When Tim Allen sends out his trademark primal call, "Augh! Augh! Augh!," a sound akin to a gorilla's grunt, he gets attention. The ape call is part of Allen's self-molded brand of humor, which he calls "masculinist," and was first heard in his popular nightclub comedy act. Later he refined his ideas, sold them to Disney, and went on to star in the popular television comedy, Home Improvement, about a blustering handyman who hosts a cable television show and is prone to accident during his fix-up jobs. "Tim is Dagwood [a character from the comic strip Blondie] with an attitude, an aggressive goof-up whose masculine pride frequently gets him in trouble with the rest of the family," wrote Ken Tucker in Entertainment Weekly. With the help of a group of talented writers, the show shook the TV ratings charts and became a hit almost overnight. Allen became just...