The Bedwetter - Sarah Silverman

The Bedwetter - Sarah Silverman

There's probably a fairly large amount of people in Ireland and the  UK who have no idea who Sarah Silverman is. There is probably no-one under 50 in the US and Canada who don't know who she is. Of those who do know her, I imagine she is a 'love her/hate her' type of comic. I imagine this means that the target audience round these parts is pretty small. It stands to reason that the better you know someone, the more you are likely to enjoy their autobiography. I've been aware of Silverman for some time, but I've never seen her TV show. I suppose I'm as much aware of her notoriety as I am of her material.

Known for her spiky and extremely frank stand-up and TV shows - she's also appeared in a number of movies - I remember her from School of Rock primarily but I did a quick check of her TV and film appearances on IMDB, and she has actually appeared in a fairly large number of shows - most appearances are fairly obvious: The Simpsons, Futurama, Saturday Night Live, Entourage and Larry Sanders. 


It's while talking about her adventures in making shows and films that Silverman is at her most entertaining. She makes the comment that for a female comic wanting to appear in movies - there are only 3 different characters available: The bitchy ex-wife, The lead character's c*nty girlfriend before he finds out what love can really be; or the quirky best friend who exists to convey information to the audience ("but you're a lawyer and he loves you!"). She adds that if you are lucky, you get to play the lead in a comedy where you get to be the uptight shrill one who tells the man to stop acting like a child. Silverman adds that she has played all of these parts and has a stack of similar scripts lined up beside her as she types. 

It occurred to me that whenever I've seen a photo of Silverman, she's nearly always pulling a silly face, or doing something 'goofy' - whether she is doing a 'sexy' shoot for Maxim or appearing on the red carpet at a premiere, she is mugging, or grabbing her crotch or something. This book is kind of like that - whenever it seems like there is a danger of things getting too serious, or us getting to look into her psyche - she makes jokes about urine, farting or being Jewish (lots and lots of mentions about being Jewish). In her early life, she was a chronic bedwetter, and suffered pretty severely from depression. It seems her parents and family were pretty supportive of her throughout this - and she realised that the humiliation of being a teenage bedwetter was about as bad as it could get, and dying on stage as a stand-up was really nothing to be afraid of.

There are parts of the book that feel padded out - the foreword, which is normally written by someone else, is written by Silverman and is pretty indulgent, as the the 'middleword' in (you guessed it) the middle of the book and a bit written about Silverman by 'God'. It's a shame because when she does talk about her family, the creative process or struggling with censorship, she comes across as humane, likeable and genuine. I think really though, to really get anything out of the book,  you would need to be aware of not only Silverman, but her peers (Louis CK, Al Franken) and a fair chunk of her material (I've not seen her TV show, or her film: Jesus is Magic).


So basically, this is a useless review. If you like her and her material, you'll probably like this. If you don't, you probably won't. You have probably figured this out all by yourself. Still, there are some excellent autobiographies by comics out there (Tina Fey, Steve Martin), and it's a shame this isn't quite up there.