As long as you don’t live under a rock and you’ve watched network television at some point in the last 20 years, you’ve heard the phrase, “Sit, Ubu, Sit” followed by a bark and “Good dog.” “Sit, Ubu, Sit” is the name of a production company started by Gary David Goldberg, and also the name of his new memoir about “how [he] went from Brooklyn to Hollywood with the same woman, the same dog, and a lot less hair.”
Goldberg is the writer and producer of “Family Ties,” “Brooklyn Bridge,” and co-producer of “Spin City.” With credentials like that, Goldberg has a right to be arrogant, but he’s not. His entire memoir praises the people who helped him. More of a glorified thank-you note to others than an exercise in selfishness, the memoir reads like Goldberg is running out of time to tell the people he loves that he loves them. It’s impossible to accurately estimate how many times Goldberg says that he owes so and so for his success.
And while this is beautiful and certainly true, I have to ask, is there anyone you don’t like?
Goldberg’s anecdotes come from 1950s Brooklyn, a 1970s trip across Europe, 1980s sound stages and the present day in Vermont. They are all slices of life that leave you happier, lighter and more optimistic.
You can hear Goldberg’s voice as you read, the stories written in his memoir as he would tell them to you in person. Full of love stories, television success and just downright lovely childhood tales, this book, as Steven Spielberg said, will make you “feel better about… everything.”
Even through all of its jovial stories and praise for his friends and colleagues, there are lessons to the learned from this book. It’s a love story but it’s also about how relationships can be tried and put to the test. It’s about television success but it’s also about failure along the way. And it’s about childhood but being a child can hurt.
This is a memoir for anyone who has ever dreamed of working in television; for anyone who has ever been in love; for anyone who has ever been happy. It may make you laugh, it may make you cry, but either way it will make you happy to be alive.
