Robert Schimmel ep.
Watching not in order David Steinberg's Showtime "Inside Comedy" series. I was never a fan of Steinberg but appreciate the intellect, genial amiablity & very different image he brought to comedy. Here he intimately interviews various comedians on a bare set-just 2 chairs as he talks to fellow comedians face to face.
The show makes me miss a time when many talk or interview shows had real dialogue going on amongst guests & hosts. Some before my time like David Frost, Dick Cavett or David Susskind. Others during my youth like Tom Snyder & early Charlie Rose.
Steinberg remains amiable but not that penetrating an interviewer. Still his pleasantness & long tenured, respected comedy career works well in allowing his guests to open up & dominate the show. A marked contrast to many current hosts.
The 2nd ep. I watched with the late Robert Schimmel was an unexpectedly moving & transcendent interview. I knew of Schimmel but never saw his stuff. He appears on the show gaunt, weak looking due to a recent heavy round of cancer treatment. But he is sharp, wonderfully fluid & skilled recalling the entwining of his family, career, the comedians who influenced him when young & the legendary Rodney Dangerfield who gave him his and many others their start.
Some ill people though sick achieve a beatific look to them. They glow with new found wisdom, grace & some humor when enduring/surviving serious health gauntlets. Schimmel though thin & sorta wizened looking shines with this beatific look here to me. I liked the interview so much I watched it again. The easy fluidity Schimmel talks with is so impressive as he defines & weaves the narrative threads of his life in comedy. His small happy serene smile after recalling some funny things is sublime. He has a realness & glow to him. Radically different looking than his younger, heavier performing self mainly due to the cancer he looks still wonderful to me. That look born of new perspective & dark bemusement that serious illness can bring.
I highly recommend any fans of comedy, or just anyone who wishes to see realness & illness carried with grace to watch this interview. There is also a wonderful brief 'Tonight Show' clip of 80's era Rodney Dangerfield at his peak killing w/still funny jokes. Sadly and ironically Schimmel died in 2010 not of cancer which I have no idea of his what his illness level was but of injuries in a Phoenix car accident. This episode was filmed 6 months before his tragic death. Life can often be a cruel MF. I'm happy though his loved ones will has this final graceful, insightful, moving & touching coda to his career and life. I'm glad, even for these brief 25 minutes, I got to know of Mr. Schimmel.