Customer Reviews

Mr. Mike : The Life and Work of Michael O'Donoghue The Man Who Made Comedy Dangerous

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Michael O'Donoghue's influence on contemporary comedy is analagous to the Velvet Underground's influence on alternative music. Only a hip minority appreciated O'Donoghue during his lifetime, but a lot of them went on to become stand-up comics, screenwriters, journalists, etc. Perrin does a marvelous job describing O'Donoghue's odyssey from obscurity in Rochester in the fifties to the undergound epicenter of The Evergreen Review and then the National Lampoon. In 1975, O'Donoghue won an Emmy as one of the founding writer/producers of Saturday Night Live. Through SNL, O'Donoghue unleashed a savage yet strangely lyric brand of satire on television audiences. Sadly O'Donoghue was never able to bring this remarkable talent into film despite penning several dark, but tantalizing screen projects that remain unproduced. Perrin's book is not only written with the same sharp wit and intelligence of its subject, but it is also rigorously researched. While Perrin makes a strong argument for O'Donoghue's achievements and brillance, he is not blind to his subject's mood swings and self-destructive career moves. Last but not least, the book is extremely well edited. For a change, photos and illustrations co-exist with the text not as a cheap five page insert of randomly selected pics. Ah, if only all bios were this user friendly, fun and illuminating. Perrin has made me love Mr. Mike all over again and reminded us that satire means never having to say "that's not funny, that's sick."

Most biograhpies have a tendency to be boring. This has some pages that drag on, but with such an interesting person they can be overlooked.
Saturday Night Live and National Lampoon both owe their status in the world of humor to this man. He was not well-liked among his peers and is not someone you want to share a drink with in a bar, but that is what makes him one of the great underrated comedy writers of the 20th century.
There was little humor in his personal life, but that never stopped him from being funny.

Reading this book reminded me why I used to watch Saturday Night Live. It sent me to the video store to search (vainly) for Michael O'Donoghue skits among the "Best Of..." compilations. I guess there are still a lot of folks who just don't get it. But those who do, will enjoy this book. And if enough folks start looking for O'Donoghue's works, maybe someone will notice. Now I'm going to go look for Phoebe Zeit-Geist.

I tend to agree with the writer from Detroit - my time would have been better spent reading the stuff this guy actually wrote. However, this is what I feel to be the next best thing. And, unlike other bios where you have to wade through seven chapters of diaper changes and drunken uncles just to reach the subject's first grade school, this fine little tome dives right into the meat surrounding the bone. My only criticism (and probably damned unfair) is the feeling I got when setting this book down - the feeling that the author felt somehow slighted in not being born O'Donoghue himself. A very good book.

60% of the book is the author reviewing O'donoghue's work in the most humorless and dull manner. (ruining most of the pieces if you aren't familiar with every single thing he has done) Another 15% is him reviewing other peoples reviews of O'dononghue's work. 420 pages where you feel like you know the guy just as much as you did before you read this book.

Seek out O'donoghue's work and read that.

Lazy work, Dennis Perrin should be flogged.

When I first found this book , I was very excited that one of my favourite writer / comedians was FINALLY getting his due. ( Let's face it , love it or hate it , it's the only book in print specifically about "Mr.Mike". ). The information was quite valid , his pre-National Lampoon days were 95% new information to me , and a good chunk of his last years were news too. So on those merits alone , I enjoyed this book. Re-living his National Lampoon material , his Saturday Night Live stuff, and selected other writings , was nice to have in one volume.

My only complaint - thus the four stars - is that author Dennis Perrin comes off as too much of a frothing fanboy. He starts the book saying he doesn't want to write a syrupy , overly gushing biography , and then launches head on into one! ( Perhaps an attempt at the ultimate Mr.Mike zeit-geist? ). Mr.Perrin treats O'Donoghue as if he invented "alternate comedy" all by himself. ( Sadly the examples given from O'Donoghue's childhood , were fairly standard , for me growing up in the 60's , playground humour. Maybe Mr.Perrin had a sheltered childhood? ). Wading through the overly deifying commentary , is difficult at times , but in the long run this is outweighed by the need to have a book on "Mr.Mike". If you loved the enigma that was Michael O'Donoghue / "Mr.Mike" , this will shine some light on the subject. ( And if you didn't enjoy the man , somewhere there are some chrome plated , 18" long , stainless steel , needles ...with your name on them bucko! )

In my younger days, I found O'Donoghue fascinating. After reading this book, I feel that I now have a good understanding of the man and of what he was doing.

Perrin covers each phase of O'Donoghue's career in depth and detail, and reveals O'Donoghue to be a performance artist working in comedy moreso than a comedian (as is, for example, Al Franken who O'Donoghue reportedly despised). This book is not a pleasant read, as O'Donoghue was devoted to offending and disturbing people. If you want to understand him, or his "art", this is the place to go.

I first encountered O'Donoghue's work on the back page of SPIN Magazine (being too young to see his Saturday Night Live work live, or hear his National Lampoon work). His short pieces were caustic and bleak, black as night but as funny as death. They had me alarmed, intrigued, and in fits of hilarious tears. And then he died.

"So who was Michael O'Donoghue," I asked myself. It was not till several years later, when I found his devilish visage staring at me from the cover of this book (brandishing a butcher's knife, no less). I wanted to learn about Mr. Mike quite badly, so I bought the book. I'll make a strange comparison here. Please hear me out. The "character" of Michael O'Donoghue that emerges from Perrin's biography reminds me a lot of the "character" of John Bonham who emerges from the Led Zeppelin bio 'Hammer of the Gods'. Both are brilliant artistic geniuses (once again excuse the hyperbole... justified as it may be) who, at the drop of a hat, turn into beasts akin to the Incredible Hulk in a particularly foul mood. It says something about the need for extremity in the artistic mind. O'Donoghue is the little, balding, bespectacled shnook, who, if tangled with, will uncoil his cobra-like wit and gnash your eyes out. He is quite an intriguing character.

Perrin does a fine job recounting the history of this character, from birth to death. He also does well to include transcriptions (and sometimes reprints) of some of O'Donoghue's more seminal works. His work for the Evergreen Review is here, best represented by 'Phoebe Zeit-Geist', which I don't entirely enjoy but can still marvel at its audacity and prodigiousness. It's like something R. Crumb would do after being severely tortured by a group of radical feminists. His National Lampoon days helped launch that magazine, as did his days at Saturday Night Live. Throughout he is morbid, meticulous, and menacing, never letting good taste get in the way of a great comic moment. He leaves no sacred cow unslaughtered. I admire that.

O'Donoghue is a good indication of the heights that the bipolar artistic mind can fly to. Perrin does well capturing that quality.

If for nothing else, MOD is to be cherished for a song lyric called CANCER FOR CHRISTMAS: "Santa's bringing sacks of morphine. And some cigarettes." And I almost croaked when I read about MOD's screenplay wherein astronauts get attacked by a flying horde of macaroni-&-cheese platters. On the other hand, I'm profoundly bored by a lot of MOD's theater-of-cruelty shtick. He had a perfectly good talent for silliness but insisted on flaunting his comedic machismo as if it were a form of good-for-you psychodrama. (Although better that than what someone once referred to as "good-for-you Shakespeare".) MOD used to gripe about the Greek polarization of drama into comedy versus tragedy. ("As if there's any effing difference.") And I'd be curious to read the MODwerks (if & when they ever get published) to see how MOD might have accomplished an amalgamation.

I'm a big fan of Mr. Mike, and was really looking forward to reading this book. It's fairly well-written, detailing Michael O'Donoghue's life from his illness as a child, his initial (and not very good) plays, through his successes with National Lampoon and SNL. Unfortunately, after this period the biographer writes like he's got to meet a deadline, and whole years of O'Donoghue's life are just skimmed over. On the whole, it's a very interesting read, but I would have really preferred a) a separate section of his written work (rather than summarizations), and b) more details about his later life, the medical causes for how he died, etc. But then, I don't expect to see too many bios of Mr. Mike, so I guess this one will do. And he was one funny (and mean!) guy!