Customer Reviews

The Comedy Writer

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

this was such a great book.....you have got to read it....it is 10 times better than his films....which were great too....another book i would highly recommend to you is Youth In Revolt, by CD Payne....it is along the same lines as Comedy writer and maybe even better.

I have to admit, when I decided to start this book, my expectations were not at an all time high. Perhaps my subsequent delight with such wonderful novel clouds my opinion a little, but five stars is five stars and I loved this book.

Farrelly is best known as a successful screenwriter and director of such over-the-top comedies as There's Something About Mary and Kingpin. Now I really enjoyed both of those movies (as well as Dumb and Dumber), but they are hardly the stuff of a brilliant story-teller.

Or are they?

Having recently re-watched all three of Mr. Farrelly's films, one thing stands out beyond all else. The stories themselves are the most important thing. Sure, sure, you can write their stuff off as "gross-out" comedy, but look at the plots. A could-have been's life stops mattering because of one childhood mistake, something it takes a lifetime of humilation to get past. A man embarrasses himself on prom night and spends the next ten years mourning that one day when his whole life could have been turned around. In The Comedy Writer, there is a similar fixation with that one moment in time that has shaped a life. Something bad or sad or mortifying happened and now the person has become set on a path, no way out, this is who he has become. The Comedy Writer deals, much the way There's Something About Mary and Kingpin do, with a loser's effort to make something of himself--no matter what. It's not like he can get any lower--take the risk.

This novel has a depth and emotional resonance that might come as a surprise. It is dark and tragic in spots, light and silly elsewhere, with wonderful Hollywood dialogue and a perfectly timed first person narration. More than anything else, perhaps, if you are an aspiring young writer (or filmmaker) this book will speak truths you may already know, but try hard to supress. Deal with it. This work can even inspire you to continue

I believe it was the great, beloved, and much missed Dorothy Parker who once said, "Hollywood -- its like paradise with a lobotomy." Its a thesis that has since been explored in several satirical books concerning the American film industry but never with quite the wonderfully deft combination of pathos and vulgarity as in Peter Farrelly's autobiographical novel The Comedy Writer. The book tells the story of Henry Halloran who, much like Farrelly, is an Irish Catholic from Providence, Rhode Island who, recovering from a bad break-up, impulsively moves to Los Angeles to try to recreate himself as a script writer. Within his first few weeks in L.A., Halloran's life is changed when he sees a suicidal woman standing atop a skyscraper and, despite his efforts, fails to keep the woman from jumping. He writes an article about her death that serves as both his first big break but also leads to him living with the dead woman's sister, the psychotic Colleen. Colleen is a truly fascinating character who manages to be strangely endearing, amazingly annoying, and quite frightening at the same time. As Halloran deals with his slutty, silicon-based neighbor (who basically has sex with with anything yet refuses to consider sleeping with him) and strikes up a rather bizarre friendship with a WASP actor who goes by the name Herb Silverman (out of a belief that the only way to make it in Hollywood is to pretend to be Jewish), he also gets a chance in a hilarious scene to pitch several script ideas to Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld (making devastating cameos as themselves) and, in the book's most unexpectedly sincere moments, to find God.

If all of this sounds a bit heavy, it should be remembered that this book is by the same man who co-created There's Something About Mary and Dumb and Dumber. In short, the book is filled with outrageously raw humor but somehow, the vulgarity never feels out of place. Instead, it feels like a natural extension of living in a world (Hollywood) that seems to have been created specifically to showcase the lowest common denominators of pop culture. Instead, much like his better films, Farrelly combines the most potentially offensive of comedy with the most sincere of emotions and it creates a truly touching and exhilirating ride. Its not common to find a talent that can somehow follow up humor about a misplaced sperm sample with a touching passage about his faith in God. Luckily, Peter Farrelly appears to be such a talent and The Comedy Writer is indeed the perfect vehicule for that talent. All-and-all, an amazing and touching book that will surprise those who both love and loathe the films of the Farrelly Brothers.

Where's the punchline? Or the plot?

Henry Halloran is a 30 something salesman living in Boston who gives it all up to become a screenwriter. He packs up his things and drives his beat up car to California, where he meets a midgt and witnesses a suicide....
Ok...he hooked me there. I was dragged in and gaffed when the suicide victim's insane younger sister shows up at Henry's apartment and begs to stay. Somewhere between here and the karmic implications of garbage, the hypochondria, the shadow characters, and Mount Tiffany, who Henry was fixated on but surprisingly mentioned only once in the last hundred pages, he lost me.
Its not a bad read and it has its mildy amusing moments ("They call me Forehead"), but it certainly shouldn't be compared favorably to Dunces (on the jacket.)

Read if you're a fan, but don't expect much and you may like it better than me.

Great, funny read. The situations his caracters (book and movies) find themselves in into are second to none. I hope to see further writings in the future.

I never laughed so hard while reading! Peter Farrelly's excellant comedic style is always present, reminding you of his films such as Kingpin, Dumb and Dumber, and There's Something About Mary. However, he demonstartes an insightfulness in his writing that will make you think and move you. Definately 5 stars, I am reading this one again!

The Comedy Writer is a truthful look into the psyche of a talented writer trying to make it in Hollywood. Henry Halloran's journey takes us into the sludge that is L.A. You find yourself rooting for this sometimes brilliant, sometimes pathetic character who makes some apalling decisions along the way. What seems to set this writer apart is his extreme honesty.

Peter Farrelly has made some great, if somewhat vulgar movies. Outside Providence (the film version) showed a greater depth. The Comedy Writer carries out that promise. It is a good (if fast) read. The characters are flawed, but entertaining. I'm not sure how much of it is autobiographical, but the details about Hollywood seem right on. It is hilarious in places and has potential to be quite touching in others (if not always reaching it). I enjoyed the odd trip through 1990 Hollywood. A worthy and breezy read.

Peter Farrelly's novel is a picaresque wonder of demented hilarity, inspired lunacy, and a ruthless skewering of the superficiality that engendered the cultural infatuation with celebrity that will be our undoing. The back of the book calls it "A Confederacy of Dunces meets The Player". More appropriately, it's The Catcher in The Rye meets Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles. Part Holden Caulfield with a profane streak, part Hunter Thompson with a redemptive streak, Farrelly's Henry Halloran tells truths that tickle as they sting, that leave tears of laughter in our eyes and lumps of sadness in our throats. This may not be literature, but it's certainly art. What were the author's intentions? Who cares?

A well-written, funny (of course) and surprisingly poignant novel by [in]famous and broadly comedic screenwriter/director of There's Something About Mary, Dumb & Dumber, etc. Farrelly's signature humor is slightly toned down, but it's a high-quality read for a serious literary audience, as well as his legions of movie fans.