When comics turn on comics!

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on October 11th, 2007

The NYPost has a healthy slice of the upcoming book “Comedy at the Edge,” which chronicles the rise of stand-up in the 1970s, by Richard Zoglin. Of course, since the excerpts appear on that paper’s Page Six, the juicy, catty gossip is emphasized.

Maher trashes Belzer. Caroline trashes Boosler. Brenner threatens Robin Williams.

We were tickled by the incident involving Mitzi Shore.

Shore could be prickly, for sure. She told Zoglin that when a hot comic named Jerry Seinfeld came to her club in 1980, she practically turned him away at the door. “I didn’t like his attitude. He didn’t fit in,” she said. For his part, Seinfeld recalled, “Mitzi Shore didn’t like me… She told me to my face. She felt so many people liked me, that’s not good for a comedian. She wanted me to seek her counsel. She was like the kid with drugs at the school– if you want to be my friend, you’ll buy drugs from me.”

Yeah… it’s never good for a comedian if so many people like you! This is the dumbest formula for calculating the potential of a comedian ever devised. The incident is entirely plausible, as many standup comics who auditioned for Shore in the ’80s and ’90s were often told by her that they were “too jokey.”

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