One Night Stand: Mike Binder

Mike Binder steps onto the HBO stage looking less like a stand-up lifer and more like a guy whose bags are already packed for a studio lot. Without a surviving public record of the specific jokes that filled this half-hour, the set functions as a time capsule of a 1990 club act delivered by someone executing an exit strategy. After spending the eighties working the door at the Comedy Store and eventually earning stage time, Binder landed this broadcast on One Night Stand. The episode aired in March 1990, premiering the exact same weekend his first produced screenplay, Coupe de Ville, hit theaters. He soon traded the microphone for a director’s chair to create projects like The Upside of Anger and The Mind of the Married Man.