Misery Loves Comedy (2015) on Netflix

Plot summary

More than sixty comics, among them stand-ups, writers, actors and directors, sit down to explain what drew them to comedy as a career. They come from the United States and Canada as well as from other countries. Together they take up the sad clown, the belief that a comic cannot be funny without being unhappy. Their accounts cover childhood and the first times they stood in front of an audience. Stand-up sets in clubs, acting jobs and writing work all figure in the careers they describe. The effect of making a room of strangers laugh is called therapeutic by more than one of them.