The Happy Melancholy of Richard Lewis

Richard Lewis used his anxiety and depression as the fuel to power his comedy and his stardom for decades, bringing him to his most memorable role on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. He passed away on Wednesday at the age of 76. Lewis started his career during the comedy club boom of the late 70s always appearing on stage in dark black attire and eventually releasing TV specials and records with names like “I’m In Pain,” “I’m Doomed” and “Live From Hell.”

Lewis took several stabs at scripted television starting with a modest hit on ABC called Anything But Love opposite Jamie Lee Curtis and one-season wonders like Hiller and Diller with Kevin Nealon and Daddy Dearest with Don Rickles. However, the one the world will undoubtedly remember him for most is playing himself on the long-running Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Show creator and star Larry David and Lewis were already lifelong friends having been born just three days apart in the same Brooklyn hospital, according to a statement David released following Lewis’ passing. Their talent and natural chemistry helped unleash Curb Your Enthusiasm’s maniac sense of infuriating fun, but Lewis played a very important role, especially in its formative episodes.

Lewis’ life had many battles with drugs and alcohol and the health ramifications such a lifestyle can create. At 44, comedy’s “Prince of Pain” found himself lying on a gurney in an emergency room after overdosing cocaine to the point of hallucination, a moment he describes in his memoir The Other Great Depression as his rock bottom. By the time Curb Your Enthusiasm morphed from a Larry David comedy special into one of cable TV’s longest running comedies, currently going through its 12^th and final season, a slightly more uplifting and even hopeful Lewis emerged.

Comedians have used depression as a theme since the beginning of the standup medium. It can be one of the biggest motivating factors that pushes someone up on a stage to reveal their thoughts and embarrassing truths about their life. But Lewis carved out a standup hook for himself as a comedian who embraced his negative emotions and put them on display for everyone in an audience to see. He let demons that planted seeds of addiction, self-doubt and worry run wild in his tightly-constructed act.

“Sadly, my last shrink, she’s retired,” Lewis said in a Comic Relief performance in 1989. “It was a nightmare because she was only 24. I guess I burned her out real fast.”

He was the first comic in my memory to talk so openly about his mental health on stage. Lewis could pick out the absurdity of his emotions and use them to build jokes but it never felt like a character or a stage persona.  Lewis’ act felt like a genuine person trying to unravel his foibles and worries in a way that anyone could identify with.

Pairing Lewis with a character like Larry David who “hates people and yet has to be amongst them” was a brilliant move. Larry has to have someone to bounce his OCD observations and obsessions with tiny details off of so he can always miss the big picture, no matter the situation. There’s no better person in such a role than Lewis.

The first episode features David getting into one of many arguments with strangers to come when a woman in a movie theater rolls her eyes over having to move her legs so Larry can get into his seat. They exchange words, because Larry can’t let anything go, especially when it comes to adhering to his laws of polite society. She then accuses Larry of looking at her breasts, and they exchange more words. The woman turns out to be Lewis’ girlfriend, and David has lit a fuse on a powder keg that’s eventually going to explode.

Richard confronts Larry in his office and this version of Richard seems to be someone who still carries the same mental conditions as the real Lewis but he’s found enough personal acceptance not just to be in a relationship but to stand up to one of his closest and oldest friends. It might seem like Lewis would commiserate with a grouch like David given their comedy history. Such a relationship wouldn’t make a show like Curb Your Enthusiasm interesting. It’s like giving  Statler and Waldorf their own sitcom.

However, Lewis really surprised me with this episode and the ones that followed. For starters, it was hopeful to see another side of him and encouraging that even he could find a reason to be happy while I was trying to understand and unpack my own emotions. It’s also been a great way for Larry to get in more trouble over the seasons that followed in some very clever ways.

They improvise a lot of Curb Your Enthusiasm from scene to scene based on a larger outline. Lewis felt like he genuinely found some peace with himself and his perceived flaws, even if swimming in pain was the cornerstone of his comedy.