Punchline (1988) on Netflix
Lilah Krytsick, a New Jersey housewife, chases a secret ambition to perform stand-up comedy. At a New York club she meets Steven Gold, a broke comic who teaches her the craft.
- Netflix2.8/5
- IMDb5.9/109,923 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes57%
Trailer
Plot summary
Steven Gold performs regularly at the Gas Station, a New York City comedy club, where the pay is small and every comic hopes for a break. He is flat broke and has recently left medical school, which he has kept from his father, a doctor. Lilah Krytsick, a housewife and mother in New Jersey, takes the same stage; her husband, insurance salesman John Krytsick, expects her to put the household first, and she hides her sets from him. Making people laugh has always pleased her, but she strains to build a set that means something to her and works on an audience. Steven, considered the club's best comic, starts teaching her the basics. Network executives then announce a contest at the club, with a television appearance as the prize.
Cast
- Pam Mattesonas Utica Blake
- Barry Neikrugas Krug
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Punchline (1988)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Tom Hanks wrote a five-minute stand-up act two months before filming Punchline and performed it at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, where the material lasted 1 minute 40 seconds and, as he recalled, had no theme; he kept at it, sometimes hitting three clubs a night.
- When Columbia Pictures couldn't get a major star to commit, producer Daniel Melnick decided to make Punchline for $8 million with no stars, but interim studio president Steve Sohmer sent the script to Sally Field instead; she agreed to star and produce, and the budget was set at $15 million.
- Producer Daniel Melnick found David Seltzer's screenplay for Punchline in Columbia Pictures' vaults in 1986 among twelve other unrealized scripts; it had gone through three changes of studio management because executives disliked its mix of comedy and drama and found the Steven Gold character mean-spirited.
