Punchline

Punchline (1988)

Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.

Lilah Krytsick is a mother and housewife who's always believed she could be a stand-up comedian. Steven Gold is an experienced stand-up seemingly on the cusp of success. When the two meet, they form an unlikely friendship, and Steven tries to help the untried Lilah develop her stage act. Despite the objections of her family and some very wobbly beginnings, Lilah improves, and soon she finds herself competing with Steven for a coveted television spot.

Date of release
1988-10-07
TMDB
5.5 / 10 (161)
Runtime
2h 3m
Genres
Comedy, Drama
Director
David Seltzer

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $15M

Punchline is a 1988 American comedy-drama film written and directed by David Seltzer and distributed by Columbia Pictures. Its story follows Steven Gold, a talented young comic, as he helps housewife Lilah Krytsick who wants to break into stand-up comedy. It stars Sally Field, Tom Hanks, John Goodman and Mark Rydell.

Production

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. 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.

In 1986, producer Daniel Melnick found the screenplay for Punchline among twelve other unrealized scripts in the vaults of Columbia Pictures. Seltzer's screenplay had gone through three changes of studio management because the executives didn't like the mix of comedy and drama as well as the Steven Gold character because they thought he was, according to Melnick, "obsessive, certainly self-destructive and could be considered mean-spirited." The s…

Field didn't mind sharing the majority of the screen time with Tom 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." New York comic Susie Essman and sitcom writer Dottie Archibald coached Field.

Two months before Punchline went into production, 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." 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.

Chairman of Columbia David Puttnam wanted to release Punchline during Christmas 1987, but the film wasn't ready. Puttnam eventually left and Dawn Steel moved in and decided to release the film after Big (1988) became a huge hit.

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