Greatest American Hero (Believe It or Not)

As September 11^th comes closer, there are going to be (and it’s already started) hundreds of hours of television and thousands of articled dedicated to this anniversary. I went through an obsessive phase a few years ago and read more than a half-dozen books about the event, including Tower Stories: An Oral History of 9/11. One thing I’ve been struck by so much in all the writing about September 11^th is the attempt to differentiate the people who died. Consistently the writers have tried to separate each victim and establish them as individuals, so that it’s not a summary of 100 people from that office who died, but “Steve who loved dogs and Bob who loved to fish…” I don’t know if that’s a particularly American thing. I don’t remember reading in great detail about victims of attacks in other countries being individualized, but it may be that I’m not reading the right sources. And it may be that with the great outpouring of words about 9/11, the authors needed these human touches to set their book apart.

As with most oral histories, Tower Stories was the most human-level recording of the day’s events that I read. Seeing how messy the day was – how people’s memories overlapped and diverged – brought home to me the utter confusion of the day. Normal people who hadn’t planned on anything more exciting than a salad for lunch turned out to be heroes. They carried strangers down 30 flights of stairs and helped firemen find offices and exits. I’m sure that there were an equal number of people who pushed their way down the stairs and left their officemates behind when they couldn’t keep up, but I’m okay with not including them in the account of the day. I think we all needed to feel like goodness could exist in the middle of such chaos. New York has a right to still feel proud, these ten years later. They did good.

Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)

Reading Rob Lowe’s book and the story about Tommy Boy made me pull out the oral history Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, as Told By Its Stars, Writers and Guests. I’ve had this book for years. I think I bought it for somebody’s birthday because I wanted to read it. They either didn’t want it as much as I did or I just took it back – I can’t remember and no takesy-backsy now, sucker. I love oral history and epistolary books written in letter or diary form more than any other styles. This book is huge and one of the reasons I sometimes long for a Kindle or Nook. I do have a Kindle on my phone, but the screen is so small that I’m going to have to get bifocals and reading glasses to add to my already giant glasses.

This book is fantastic, if only because the people interviewed are mostly comedians and not overly concerned with protecting feelings and goodwill. While I don’t want to date Chevy Chase (for so many reasons), I’m so glad that he’s willing to pummel and be pummeled in book form. In SNL history, there are a lot of people referred to as funny, a few lauded as genius, and then Chevy Chase. His fellow cast members really, really didn’t like him. The interviewers caught him at a perfect time, when he was enough older to recognize his part in the ill-will and still egotistical enough to think he was right. He and Bill Murray apparently got into some sort of fight that never quite tipped over into punches and the insult that everyone remembers best (decades after the fight) was Bill calling Chevy a “medium talent.” That kills me.

The early days and first few casts are explored in deep and loving detail, but as the years go by, the cast profiles get shorter and the interviews are mostly about Lorne Michaels. There’s a real sense of invention and experimentation in the early years, and that only makes sense, but as the show grinds on, it because a series of stories about how Lorne rescued whosie-whatsit from stand-up clubs and became their father-/god-figure. The best exceptions to this are the people who absolutely didn’t fit in at SNL, like Janeane Garolfalo and Norm MacDonald. They get to talk a long time about the faults of the show and network and that’s just good reading.

Oh, and did you know there were drugs at Saturday Night Live? Apparently they did some drugs there.

I can’t let any reference to Chevy Chase go by without reminding you guys to watch Community. It’s awesome good television. So is Parks & Recreation, and Amy Poehler is on that one. See, it all circles back to Saturday Night Live in the end. Maybe Lorne Michaels really is some sort of god? Oh, wait, Stuart Saves His Family. [Gilda Radner voice] Never mind. [/Gilda Radner]

Man in Motion

I just finished Rob Lowe’s autobiography. I have a deep love for autobiographies, anyway, with what people choose to include and leave out from their official life record. In the case of public figures, it’s most interesting because you already know so much about them. Rob Lowe, just for instance, chooses to barely touch upon his sex-tape scandal with two underage girls by explaining in one part of the book why he would have had no way of knowing they were underage and obliquely referring to the idea that he taped it simply because the technology was available, (I climb the mountain because it is there.) He didn’t have to say what he had done, catch us up on the back story, because we already know. In a weird way, the title Stories I Only Tell My Friends does refer to us in the public. We already know way more than the bare outlines of his stories, he’s just giving us the color detail.

Lowe’s stories are funny and quirky, and he seems to be a nice family guy. Now.  I was struck by his version of his relationship with Melissa Gilbert, who talked about their romance quite a bit in her autobiography. Lowe mentions that her mother thought he was after her for her fame and then sums up years of dating Gilbert as a hot-cold relationship when he’s talking about his affair with Natasha Kinski that blew the whole thing up. This man has slept with some women. He’s determined to make you see his sex life as a result of having trouble getting dates in high school, but he’s telling about girls who seduce him as a pre-teen, so it’s hard to be too caught up in his lonely pain.

Lowe tells a story about Chris Farley that breaks my heart a little. He and David Spade were at a steakhouse during the filming of Tommy Boy. He said Farley ordered two porterhouse steaks and put an entire pat of butter on each bite of both steaks. When one of them freaked out about the butter, Lowe said Farley giggled and said in his little kid voice, “It needs a hat.” That tiny portrait made me understand Chris Farley more than anything I’ve read. This man hated himself. I thought the drugs were the reason he was so messed up, but they were apparently just one more weapon he used in his battle against himself. I mean, there’s self-destruction and then there’s lighting dynamite and stuffing it down your pants.

 There’s some juicy stuff about The West Wing, for the Wing-nuts among us. Mostly contract and back-scene stories, but I’d love to get a great behind the scenes book about that series. They all thought they would last 8 episodes and then it became a juggernaut. What would that do to a cast of relative unknowns (except for Martin Sheen and Lowe) and their egos? Somebody without a stake needs to write that book for me, stat.

The other book I want to read is about Darryl Hannah. Lowe talks about the night he met her and she had on a fairy suit with wings (at 19) and didn’t sleep with him because she was saving herself for Jackson Browne, whom she hadn’t yet met. Some other biography, probably one of JFK, Jr., talks about her carrying around a teddy bear at a dinner party. In her twenties. I think she might be an interested subject or the whole book might be two lines. Darryl Hannah is beautiful and rich. And a whack-job.