Publishers Weekly
08/21/2023
Comedian and musician Watts debuts with an animated love letter to Great Falls, Mont., that recounts his tangled coming-of-age there. In 1976, when Watts was four, he moved with his Black American father and white French mother from Madrid to Great Falls after his father was assigned to a nearby Air Force base. In junior high, competitive drama competitions gave Watts his first taste of onstage success, and through high school—even as he took up smoking weed, chugging Robitussin, and participating in acts of vandalism—he never stopped chasing that rush, consistently playing in bands and performing bizarre, Andy Kaufman–style improv and stand-up comedy. After high school, Watts set off for Seattle, where he joined the band Maktub, and then for New York City, where he gigged at comedy clubs until his star rose and he started making nightly appearances on The Late, Late Show. He ties it all together with a third-act return to Great Falls to care for his dying mother, during which he unpacks the influence Montana had on his life and career, and concludes, “there’s no place better.” Watts is a droll, endearing narrator, delivering his account with the rapid-fire patter of a good improv act. Budding performers and comedy fans alike will find much to love.Agent: David Larabell, CAA. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
*A Vulture Best Comedy Book of 2023*
"Reminiscent of experimental meta-memoirs like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Great Falls, MT is earnest, optimistic, and future-forward but also nostalgic for (and critical of) times gone by, particularly the ’90s grunge boom and that greater Pacific Northwest–based cultural moment." –Vulture
"Joyful" –The New York Times Book Review
“Fans of Watts will revel in this enjoyable stroll into the past, and those new to him could have no better introduction.” –Kirkus
“Watts is a droll, endearing narrator, delivering his account with the rapid-fire patter of a good improv act. Budding performers and comedy fans alike will find much to love.”–Publishers Weekly
"The rhythms, spontaneity, and wide-eyed curiosity of Watts’s singular musical-comedy act work monumentally well as a book... Most affecting: Watts’s visceral and immersive first-hand account of the ’90s grunge boom and the comedy scenes from later in that decade along with some sweet and honest passages about his parents." –Vulture, Best Comedy Book of 2023 Roundup
“It makes sense that one of our most original and surreal comedians would have an upbringing to match, having been forged in the crucible of Montana via Europe. Reggie’s telling of his story is a delight, exceeded only by my ability to use “crucible” in a sentence.” –Conan O’Brien
“This gripping memoir is equal parts relatable small-town upbringing and unfathomable noise-wizard jazz-clown origin story. Eleventy stars!” –Nick Offerman
“Reggie Watts fits in no box. He is no type of person. Find out how this fascinating and fascinated dude came to be by reading the combination of words he put together on the pages in this book and maybe you will love him like I do.” –Sarah Silverman
“Great Falls, MT deepens my understanding of Reggie Watts while keeping the mysteriousness around his incredible art intact. How did this brilliant, wonderful person get here? This book makes his path seem like something more logical than improbable. Of course he became this person! It’s the same way I feel about Liverpool and The Beatles, or Minneapolis and Prince." –Fred Armisen
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-07-26
A pleasingly offbeat memoir of growing up biracial on the Montana plains.
Watts, a comedian and house bandleader for the Late Late Show With James Corden, writes of his boyhood and teenage years in Great Falls, an Air Force town along the Missouri River that helped shape his future life as “a musician, comedian, and consummate weirdo.” The author was at first daunted by Montana’s trademark big sky, “so huge it felt like it could swallow me up at any moment,” but he soon came to be at home in a place that, in its own way, accepted him for who he was, even though he was “one of nine Black kids” in his high school and thus “an unknown quantity.” Early on in life, he writes, “I absorbed the reality of my jumbled identity, and I embraced it.” Among memories of star-crossed teen romance, the donning of various masks of identity—e.g., “the sensitive James Bond, the funny James Bond, the James Bond who respected women” and Duckie of John Hughes film fame—and occasional forays into behavior that he is sometimes reticent to discuss (not that it stops him from writing candidly), Watts deftly describes the formative 1980s pop cultural landmarks that formed him. Although his hometown had its shortcomings, quickly revealed once he took up residence after high school in Seattle and then Los Angeles, he writes, affectionately, that it allowed him to be whatever he wanted to be—which, in the end, turned out to be “weird, even among other weird people.” It all makes for a lively, endlessly entertaining rejoinder to Chuck Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City with a dash of Questlove for good measure. Watts captures a once-fresh era now rapidly receding into historical memory.
Fans of Watts will revel in this enjoyable stroll into the past, and those new to him could have no better introduction.
