Word: walkouts
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...That walkout was the culmination of a decade in which stand-up became the voice of the counterculture generation. Like George Carlin, Richard Pryor and other pioneers of those years, the new stand-up comics were not just anti-Establishment rabble rousers; they were intimate, populist artists who got their power by convincing us that they were ordinary folks, with the same gripes and anxieties as everyone else. They joked about furnishing their tiny apartments and riding the subways and trying to get girls. The strike against the Comedy Store, the leading comedy club in Los Angeles, reinforced their real...
...poverty-stricken comics were far less prepared for a long walkout than the relatively well-heeled writers today. Shore closed down her club, then reopened it, using the few loyalists willing to cross the picket line and some neophytes who saw an opportunity for some stage time. When she made a compromise offer to pay the comics $25 a set only on weekends, some of them, like Garry Shandling, thought it was fair and went back to work?a blow to the comics' shaky solidarity. "I think there was a lot of good that was accomplished by that strike," says...
...comedians it was a serious matter, and the vast majority of the 150 or so who worked at the Comedy Store walked off the job. Some of them had careers outside the club and didn't need the money, but supported the strike nevertheless. In the midst of the walkout, Letterman filled in for Johnny Carson as guest host of The Tonight Show. Immediately after finishing the show he drove to the Comedy Store and joined the picket line. "This was the umbilical cord for a lot of guys, myself included," says Letterman. "Money wasn't necessarily an issue...
...said, let's settle this thing right now," says Dreesen. On May 4 a settlement was reached, on essentially the same terms that Mitzi had rejected earlier - twenty-five dollars per set for all but a few specified hours during the week reserved for newcomers. After a six-week walkout, the Comedy Store comics went back to work, claiming victory...
CORRECTION: The Oct. 16 news article "Schlafly Stirs Audience Walkout" gave an incorrect estimate of the number of people attending a speech by political activist Phyllis Schlafly. According to Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study officials, about 150 people were at the event, not 70 as the article reported...