They Dream of Reaching Couch on Johnny Carson Show : The New Comics: Laughter Is Serious Business

Laura Kightlinger wakes up screaming with laughter and writes notes to herself on the bedroom wall.

Her landlady might be perplexed to read: “I’m wearing fashion jeans . . . ‘Salvation d’Armee.’ ”

Linda Franklin, a vascular technician, tries out jokes on her captive audience of patients at New England Baptist Hospital. The therapy includes lines such as: “President Reagan has reached a compromise with Congress on Amtrak. They’re gonna leave one rail.”

Wendy Liebman, a researcher at the Houghton Mifflin book publishers with a degree in psychology from Wellesley, jots down jokes on “bits of notepaper that can be rolled into a little ball” and “tries them out on the girls at lunch, which sometimes can get pretty rowdy.”

‘Hell Hole Circuit’

Jennifer Hoag, who works days in a graphic arts firm but has had some bookings on “the Hell Hole circuit”--clubs and bars in Salem, Quincy and West Sturbridge--has decided to give comedy “two more years and then either kill myself or become a hairdresser.”

Laura, Linda, Wendy, Jennifer and 60 “open mikers” like them in the Boston area, and perhaps several thousand others across the country, are all obsessed by a dream of being “called to the couch”--Johnny Carson’s couch.

“It’s not enough to walk through those parted curtains. You got to make it to the couch. When you’re called back to chat with Johnny, then you know you’ve realized the dream: You’ve made the big time,” emphasized Jimmy Smith, who gets steady bookings but still hasn’t made it big enough to give up his day job teaching band music.

“Comedy is a growth industry around the country. It really has taken off here in Boston,” Smith said before taking the microphone at the Comedy Connection to introduce 18 young comics.

Hoping to follow in the footsteps of Stephen Wright, who made it from this same stage to the Carson couch only four years ago, all the performers appeared for free.

Performing without pay before a paying live audience, Smith explained, “is what open mikes are all about: a chance for newcomers to break into stand-up comedy, an opportunity for more seasoned artists to try out new material without pressure before a hip, friendly crowd. And there’s always the chance there might be a talent scout out there from HBO or maybe a segment producer from the Carson or Dave Letterman show.”

“No major city is without a comedy club,” says Anne Fox, co-editor of “Just for Laughs,” a trade paper for comics and a sponsor of the 10th annual San Francisco international stand-up comedy competition over Labor Day weekend. Robin Williams of Ork fame, she notes, was a second-place winner in 1976.

Reservations Needed

In Boston, laugh centers such as the Comedy Connection have been pushing the strip joints and the massage parlors out of the “Combat Zone.” Open mike nights have drawn so many budding jokesmiths that aspirants have to call in their names before 10 a.m. to be considered for a five-minute set.

“Imagine working for nothing here in the red light district,” said Laura Franklin, a doctor’s daughter. “It’s like the madam saying to a hooker, ‘Look honey, if you do a real good trick tonight, you might get paid next time.’ ”

While disco’s din is dying and jazz joints have yet to find a younger audience, comedy is king in clubland, and the American dream machine in assembly-line fashion is turning out an unending line of pretenders to the throne of Woody Allen, Steve Martin and Joan Rivers.

Almost all the Boston comics interviewed revere Allen. They read his books, listen to his records, watch his movies over and over again and, in different ways, learn from his cerebral, laid-back, self-deprecating style. Sex and psychology are dominant themes in their material, which they all claimed they write for themselves.

“These gals and guys can’t afford writers. Most don’t even have agents or managers,” says Jo-Anne Leppanen, a Boston lawyer who helps young comics with the tax problems that come with their first paid gigs. “They’re such babes in the woods. They don’t even know enough to deduct transportation expenses to an engagement. They rarely steal jokes from each other. Not in Boston. They give material to each other.”

The new comics find much to laugh about in television commercials, Yuppies, the tanning center craze, cordless telephones, shopping malls, subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz, New York’s high school for gays, K mart and Bloomingdale’s, the “new” Coca-Cola and imitations of Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, Andy Rooney, Barbara Walters, Howard Cosell and Sylvester Stallone.

“Rambo is very in now,” says Fran Solomite, who has played Reno and Tahoe and does a hilarious grunting Stallone. “I feel every time Sly does a new movie I should send him a check in gratitude.”

Cindy Freeman, a senior at Emerson College, who has had paid gigs ranging from $20 to $360, agrees with her fellow comics that “nothing is banned in Boston anymore. You hear jokes about the hijackers and the African famine. Even the Pope isn’t off limits, but bad language is going out. It’s a cheap laugh, and there’s no longer any shock effect. You hear it on cable TV.”