|
"39 Years
of Short-Term Memory Loss" is a seriously
funny and irreverent memoir that gives an insider's view of
the birth and rise of Saturday Night Live, and features laugh-out-loud
stories about some of its greatest personalities--Al Franken,
Lorne Michaels, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Michael
O'Donoghue, and Chris Farley.
Written by Tom Davis, an
original SNL writer and comedy partner of Al Franken, Thirty-Nine
Years of Short-Term Memory Loss is the story of coming of
age in the 60s, and a spellbinding account of the birth and
rise of one of television's most celebrated shows, Saturday
Night Live. Al Franken and Tom Davis were a stand-up comedy
team that got their start in high school in 1968, performing
their first material at Dudley Riggs Brave New Workshop in
Minneapolis. They worked in comedy clubs and colleges from
New York to Los Angeles, sharing stages with contemporaries
including Jay Leno, Don Novello, Gabe Kaplan, and Andy Kaufman.
When they were rejected
by The Tonight Show and blacklisted by The Comedy Store, Franken
and Davis embraced their counter-cultural bent all the more,
pushing the envelope of their unique sense of humor.
However, success seemed
less than likely until Lorne Michaels read some of their material
in July 1975, and hired the team, sight unseen, as writers
for an as yet unnamed comedy show to be broadcast live from
New York--the show that would become Saturday Night Live.
Tom Davis's memoir is filled
with wry, candid anecdotes about his days at Saturday Night
Live and his friendships with its stars. But this memoir is
also a coming-of-age tale of his generation and a graphic
description of the cannon he was shot out of: suburbanchildhood,
high school in the '60s, the discovery of sex, overcoming
the stumbling blocks of fear through the use of LSD, and reveling
in the hippie culture from San Francisco to Katmandu.
Hysterical, lucid, and wise,
Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss is an unforgettable
romp in an era of sex, drugs, and comedy.
|
