For 48 years, Los Angeles' Comedy Store has been the mecca for every comic who ever dreamed of making people laugh — from Richard Pryor to David Letterman to Jerry Seinfeld.

And writer-producer Mike Binder was one of them. Binder started out as a shaky 18-year-old pitching jokes in the smoke-filled room run by the infamous Mitzi Shore.

Now Binder, screenwriter on "The Upside of Anger," "The Mind of the Married Man," has mined the memories of jokesters who started there in a documentary for Showtime. The five-parter, "The Comedy Store," premieres on Sunday.

Comic Bill Burr recalls his initiation at the Lourdes of Laughter. "I was living in LA in the late '90s, and I went down there to audition. And it was a big deal, and I was super intimidated," he says.

"And I went up. and I thought I had a good set, and Mitzi was just, 'He's not ready.' I heard her say it in the middle of my set.

"Her voice could just cut through the room, so it was weird because I probably still had three bits left — knowing I already blew it. And I was upset. Like a lot of young comics, I thought I was ready. But she was right. I wasn't," he recalls.

Five years later, he tried again. This time he had a feeling he aced it. "I'm living in New York. I don't care if I'm in this club. Of course I did, but I was telling myself I didn't. And then I went up on stage. And I didn't realize she was in the room. And somebody grabbed me. It might have been (her son) Pauly. He goes, 'My mom wants to talk to you.'

"And she just went, 'Very funny. You are so funny,' and all of this stuff. Just considering the people that she saw over the years — all of my comedy heroes — it was such a huge thing for me."

Louie Anderson remembers his first shot at the Store. "When I moved from Minnesota, my parents had retired to Carson City, so I came that way. When I hit Tahoe and Sacramento, I hit the 101 and saw palm trees on the freeway. I called my friends and said, 'There's palm trees on the freeway, and I'm never coming back to Minnesota.'

"I went straight to The Comedy Store. Jimmy Walker made Mitzi Shore watch me. Then she made me an unpaid regular and then a paid regular. I'm still friends with the Shores."

Andrew Dice Clay says his inauguration was different. "It was never really about standup to me, it was theater to me," he says.

"It was about performance to me. When I hit The Comedy Store, I figured instead of going to acting school, I'll just be on stage every night and develop my acting chops. Instead of going once a week to a school, I would be on stage every night. That's how I looked at it."

George Lopez was 23 when he first tried The Comedy Store. "In 1984, I went to The Comedy Store on Sunset, and that night I vowed I was not going to quit anymore, because I'd quit at everything else," he remembers.

"I'd quit accordion, on baseball which I loved, quit on friends, on jobs — I was a quitter. And I didn't like that part of my personality. I started to continually go to The Comedy Store on Mondays, then started to find other nights to go. From there, I went to the Ice House (club) in Pasadena. And they gave me a job as master of ceremonies. Out of that I built something out of a spark."

While it's a difficult job making people laugh, comics relish the challenge. Comedienne Annie Lederman says it's a thrill to tickle the funny bone.

"I call it an ocean job. It's like I do this because I was thrown into the sea. I can't do land jobs, 9 to 5s — I know how much money I'm going to make. I know exactly what's going to happen. That doesn't work for me. I like to be either pulled down under the waves or on top of one. And so I think that's what's so exciting about it. It's like maybe we're all sort of working (with) PTSD from our last bomb," she says.

While preparing the series, Binder says he came across some videos of Robin Williams. "I found this old clip of him, and he was so comfortable late at night on stage at The Store — so loose. And it felt like watching Miles Davis or something, because that's where he didn't have to worry about who was watching him or what. He just could be himself doing what he does. There was nothing at stake. And I think that for these guys, that's what The Store becomes after you make it. At first it becomes the place to make it. But then it becomes the place to reclaim it."