Stand-up comedy is best live — and often lived. Judd Apatow and comedy appreciator Neil Berkeley know this. In their admiring, at times achingly funny documentary “Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story” premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, the co-directors celebrate a comedian especially good at mining her life — including her struggles with mental health.
The film builds the arc of Bamford’s life and career by utilizing clips from decades of her stand-up. Augmenting that spine are family photos and home movies, copious insights and praise from fellow comedians, anchored with interviews — awkward and endearing — with the comic herself, as well as her parents and older sister, Sarah Bamford Seidelmann.
Born and raised in Duluth, she’s the second daughter of a doctor and a formidable mother. Around the time Bamford was 8 years old, she began experiencing a form of Ocd that is marked by dark, intrusive thoughts that…
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