Laughter on the 23rd Floor

Max Prince is the star of The Max Prince Show, a popular comedy-variety series that is a major hit on the East Coast – where most of the TVs are - but network executives insist that it's too sophisticated for the fast-growing Midwest market and urge Prince to dumb down his show, which he adamantly refuses to do.

Between the tensions of producing an hour of top-quality comedy each week and being pestered about his ratings, Prince is beginning to unravel. His last line of defense against both the network and the ratings is his fiercely loyal writing staff (all future TV and film legends themselves), which spends its days inventing brilliant sketches for the show while hurling humorous invective at each other and anyone else within earshot.

Tensions come to a head as ratings begin to slide and the network continues to squeeze the budget. Eventually, Max loses his battle with the bean counters and the show is canceled, the group is disbanded, and the lightning-in-a-bottle that formed Neil Simon’s earliest professional writing memories passes into mythic history.

Keeping up a running commentary on the writing, fighting and wacky antics is Simon's alter-ego Lucas Brickman, recalling those heady days, and the comic royalty with whom he rubbed elbows.