humor

I saw Rodney a couple of years ago in the Salt Lake City airport sitting in a chair waiting for his flight to LAX with his wife. He looked old and frail, but I gave him a wave and he gave me back a wink with his trademark okay sign. That was very cool.

So when I bought this book I was really looking forward to an interesting read....and I found it.

This book has a tons of jokes that are used to separate his stories (and he's got a lot of them) within the chapters. I now realize how hard he worked and really how little he received back in terms of material riches. (He only received $35,000 for Caddyshack with no residuals!)

There are so many funny stories about show business, struggling as a comedian, sex, women, drugs, his youth, his health, friends, marriage, and of course, not getting any respect.

I know that Rodney may not be with us very long as he is in his 80's and dealing with health issues, but I feel lucky to have seen him since the Ed Sullivan days, through the Johnny Carson years, the Miller Lite Beer commercials, the hilarious movies, and up to my incident at the Salt Lake City airport.

Here's a real success story in disguise from a kind man who has made us all laugh for decades.

This book adds so much to my appreciation of this humble and very human man. I'm going to watch "Back To School" and "Caddyshack" again soon.

Thanks Rodney. You have my respect.

The exciting aspect of this book is that it was authored exclusively by Rodney Dangerfield. When you read this volume you cannot help but hear Rodney Dangerfield's voice telling his story. From Dangerfield's New York childhood to his surgeries in California, this book encompasses the life of a man who made a career commanding "No Respect." The book is lighthearted and very funny. There are some lessons on life as well. Though I thoroughly enjoyed the autobiography I also found it lacked detail -- or should I say it whetted my appetite for more. Reading the book it appeared that the chapters were directly transcribed from random notes or dictation recordings. It is difficult to follow Dangerfield's career progression as the story jumps back and forth in time more often than Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughter House Five." Many of Dangerfield's recollections are not dated and I was often left wondering exactly when an event occurred. More importantly, Dangerfield introduces subjects about his very interesting life that beg additional detail. For example, his reminiscences of movies such "Caddy Shack," "Easy Money," and "Back to School" easily deserved entire chapters, but were relegated to a handful of sentences. Likewise he discusses his decade-long show business hiatus in order to sell aluminum siding, but the home improvement segment of his life is only a scattered reference throughout the book. The bottom line is that in the future there is an opportunity for Rodney Dangerfield to reissue an "Author's Cut" of this book that would lengthen the work ten fold. Still, I found it humorous reading and look forward to the availability of the audio-CD, only if narrated by the author.

Rodney Dangerfield is one of the two funniest comedians I have ever seen (Sam Kinison, who Rodney essentially discovered, is the other). The schtick of "No Respect" has never, ever gotten old with me. So when I saw his autobiography, I grabbed a copy right away without so much as a skim.

Rodney tells his story with his usual "No Respect" fervor, but, he pretty much only grazes over his many experiences. He wrote enough to let me know that he cared less about his mother and wished he knew his father better, but his first marriage is pretty much covered in a couple of pages. No real explanation of what went wrong and why they got back together and got married again only to break up again. Not much is mentioned about his kids. Not much is mentioned about his take on other comedians (except Jim Carrey, who he takes much credit in keeping him from quitting the business in the early days). I wanted more.

There are many of his famous one-liners interspersed between his writings. I've heard most before, but they are still pretty funny.

All-in-all, I'm glad he wrote this book, but I suspect it would have been a lot better 10 to 15 years ago when he wasn't suffering from his many maladies of an 80+ year old man.