“Nothing is funnier than misfortune,” wrote Samuel Beckett. “It’s the most funny thing in the world.” Lewis bet on anxiety. He is a regular at “Curb Your Enthusiasm” which brings up the creator Larry David, by comparison, exultant and balanced. At the age of 72, three days old, David’s eldest (and born in the same Brooklyn hospital), Lewis is perpetually on the verge of losing his bowels on his sleeve. He is The Wretch.
But he may not be as miserable as he seems.
Lewis and David have known each other since the age of 12 at a summer camp in Cornwall-on-Hudson (on the grounds of the New York Military Academy, assisted by a Donald Trump. Lewis: “I pray not to have slept in his bunk.”)
“We hated each other. He was a boring, lanky and obnoxious basketball player, “Lewis said of David. In addition, “I was a better shooter.”
David retorts: “I was a better player. I had more movements. I was more difficult to keep. “Oh and: “I could go left and right. And put a jump jump. And I was a better rebounder. “
At 23, they met again in stand-up in New York and became friends. “We are as close as possible,” says David, although they rarely visit each other out of step. “We live too far apart,” says David. About 23 miles. “We are both extremely lazy when it comes to moving.”
The 10th season of HBO’s “Curb” was exceptionally strong, even drawing Trump’s attention. At the premiere, David wore a “Make America Great Again” cap – as he says, “a great repellent” in Los Angeles. Trump tweeted, “HARD GUYS FOR ASSET!” with a video clip from the show. Lewis, a staunch Democrat, remains incredulous: “He thought it was praise!”
When he signed up for “Curb”, Lewis insisted on a narrative arc of several episodes so that he could not be cut from the cast. He plays Richard Lewis, “the friend who really annoys Larry, and I really the bored. Every time I hit him with the truth – just honest by telling him the truth – he laughs. Their screen friendship, the two insist, is a more controversial version of their true friendship.
“When you know someone as well, what makes them effective is that you can really say anything you want to someone like that,” says David. “Nothing is prohibited. We have so much confidence in our friendship. “
An appointment on Letterman (48 times) and Howard Stern, Lewis is a recovering alcoholic (sheepish, he admits, champagne was his favorite) and drug addict (cocaine, crystal meth) who has been sober since 1994. He suffers from an eating disorder (bodily dysmorphism). He did not marry until his AARP years, at the age of 57.
“I was really in need,” he admits. Each statement is a confession. “It was all about the road and I got there first.” His comedic character is that of the worst boyfriend you have ever had in your early 20s when you didn’t know better.
The plan was to interview him in person at his Hollywood Hills home. Instead, he will only chat on the phone, because of the pain, which is so very Richard Lewis.
In conversation, he is soft, graceful, a kitty. Maybe it’s the age, the success, the lure of the “sidewalk” or the din of her emotional pain soothed by physical discomfort. Then he offers: “I am a very happy man.”
Really? Because this is your career.
“No, I am not a very happy man. I am delighted to be alive. I am grateful for who is in my life. I have great friends, a great wife, a dog and I have a beautiful career, but … “
“But there is just one part of me that will never be completely happy,” he says, “and I think it has a lot to do with my childhood.”
Note that we are in eight minutes in the conversation.
His father: “He has never been at home. He died before I was an actor. And her mother: “She had emotional problems. She didn’t understand me at all. I owe my career to my mother. I should have given him my agent commission. “
Five therapists treated Lewis. “Some of them are dead,” he says. Lewis brought his then girlfriend Joyce Lapinsky to meet the last shrink, the one who lasted 18 years. The therapist’s suggestion: “It’s as good as possible.”
So the marriage proposal in 2004. Lewis, in a T-shirt and underpants, without looking at Lapinsky, who reads: “I guess we have to do it.”
Lapinsky: “Yeah, okay.”
It is possible that Lewis is, if he is not happy, a human with closed content. He is an exuberant, rosy husband, Lapinsky a constant in conversation. “The long-suffering wife,” as he describes it.
“He is an anxious person. He is a worried, worried, worried person. He suffers from worry and anxiety. But he is neither depressed nor sad, ”says Lapinsky. “We can both go down the dark side. He and I will do anything for the joke. Part of that is why it works so well. “
On the set, Susie Essman says, “Everyone loves Lewis. There is never a hard word. He is so generous. “He has friends, fans, sobriety, enough money so he doesn’t have to run constantly. He stopped therapy seven years ago.
“Curb” launched in 2000, 10 seasons over two decades, produced on Larry Time, because when you are the co-creator of “Seinfeld”, you can do what you want. The show has no script, it just describes “the most ideal thing,” says Lewis. It helped attract new younger fans and freed him from the tour. He loves this season “because he’s gotten back to where he started, with really simple stuff.” Lewis is in most of the 10 episodes.
But: “It killed my acting career.”
The role does not display the range exactly – unless you include hand movements.
But: “I was classified as the neurotic Jew.”
The greatest role of Lewis, his Hamlet, was himself. He is one of the great gesticulators of comedy, a master of the shrug. Since the 1980s, the only changes to her look have been due to time and gravity. Lewis is the original hair comedian, a cascade of Farrah waves and loose black clothes to match the mood. “I bet his underwear is black,” says J.B. Smoove, who plays David’s roommate, Leon Black. (Lewis: Yes.)
Long-haired David, Lewis says, intentionally included a close-up of his budding bald spot in a recent episode. “He was delighted,” said Lewis, who nicknamed him “Larry the pig” because he is at the center of each shot, not wanting to allow Lewis to share a fleshy scene with Smoove and Essman.
“There’s nothing predictable about Richie,” said Essman, who toured with him. “His brain works differently. He looks like a jazz musician, improvising and riffing. It shows this deep, deep vulnerability. She is such an open soul. He taught me not to be afraid. “(Unlike his mouth-blown character” Curb “, Essman swears only once during the conversation:” It’s called acting. “)
Lewis tends to riff in his performances, like his hero, Lenny Bruce, so no two performances are the same, which makes a special comedy, where the same routine is filmed for several nights, almost impossible. Lewis is credited with inventing the phrase “date of hell”, launching countless iterations of “anything from hell”. He likes to say about his comedy: “I’m going on a long tour and I make people happy that they are not me, and then they go home.”
In his comedy, Lewis is invariably his own punching bag:
“I stopped therapy because my analyst was trying to help me behind my back.”
“Life and mental illness aside, the only reason to stay unhappy is life or mental illness.”
Lewis stores “about 20,000 pages” of jokes on his computer. At the start of his career, he scribbled on legal blocks, subjects such as “birthdays”, “sex”, “intimacy” and, of course, “my mother”. In 1989, at Carnegie Hall, he appeared with six feet of yellow sheets glued together, two and a half hours, two standing ovations. The evening was “the highlight of my career”.
But then he got plastered in the locker room “and made a moron of myself”. Lewis had to ask his sister if the ovations had actually occurred. “And it still took me five years to get sober.”
Episodes of his life infiltrate “Curb”. Fighting for the check (episode 3 this season) is a constant in the Lewis-David friendship. “I always arrive early and give my credit card to the restaurant,” says Lewis. “We placed our order. I’ve only been there for five or six minutes, and Larry realizes he has a game of poker at Steve Martin’s and leaves. And I eat alone, stuck with a check for $ 400. “
David says, “The key ingredient in his humor is honesty. Richard has a bad relationship with himself – most comedians have one – but he can express it. “
The actors “have a unique filtration system,” says Smoove. “We can take the incredible pain of being ourselves and retreat it through our bodies and give it to you in a manageable form. It takes a long time for an actor to give you that. We have a high tolerance for love. And a great tolerance for pain. “
Lewis’ gift, says Smoove, is “to bring it up as much as possible.” His act is as Prince of Pain, but it is his management of this pain. He must also control his happiness. Smoove says, “Somewhere there is a pool of joy.”
Lewis claims to be the happiest sitting in his house watching European classics, Truffaut and Fellini. “If I had the courage, I would write a very weak film by Ingmar Bergman. I love its darkness, ”he says. Or a play, quoting Eugene O’Neill. “What started with the dark, I turned it into a comedy. If I wrote the dark, I would close the loop.”
“Curb”, he concedes, spoiled him. Life, as David might notice, is pretty, pretty good. Lewis is not sure what he will do next or whether he will start stand-up again.
But: could be the pain of speaking.