On the occasion of the upcoming release of Judd Apatow‘s movie about standup comics, we wanted to drive people to The Male Half’s review of that sorry-ass abomination starring Tom Hanks and Sally Fields as comedians.

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.

He’s just getting warmed up. We still call it The Definitive Smackdown Of Punchline.

From the Wikipedia entry for the film, comes this recipe for a craptastic Hollywood abomination:

David Seltzer wrote the first draft for Punchline in 1979 after becoming fascinated by comedy clubs while looking for someone to play a psychiatrist on a television pilot that he was writing.[1] He had a development deal with the movie division of ABC. Originally, the tone of the film was more good-natured a la Fame (1980) with more characters and less of an emphasis on Steven Gold.[1] Bob Bookman, an executive, sponsored the script but left for Columbia Pictures. He bought the screenplay because Howard Zieff was interested in directing it. When Zieff lost interest (he ended up doing Unfaithfully Yours in 1984), the script was buried for years.[2]

In 1986, producer Daniel Melnick found the screenplay for Punchline among twelve other scripts collecting dust in the vaults of Columbia Pictures.[2] Seltzer’s screenplay had gone through three changes of studio management because the executives didn’t like the mix of comedy and drama. They also didn’t like the Steven Gold character because they thought he was, according to Melnick, “obsessive, certainly self-destructive and could be considered mean-spirited.”[2] The studio couldn’t get a major star to commit to the material and so Melnick decided to make the movie for $8 million and with no stars.[2] Interim studio president, Steve Sohmer didn’t like that idea and sent the script to Sally Field, who had a production deal with Columbia. Field agreed to star in and produce the movie.[2] Once Field signed on, the budget was set at $15 million.

Field didn’t mind sharing the majority of the screen time with Hanks and taking on the role of producer because, as she said in an interview at the time, “as a producer I am not developing films in which I can do fancy footwork. I don’t have to have the tour de force part.”[2] New York comic, Susie Essman and sitcom writer Dottie Archibald coached Field.[3] The writer also served as comedy consultant for the movie, recruiting fifteen comics to populate the comedy club Steven and Lilah frequent.[3] Field’s research often mirrored her character’s as she remembers working “for about six months to find where Lilah’s comedy was, which is what my character was going through. So it was actually happening to both of us.”[4]

Two months before the Punchline went into production, Tom Hanks wrote a five-minute stand-up act and performed it at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles. As Hanks recalls, “it was pure flop sweat time, an embarrassment. That material lasted 1 minute 40 seconds, and it had no theme.”[2] Hanks tried again and again, sometimes hitting three clubs a night. It took a month before the actor “didn’t sweat like a pig” on stage.[2] By that point he had enlisted an old friend and comedy writer, Randy Fechter and stand-up comic Barry Sobel to help him write his routine.[5] Hanks ended up performing more than thirty times in clubs in Los Angeles and New York City.

Chairman of Columbia, David Puttnam wanted to release Punchline during the Christmas of 1987, but the film wasn’t ready.[2] Puttnam eventually left and Dawn Steel moved in and decided to release the movie after Big (1988) became a huge hit. Punchline grossed a respectable $21 million in the United States.