Review: Call Your Mother by Barry Sonnenfeld

I feel like everyone reading Barry Sonnenfeld’s memoir will be disappointed.

That’s not the same as saying the book is bad. It’s not. But for people expecting a book filled with behind the scenes stories from Sonnenfeld’s Hollywood career, they’ll likely be a little disappointed. Even as someone who was fine with the book not being a lot of anecdotes, found myself disappointed. After all I am a big fan of his pair of Addams Family movies and would have loved to read more about the making of them, and some of the choices he made (especially considering that David Krumholtz’s character in Addams Family Values seems to have been a younger version of Sonnenfeld). Why he thought Wild Wild West was a good idea (I mean, why anyone thought that was a good idea is beyond me….). More about Men in Black and his friendship with Will Smith. The making of the sadly short-lived The Tick series. Pushing Daisies, the pilot which Sonnenfeld directed, I will argue, is one of the most beautiful episodes of television ever made.

He does have stories about how he got his start, about how he became friends with the Coen Brothers and how they worked together. About how he and Penny Marshall did NOT get along making Big.

The book is ultimately about Sonnenfeld’s life. Which I should note he tells in a very entertaining way. It’s far funnier to read than it was to live. This is a man who argued with Larry David over which one of them is more neurotic. Which should give people a rough idea of the kind of person Sonnenfeld is. I mean, many of us who think we’re neurotic would go, I can’t hold a candle to Larry David. But in reading about Sonnenfeld’s parents and his uncle and his childhood and plane crashes, well, can’t really blame the man.

I said earlier that I wanted more stories of the making of different projects, and I do, but I can also see Sonnenfeld’s interests and fingerprints in his work after reading the book. Some of which may simply be in my own mind. But I suppose it might be too much to ask Sonnenfeld to dissect his own work at length after just dissecting his own life in such depth. Besides, he wrote an entertaining book.

If I ever have a drink with Sonnenfeld, I’ll concede that he’s more neurotic. (And I’m not just saying that so he’ll tell me about The Tick.)