Well damn.
(Also, he was older than I thought.)
He should have been a much bigger name but his issues overwhelmed his comedy. In small doses he was great.
We’re heading for an era of obituaries on 80s comedians. It will be sad.
RIP Richard Lewis. I enjoyed all of this comedy.
Being too cheap to buy HBO, I never watched “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” but I did enjoy him in the show he did with Jamie Lee Curtis, Anything But Love.
I was scared at first that the thread title was about kaylasmom’s cousin, the executive director of Sacramento Music Circus.
I actually thought Richard Lewis had died last year, but I was confusing him with Richard Belzer.
I was reading this thread thinking it was Belzer til I saw your post!
Somewhere out the is a “…from hell” joke about his death that would be fitting. He claimed to invent the “_______ from hell” phrase.
Didn’t care for him much, but my two favorite things he did was the Hyundai commercial he appeared in, and an episode of the short-lived “Code Black.” In both of those he was pretty much playing himself. Yeah, small doses.
This news is very depressing.
Oh, so sad. On one of the more recent Curb episodes, he and Larry were yelling at each other about being in each other’s wills and being each other’s heirs. It feels very different today than the day I watched it.
Finally ran out of things to complain about. OR-- his biggest complaint ever! RIP.
Richard was the perfect foil/friend for Larry in Curb. From what I understand he fulfilled pretty much the same role in real life. RIP.
I very much liked that show when it was originally on but a couple of years ago, I rewatched it on a streaming service or Netflix DVDs and wasn’t as enthusiastic.
I grew up with his Boku commercials and they’re still the first thing that pops into my mind when I read/hear his name.
“When are you gonna die? Why don’t you just die already?” -Larry David to Richard Lewis
The answer is February 27, Larry. And now he has. RIP.
Richard and Larry had a very unique and special friendship. I’m sure he’s wrecked tonight.
Who died a year ago at 78.
“Richard and I were born three days apart in the same hospital and for most of my life he’s been like a brother to me,” David said in a statement shared on the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” Instagram page. “He had that rare combination of being the funniest person and also the sweetest. But today he made me sob and for that I’ll never forgive him.”
On Morning Joe today they ran some clips from an interview Scarborough did with Lewis a while back. One bit was that at some point Larry had asked Richard: “So, what are you going to die of?”
Answer: “Natural causes”, whatever that means.
BTW in PD circles the saying is: you don’t die of Parkinson’s, you die with Parkinson’s.
Letterman’s YouTube channel usually puts up some old clips when one of their better known guests die. So far they’ve only put up one. Hopefully there will be more. Even Pee-Wee got two.
Richard Lewis, Richard Belzer, and Phil Hartman made a pilot together.
