Live From New York: An Uncensored History Of Saturday Night Live Author: Tom Shales | Language: English | ISBN:
B00I828AJK | Format: EPUB
Live From New York: An Uncensored History Of Saturday Night Live Description
Just in time for the 40th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, a rollickingly updated edition of LIVE FROM NEW YORK with more than 100 pages covering the past decade.When first published to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, LIVE FROM NEW YORK was immediately proclaimed the best book ever produced on the landmark and legendary late-night show. In their own words, unfiltered and uncensored, a dazzling galaxy of trail-blazing talents recalled three turbulent decades of on-camera antics and off-camera escapades. Now a fourth decade has passed---and bestselling authors James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales have returned to Studio 8H. Over more than 100 pages of new material, they raucously and revealingly take the SNL story up to the present, adding a constellation of iconic new stars, surprises, and controversies.
- Print Length: 608 pages
- Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (September 9, 2014)
- Sold by: Hachette Book Group
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00I828AJK
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #76,465 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #18
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Humor & Entertainment > Television > History & Criticism - #36
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Comedy - #44
in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Television > History & Criticism
- #18
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Humor & Entertainment > Television > History & Criticism - #36
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Comedy - #44
in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Television > History & Criticism
I can't say I hated the book. I kept coming back to it willingly enough, and finished it relatively quickly. My problems with it come not from the bulk of the material itself (interviews with cast, hosts, producers, directors, and writers, cut into segments organized into some rough similiarities of topic), but from what the writers have done with it.
When you have a book consisting largely of interview snippets, what you have is a cross-section of opinions. Some of those opinions may have a greater amount of concensus behind them than others. Better writers could have done real research to qualify or confirm the statements made by the interview subjects: was Doumanian's budget actually cut from the first years of the show? If so, by as much as she claims? Where did the cuts hit the most? What were the actual box office numbers of Belushi's and Murphy's movies? Have they taken later rentals and tv showings into account in saying who was more successful? Was Nora Dunn as unsuccessful after leaving the show as her resentful colleagues would like to think? (A quick look at imdb.com suggests not...)
Apart from the failure to provide factual context, the writers show their own prejudices in ways that can't help to be annoying and occasionally disturbing. The bridge and introduction segments are full of the usual kind of biography hyperbole better writers avoid. SNL "helped bestow upon the comedy elite the hip-mythic status that rock stars had long enjoyed." "An audience that expected to see fresh new Gildas, Belushis... refused to settle for the paltry replacements that initially dominated Doumanian's cast." "[Belushi's death] told his friends at Saturday Night Live not only that John was mortal, but that they were too.
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