I read Paul Feig's Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence and Superstud, or How I Became a 24-Year-Old Virgin back-to-back, shortly after watching Judd Apatow's The Forty Year Old Virgin. I am now convinced of one thing: When it came to the show Freaks and Geeks, I'm thinking that Feig was writing allllll the "geeks" stuff from experience. That episode with the Parisian night suit? Uncomfortably close to an incident in Kick Me. Every awkward interaction between Sam Weir and Cindy Sanders? Informed by several cringe-worthy chapters in Superstud.
(However, we should all be grateful Freaks and Geeks was cancelled before anyone could get around to attempting something Feig describes in excruciating detail in the third-to-last chapter of Superstud.)
Reading these books was a sweet, prickly experience: I lost count of the number of times I flashed back to specific, awful moments in my own career as a junior dork. What ultimately carried me -- and carries the books -- is the author's awareness of how freakin' absurd a lot of growing up is, and how all we need to do is get through it. Feig is an eminently empathetic narrator. I cringed every time fate kicked him in the teeth -- and I cheered both his robust sense of humor and his resilient optimism.
Of course, then I went and read about p0rn. Lots and lots and lots and lots of p0rn. So much p0rn, in fact, that I had nightmares about R0n J3r3my all weekend.
I still say Legs McNeil's The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry is totally worth reading.
Like McNeil's other awesome narrative, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, this book collects a cast of dozens, traces a controversial subculture from its beginnings to its mainstream commercialization to its current state, and weaves a story from other people's words.
It's this last feature I find absolutely amazing: I am delighted when Studs Terkel does it, but in either of McNeil's books, it goes to a whole new level. I love that McNeil puts other people's words in a narrative order that lets you get a grasp on the bare bones of an event, gives you multiple perspectives, then forces you to make up your own mind about what really happened. The immediacy you get from reading first-person interviews is incredibly illuminating; it illustrates how controversies erupt into existence, and how all the dissenting edges are rubbed off a conventional narrative in the telling and retelling.
(And from an editing perspective: the ability to sift through countless interviews, put them in chronological and thematic order, fact-check them, then excerpt and rearrange for maximum narrative impact ... I drop to my knees in reverence for anyone who can do that well.)
As for the contents of the book itself. If asked to sum them up in one sentence, I'd say: "It's like Boogie Nights, except without the preachy moralizing parts." You get an idea of why people get into the business, what it's like to be making these movies, what the occupational hazards are, and how the business has changed since the 1980s. Epidemiological nerd that I am, the chapters on how the adult industry dealt with HIV were the most interesting to me personally. However, the Mitchell Brothers stuff also fascinated me, what with the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater being a local landmark and all.
Just don't do what I did, which is read nothing but this book for two days straight. It's totally absorbing, but by the end of it, I was left with exactly the opposite feeling I had after finishing Feig's two books. Feig gives you the idea that you'll survive no matter what libido-fueled stupidity you get yourself into; McNeil's book reports otherwise.
I loved Please Kill Me too. I found the style to be absolutely riveting. The only other book I've found that uses interviews in the same way is Live from New York by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller. It's a completely fascinating look at Saturday Night Live, and I'd definitely recommend it.
Posted by: Alice | 2006.06.14 at 05:25
Me too! I got it for Christmas in 2002, and happily devoured it over the next day or two. I wrote a review of it -- comparing and contrasting to another SNL book in our library, _Saturday Night: A Backstage History of "Saturday Night Live" -- for Teevee over three years ago. You can find the review here.
Posted by: Lisa | 2006.06.14 at 07:54
Yep, I read (devoured) both of Paul Feig's books and thought, "No WONDER Freaks and Geeks seemed so authentic!"
Posted by: Emilie | 2006.06.14 at 11:31
Heh...I just picked up "The Other Hollywood" yesterday at the library. I certainly wish I would have seen your warning about not reading that and nothing else for two days straight. I'm about 1/2 way through (it's a fast read, no?) and...yeah. Your warning stands true.
Posted by: silene | 2006.06.14 at 13:26
Good reviews of the SNL books, Lisa!
I'm off to buy the Saturday Night book now - Amazon absolutely loves me this week!
Posted by: Alice | 2006.06.15 at 04:05
Yeah, on a lot of the commentary tracks on the F&G DVDs, they (writers, cast members, Judd Apatow--everyone, basically) really rib Feig about taking most of Sam's storylines from his own adolescence, although they also add that he was significantly older when a lot of the things happen. The commentaries are pretty rad--and there are like, 4,000 of them. Highly recommended.
Posted by: liz | 2006.06.15 at 12:15