EYE Marty

Book excerpt: Completed before he died, thirty years ago, this is the newly discovered autobiography of one of the most influential comedians of recent times, Marty Feldman. Marty was a professional writer, and considered himself a writer first, and an actor second. Feldman created a number of immensely successful and influential shows such asMarty, The Frost Report and sketches forMonty Python. He was one of the most essential creative forces in British comedy embodied also by his close friends and creative partners fromBeyond the Fringe (especially Peter Cook and Dudley Moore) andMonty Python (especially John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Eric Idle). Marty played the fool, often very happily and with tremendous talent and volcanic, anarchic energy, for his entire life. His face is what many people most immediately remember. It was a face that David Frost, one of his bosses, characterized as 'too grotesque' for television -- see what Feldman has to say about Frost, and Francis Bacon, and John Lennon... Marty Feldman finished, and set asideeYE Marty soon before traveling to Mexico to shoot his final film. He did not know that he would die there, although he certainly felt he might die soon, and was haunted by the notion. The book is exactly as Feldman wrote it: Mark Flanagan had it transcribed, with even the photos inserted where Feldman had noted they should go. Hilarious, deeply charming, aphoristic, ironic, charged throughout with lust for life and filled with scenes of great vanished eras and and portraits of other performers and friends,eYE Marty is the amazing discovery of the story of a man who was at the heart of the British comedy revolution.