TOM
SHALES & JAMES ANDREW MILLER
Synopsis
from back cover: In
their own words, a galaxy of stars – Mike Myers, Bill Murray, Will
Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Dan Akroyd, Steve Martin, Dana Carvey, Tina
Fey, Molly Shannon, Al Franken, Billy Crystal, Chevy Chase, and many
others – as well as members of Saturday Night Live's extended
family of cast, crew and guests, recall more than a quarter-century's
worth of great backstage stories, off-camera gossip, feuds, foibles,
drugs, sex, struggles, and calamities. This irresistibly readable
book takes us behind the scenes of SNL like no other book ever has.
Stats
for my copy:
Trade paperback, Back Bay Books, 2003.
How
acquired: Bought.
First
Line: Saturday Night Live
is more than a television show.
My
thoughts: I
stopped watching Saturday Night Live sometime in the 90's. At first I
just gradually lost interest, when I was working a lot, sometimes
until 1:00 or 1:30 in the morning. Then I made a conscious decision
to stop watching because I had young kids and I felt like the show
was no longer funny, it was just raunch. But after reading this book
I now feel very nostalgic and want to go back and watch from the very
beginning.
The
book follows the show chronologically, with chapter headings broken
into chunks of time, such as “Exordium: 1975-1976” and “Heyday:
1976-1980”. It's an oral history, in that the majority of the book
is in the words of the people interviewed, from cast members and
writers to agents, producers and executives. And it's all incredibly
fascinating. In the chapters from the later years, there were some
cast members I'd never heard of, and a lot of cast members who I am
familiar with but had not known were in the cast (Julia
Louis-Dreyfus!). The book is long, 600 pages not counting the index
in the back, and only goes up to the 2002-2003 season. Looking at the
different editions on Goodreads, another updated edition was
published in 2014, with “over more than 100 pages of new material”,
and I would love to find a copy of that edition just to read those
additional pages.
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