Patton Oswalt Reflects On His Addiction To Film In The New Memoir Silver Screen Fiend

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• The comedian in his younger years (2005, to be precise)

Patton Oswalt’s second memoir, his follow-up to 2011’s Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, is his recounting of the period between 1995 and ’99, when he was an up-and-coming comic in Los Angeles who went to the movies almost every night. Enabled by living in close proximity to the legendary New Beverly Cinema, he set out to see as many movies as possible that he found listed in The Film Noir Encyclopedia, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, and Danny Peary’s three volumes of Cult Movies. What results in Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life From an Addiction to Film is part film criticism and part show-biz autobiography, as Oswalt fits in Billy Wilder double features and Hammer horror marathons around club gigs and a stint writing for Mad TV.