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Live from New York
The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests
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Narrated by:
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Christina Delaine
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Paul Woodson
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Written by:
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James Andrew Miller
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Tom Shales
About this listen
When first published to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, Live from New York was immediately proclaimed the best book ever produced on the landmark and legendary late-night show. In their own words, unfiltered and uncensored, a dazzling galaxy of trail-blazing talents recalled three turbulent decades of on-camera antics and off-camera escapades. Now a fourth decade has passed - and best-selling authors James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales have returned to Studio 8H. They raucously and revealingly take the SNL story up to the present, adding a constellation of iconic new stars, surprises, and controversies.
©2002 Thomas W. Shales and Jimmy the Writer, Inc.; material new to the 2014 edition copyright 2014 by Jimmy the Writer, Inc.; preface to the 2015 edition copyright 2015 by Jimmy the Writer, Inc. (P)2017 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksYou may also enjoy...
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Performance
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You make me smile out loud
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Amazing
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Story
Scotty Bowman is recognized as the best coach in hockey history, and one of the greatest coaches in all of sports. He won more games and more Stanley Cups than anyone else. Despite all the changes in hockey, he coached at the very top for more than four decades, his first Cup win and his last an astonishing thirty-nine years apart. Yet perhaps most uniquely, different from anyone else who has ever lived or ever will again, he has continuously experienced the best of hockey since he was fourteen years old.
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What an amazing story! This from a Leaf's fan.
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What listeners say about Live from New York
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Geoff
- 2024-07-28
Great Look Back
I've been watching Saturday Night Live since about 84 or so. Not so much in the last two decades but definitely remember the Chris Farley and Will Ferrell years. I had enjoyed the show and thought this would be a pretty interesting listen and it was.
The story, a complete recollection by the many writers, actors, guests and other personalities that have been or had some part in or on Saturday Night Live since it's start in 75 pieced together to give perspective of moments and events going on during those times.
The reading was well done by both narrators, the flow was ok although I found I would occasionally lose track of who is giving their versions or retelling their stories at times but for the most part it worked. Ultimately, you do get a very good overview and understanding of Saturday Night Live's history and realize that love him or hate him (and there are a number on both sides) Lorne Michaels is an individual who is respected not just for what he created, produced but as a pretty decent person, albeit with a seeming sort of passive aggressive power trip thing going on. 4.1 stars overall.
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- Anonymous
- 2023-03-23
Great Read!
If your an SNL fan this is a must. It’s a nice deep dive into the world of SNL. It’s an emotional journey to say the least. Thank you to the authors, narrators and all the cast that shared there experiences in this book.
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- cvanspro
- 2023-10-21
It's hard to keep up with who's who bc same voices
It's hard to keep up with who's who bc same 2 voices for everyone. I had to rewind often to verify whose story it was. Great story, but just having 2 peopke and not the persons, themselves made it harder to follow. Great stories, though.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Bruce Novakowski
- 2024-01-25
Very Meh lol. Performances are cringe-worthy, get ready
It’s dense, only for obsessives and Uber fans of SNL history and lore. More of a salacious, gossipy, behind-the-scenes look at SNL, rather than an objective and academic deep-dive. Seemed to be mostly based on interviews with satellite figures spilling the tee on their experiences, some juicy stories though I guess. Overall the stories are worthwhile, but the performances are pretty rough at times. They seemed to hire B-level voiceover artists, career narrators with a bit of personality and had them voicing these titans of comedy…. Which translated to very annoyingly desperate performances. There was one woman that I could not stand, just insufferable lol. Honestly, the narration kinda ruined it for me.
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- Kelli
- 2025-03-02
deeply unsatisfying
started out great! riveting story of SNL, with quotes and interviews with former writers and stars. But the the last third of the book is just incredibly repetitive! just quote after quote about Lorne. nearly everyone loves him except Jeanne Garofalo. OK. We get it. don't have to hear it 25 times.
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- R. Whitlock
- 2019-08-17
Fascinating book
This is my third time reading this book. The first two times were the original version, and with an actual hard copy. I loved it then and I love it now.
My takeaways for this version:
1. The updated material DELIGHTED me. They could make a version of this book every ten years and I’d buy it again. The inner workings of SNL never stop intriguing me.
2. My only issue with the reading of the book, and it is one that is hard to solve, is that each genders passage is read by the same voice. So if I miss the name intro, or forget whose name it was because a lot of these names hold little meaning until long into the book, the stories aren’t as valuable. And if I need to know who is saying what, I have to skip back how many seconds to hear their name introduces? It was so frustrating, and could only be fixed by having a different voice for each main character (implausible), or having the persons name be repeated at the end of the story/appear in screen.
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9 people found this helpful
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- B. Morgan
- 2021-02-02
All of the warts ... none of the charm.
If you have any affection for SNL at all, fair warning .. this book will pretty much cure you of that. It's just ugly.
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- Jim Johnson
- 2019-12-31
all drama no funny
of all the ways this book could go, im on chapter 27/41 and its been very little about the skits stories of behind the scenes funny stuff....this is actually a book about how it almost went off the air every other year and firing cast. extremely disappointing. thank god i can return . be warned its 24+ hours of drama about a comedy show.
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