Almost Interesting

There are a few different approaches to comedy memoirs. You can go with the actual story of your life (with jokes), a la Amy Poehler: This requires you to a) have an interesting life, and b) be funny. You can try for the structured set approach: You set the book up as a connected strand of narratives, each one with its own theme, and riff as you go. This is the most common approach, at least as practiced successfully: Patton Oswalt's Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, Jim Gaffigan's Dad Is Fat and Tina Fey's Bossypants.

All of this is by way of saying that David Spade could have really used a thoughtful approach here. The book's a bit schizophrenic: The first part is a pretty straightforward narrative of his life coming up in comedy. It's not peppered full of jokes, but memoirs don't need to be — it's about the person's life, and in Spade's case that life is worth reading about.

He of course covers Saturday Night Live, where most people know him from, and it's a worthwhile addition to the numerous full books that have been written about the show from Studio 6H. He also touches a bit on his most-well-known partner, Chris Farley, which I mention only because I've read him in other places talking about the emotional bond between the two. There's plenty of Farley information (with new stories), but Spade doesn't delve as deep into himself and his own feelings as he did in the beginning, so it winds up feeling a little bit like fanservice. Which is understandable — maybe he didn't want to linger too much on Farley (whether because of genuine emotion or not wanting to be eternally Farley's sidekick is immaterial) yet knew there would be an expectation for it — but it's noticeable, nonetheless.

But then it gets weird. We hear a genuinely terrifying about attempted murder, a pretty egregious theft by his housekeeper and ... Spade's thoughts on women? The general reader might not know it, but Spade possess a fairly sizable filmography post-Farley: Joe Dirt, Joe Dirt 2, Grown-Upses, Just Shoot Me, Emperor's New Groove, Benchwarmers, Dickie Roberts ... These get name-checks, at best. I'm not saying a memoir has to include absolutely everything that's ever happened (that's what the sequel's for!), but in this case the latter half of the book is just random stories. Personally, I would have much preferred jettisoning it entirely (except where it made sense in the narrative of his life) and gotten more about his work rather than what sounds like rehashed standup material.

A surprisingly good book. I liked this comedy autobio more than many other comedy bio books out there. Really solid work.

Spade knows he's not everyone's cup of tea, and it's important to note the difference between the Spade you see on TV and in movies, and the real guy who is nothing like his stage persona. It was nice to hear the stories about Farley and Spade's time on SNL.

He doesn't really touch on much about Sandler, though. Found that a little strange.

Get the audiobook. Worth a listen.