From his hit films "The Addams Family" and "Men in Black" to his Netflix show "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events," director Barry Sonnenfeld paints the world as surreal, chaotic and more than a little dark. It turns out there's a reason.
In his memoir "Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother," the onetime Long Islander (he lived on the East End for many years with his wife, Susan Ringo), describes the emotionally stifling mother, adulterous father and pedophile cousin who together conspired to turn his childhood into something even weirder and darker than one of his own comedies.
The book takes its title from a humiliating announcement that went over the Madison Square Garden sound system while Sonnenfeld was attending a rock concert as a teenager. Its subtitle: "Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker."
