Seven years ago Jim Carrane seemed on the verge of something big. The theater group he’d helped found, the Annoyance, was white-hot. His one-man show there, I’m 27, I Still Live at Home and I Sell Office Supplies, was a big hit. He began to get TV gigs. He says his subject–Gen X-ers who move back home after college–“was very trendy back then. I even got on Jenny Jones.”
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Soon after Carrane closed the show his father, a respected, prosperous lawyer, pleaded guilty to stealing more than $3 million from two banks and several individuals. Carrane’s family was torn apart. “There was a lot of anger in the family–people weren’t talking to people,” he says. “It was an awful mess.”
He sank into a deep funk. “That was a very hard time,” he says, “a real lull in my creativity.” He was no longer a member of the Annoyance ensemble, no longer the guy in the hot one-man show, no longer even on great terms with his family. To make matters worse, his improv buddies were beginning to succeed. Andy Richter, who costarred in Carrane’s first show, Ayn Rand Gives Me a Boner, now had a regular gig on Late Night With Conan O’Brien. Carrane’s former roommate Dave Koechner was on Saturday Night Live.
While he was dog-sitting, Carrane began to daydream about putting together another one-man show. “I took a lot of time with my first show,” he says. “I basically improvised the material over several months with Gary Ruderman [the show’s director] helping me shape material and edit it down. I put my second show together too quickly. It was written, not improvised, and we put it on its feet before it was ready. This time Sharon Evans has let me take my time putting this together.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Jim Newberry.
