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    Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film
    Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film
    Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film
    Audiobook4 hours

    Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film

    Written by Patton Oswalt

    Narrated by Patton Oswalt

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    The instant New York Times bestseller from author, comedian and actor Patton Oswalt, a “heartfelt and hilarious” (USA TODAY) memoir about coming of age as a performer during the late 1990s while obsessively watching classic films at a legendary theater in Los Angeles. “[Oswalt has] a set of synapses like a pinball machine and a prose style to match” (The New York Times).

    Between 1995 and 1999, Patton Oswalt lived with an unshakable addiction. It wasn’t drugs, alcohol, or sex: it was film. After moving to Los Angeles, Oswalt became a huge film buff (or as he calls it, a sprocket fiend), absorbing classics, cult hits, and new releases at the famous New Beverly Cinema. Silver screen celluloid became Patton’s life schoolbook, informing his notion of acting, writing, comedy, and relationships.

    Set in the nascent days of LA’s alternative comedy scene, Silver Screen Fiend chronicles Oswalt’s journey from fledgling stand-up comedian to self-assured sitcom actor, with the colorful New Beverly collective and a cast of now-notable young comedians supporting him all along the way. “Clever and readable...Oswalt’s encyclopedic knowledge and frothing enthusiasm for films (from sleek noir classics, to gory B movies, to cliché-riddled independents, to big empty blockbusters) is relentlessly present, whirring in the background like a projector” (The Boston Globe). More than a memoir, this is “a love song to the silver screen” (Paste Magazine).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJan 6, 2015
    ISBN9781442375147
    Author

    Patton Oswalt

    Patton Oswalt is the author of the New York Times bestseller Zombie Spaceship Wasteland. He has released four TV specials and four critically acclaimed comedy albums, including the Grammy-nominated My Weakness Is Strong. He put together the Comedians of Comedy tour and television series. Oswalt has also appeared on many television shows and in more than twenty films, including Young Adult, Big Fan, and Ratatouille. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

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    Reviews for Silver Screen Fiend

    4/5

    182 ratings17 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Oswalt's lucidly descriptive stories. Although some of the references were admittedly over my head having not seen all of the films he mentioned, I found it useful as a resource for a want-to-be film buff (in the larval stage of the obsession) like myself.
    • 5/5
      Funny well-written sometimes poignant memoir and ode to movies and the joys of creating and experiencing good art, writing, and standup comedy. Great fun and I took away a list of cool movies books and more to check out.
    • 5/5
      I’m a sprocket fiend so this book really resonated with me.
    • 4/5
      The second book in Patton Oswald's memoirs details his love of classic and cult films shown in arthouse theatre around LA as he established his career as a comic. Entertainingly read by the author.
    • 4/5
      I love movies. I love memoirs. I love Patton Oswalt. So I was a little nervous, reading the first three chapters of this book, because I couldn't get into it. And I really really wanted to. By the time I got to chapter 4, something clicked and I couldn't put it down. As someone who is easily lured by checklists, I appreciated Oswalt's last chapter, an illuminating epiphany of the risks we run when we enslave ourselves to checklists of any sort: "The engine of your life should be your LIFE." So glad I stuck with him until the end.
    • 3/5
      This is contractual obligation kinda stuff, but he's engaging enough that it doesn't really matter. A little gossipy but mostly kind rather than cruel. This was a perfect read for relaxing around the pool. Inconsequential fluff.
    • 5/5
      This book was rad.
    • 4/5
      I felt like this book was a love letter to film and an apology to Patton Oswalt's friends, family and colleagues who put up with him in his 20s. If you wish you could write letters to all those you ran over and disregarded at some point early in your life, then you will enjoy this book - even if you are not a true film fanatic. Beautifully written and lovingly performed by Oswalt (the audiobook). Short and sweet.
    • 4/5
      I have loved movies, since I was a kid, witnessing my own golden era of film, late 60s to mid-70s, in all it's celluloid glory. In my early thirties, thanks to a few film buff friends, I decided to get more serious about film, by putting myself through my own little film school, in the late 80s and through the 90s, by watching hundreds of movies, from every niche and every era. I absorbed and studied movies, through the silent years, the great Warner Brothers films of the 30s, Capra, Ford, Hitchcock, Kazan, film noir and then onto foreign film, which opened so many decades of beauty and wonder. All that said, I can really relate to Silver Screen Fiend. Starting in '95 and ending in '99, Patton Oswalt became addicted to film, obsessively watching hundreds of films and this coincided with his own rise in comedy, which he credits as influencing his own creative drive to succeed. I did not know Oswalt, through his comedy, (I did not watch much stand-up during this time. I must have been busy raising a family and watching movies) but I had recognized him through his film work.This is a solid memoir. Smart and funny and the audio with Patton narrating is a joy to hear.
    • 4/5
      Except for the last third of the book, I enjoyed this very much.
    • 4/5
      I was pleasantly surprised by this life-lessons memoir, which was modestly expressed and so different from the movie-review compendium I was expecting. About two-thirds of the book centers on movies, and you're highly advised to have IMDB or another good film guide at your side, because Oswalt tosses off fascinating titles like a sparkler throws sparks. One quarter of the book is a surprising insider's look at the world of comedy, from entry-level to the various double-edged flavors of success, with varied hilarious and cautionary tales told like stories on The Moth. The rest consists of fairly subtle and self-deprecating bits of wisdom that it would be easy to overlook. Like Oswalt himself, this book is short and contains depths. I enjoyed it a lot and I hope there's a sequel.
    • 3/5
      Incredibly short and not always on topic. Epilogue 1 is strictly for film nuts.
    • 2/5
      Repetitive and grating, I expected more from this one. I adore movies, but it's hard to imagine a life where someone places their importance above anything else.
    • 3/5
      I picked this book up thinking it was going to be about movies, and it is. However, it's a whole lot more: a coming of age story, a discourse on modern stand-up comedy and observations about various obsessions over the author's life.Patton Oswalt is an edgy comic, an actor and also a screenwriter and this book is like peering into a diary written by someone who has OCD and also on drugs. In a stream of consciousness style, Oswalt talks about breaking into the big time stand-up comedy world as well as the larger world of show business all while he is obsessively immersing himself into movies, watching sometimes as many as five or six per day. At times his writing is a bit too frenetic, but mostly it's absorbing and very, very funny.
    • 4/5
      A memoir about Oswalt's start and career in stand-up, wound through with his obsession with seeing (mostly) old movie at the rep theaters in L.A. He discusses great films, like "Sunset Boulevard", a weekend Hammer movie binge, and the horrible film that finally broke him of his several-a-week movie diet. This is a fun book, even if it isn't written as a comedic autobiography, but when he describes hearing actor Lawrence Tierney mumbling behind him during "Citizen Kane", or a long ago acquaintance twisting his arm to help him get a t.v. show, it's funny.
    • 4/5
      Terrific stuff. Vivid, touching, funny, full of great little stories and anecdotes about being a comic in LA in the mid-nineties.

      I hope he writes a few more of these memoirs, I'll read them all.


    • 4/5
      Excellent, entertaining book for fans of comedy and movies. Thoroughly enjoyable!