Monday, September 07, 2020

A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost

A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost is a solid memoir from the fifteen-year Saturday Night Live veteran, hired as a staff writer, and then head writer and for the past six years, also co-host of Weekend Update.

Jost provides interesting and entertaining stories of his life, starting with growing up on Staten Island, and at the age of 14, getting accepted into Regis, a free Catholic high school in Manhattan. The school is one of the best in the country, with each year tens of thousands of kids applying for 120 spots in each class. It's covered in the book how it would take Jost at least 90 minutes one-way to commute to and from school, with him on his own taking a bus, ferry, and subway. He and his friends then would often roam New York City after school and Jost while at Regis did speech and debate, something that required having a short-term memory of success or failures, which he noted as helping later while at Saturday Light Live.

Jost got into Harvard and covers in the book how he didn't fit in for much of his freshman year, and then discovered the Harvard Lampoon magazine. He learned he wanted to be a comedy writer and, just as with Regis, it was difficult to get accepted, with hundreds applying every semester and usually only three or four writers being accepted into the Lampoon based on the strength of their writing. He got in on his third attempt and over the course of two and a half years on staff, had more than a hundred pieces published in the magazine. He was elected president in his junior year and notes in the book how he found others who cared about comedy as much as he did.

He graduated Harvard, with his studies in Russian Literature, and got a job as a night editor with a Staten Island newspaper. He wanted to be in comedy so even though he liked the job, saved up enough money to cover rent for two months and quit, sending letters to TV shows asking them to read his writing samples. He took a job writing for a now-defunct company called Animation Collective and while there, got a call from Saturday Night Live based on a submission, and was hired as an SNL staff writer at the age of twenty-two.

There's great stories from Saturday Night Live, as well as his stand-up comedy, which Jost notes that he's been doing for sixteen years, thousands of shows and still fifty to a hundred a year. It was tremendously interesting reading of how Jost after graduating Harvard worked so hard for little money to get started in entertainment, and about his insecurities, being afraid of being boring. Jost also writes about his mom, who was Chief Medical Officer for the New York City Fire Department during 9/11, and what she went through that day and immediately after. It's an excellent book that's insightful and has great stories.