>>REVIEW
700 SUNDAYS
Billy Crystal
Warner Books, 182 pp.
In Baseball, the behemoth 1994 Ken Burns miniseries, comedian Billy Crystal recalls his experiences with America’s national pastime. One of the stories he tells is of his first visit to New York’s Yankee Stadium.
Early into the tale, a glossy sheen of performance sets in and something just doesn’t seem genuine about Crystal’s wide-eyed expression and urgent, almost pleading tone. The prolonged anecdote, which includes nine-year-old Crystal exchanging quips with legendary Yankees manager Casey Stengel, reeks of artistic license. It stands out as a glaring flaw in Burns’s otherwise masterful documentary. It seems sad that such an obviously big day in a young Crystal’s life has become nothing more than shtick.
Prior to Baseball, Crystal told an altered version of the story in the 1991 comedy film, City Slickers. Now, in the pages of his new book, 700 Sundays, based on the Tony Award-winning Broadway play of the same name, this tired old tale pops up again.
The book’s title refers to the amount of time Crystal spent in the company of his beloved father, Jack, who died when Billy was only 15. Jack owned and operated a legendary jazz record store known as the Commodore and worked six days a week for most of his son’s life. This left Sunday as the only day devoted solely to a family that also included Billy’s selfless mother, Helen, and his older brothers Joel and Rip.
Much of 700 Sundays paints Jack as a supportive and proud papa who not only got young Billy interested in baseball and jazz, but also in the works of great comedians like Jonathan Winters, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. The book also pays tribute to important members of Crystal’s extended family, such as his irrepressible Uncle Berns and his painfully frank Aunt Sheila.
Crystal has a compelling cast of real-life characters to play with and his affection for them rings true. But whenever the book seems to be gaining introspective momentum, it trips up, à la the Yankee Stadium story, and descends into zinger-laced yarn spinning.
When Crystal chronicles the bowling-alley death of his father and its immediate aftermath, the book is truly touching and darkly comic at the same time. But two chapters later, Crystal devotes far too much time to recounting a basketball game between his mostly Jewish Long Island high school and a powerhouse, predominantly black inner-city New York squad. Disposable one-liners dominate the story, which predictably wraps up with someone getting socked in the nuts. It’s the stuff you’d expect to see presented on an episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos, not the kind of material that makes for addictive bio reading.
For many people today, Crystal is best known as that funny and talented guy who has hosted the Academy Awards several times. One of the highlights of those broadcasts has been his Broadway musical parody of the films nominated for best picture. But, while that sort of showbiz tomfoolery plays well on Oscar night, here it undermines what could have been an engrossing book. And please, spare us from ever having to hear that trumped up, syrupy Yankee story one more freaking time! |
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