For Madmen Only: The Stories of Del Close (2020)

(On Cable TV, November 2022) Most biographical documentaries desperately want you to like and admire their subjects. They want to make you feel that their person of interest made a meaningful contribution to the world. They bring in friends, acquaintances, family and tell you how wonderful the person is. Things are a bit more complex with For Madmen Only: The Stories of Del Close, and it starts with “Who’s Del Close?”  Most people outside the comedy industry have never heard of Del Close—and his death in 1999 means that his star is fading somewhat. But Del Close, as the film breathlessly explains, is one of the great hidden influencers of North American comedy from 1960 to well into the 1990s, acting as a coach, trainer and influence on improvisational comedy, which he capriciously called “Harold.”  Ironically enough, the documentary ended up identifying Close as responsible for what I consider to be a scourge upon modern comedy—I don’t necessarily dislike improv, but I always prefer meticulously planned, structured and delivered comic material to looser improvisational riffs, which feels disconnected and absent larger coherency. But that’s not the only problem you can have with Close, a famously difficult personality with a penchant for self-aggrandizing lies, drug abuse, abrasive relationships and self-destructive habits. And yet… the list of his students reads like a who’s who of late-twentieth-century North American comedy (Close harmed comedy not only in Chicago and Los Angeles, but also in Toronto) with several eloquent testimonies bemoaning the man as much as they’re praising his impact. See for yourself and decide whether he was a saviour or a scourge.