Pajiba are reporting, via the infamous and mysterious industry insider The Hollywood Cog, that Tom Hanks' production company Playtone is developing a film about The Comedy Store.
Specifically, it's a biopic of Mitzy Shore (Pauly Shore's mom), and an adaptation of William Knoedelseder's book I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-up Comedy's Golden Era. That golden era was the late 70s, when comedians like Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, Richard Lewis, Jay Leno, David Letterman and Andy Kaufman were all Comedy Store regulars, and were paid nothing by proprietress Mrs Shore for their work.
Shore felt that, as a prestigious training ground, it was a privilege for the acts to perform in her club and her prerogative to pocket the money. The acts disagreed, leading to an acrimonious comedians strike and the suicide of comic Steve Lubetkin.
The project is "out to writers" at the moment, and there's no indication as yet of how involved Hanks will be. As a drama it certainly has a lot of potential, however, with the opportunity to play up the early relationship of Leno and Letterman for example, and a surefire, meaty, grandstanding female role in the form of Mitzy.
And would it give us a second Richard Pryor, to rival Marlon Wayans in Bill Condon's in-the-works Is It Something I Said? Somebody call Eddie Murphy's agent...