Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL from Someone Who Was There

by Tom Davis Narrated by Tom Davis

Overview

Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss is a seriously funny, offbeat, and irreverent memoir that chronicles the early days of Saturday Night Live and features some of its greatest personalities-Al Franken, Lorne Michaels, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Michael O'Donoghue, and Chris Farley. Written by Tom Davis, an original SNL writer and comedy partner of Al Franken, Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss is the story of coming of age in the 1960s and a spellbinding account of the birth and rise of one of television's most celebrated shows. Davis's memoir is filled with wry, candid anecdotes about his days at Saturday Night Live and his friendship with its stars. But it is also the story of Davis's own coming of age-escaping his conservative roots in suburban Minneapolis, traveling the world, and reveling in the hippie culture of 1960s San Francisco. The author finds the highs and lows of his own career to be a hilarious counterpoint to the meteoric rise of SNL and his friends' growing celebrity. Hysterical, lucid, and wise, Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss is a free-spirited, unrepentant romp through an era of sex, drugs, and comedy.

Editorial Reviews

This often hilarious memoir weaves together the coming-of-age stories of a comedy writer and the television institution he helped spawn. When Saturday Night Live first hit the airwaves, Gerald Ford was president. No one expected it to run for decades; least of all, footloose midwestern hippie and cutup Tom Davis. Perhaps best remembered today as the other half of the Franken & Davis comedy team, Davis won four Emmy Awards during the '70s, but his free-spirited 39 Years of Short-Term Memory Loss jogs through the honors, lingering instead on his interactions with Lorne Michaels, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, and Chris Farley.

Kirkus Reviews

A disappointing memoir from four-time Emmy winner Davis on his transgressive life and high times as an original writer with Saturday Night Live. Much of this reads like a prototypical countercultural/showbiz autobiography: the upbringing in suburban Minnesota with a conservative father; the Jimi Hendrix concert that changed his life; obligatory drug-fueled hijinks in San Francisco and India; narrow scrapes with the law; friendships with Timothy Leary and Jerry Garcia. How could this recounting, a veritable miracle of memory given all the pot, LSD, coke, hashish and heroin consumed along the way, even occur? Davis-now rehabbed after three years in a methadone program in the mid-'90s-poses this question himself, noting what happened after he and fellow SNL writer Michael O'Donoghue snorted heroin on the way to John Belushi's funeral: "My memory of the event is so flawed that it demonstrates how I sublimated this catastrophe." Readers will grasp at anything, no matter how nasty or unspecific, to break the consistent deadpan delivery of these events, such as the author's excoriation of short-lived SNL regulars Anthony Michael Hall and Robert Downey Jr. for behaving "like school bullies with a substitute teacher." Although Davis discusses the highs and lows of his longtime friendship with entertainer-politician Al Franken-from their debut as stand-up comics at Dudley Riggs Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis through their hiring as SNL writers in July 1975-he is oddly silent on why they reconciled after an acrimonious breakup of their partnership in 1990. Twelve years with SNL provided countless stories but little perspective on its manic environment, nor on the creation of his memorable,censor-baiting skits (several are reproduced verbatim). Moreover, while Davis relates how Lorne Michaels forced his 1994 departure from the show, he never analyzes how the "brilliant" producer molded it into a pop-culture institution. For a truly reflective, present-at-the-creation look at the long-running weekend mainstay, turn to Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller's Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (2002).

Entertainment Weekly

Funny, spiky, and twistedly entertaining.”

From the Publisher

"Funny, spiky, and twistedly entertaining.... B+." ---Entertainment Weekly

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170714858
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	03/23/2009
Edition description:	Unabridged

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