Rating: 
Summary: Really fills in the gaps on SNL's backstory
Review: What did some of the people below expect? Lists of every Lisa Loopner and Conehead sketch? This book is pure, bare-boned, black and white behind-the-scenes information you never heard in the fluff-books previously published. That's all I was looking for and that's exactly what I got...and more! First-hand accounts from performers, writers, producers and network suits make up at least 98% of the text. Having watched the show since day-one, I still learned things I never knew, even from the first few seasons. For the first time ever, I really feel like I've got a handle on Lorne Michaels--frankly, not someone I'd like to know personally AND the absolutely best man for the job. Someone ponders nears the end of the book that if Michaels ever leaves, the show would be cancelled in a heartbeat. After finishing the book, I'm inclined to fully agree. Some information is truly shocking--try to avoid the Chris Farley/pool cue story if you can!
Rating:
Summary: An Entertaining, Informative Look At A Cultural Landmark
Review: Much like one of its subject's shows, Live From New York clearly has its high points and its low points. The high points come from the fascinating collection of anecdotes and remembrances that are offered by a variety of people associated with the show. Sometimes, these stories are hilarious (like Damon Wayans' retelling of how he caused himself to get fired). Other times, they are heart wrenching (as in the case of the remembrances of Gilda Radner). But above all, the stories vividly covey the sense of manic energy and fun that comes across in each Saturday Night Live episode.The book's low points are clearly the contributions of the authors: Shales and Miller. One first has to question whether they should be given the title of "editors" instead of "authors", because very little of their own words are in the book. What words they do write are so fawning and uncritical that they threaten to turn the book into an unjustified hagiography. Yet, the interview material more than adequately offsets the weak contributions of the editors/authors. Fans who recently began watching the show will gain an appreciation for the struggles and the effort it took to get, and keep, Saturday Night Live on the air. Long time fans will find an entertaining and informative oral history that is sure to evoke memories. However, what both groups will discover is an appreciation for the talented people who have labored to maintain the show's status as a television comedy standard. By focusing on the human side of the story, Live From New York turns out to be a solid chronicle of this television icon.
Rating: 
Summary: The literary equivalent of Lazy Man's Lobster.
Review: Does the phrase quick and dirty mean anything to you? Well, on a number of levels it describes this massive, stream of consciousness tome that, despite its prodigious length, reads as quickly as a bag of street vendor caramel corn (can't you just smell it!), and leaves you feel just about as queasy two thirds of the way through. Don't thank the authors for much. All they did was cut and paste snippets from interviews with people associated with the show, loosely organizing the tome by bundles of years. I heard Tom Shales in an interview suggest that this format--unending verbatim quotes from cast members, writers, producers, network executives, and hosts--was somehow carefully arrived at to accomplish the task at hand. If that is true--and I highly doubt it--their thinking processes must have been affected by ink vapors. Lots of ink vapors. This book really answers the question: What book would two extremely unmotivated and uninsightful people with a tape recorder and a stream of narcissistic interviewees put together with the chief objective being work as little as possible? But despite the obvious laziness of the authors, what fascinates about this book is the bizarre and curious characters that inhabited (and continue to inhabit) the Saturday Night Live universe. There is nothing jaw dropping here. A lot of it is People magazine-style trash, with a sprinkling of R-rated snippets for good--or not so good--measure. (I did not need to know that Milton Berle liked to show off his "anaconda.") While you do learn about the show and its ups and downs, you also get glimpses into what may be the real personas behind many popular stars, and just how vain, egotistical, and shallow they may really be. (Mike Myers and Fred Silverman come off as perhaps the biggest blowhards of all the male stars (what normal person uses the word "homage" to describe their work?), but neither even comes close to the balloon-headed arrogance which suffuses from the words of Janeane Garofalo and Jan Hooks.) You also get a glimpse into the vain, egotistical, and seedy world of the writers, too. Some of them are worse than the performers. (The one writer who left the most offensive stench for me was Fred Wolf. He's both arrogant and places the most lip-holds on Lorne Michael's proverbial rectum. It's also clear that he drips with envy for the stars, missing no opportunity to make himself appear superior.) Of course, there are people who acquit themselves well, including the suprisingly gracious and insightful Alec Baldwin, Victoria Jackson, Kevin Nealon, Will Ferrell, and Dana Carvey. The other part of the book that was enormously disconcerting was the near canonization of Gilda Radner. She sounded like a decent, kindhearted person. But against the backdrop of the entertainment industry revealed in this book, she really is, by comparison, Mother Theresa.
Rating:
Summary: Thorough account of 27+ years
Review: Having been exposed to a lot of information on the show via television, articles, and the detailed book that came out in the 1980s, a lot of the information had been heard before. However, I think the best thing about this book is how it provides that information for those who did not know, but also provides different perspectives from those who were around for the various eras.
* Most SNL information, like the repeats on E! and Comedy Central, tend to focus only on the pre-1980 and post-1984 years, with Michaels at the helm. It was interesting to hear information about what the show was like during the other periods.
* In particular, I liked hearing from the people that aren't regularly heard from on the subject and perhaps did not have the best fit with the format: Harry Shearer, Janeane Garofalo, Tim Kazurinski, Chris Elliott. Their words provided a refreshing change of pace from the "hallowed institution" language one most often hears.
* "Different perspectives" are also expressed when recalling SNL's legendary "[white] boy's club" mentality. You will be quite curious as to how the same situation was read differently by each individual (and surprised as to who was "for" and "against"). In my opinion, that is the reason to buy this book - everything else you know already.
Rating:
Summary: Frustrating Exercise in Reading
Review: It seems these days that the hip thing to do in writing historical accounts of modern events where many of the characters involved are still alive, is by compiling the actual words of said characters into a compendium of interviews. In a way this is literature's version of the current Reality TV phenomenon- straight from the horses' mouths with no embellishments or fictionalization by the author. This method has been proven very attractive and potent in various books. But it is a dangerous method that poses a problem if abused or lazily brandished about. Case in point: This book. First off, the Prologue. Written in a very flowery style that over-describes everything ad nauseum, it is a very frustrating exercise in poor writing style, featuring incredibly poor sentence structure and awkward phrasing. It is a dangerous sign of things to come. And in fact, the authors comments between inteview passages continue the trend of awkwardly flowery text. Don't get me wrong, there is a ton of interesting info, anecdotes and tidbits in this book. But everything is so chaotically organized and structured that there is no real coherent fluidity to the story. Occasionally the comments of various people are interrelated, many times not. One never knows when a new subject is being touched on until one is half way through the next interviewee's comments. Dear authors: How about some title headings when the subject is about to change? The haphazard nature of the book is terribly distracting. Another issue: Too much about the writers and not enough about the actors. Also, the photos leave something to be desired - ther e should easily have been many more photo sections than only one. But perhaps the biggest problem with this book is the incessant lionizing and worshipping of the SNL deity Lorne Michaels. It almost seems that this book's true intention is to let everone know what a genius Lorne is for creating this show, when in reality it was just right place, right time, right idea. To constantly, on page after page, inform about all the amazing parties he has had, and famous people he has hung out with, and how people have feared him, and kissed his shoes, in the end only hurts the book. The writer's seem to have trouble with an objective view of SNL and its creators. This could have been so much better written and organized. On top of that, the amount of text in the book does not justify its monstrous hard cover size or price. The best book on SNL, despite its age (it covers the first 10 years), remains A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live by Hill and Weingrad. Seek it out on ebay.
Rating:
Summary: Dive in
Review: Personally, I think the Doug Hill/Jeff Weingrad book "Saturday Night" gives a much more detailed, much clearer picture of how SNL came together and what it meant as a television staple. That book ends, unfortunately, in the 80's and, thus, can't offer perspective on everything that came since; but it's chronicling of the early days and it's portrait of Lorne Michaels is much more detailed and probably more honest. NEVERTHELESS... with "Live From New York," Tom Shales & J.A. Miller have carved up a fun, fascinating read. You can open the pages to any point and find some interesting bit of gossip or history. When it hits trade paperback it will be a required addition to any pop culture fan's bathroom bookshelf.
Rating: 
Summary: A superb overview of an American tradition
Review: Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller have, with "Live from New York," provided the reading public with an utterly fascinating account of "Saturday Night Live." This groundbreaking program electrified the country when it first appeared in 1975, combining as it did (and still does) hilarious jokes, political commentary, overt bad taste, up-to-the-minute music and superb talent. Shales and Miller have interviewed practically everyone who ever had anything to do with the show, from creator Lorne Michaels to the stars to the guest hosts, writers and musical guests. We see the hatching of particularly well-known skits like the Czech "wild and crazy" brothers played by Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray's loopy "nerds" couple, Belushi's Marlon Brando impression, right on up through Eddie Murphy's linguistically-challenged Buckwheat, Joe Piscopo's self-satisfied Frank Sinatra, Molly Shannon's nervy Mary Katherine Gallagher, and Julia Sweeney's beloved hermaphroditic "Pat." They're all here and then some, and while that's a lot of fun, what is almost better are the behind-the-scenes goings-on. The account of the writers dying with laughter while they write Buckwheat's rendition of Lionel Richie's "Three Times a Lady" is alone going to make most readers happy ("Unz, tice, fee times a nady" went the immortal lyrics). Writer and performer Al Franken's account of his daughter's baby shower (where he showed up with a doll, proceeded to smash the doll on the coffee table, and scared to death every guest who thought the doll was, in fact, the sleeping baby) is priceless. There are sadnesses, too, harkening back to the old adage about people in pain producing the best comedy. We see in-depth the problems of John Belushi and Chris Farley, and get chills reading about the untimely demise (at his wife's hand) of the brilliant Phil Hartman. We squirm at the unhappy tenures of both Harry Shearer and Janeane Garofalo, both of whom were a bad fit with SNL's culture (Garofalo seems still puzzled and unhappy with her experience, while Shearer has a light touch--when relating that he left for "creative differences," he says, "Yeah, I was creative and they were different"). The only problem with the book--and it is rather a big one--is that Eddie Murphy refused to be interviewed for its pages. That this colossal talent's voice is missing from the book means we get only everyone else's perspective on him. It's instructive, but it would have made the book utterly complete had we had Murphy's own recollections of his 1980s stint on the show. Still, this is a wonderfully written (and judiciously edited) book.
Rating: 
Summary: Love It or Hate It
Review: I try to remain neutral about this topic, because of the way that SNL has changed over the years. What was once a dynamo on Saturday night and what changed it to a mediocre program, to one that is still trying to find itself, given the politics of the Hollywood games and players. This is essentially an oral history of the groundbreaking show from the early days to the present. Nearly 600 pages of interviews from the writers and comedians who made the show what it is, and the book includes gossip as well as tributes to deceased cast members like
Belushi, Farley and Hartman. A lot of crude language and anecdotes. I don't know what they're there. Maybe someone thought it was funny, but it detracts from the overall book.
Rating:
Summary: A must for the cultural observer
Review: I loved this book. When I saw the 'first-person reminiscences' format I didn't think I'd be able to deal with it. But after reading just a few pages, I was hooked. If you like gossip, you'll like this book. With the exception of Eddie Murphy, every actor, writer, guest host, producer, and network executive involved with the show cooperated in sharing his or her thoughts about a television program that has profoundly affected our society. And, like him or loath him, Lorne Michaels might be the most influential cultural arbiter of the last quarter century.
Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting Read
Review: Having been a fan of SNL from the begining I found this book fascinating. SNL began as a cultural phenomenon, and although it has lost it's cutting edge impact over the years it remains a comic institution. The anecdotes of egos, intrigue, politics, genius and endless toil have heightened my appreciation of the show.
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