The border between real life and the movies seems to cry out for comic treatment, which may be why Patton Oswalt's Silver Screen Fiend scores so highly. It helps, of course, if you have a set of synapses like a pinball machine and a prose style to match…Oswalt's writing gives off the hallucinogenic shimmer of the true obsessive, packing all the sharpness and bite of his stand-up…The world's brain is lucky to have Oswalt knocking around in there, making connections, sparking those synapses, lighting us up.

03/23/2015
Veteran stand-up comedian and television actor Oswalt brings his quirky persona to the audio edition of his latest book. Oswalt recounts a four-year period as a young adult in the 1990s when he became obsessed with vintage movies and spent at least three nights a week at the famed New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Oswalt provides a conversational and confessional style of delivery familiar to fans of his stand-up act; he moves at a fast pace, never slowing down to allow time for listeners to digest all of his unapologetically esoteric references to cinema and the comedy scene. Yet that mixture of eccentricity and bravado is the essence of Oswalt’s appeal. A tribute to The Beverly Theater’s colorful owner and operator, the late Sherman Torgan, is especially memorable, as Oswalt vividly recites a list of never-made films that he wishes Torgan could view as a reward in the afterlife. The audiobook also includes a bonus PDF with photos and a helpful index detailing all of Oswalt’s movie-going during his addiction period. A Scribner hardcover. (Jan.)

02/02/2015
In this dynamic memoir, comedian and author Patton Oswald writes of his obsessive four-year love affair with film. Arriving in LA to chase his dream of standup stardom, Oswalt was seduced by films, from classic to contemporary, and spent four years racing from theater to theater to catch everything from latest blockbuster to Hammer retrospective. Oswalt's celluloid odyssey provides a framework for his education as an artist and human being. A brash suburbanite when he arrives on the West Coast, Oswalt endures one humiliation after another – bombing onstage in San Francisco, getting fired from MADtv – on his way to success, and still manages to keep his soul. Silver Screen Fiend serves as a sort-of a sequel to a previous memoir (Zombie Spaceship Wasteland). Two memoirs in quick succession from a, relatively, young man might raise doubts but Oswalt's unique voice and offbeat conceits save him from any danger of a sophomore slump. While he does indulge in the typical Hollywood smoke blowing – every peer is a genius! Prodigy! Seventh Wonder! – his sardonic self-awareness and fascination with the minutiae of film history are seductive. Oswalt's sentences crackle with energy and humor; this stand-up comic is also a sit-down one. (Jan.)

Silver Screen Fiend is both a love letter to artistic obsession and string of caution tape around it. Patton describes the ecstatic demands of the arts (in this case, Stand-up and Film) with insight, fond pity, and unfailing humor. This is a book for anyone who strives to be great, or is bored in an airport.

"[Oswalt has] a set of synapses like a pinball machine and a prose style to match....Oswalt's writing gives off the hallucinogenic shimmer of the true obsessive, packing all the sharpness and bite of his stand-up."

"Hilarious.... [Silver Screen Fiend] shows Oswalt's maturity as a writer and a thinker."

Oswalt is a great conveyer of his real-life (and reel-life) experiences....great insider stuff."

Oswalt's prose is sparkling.... A coming-of middle-age meditation, Oswalt's homage to films is both hilarious and heartfelt."

"Vivid and funny."

"Anyone who loves movies...will be better for reading this enjoyable and funny memoir."

"A funny and sentimental read.... deep, passionate, and personal."

Patton Oswalt is one of the most brilliant comedy minds of a generation. This book confirms it.

"Entertaining and maniacally informative."

"Oswalt is...a formidable storyteller....A love song to the silver screen."

"Immediate and vital... [Silver Screen Fiend is] enough to make any reader seek out the many films that made him hibernate in the first place.

"Clever and readable...Oswalt’s encyclopedic knowledge and frothing enthusiasm for films (from sleek noir classics, to gory B movies, to cliche-riddled independents,to big empty blockbusters) is relentlessly present, whirringin the background like a projector."

"Smart and pointed. [Oswalt] is a colorful writer."

"I loved this book. It feels like a great one sided conversation from your funniest friend. It made me feel less alone in the precious hours I read it. But now it's gone and I have nothing."

"A must for fans of comedy and film."

Oswalt's prose is sparkling.... A coming-of middle-age meditation, Oswalt's homage to films is both hilarious and heartfelt."

05/01/2015
Stand-up comedian, writer, and actor Oswalt reviews pivotal moments in his career in this memoir where he uses his (former) obsession with movies as a framing device for telling vignettes of his early work. Stories include performing stand-up comedy at the Largo, writing sketches for Mad TV, and his first acting job as an extra in the hilariously bad movie Down Periscope. Oswalt's writing style is clear and passionate, but he occasionally drifts into lyric prose and heavy-handed art metaphors that are better suited to print than the spoken word. The author does a good job of narrating his book, smoothly incorporating footnotes and side notes in an energetic, conversational style. VERDICT Although Oswalt is a gifted comedian, his stories here are moderately enjoyable without being funny; film buffs will enjoy the obsessive descriptions of cult film moments, while Oswalt's fans will enjoy the peek into his days as an up-and-coming L.A. performer.—Cliff Landis, Georgia State Univ. Lib., Atlanta

01/01/2015
Comedian and performer Oswalt (Zombie Spaceship Wasteland) has come up with another delightful, easy-to-read, and entertaining book, focusing on his years as an obsessive film buff when he was first starting out in Los Angeles. He recounts how his movie addiction intertwined and influenced his stand-up comedy, his writing, his acting career, and his personal life. The many funny stories include instances when he was performing comedy and someone thought it was an AA meeting and when he tried to do live readings of the Jerry Lewis movie script The Day the Clown Cried and received a cease-and-desist order. His film obesssion began to taper off after he viewed George Lucas's The Phantom Menace, about which his brother said, "This is like watching C-SPAN but everyone's wearing monster masks." Oswalt finally got tired of watching a movie every night, but it is fun to hear about his experience. VERDICT Oswalt's humorous take on life makes this a very enjoyable book. Recommended for those who love comedy, autobiographies, movies, entertainment, humor, and stand-up. [See Prepub Alert, 7/7/14; five-city tour.]—Sally Bryant, Pepperdine Univ. Lib., Malibu, CA

Patton Oswalt's audiobook is a bit about movies—but more about the life and times of Patton Oswalt, as told by the comedian himself. In a light and breezy tone, he talks about films but frequently breaks off into tangents about himself and his childhood. Oswalt is an engaging fellow, the kind of nice guy you’d like to meet and listen to at a bar, but he could get tiresome fast. That's one reason this audiobook is just long enough. Oswalt’s passion for films runs deep, and he clues listeners in on a lot of great movies they may not know about. M.S. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

2014-09-30
A comedian's lively memoir about his movie addiction."All this filming isn't healthy." That's the advice given to the title character in Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960), and comedian and actor Oswalt (Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, 2011) would no doubt say the same goes for viewing. In this lively memoir, the author focuses on his early 1990s career, when time was divided between hustling the Los Angeles stand-up circuit and filling his head with every available movie. As he devoured film after film, he told himself that he was getting an education: "As I filled in each hole in my movie buff's incomplete knowledge, perhaps I was unlocking some secret level of skill I had as a comedian." Oswalt was also thinking of the Woody Allen career arc: Germinate in the hothouses of comedy clubs and movie houses and blossom as a brilliant auteur. Instead, watching movies took over, alienating him from life and people: "Don't they want to talk about the movies of the newly rediscovered French crime master Jean-Pierre Melville, or the Dogme 95 movement, or the dozen or so hidden references in the latest Tarantino film? Why are people so boring?" Oswalt tells a variety of interesting stories—of half-assing his way through his days as a MADtv sketch writer, pissing off Jerry Lewis, obsessing over his first tiny film role, hearing an aging actor bellow drunken commentary during a screening of Citizen Kane—but he doesn't go out of his way to score punch lines. Actually, he's on to something more serious, which is how movies can simultaneously inspire and stunt ambition. After all, who has time to write a screenplay when a remastered version of Dr. Strangelove starts in a few hours? A funny, insightful homage to movie love and an honest account of growing up, personally and professionally.