God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F***ed: Misadventures With Fake Noses, Funny Accents, Addiction, And Saturday Night Live (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
This was meant to be my guilty pleasure reading for the holiday season, but it turned out to be a pretty heavy read. Darrell Hammond is the talented impressionist who was featured on Saturday Night Live for 14 seasons and is best known for his take on Bill Clinton (although I'm partial to his Al Gore and Donald Trump impressions). Mr. Hammond is brutally honest and pulls no punches in discussing his decades-long struggle with severe mental illness and substance abuse. His descriptions of self-mutilation and embarrassing drunken episodes are tough to read (and must have been hell to write) but Hammond tells the tale clear-eyed and clinically and thats the problem with this book. The tale of his deeds is awful, but its told almost from the point of view of an observer. Hammond writes "then this happened, then this terrible thing happened, then I did this awful thing..." and although it is fascinating (like watching a slow-motion car wreck), I never felt connected to the writer or what his state of mind/mood was during any of the worst of what happened. The closest I think Hammond came to bringing me into the story was his description of being arrested in Freeport, The Bahamas and having to spend 3 harrowing days in a Caribbean jail. There is a clear difference in writing style between Hammond's description of his sun-filled childhood days playing baseball in Florida and his darker adulthood. Hammond writes about his childhood in a way that brings the reader right down to the playing field where I felt like I was watching Hammond and his buddies playing baseball - I could smell the ocean breeze and feel the sand and salty air. When the story moves forward, the descriptions become much less colored and much more monotone and dull. Perhaps it was a defensive mechanism and the only way that Hammond could put the painful words on paper - whatever the reason, it really cripples the book. Hammond spends a great deal of time writing about Saturday Night Live and the process that goes into creating that show every week. It is a great deal of fun to get a glimpse behind-the-scenes but I wish Hammond would be a little less charitable with his descriptions of guests and cast members. I can't believe that in 14 years of doing the show, Hammond doesn't have any real dirt to share. He simply doesn't have any axe to grind at all with regards to SNL, which is just tough to accept. Hammond also doesn't go too in depth into any of the psychoanalytic process that eventually makes him better. I won't say that he is "well" because even he admits that there are good days and bad days, but he is sober and working and continues to battle his demons and for the time being seems to be winning the war. The book describes an intelligent, hard-working, sensitive and gifted but badly damaged man who is admirable if for nothing else, his tenacity and underlying goodness. If you watched SNL in the late 90s, you likely saw Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton or a number of other characters, including Ted Koppel, Phil Donahue, and everyone's favorite Trebek-mother-bagging Sean Connery. Like many SNL cast members before him, Hammond has his demons. A violent, traumatic childhood resulted in an addicted, alcoholic adulthood that had him in and out of rehabilitation facilities, psych wards, and emergency rooms. He writes frankly about strategically carving up his arms with razor blades in an effort to cope with his PTSD. Hammond is obviously comfortable sharing about his young love of baseball, his memories at SNL, and his intense work ethic (he says he often went to Caroline's to perform at 1:30am on Saturday nights, after SNL--jeezus!). But his wife and daughter (who, I imagine, have a very different perspective on his behavior) are mentioned only fleetingly. While intense and disturbing at times, this book still managed to make me laugh. I also learned that Hammond is synesthetic (he hears the voices he impersonates as colors).
What do You think about God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F***ed: Misadventures With Fake Noses, Funny Accents, Addiction, And Saturday Night Live (2011)?
Great insight on how Saturday Night works and a couragous telling of his life story.
—nesie
I'd give this a 3 1/2, but not a full 4 stars.
—Samueloni
Loved it...dark at times but brilliant
—aabbottswood
