Mr. Mike: The Life and Work of Michael O'Donoghue by Dennis PerrinMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
An entertaining, but on reflection superficial, examination of an author who was a major influence in the establishment of both National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live. There were obviously worms underneath the psyche of O'Donoghue, but as portrayed by Perrin, he comes across as a massively talented adolescent with the emotional control of an angry toddler. There's a frustrating lack of depth or analysis. The acknowledgements page betrays a possible reason-- despite O'Donoghue's life touching a cast of thousands across both the Lampoon and SNL, as well as the rest of his varied career, only O'Donoghue's wife Cheryl Hardwicke stands out, as well as Tony Hendra, Matty Simmons and Lorne Michaels for glimpses of their own works about the man. While the likes of Chevy Chase and Anne Beats discuss him in passing, the opportunity to really dig through the memories of those who knew him best seems to be shied away from.
The book is an entertaining read, and it skims across the major points of a complex and driven artistic soul, but it's hard not to feel that the opportunity for a major examination of O'Donoghue's influence on his contemporaries and industry has been missed, here. In all probability, this was the only chance, and it's now been missed. Try as he might, Perrin never gets beyond the image of O'Donoghue as a tortured enfant terrible, leaving us with only glimpses of what might exist beyond that role.
It's a book to treasure for those of us who were, and remain, fans, but it's a bittersweet fandom: we never really get to know the man, just the image.
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