This is a long book: 500 plus pages of behind the scenes drama gleaned from new and historical interviews from the cast, crew, and creative minds behind the making of Star Trek for the first twenty-five years of its history. It didn’t really read like that long of a book, though. I’ve always loved behind the scenes stories, and oral histories are a particularly good format for that. So much room for conflicting opinions. Lots of insight and drama. Lots of gross stories about Gene […]
I’m Not Going to be Your Monkey.
I read books on my tablet while I walk my dog in the morning. He’s old, a slow walker, likes to sniff thoroughly, and will often take a rest in other people’s yards. I wasn’t far in to the oral history of The Daily Show when, for a changed, I was the one who had to stop. I stopped to laugh. It probably wasn’t the laugh they were expecting, but that’s life in Trump’s America. Various writers, producers and correspondents were reminiscing about how the 2000 […]
They Didn’t Want to Leave, They Definitely Couldn’t Stay
“I was leaving the South/To fling myself into the unknown…./I was taking a part of the South/To transplant in alien soil,/To see if it could grow differently,/If it could drink of new and cool rains,/Bend in strange winds,/Respond to the warmth of other suns/And, perhaps, to bloom.” – Richard Wright
Not a funny book, but a book about being funny.
This was an overall interesting book full of conversations. It is not comedic itself but ABOUT comedy and the people who create it. So, if you’re going into the book expecting to laugh, you’re really setting both yourself and the book up for failure. This book isn’t for people looking for empty laughs, it’s for people looking to read sometimes very personal conversations about comedy behind the scenes, what it takes to do the work, how it effects comedians personally, what kind of person becomes […]
How’s Annie?
I am a Twin Peaks fan and enjoyed reading this oral history so much. There are some missing voices from key players (Lara Flynn Boyle and David Lynch most notably) but most of the stars participated. I read this book slowly and re-watched Twin Peaks on Netflix, catching all the nuance the actors and writers/directors/producers talked about in the book. Highlights include: Sheryl Lee (Laura Palmer) on being a baby actress and acting dead for the filming of the pilot and absorbing all she could […]