Joe Roth studied communications at Boston University before settling in San Francisco where he first found employment as a production assistant on commercials and feature films and later as a booker for United Artists. At the same time, the native New Yorker began an association with the Pitchel Players, an improvisational comedy group like Chicago's Second City, that led to his eventually producing the troupe's shows. In 1974, the Players relocated to L.A. and Roth, utilizing then-unknown comic actors like Chevy Chase, Howard Hesseman and Laraine Newman, produced his first film,
