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A review by thefriedone
Silver Screen Fiend: Learning about Life from an Addiction to Film by Patton Oswalt
3.0
Quick, fun read.
I was pleasantly surprised by the history of Patton's progress in stand-up here. Those parts were definitely the most interesting to me. I liked his idea of using Van Gogh's The Night Cafe (a turning point in the artist's career/life) to pinpoint his own "Night Cafes" - venues that helped him evolve with his stand-up and/or made him realize changes that he needed to make in his life. Each of those places (mostly stand-up venues and theaters) had an impact on his career and his life because of their unique audiences, standards, cliques, etc.
In terms of the film "addiction" I was left underwhelmed. The fact that he was still honing his stand-up craft, holding down a comedy writing gig, etc. while "addicted" to theater-going weakened the impression that those years were such a dark time in his life. He is/was certainly a cinephile and had a compulsion to check off films from his Five Film Books more for completion than enjoyment. There's no denying film had a large impact on his life but perhaps less so than we're led to believe from the title or synopsis.
Overall it's a decent memoir chock full of fun anecdotes about his burgeoning stand-up career and film trivia from a formative four-year period in the mid-late 90s.
I was pleasantly surprised by the history of Patton's progress in stand-up here. Those parts were definitely the most interesting to me. I liked his idea of using Van Gogh's The Night Cafe (a turning point in the artist's career/life) to pinpoint his own "Night Cafes" - venues that helped him evolve with his stand-up and/or made him realize changes that he needed to make in his life. Each of those places (mostly stand-up venues and theaters) had an impact on his career and his life because of their unique audiences, standards, cliques, etc.
In terms of the film "addiction" I was left underwhelmed. The fact that he was still honing his stand-up craft, holding down a comedy writing gig, etc. while "addicted" to theater-going weakened the impression that those years were such a dark time in his life. He is/was certainly a cinephile and had a compulsion to check off films from his Five Film Books more for completion than enjoyment. There's no denying film had a large impact on his life but perhaps less so than we're led to believe from the title or synopsis.
Overall it's a decent memoir chock full of fun anecdotes about his burgeoning stand-up career and film trivia from a formative four-year period in the mid-late 90s.