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

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.

I get a strong "loser" vibe from this, which is unfortunate, because I used to think he was funny. Then he went off the deep end, but this book makes it obvious in retrospect that that's exactly what would happen. A two-faced man full of piss and vinegar who LARPs as a "nice guy" (you know the type). It came out before his first wife's death, whom he very quickly replaced. It works as a kind of psychological study, and an insight into everything wrong with the Hollywood mindset.

This is written by from the perspective of someone who has achieved a level of enlightenment, by someone who clearly hasn't. What it amounts to is a guy who hates his former self, but hasn't seemed to learn about life ... just addiction ... from that self.

There are some great stories about stand ups and the business in here, and some nice movie talk, nestled in among judgey, go-nowhere assertions that his current self is where it's at.

I wonder how the book would read if he'd made less money or hadn't had a kid.

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 show more enjoyed it a lot and I hope there's a sequel. show less

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, Bergman, Truffaut, Kurosawa and Fellini, 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 show more 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. show less

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.

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.