Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
On a Zoom call, he looks a little ragged, but thats understandable.
She passed him immediately, and he became a Store fixture for a decade.
I didnt realize how hard it was, he says, laughing.
The four episodes hes finished are a wildly entertaining if thoroughly unconventional chronicle of the Stores past.
But Binder isnt only the collector of these tales; hes got many of his own.
As such, he isnt just telling this story hes a character in it.
At first, I didnt like the idea, he says.
I showed some early cuts to Neal Brennan and he was like, What are you doing?
Youre making a fool of yourself.
But then I thought,Its got to be someones story.
Im just going to tell it the way I saw it.
I know Peter Shore brought this idea to you, but was Pauly involved from the beginning too?
But creatively, he isnt involved at all.
Its just the Shore brothers that are involved because its their familys business.
Why is he credited as a co-executive producer?Thats a deal that those guys all made.
Peter runs the business.
Peter and Pauly had apretty public tug-of-war over control of the Store around 2009.
Whyd you choose not to cover that?Because Im close with all three brothers.
I was their babysitter.
I just dont want to air the familys dirty laundry.
They went through a long fight.
Theyve worked it out.
Pauly is a comedian.
I dont spend a lot of time on the Shore family at all.
My focus is on stand-up comedy and Mitzi Shores effect on stand-up comedy.
It seems like you had to throw the idea of objectivity out the window from the beginning.Yeah.
I realized I knew too much.
Then I became a real journalist, really getting in there and sussing out a story.
And for the new part, a lot of them were really skeptical:Who is this guy?
Why is he telling this story?
Was it hard to tell the story of the strike?
I was just a kid.
Jay Leno was one of my best friends at the time.
Weve never been really close again.
Leno was so bummed at me.
And Tom Dreesen and Elayne Boosler, all those people hated me for a long time.
But the worst part about it was I realized as I got older, you should back your friends.
So it was a hard story to tell.
I thought it was bizarre how fresh the wound is 40 years later to a lot of people.
You could tell Leno has never been back to the Store.
His blow-up hasnt been on the wall because Mitzi never had it put back up.
I didnt want him to see that, so I had it done.
I made such a big deal: Is that blow-up ready?
And he didnt even look at it.
He just walked through the room.
I cant do it in four.
Im moving too fast.
And they said, No, do four.
Finally, they said, Okay, five.
But ideally, I couldve really done eight episodes.
Was that why you didnt get into the story of the Improv burning down during the strike?
I can tell you for a fact they didnt.
The problem is the strike should have been a half-hour, 40.
And if you knew anything about Mitzi, she wouldve turned around and called the police.
Mitzi was not a gangster.
She was a polarizing character though.
Even the people who loved her have always acknowledged that.
What was your relationship with her like?Well, listen, I had a falling out with her.
I didnt talk to her for years.
I had done this HBO special in like 85.
George Carlin executive produced it, and she wanted to executive produce it.
And I was like, Mitzi, hes my childhood idol.
Youre not allowed here.
She took my neon light down.
Took my name off the wall.
Took all my pictures off the wall.
To her credit, she called me later and said, I overreacted.
And I went back, but it was never the same.
She gave me a job.
I was at her house for all the holiday dinners with her family.
She cut off probably five or six years of struggling for me.
She used her power for me to cut the line in a big way.
She changed the destiny of my life.
Then, eight years later, she said, I want to be a producer.
You got a big HBO deal.
I want you to help me out.
And I said no.
So maybe she was right and I was wrong.
And I wasnt the only one that did that.
She would shoot these horrible fucking specials at the Comedy Store.
That was the reason we wouldnt let her produce this stuff.
But I wasnt savvy enough.
Comics relationship with Mitzi seems to mirror their relationships to the Store itself.
Even those who love it acknowledge it could be a dark, fucked-up place.
Mitzi is dead now, and hasnt really trigger the Store in many years.
Do you think its still a reflection of her?Yeah.
Iliza Shlesinger really pegged it the best.
She said its like an abusive boyfriend: Why do I keep going back?
Hes in a wheelchair.
Whoopi and Rock and [Eddie] Murphy are sitting on the floor watching.
She hands it to him and Richard goes, See that waitress right there?
She gave me a martini.
She goes, Oh my God!
Richard Pryor just called me a bitch in front of the audience at the Comedy Store.
This is one of the best days of my life!
Thats the difference between someone who gets the Comedy Store and someone who doesnt.
I dont really care what they think at this point.
Dice is a good friend of mine.
And I think Dice is really relevant right now because they worked out cancel culture on Dices back.
And he deserved it.
Because you cant just innocently say, Its a character.
The flip side of it is, comedy is comedy.
It was a time when America was figuring out how far the edge of the stage goes.
But its not my place to answer those questions in this particular project.
The Store had a huge impact on the overall culture around comedy.
And guys like Dice and Sam Kinison played a big part in creating a testosterone-heavy, boys club atmosphere.
To me that is everything, and I think it was everything to Mitzi.
You should be able to say and do anything you want onstage.
She didnt have a problem with anything like that.
What you do offstage, youve got to pay for that.
They havent even been charged with anything.
And they are Comedy Store people people that have done a lot for the Comedy Store.
We deal a lot with that in the fifth episode.
But theres another thing the Comedy Store had that was 40 years ahead of its time.
Mitzi was ahead of her time in terms of diversity.
