Book Details
| Title: | The Second City Unscripted | |
| Author: | Mike Thomas | |
| Times Read: | 1 | |
| Last Read: | 12.10.10 |
Other Books Read By This Author (0)
| Date Read | Note |
| 12.10.10 | An oral history of The Second City theater and brand. It's hard not to directly compare this to Live from New York, the SNL oral history. Both big time comedy brands, a ton of SNL people were involved with Second City as well, most of Second City's big names became famous on SNL, etc. But the truth is, as books, Live from New York is like twice as long and a much higher profile so a direct comparison is pretty unfair. It's been a few years since I read the SNL book but my lasting memory of it was that it was very thorough and complete and really informed me of the SNL history and process. With this book, the history seems rushed and abbreviated and there's almost no talk of the process. I guess with SNL being a tv show that I've seen and Second City being live theater that I've not seen doesn't help, but I spent most of the book wondering what the theater was actually like and what kind of work these big names did while they were there. I got interesting incite about personalities and amusing anecdotes of the old days but no clue of the actual place or work. More pictures would help. They also... while the author got an impressive amount of people, the thing with that SNL book was that they got EVERYONE. A handful of big names are notably absent here(Bill Murray, Steve Carrell, Mike Myers, Tim Meadows) and are just talked about by other people than actually heard from. It's still a pretty good book though and I guess if I was especially interested in SCTV I could rent the DVDs and listen to the commentaries and whatnot or things like that. For someone curious about Second City (like me) it's a good resource and it's still pretty entertaining - i'm a sucker for these oral history interview books. I just wish it was more authoritative like that SNL book... |
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