crucial times. I guess it's directorial shorthand for unprofessionalism. The list of inaccuracies goes on far too long.

Another of Seltzer's writer/director efforts was "Shining Through." That's the one where Melanie Griffith convinces her boss Michael Douglas that she can be a spy behind enemy lines. I suspect that all the spies in World War II had lockers...and a spacious dressing room.

There will never be another major motion picture made about a standup comic. Not because "Punchline" didn't fare well at the box office (I assume it made back its money). No, in the last decade or so, the popular media have amplified Seltzer's modified laughing-on-the-outside/bipolar-on-the-inside characterization of standup comics to incorporate all sorts of anti-social tics like homophobia, misogyny and generally inappopriate foulmouthedness. The comic is now such an outcast that John Waters wouldn't even make a film about one.

Our legacy is "Punchline." The joke is on us.