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Eighteen years ago this month, I first had the chance to speak to Richard Lewis. Or, should I say, I listened to Lewis as the comedian launched into one riff after another for an hour over the phone in February 2006, giving me far more quotable material than my editors at the Boston Herald would ever publish.
Looking back on it now, upon hearing Lewis had died today of a heart attack at age 76, what stood out remarkably was something he said in passing about his legacy.
“What humbled me more than anything,” Lewis told me in 2006. “When Walter Matthau died. Everybody loved him, but it was 12 seconds in an hour on the news, and they cut to a traffic jam … I thought they would just talk about Matthau and forget about the traffic or the weather for the night. So I don’t take myself that seriously.”