Long before the Improv became a franchise and a cable TV show, it was just a comedy club. An ex-Vietnamese restaurant, turned to a place for comics to hang out and drink booze. That’s what it was 50 years ago. Eventually it became the “Mecca of comedy”, the place from which the most successful names in comedy started, amazing people like Richard Pryor, Robert Klein, George Carlin, Lily Tomlin and Andy Kaufman. In New York, where the original Improvisation Club was and in Melrose Avenue, California where Hollywood got its regular servings of comedy, those places created history and helped the art of stand-up comedy take new forms and shapes, provided the TV networks with new talents and made an ideal step-ladder for the Tonight Show.
The one hour special, The Improv: 50 Years Behind The Brick Wall, narrated by Adam Sandler and interviewing Judd Apatow, Lewis Black, Russell Brand, Larry David, Jimmy Fallon, Kathy Griffin, Jay Leno, Richard Lewis, Bill Maher, Ray Romano, Jerry Seinfeld, Sarah Silverman, the Wayans brothers, as well as the club’s founder Budd Friedman, reminisces the past, tells behind the scenes stories and repeats the significant jokes. Whether these jokes were funny or not, it didn’t matter. Because if you were at the Improv those days, if you were a good sport or even a heckler, you watched history in the making.
The Improv official website
ZR