Eleven things I learned from reading Adam West's memoirs

This is what I learned from reading Adam West's book "Back to the Batcave" from 1994:


1. Adam West still defends his work in the original show to this very day, despite the fact that many adults look back at it and see it as melodramatic drivel. He says that Batman was slightly over-the-top but that it was less ridiculous than the comics of the time. He also did not like the use of the word "campy" and did not know what camp meant when reporters suggested it to him. He preferred the word "pop art" and likened the "pow"s and "oomphs" that would appear on screen to Andy Warholesque touches. He maintains that the light-hearted and fun version of the times was exactly what the public needed because it was a very stressful era and tumultuous time. He said that a serious version of a superhero comic would have failed, and he cites the fact that the Green Hornet only lasted one season as evidence of that. Most importantly, Batman would have been cancelled if it weren't for the popularity of the TV show. The sales on the comic were rapidly declining and DC Comics told Bob Kane to hang up his pen at the time.

2. At the same time, West was also slightly delusional. When it was time to reinvent Batman for the movies, West thought that Tim Burton made a mistake by not casting him, despite the fact that he was well into middle-age and the 1966 TV Batman was way behind the times.

3. Adam West also claims to be a serious actor who actually did research and devoted energy into making his part believable. This is particularly surprising because it looks like West was either a guy who didn't try very hard or a very poor actor whose overdelivery of the dialogue made the show hard to take seriously. But Adam West's overacting was all very calculated and came after months (not hours, I repeat, but months) of thinking about how he'd approach this character and came up with a list of 6 constants that Batman should have.

4. Despite rumors that Adam West was seducing costars left and right, West claims that he had mostly professional relationships with the costars because he didn't want to endanger the show. He said some of them like Julie Newmar were incredibly tempting and it was INCREDIBLY difficult for him to maintain professionalism on the set by Newmar, in particular. The book is rather vague about whether Newmar and West actually did do anything illicit. He does claim to have had a very active sex life having been approached with groupies everywhere who made it all incredibly easy for him. He dated Lana Wood, however, and it also sounds like he lightly dated Natalie Wood. He unsuccessfully pursued Jill St John (guest star from the very first episode). St. John and him are still good friends. Throughout the show, he still pined for his ex-wife with whom he shared kids.

5. Adam West claims life post-Batman was highly depressing because he could not get any work. It took him years to escape the clout of Batman. He was offered the part of James Bond and turned it down because he felt the role should have gone to an Englishman. This takes a great deal of integrity considering how desperate one might be for work.

6. Adam West enjoyed meeting a lot of great actors on set. He was good friends with the Riddler's Frank Gorshin. They went to an orgy once where they started acting in character just for kicks and got thrown out (what's the procedure for being throwing someone out of an orgy? Do you not get your parking validated or something?). He also really admired the worklike ethic of Meredith Burgess and Cesar Romero. He especially enjoyed meeting George Saunders (Mr. Freeze #1), Vincent Price (Egghead), Cliff Robertson (Shame) and Maurice Evans (The Puzzler, poor man's Riddler).

7. He did not enjoy Otto Preminger who played Mr. Freeze and his costars universally agreed. He hit on every woman on the set while simultaneously treating them like dirt. He also bossed everyone around as though he were the director when the show already had that part filled.


8. Many of the great actors who appeared on Batman didn't feel like it was dumbing themselves down to appear on the show. Classically-trained actors like Meredith Burgess, Cesar Romero, Maurie Evans (The Puzzler), David Wayne (Mad Hatter), George Saunders (Mr. Freze), Shelly Winters (Ma Parker), Cliff Robertson (Shame), and Vincent Price (Egghead) enjoyed being part of pop culture and gaining larger exposure and they also enjoyed taking a break from serious acting rules to be animated and comical.

9. Burt Ward (aka Robin) was kind of a brat. He insisted on being the last to leave his tstart at one point which led to a war of attrition between him and Adam West. He started out the show married but succumbed to the temptation of all the groupies and his marraige fell apart. He once came close to being beaten up by Bruce Lee during the Green Hornet crossover

10. Adam West had a few different careers before acting. He was a pilot in Hawaii and led airtours with a partner who later got him into acting on a kid's TV show with a chimp as his costar. He also met his wife in Hawaii- a Tahitian named Nga (short for Ngatokoruaimatauaia) and had kids with her. Despite his wild sex life, he still pined for Nga and was holding out for reconciliation with her

11. West was pretty uncomfortable in that outfit and that cowel restricted his lateral movement pretty intensely

Seven things I learned from reading Tracy Morgan's book

1)  Good thing there's probably some sort of statute of limitations on drug busts because Tracy Morgan flat-out admits to spending his youth dealing drugs (weed later followed by crack) for a living. In fact, I'd even say this book has educational value: I learned things about the illicit drug trade (particularly Bronx circa the late 1980's) that I never knew before reading this book. Tracy Morgan said that he liked drug dealing because it gave him opportunities to talk to people and even try out his comedy routines.

I'd imagine that crackheads would be too zoned out to appreciate a good stand-up routine and first-time buyers would be too nervous to be bombarded with a stand-up routine in a shady parking lot drop-off. The more I think about it, in fact, the more suicidally insane it would seem to use your job dealing in a shady parking lot in the Bronx as a platform to hone your comedic skills. If I had known Tracy Morgan at the time, I would have fervently advised him NOT to mix stand-up comedy with drug dealing.

2) Tonally, the book is very interesting in that Tracy Morgan likes to drop the f-bomb a lot and write as though he's speaking in a streetwise (I thought for a good 6 or 7 minutes about what adjective I wanted to use here and still feel like I failed) manner. At the same time, he's clearly picked up a lot from his environment. When he discusses the experience of being on TV shows,  he displays a fairly intellegent grasp of the vocabulary used by people in the TV industry. Additionally, when he's talking about writing comedy or the nature of comedy in general, he sounds very intelligent and clearly knows what he's doing. Other times, he makes really good use of metaphors: "My life growing up was like a twisted Bronx Tale version of The Color Purple." The odd effect of this mix of styles is that when he transitions from talking about a sketch he performed on SNL to something else, it looks as though he lapsed into illiteracy.

3) Tracy Morgan officially confirms the longstanding rumors that he and Tina Fey are BFF's. Tina Fey and Morgan had a strong bond since joining SNL at roughly the same time and notes that he was the first person to be called to be on the show preceding even Alec Baldwin's
casting.

Taking advice from one of his comedic idols Richard Pryor, Tracy Morgan believed that everything in his life should be used as comedic fodder. He gave Tina Fey carte blanche to use everything she knew about him for show material and believes that the character of Tracy Jordan was successful largely because he was based on a real person's body of experiences.

4) The after-after-after party cold open from the Season 1 episode "The Source Awards" was based on a wild night on SNL when Tracy Morgan got Tina Fey, Horatio Sanz, and Rachel Dratch among others to ditch the traditional after party and go to what sounds like the shadiest nightclub you've ever heard of. Tina encountered far wilder things than a clingy Wayne Brady that night.

5) If you're looking for dirt on other SNL members, Tracy Morgan reserves exactly two lines of his book to diss two former cast members in a disconcertingly vague way:
"All I have to say about that is, where's Chris Katan now? Where's Cheri Oteri now? That b***h can't even get arrested"
I'm going to go out and say it: This was highly irresponsible of Tracy Morgan. It's highly vague whether Katan and Oteri were actually mean to him or whether he's singling them out becuase they didn't go on to much fame. If Katan and Oteri were legitimately deserving of this, that's fine, but he doesn't go on to say much more, and either way, it's kicking two people when they're down.

In the meantime, the media picked up pretty heavily on that line of the book, with the end result that Oteri and Katan were dragged into the news cycle (Huffington Post, Celebitchy.com, TV Guide, USA Today,  Entertainment Weekly  the AV Club, and the grand mecca of all entertainment news: the Tampa Bay Times) because they were a-holes to Tracy Morgan. Imagine how their agents must have felt that virtually the only publicity those guys got after leaving Saturday Night Live is a vague line in Tracy Morgan's book about how they might be complete jerks. Even if they APPEARED to be jerks to Tracy Morgan, it's highly possible that they were just dealing with their own issues and might have been misunderstood. It's well-documented, after all, that SNL's hectic schedule is conducive to bringing out the worst in people. [Ed. note: apparently, in the reading of the audiobook a few months later, Tracy Morgan went off-script and elaborated a little more on Oteri and Kattan]

6) Tracy Morgan doesn't discriminate between his friends. He has "friends who are black, white, purple, gay, straight, Martian, yellow, old, and young." I'm glad his circle of friends extends to 25% of the solar system. In all seriousness, I love this line because Morgan has a persona that is batshit-crazy enough that I could see him literally believing in Martians.

7) It's entirely possible that Tracy Morgan is unaware of the existence of  Tim Meadows (as well as Dean Edwards and Jerry Minjor). Throughout his book, Morgan refers to himself as the show's only black castmember.
[Ed. note: In a later interview, Morgan clarified he doesn't have any animosity towards Tim but the two rarely interacted because they were from different eras and Tim had so much seniority when he came in]