You're Lucky You're Funny: How Life Becomes a Sitcom [Mass Market Paperback]

Phil Rosenthal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 25, 2007

The creator and executive producer of Everybody Loves Raymond, on how to make a sitcom classic and keep laughing

This laugh-out-loud memoir takes readers backstage and inside the writers’ room of one of America’s best-loved shows. With more than 17 million viewers and more than seventy Emmy nominations—including two wins for best comedy—Everybody Loves Raymond reigned supreme in television comedy for almost a decade. Phil Rosenthal was there at the beginning. United by a shared lifetime of family dysfunction, he and Ray Romano found endless material to keep the show fresh and funny for its entire run. Alongside hilarious anecdotes from the series and his own career misadventures prior to working on the show, Rosenthal provides an enlightening and entertaining look at how sitcoms are written and characters developed. You’re Lucky You’re Funny is an inspiration to aspiring creators of comedy and a must read for the show’s millions of devoted fans.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1996, TV scriptwriter Rosenthal created Everybody Loves Raymond by stirring the standup comedy of Ray Romano into his own family memories. With Rosenthal as executive producer and inexperienced actor Romano basically portraying himself, their successful sitcom found an audience of 17 million viewers and ran for nine seasons (1996–2005), receiving over 70 Emmy nominations. Rosenthal offers a comedic chronicle of his own life, weaving wit and humor into every page. After a Bronx boyhood as a "shrimpy little nothing," his high school obsession with TV led to college theater, odd jobs (museum guard, deli manager) and a New York acting career that bottomed out. Arriving in L.A., he discovered it was "suburbia without the urbia," and after five years of grinding out scripts for now-forgotten sitcoms, he lit the Romano rocket. Rosenthal details it all—character development, devising dialogue, casting, table reads, run-throughs, doing publicity and dealing with interfering studio executives. Aspiring TV comedy writers and producers will see this as a valuable textbook of insights from an insider, while fans now buying DVD sets will welcome the vast array of amusing anecdotes and background information. Rosenthal also pokes the dark underbelly of "phoney baloney Hollywood," so parts of this book are like listening to a very long and funny standup routine. (Oct. 23)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“Rosenthal’s stories are universal, whether he’s getting fired from a night security job at NYC’s Metropolitan Musuem of Art after napping on a seventeenth-century bed or writing jokes for Bill Clinton and respectfully correcting the then president’s pronunciation of Yahtzee.”
—Entertainment Weekly “[An] extraordinary ratio of laughs per page.”
—James L. Brooks

“Humorous and highly entertaining.”
—Carl Reiner

“[A] memoir as funny as the sitcom.”
—Publishers Weekly --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Plume (September 25, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452288789
• ISBN-13: 978-0452288782
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #603,560 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like vacationing with a funny friend, February 4, 2007

By 

Ellen Meister (NY, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: You're Lucky You're Funny: How Life Becomes a Sitcom (Hardcover)

I picked up Phil Rosenthal's "You're Lucky You're Funny" for research, as I needed a bit of background info for a novel I'm writing. My intention was to skim it and move on. After one page, however, I knew I wasn't putting down this book until I'd read every delicious word. It's not only hilarious, but so charming I feel like I've just spent a vacation with a favorite friend. A very smart, very funny favorite friend. Plus, it taught me more about the inside world of sitcoms than I'd even hoped.

But even if you're just in it for the laughs, this book is worth the price. Hell, the fruit-of-the-month story alone is enough to make me recommend it. And that's not even the funniest part (for my money, it's his description of the "all-inclusive" vacation from hell).

I read this in hardcover, but see that it's also available in audio format, which I think might be a lot of fun, as well. I listened to a clip, and Phil Rosenthal has a delightfully anachronistic Old New York accent--kind of a cross between Top Cat and Nicely Nicely from Guys and Dolls. So whether you read or listen, you're in for a great trip.

-Ellen Meister, author of Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We're Lucky Phil Rosenthal's Funny, December 24, 2006

By 

Ellen Hickey (Bel Air Maryland) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: You're Lucky You're Funny: How Life Becomes a Sitcom (Hardcover)

I couldn't put this book down and I had to endure the mystified stares of my family as I laughed out loud. This is the story of a decent, mega-talented, hilariously funny man who went on to create a show that has now become one of the few classic television programs of our era. With inside stories regarding his life, the actors, and the writers who worked on Everybody Loves Raymond, the book recounts how the series was developed as well as how the ideas for many of the most memorable episodes, had their beginnings from real-life events. A brilliant, joyful read that I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys reading for sheer pleasure. Everybody loves this book!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Real life brought into our living rooms, December 31, 2006

By 

Corinne H. Smith (Athol, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: You're Lucky You're Funny: How Life Becomes a Sitcom (Hardcover)

Both "Everybody Loves Raymond" fans and aspiring writers of any kind will enjoy this enlightening and amusing book. Phil Rosenthal reveals to us how he and his fellow "Raymond" writers transferred their real life adventures to the network screen. Part memoir, part tell-all -- but not TOO tell-all, for some names are withheld to protect the stupid -- "You're Lucky You're Funny" also provides an insight into a typical writer's road to Hollywood. As such, the book is humorous in its own right. And anyone who's seen the show will nod in acknowledgement as Phil explains the basis of selected plot ideas. By the way, Phil: a complete listing of all the shows would have been a wonderful addition as an appendix.

Rosenthal leaves us with his theory about the proliferation and seeming success of TV reality shows. Regular comedies and dramas aren't believable anymore, he claims. They're not written as if the plots or the dialogue could actually happen. So folks are turning to reality TV because they see real people making real-life kinds of decisions. And that also explains the popularity and relate-ability of "Everybody Loves Raymond," for it was based on the true but bizarre experiences of people connected with the show.

For more "Raymond" tales, devoted fans should also read "Motherhood and Hollywood: How to Get a Job Like Mine" by Patricia Heaton (2002) and "Are You Hungry, Dear? Life, Laughs and Lasagne" by Doris Roberts (2004). These three books don't overlap in their coverage; and all of them are made even more poignant now, with the recent death of Peter Boyle. Holy crap.