Laugh Lines

Alan Zweibel began his comedy career selling jokes for seven dollars each to the last of the Borscht Belt stand-ups. One night he bombed on stage anyway, but he caught the eye of Lorne Michaels and ended up among the first writers hired for Saturday Night Live. There he wrote material for Gilda Radner, John Belushi, and the rest of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players.

After SNL, Zweibel worked on a string of landmark television comedies, from It's Garry Shandling's Show to Curb Your Enthusiasm. In this memoir he gathers the stories of a career spanning four decades, from writing for a generation of veteran comics to first meeting Gilda while hiding behind a potted plant. He goes into the origins of well-known SNL sketches, describes how the show changed after its sudden success, and covers the projects that came afterward, not all of which lasted.

Zweibel also writes warmly about his friendships with Garry Shandling, Billy Crystal, Larry David, and others. Throughout the book, other comedians and writers add their own words, including Richard Lewis, Eric Idle, Judd Apatow, Dave Barry, Carl Reiner, Mike Birbiglia, and Sarah Silverman. The result is a funny, affectionate memoir that doubles as a history of American comedy, by an award-winning writer.