Richard Lewis

Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA

Biography

Richard Philip Lewis (June 29, 1947 – February 27, 2024) was an American actor, writer, and stand-up comedian. He came to prominence in the 1980s and became known for his dark, neurotic and self-deprecating humor. As an actor he was known for co-starring with Jamie Lee Curtis in the sitcom Anything but Love, for playing the role of Prince John in the film Robin Hood: Men in Tights and for his recurring role as a semi-fictionalized version of himself in HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Movies

Dinner for Five is a television program in which actor/filmmaker Jon Favreau and a revolving guest list of celebrities eat, drink and talk about life on and off the set and swap stories about projects past and present. The program seats screen legends next to a variety of personalities from film, television, music and comedy, resulting in an unpredictable free-for-all. The program aired on the Independent Film Channel with Favreau the co-Executive Producer with Peter Billingsley. The show format is a spontaneous, open forum for people in the entertainment community. The idea, originally conceived by Favreau, originated from a time when he went out to dinner with colleagues on a film location and exchanged filming anecdotes. Favreau said, "I thought it would be interesting to show people that side of the business". He did not want to present them in a "sensationalized way [that] they're presented in the press, but as normal people". The format featured Favreau and four guests from the entertainment industry in a restaurant with no other diners. They ordered actual food from real menus and were served by authentic waiters. There were no cue cards or previous research on the participants that would have allowed him to orchestrate the conversation and the guests were allowed to talk about whatever they wanted. The show used five cameras with the operators using long lenses so that they could be at least ten feet away from the table and not intrude on the conversation or make the guests self-conscious. The conversations lasted until the film ran out. A 25-minutes episode would be edited from the two-hour dinner.

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Dinner for Five
2001

Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist is an American animated series that originally ran on Comedy Central from May 28, 1995 to December 24, 1999—with a final set of three shelved episodes airing in 2002—starring Jonathan Katz, Jon Benjamin, and Laura Silverman. The show was created by a Burbank, California production company Popular Arts Entertainment, with Jonathan Katz and Tom Snyder, developed and first made by Popular Arts for HBO Downtown Productions. Boston-based Tom Snyder Productions became the hands-on production company, and the episodes were usually produced by Katz and Loren Bouchard. The show was computer animated in a crude, easily recognizable style produced with the software Squigglevision in which all persons and animate objects are colored and have constantly squiggling outlines, while most other inanimate objects are static and usually gray in color. The original challenge Popular Arts faced was how to repurpose recorded stand-up comedy material. To do so they based Dr. Katz's patients on stand-up comics for the first several episodes, simply having them recite their stand-up acts. The secondary challenge was how to affordably animate on cable TV at the time. Snyder had Squigglevision, an inexpensive means of getting animation on cable, which could not afford traditional animation processes. A partnership between Popular Arts, Tom Snyder Productions and Jonathan Katz was formed and Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist was born.

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Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist
1995

Revealed...with Jules Asner is a biography-style television show that first aired on E! Entertainment Television from 2001-2003. The host, Jules Asner, was a rising star among the network's stable of on-air personalities, and programmers at the cable channel decided she was the right person to begin hosting the existing series Celebrity Profile which had premiered in 1997. The name change also meant a slight change in format; while Celebrity Profile had been strictly a biographical show voiced by an unseen narrator -- and without a fresh interview of the star featured -- each episode of Revealed featured a new, one-on-one interview of the profile conducted by Asner herself. The first three shows in the series profiled Julia Roberts, George Clooney, and Matt Damon. Each had agreed to participate because of a quid pro quo: Oceans Eleven, their film being released at the time, was directed by Asner's then-boyfriend, Steven Soderbergh. While Asner conducted the "main" interview for each episode, staff producers and associate producers interviewed everyone else whose sound bites turned up in episodes -- co-stars, family, friends, industry insiders, etc. Asner and E! parted company under some unhappy circumstances -- she moved to New York and wed the director, even as network executives were unhappy with the series' declining ratings and Asner's increasing petulance -- especially regarding her unwillingness to ask anything more than softball questions during interviews for her show.

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Revealed with Jules Asner
2001