DVD Review: Richard Lewis: Bundle of Nerves

STUDIO: VSC | DIRECTOR: various
DVD RELEASE DATE: 9/2/2014 | PRICE: DVD $29.98
BONUSES: none
SPECS: NR | 305 min. | Comedy | widescreen | stereo

RATINGS (out of 5 dishes): Movie | Audio | Video | Overall

Richard Lewis is the subject of Bundle of Nerves, a collection of films and performances featuring the comedian who’s made a career out of anguish and self-loathing.

Leading off this two-disc set is Diary of a Young Comic, a 1979 hour-long film directed by Gary Weis, Saturday Night Live’s in-house filmmaker at the time. Originally broadcast in the SNL time slot, Diary stars Lewis as an aspiring comic who agonizes over his life while pursuing his dream in oh-so-hip L.A. Featuring appearances by the eclectic likes of Dom DeLuise, George Jessel, Stacy Keach and the ever-leggy Nina van Pallandt, it’s a minor cult piece that probably played a lot cleverer 30-plus years ago then it does today.

Then there’s Drunks, a 1995 film based on Gary Lennon’s 1990 off-Broadway play. Using an AA meeting as the backdrop for a group of stories about addiction and survival, it features a quite-fine Lewis in an ensemble that also includes Faye Dunaway, Dianne Wiest, Parker Posey, Spalding Gray and Sam Rockwell.

Richard Lewis kvetches in 1997's Magical Misery Tour

Third up is Magical Misery Tour, Lewis’s fourth HBO special, Recorded at New York’s legendary Bottom Line in Greenwich Village in 1997, it features Lewis at the top of his game.

Bundle of Nerves is topped off by the newly produced House of a Lifetime. Clocking in at 45 minutes, the program finds Lewis giving viewers a tour of his memorabilia-and-art-filled house in Los Angeles’ rustic Laurel Canyon area. Bordering somewhere between a tchotchke museum and an arty hoarder’s paradise, the house is brimming with stuff—posters, autographs, photos, paintings, signs, books, statues, found objects and any-and-all-publications that have ever featured Lewis, along with all sorts of paraphernalia pertaining to Lewis’s heroes Lenny Bruce, Marlon Brando, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin (among others). As Lewis leads the camera operator around the house he’s owned for 25 years, he admits that he got a little carried away in filling up every inch of the space with his collectibles—his wife ain’t all that thrilled with it—but he remains proud of what he’s got. And he’s probably right when he says that focusing on his stuff and throwing money into buying it all beats putting his cash and energy into drugs and booze, which he’s been steering clear of for more than a decade.

Bundle of Nerves represents the DVD debuts of Magical Misery Tour and Diary of a Young Comic, which were previously released on VHS, and the premiere of House of a Lifetime. So overall, this is a must-have for fans of comedy’s “Prince of Pain.”