"I think Sammy Petrillo is fucking Amazing! If he was starring in The Jerry Lewis Story, he would deserve an Academy Award. This is not hyperbole!" — Quentin Tarantino

"This book will save America." —Patton Oswalt

Your Time Is Now: The Sammy Petrillo Story is the first full-scale biography of the legendary Jerry Lewis look-alike whose strange, funny, and often heartbreaking life unfolded in the long shadow of one of America’s most famous comedians. With a foreword by award-winning screenwriter Scott Alexander, this deeply researched work of comedy history delivers a rare dual portrait: a parallel biography of Sammy Petrillo and Jerry Lewis, two performers bound together by imitation, rivalry, resentment, and an uneasy mutual awareness that lasted decades. Drawing on original interviews with Petrillo, Lewis, family members, show-business insiders, and surviving mid-century comedy figures, the book reconstructs the improbable life of a journeyman comic who both benefited from and was trapped by his uncanny resemblance to a superstar.

Blending biography, film history, and cultural criticism, Your Time Is Now explores the strange ecosystem of postwar show business—from live television and burlesque stages to poverty-row film studios and cult movie houses. Readers discover the bizarre making and afterlife of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, Petrillo’s complicated relationship with Jerry Lewis, and previously untold connections to figures such as Barbara Loden and the early development of television comedy culture. The result is a richly detailed, often darkly comic examination of identity, fame, imitation, and failure in American entertainment.

For readers of classic Hollywood biography, stand-up and comedy history, cult film culture, and mid-century pop culture, this book is a major addition to the field—a rare, meticulously sourced account that finally gives Sammy Petrillo his due while reframing the legacy of Jerry Lewis through a revealing and unexpected lens. Both a cautionary show-business tale and a trove of entertainment lore, Your Time Is Now is an essential volume for anyone interested in comedy history, Hollywood outsiders, and the strange afterlives of celebrity.

The cover features an original illustration by Drew Friedman and filled with dozens of archival images. Foreword by acclaimed and award-winning screenwriter Scott Alexander.

About the Authors

Dave Abramson, also known as Dave the Spazz, is a New York City–based writer, radio personality, and cultural historian whose work documents the margins of American entertainment, underground music, and outsider show business. Since 1987, he has hosted Music to Spazz By on legendary freeform radio station WFMU, where his deep knowledge of pop ephemera, novelty records, comedy, and cult culture has earned a devoted international following. Abramson is the editor of The Best of LCD: The Art and Writing of WFMU, published by Princeton Architectural Press, and a longtime contributor to WFMU’s influential program guide and media ecosystem.

Abramson’s writing blends obsessive research, firsthand reporting, and dark humor, focusing on forgotten figures, near-misses, and cultural detours that reveal how fame, imitation, and failure operate in American media. He has written for LCD, Harper’s, The Village Voice, and numerous underground publications, and has been interviewed widely on radio and podcasts about music history, cult films, and comedy. In Your Time Is Now: The Sammy Petrillo Story, Abramson brings decades of archival digging and personal encounters to bear on a singular outsider biography, establishing himself as a sharp-eyed chronicler of American show business at its strangest and most revealing edges.

Scott Alexander is an American screenwriter, producer, and director best known for his long-running collaboration with Larry Karaszewski on films that explore outsider figures and American subculture. Their credits include Ed Wood, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Man on the Moon, Dolemite Is My Name, and the Emmy-winning television series The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story. Alexander’s work is noted for blending meticulous research with dark humor and empathy for unconventional subjects.

Drew Friedman's work has appeared in The New York Times, Mad, New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and many other magazines. He is the author of several collections of comics and cartooning, including All the Presidents, Maverix and Lunatix: Icons of Underground Comix, Old Jewish Comedians, and Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead is Purely Coincidental. He resides in Pennsylvania with his wife and collaborator, Kathy Bidus, and their beagles.

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