For nearly 10 years no TV comedy was as popular or beloved as Everybody Loves Raymond. In You're Lucky You're Funny, Phil Rosenthal, the creator and executive producer of the show, tells the behind-the-scenes story of the making of a number one smash-hit sitcom. Based on ay Romano's actual life, the show also took much of its material from Phil's equally, and hysterically, dysfunctional family characters and experiences. Besides being one of the funniest books ever written about television, You're Lucky You're Funny is one of the most illuminating. Phil offers an unprecedented look at the making of a hit show, considering everything from casting to writing to production to managing egos to keeping a series fresh after it has comfortably settled in for the long haul.
1 of 1 copy available
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
February 6, 2007 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- File size: 198000 KB
- Duration: 06:52:29
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Some would say it's impossible to find a warm-hearted, genuine, funny person in what the author calls "phony-baloney Hollywood," but at least one exists--author and reader Rosenthal. With his thick Bronx accent fully intact, Rosenthal regales listeners with his beginnings in a family full of absurd characters and situations, his teenaged mishaps and misfires, and his ascendancy as producer/writer of the popular sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond." Something of a manual of television writing, casting, directing, and producing, along with a jokey tell-all, YOU'RE LUCKY is a self-deprecating laugh-fest delivered by someone who was determined to create warmth and camaraderie in a notoriously cold business. D.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine -
August 28, 2006
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.
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