Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (27 page)

DICK EBERSOL:

Fred fired me in 1979, although he did not have the guts to do it himself. He had a triumvirate of folks do it. I was running comedy, variety, and specials at the time. Brandon and I were each other’s absolute best friend on the face of the earth. He had once been my assistant. And, if you recall, Fred, in one fell swoop, and correctly — in one of the great moves of Fred’s career — promoted Brandon above me, so that I became an executive reporting to Brandon for the last six months that I worked at NBC, which Brandon and I handled beautifully.

ALAN ZWEIBEL:

John was on the cover of
Newsweek
by himself when
Animal House
came out, and there wasn’t anyone from the rest of the cast there with him. I think if there was a demarcation point, as far as I was concerned, that may have been it. Things changed. All of a sudden there was a world that was dangling temptations. John’s a star now by himself, John’s getting a million dollars or whatever it was, by himself. Gilda was given a one-woman show on Broadway. Billy did
Meatballs.
John did
Goin’ South
, and he and Danny did the Blues Brothers movie. And I think those last few years that I was there, one of Lorne’s greatest tasks was to keep everybody together. So it wasn’t just, “Let’s put on a fun show,” it was, “Let’s keep this together.” And what happened was, there was a competition. There were studio executives starting to hang out in 8H during blocking asking, “Who wrote that sketch?” They were looking for sitcom writers or movie writers.

Don’t forget, these guys were starting to go into movies. Someone was going to have to write John’s movies, someone was going to have to write Gilda’s movies. And within the cast itself, the Tuesday night writing sessions became all-nighters, which was not the case at the very beginning.

What had happened was, the politicking of the situation almost made it necessary for people to lobby. They’d think, “Gee, if I go home early and I’m not here to hang out or to sit in a room and inject myself into a sketch, I might not have that much to do this week.” Writers felt that if they weren’t there to get their names on the tops of the paper, or if they didn’t get Gilda or John or somebody who was a little bit more front-and-center at the time to do their sketch, it might not get on.

MARILYN SUZANNE MILLER

Lorne died with the show. If things didn’t go well, he torpedoed. They’d go up there in those first years immediately after the air show and watch the tape within seconds. In the earliest years, they were together night and day, day and night. At night it’s the party; the next morning you’d go to the Russian Tea Room and have brunch. And it was always about, “We will try harder.” Everybody was this animatronic personality who was going to do better, and it was all for the show, and giving up things for the show. The emotional component was so great for everyone involved.

DAN AYKROYD:

It’s too stressful, because you worry about quality, you want things to be so right, and that really weighs heavily — plus the adrenaline pump, it’s like being in combat or a cop or something. You can’t take that week after week. It’s a young man’s game, there’s no doubt about it. It is satisfying when you pull something off, and it is tremendously debilitating and anxiety-producing when you don’t.

PAULA DAVIS:

There’s something about
SNL
. I’ve worked at other places. It’s unlike working anywhere else, and it’s a great place to learn because you are so instilled with paranoia. Everything you say is double- and triple-checked. Where did you hear that? Where did you go with it? Does anybody else know? I have that so ingrained in me that when I get information, I won’t divulge it until I know that it’s absolutely okay. There’s also this kind of snobby thing that’s just inbred up there, like you’re the only people working in showbiz. I feel like when I was there, I was kind of snotty and dismissive of other people. I just thought, “If you don’t work at
SNL
, you don’t know what showbiz is,” you know?

RODNEY DANGERFIELD:

It’s tough to produce that show every week, are you kiddin’? It’s difficult. My father was in vaudeville, and he went on the road for ten months to break in an eight-minute act. So to do something every week — I mean, people do sitcoms and stuff like that, which I’m not that fond of, because I can’t sit there and laugh at typed-in laughter, that is not my cup of tea. But
Saturday Night Live
, that’s unusual. They’re all so great there too. Jeez, every year they come up with such winners, you know?

BILL MURRAY:

I only became sort of important to the show after Danny and John went to do
The Blues Brothers
and quit. When they were doing
The Blues Brothers
, all of a sudden I started getting a lot to do, and when they were gone, then I really got a lot to do. Then I was in lots and lots and lots and lots of sketches.

When you have this celebrity thing, different things change, your vision is different, and I was sort of like in the wake of all these people. I didn’t have as many famous friends and I didn’t necessarily work certain parts of town. So I was just doing what I was doing and happy enough to do that. I was still trying to be not-famous on some level — and I still was not-famous on some level — so I was able to enjoy that part of it and see that the famous part of it had its down side. I was busy mining the parts of my life where I was not famous, because I saw that those were not going to last forever.

Professionally, I just kept doing my job because I was pretty good at it, and I became valuable those last couple years, and I was proud of the work I did. I thought I worked hard. I was a little late sometimes, but I thought I worked pretty well and I never had like brawls or feuds with the girls or anything.

Even network executives became embroiled in backstage melodrama — especially toward the end of
SNL
’s raucous infancy, when NBC was getting a double drubbing: terrible ratings in prime time and even worse press. Fred Silverman, having a spectacularly stormy reign as network president and already feeling under siege, saw
Saturday Night Live
graduate from being a source of occasional irritation to being a major, gaping trouble spot. Al Franken picked this painful moment to compose a savage piece of satire called “Limo for a Lame-O,” one of the meanest acts of character assassination in the history of — well, in the history of mean acts of character assassination. Franken, addressing the camera, told viewers Silverman had done a lousy job running the network and didn’t deserve the limousine that was one of his lavish perks, whereas Franken, star of a hit show, did. He invited viewers to write to Silverman demanding that Franken be given the use of a limo. More than five thousand letters — nastily addressed to “The Lame-O” — deluged an infuriated Silverman’s office.

Already incensed about losing the Gilda Radner variety hour that he thought would rescue his regime, and assuming the Franken sketch to have been part of a staff conspiracy at
Saturday Night Live,
Silverman broke off communication with Michaels and never consulted him about who his replacement as executive producer should be. Michaels wanted Franken. The “Limo” sketch certainly put the kibosh on that.

LORNE MICHAELS:

I was going back and forth about whether to come back or not. All I really wanted was time. Since the election was coming up in the fall and they always threw us out of 8H for election coverage in those days, I was looking for some downtime after the season ended. I’d worked the summer before on Gilda’s Broadway show, and I wanted this summer off, plus just a month or two of recovery time. So basically, I wanted to start up again after the 1980 election. That was what I wanted creatively. The business questions of what I wanted, or of what I have to this day, had been solved at the end of the third season, when my contract was first up. So it wasn’t a money issue at all.

And that fifth season, Fred Silverman was running a
Best of Saturday Night Live
in prime time for thirteen weeks, so in every way we were at the peak of being exploited — or to put it another way, the peak of overexposure. We were limping to the finish line.

Gilda had said she would stay with me. There were a couple people I knew would still be there. But the big piece of information was that I was going to have to really recast and reinvent the show. I was going to have to fire some people, many of whom had lived up to the top of their talent, but the mistake was made five years earlier in the hiring. Quite often the least talented are the ones who most want you to know how loyal they are. And if I did return, I’d have to give up all thoughts of directing movies or whatever else I thought I might want to do with my life.

Brandon Tartikoff had been given the task of either trying to get me to come back or getting a replacement. I think he had more than enough problems with Silverman as it was. And Freddie was a screamer. I was supposed to have met with Fred, but he had stayed out late the night before and canceled the meeting. Bernie took this as a sign of lack of respect. I did know they were making Tom Snyder’s new deal and Johnny Carson’s new deal, so the emphasis seemed to be on on-air talent as opposed to dealing with a producer, which they weren’t used to. It just wasn’t a priority. I don’t think they understood the part a producer played in that kind of a show.

Anyway, Fred apologized profusely and our meeting was rescheduled for the following Monday. That weekend, Al Franken does “Limo for a Lame-O,” which is a direct fucking assault on Fred Silverman. I see it for the first time, as I do with “Update,” at dress rehearsal. Brandon Tartikoff comes over to me, and he’s laughing at it because it’s very funny and it killed with the audience. I say to Brandon and Barbara Gallagher, who worked directly for Fred, “You should let Fred know. Don’t blindside him on this. You don’t want to be sitting in your house and suddenly Al Franken is attacking Fred.” But neither Brandon nor Barbara made the call — I think because, at the time, they were both frightened of him.

So what happens is, Fred Silverman
is
blindsided by this thing at home and goes into a complete rage. He thinks that I’m responding to his canceling the meeting with me by calling him a lame-o on national television. And what are you going to say — that it wasn’t me? Then he’d think I’m such a wuss that I allow Al Franken to just steamroll me against my own better career instincts. Anyway, it all blows up and that’s that. And then his hurt feelings lead to my hurt feelings. It all seemed to be end-of-season emotions, which are just end-of-season emotions — that time when you never want to see anybody again ever. The upshot of it all was that Fred took it personally, and that put a further strain between him and me, and we never did meet.

FRED SILVERMAN:

I never liked Al Franken to begin with. You don’t mind it if somebody like John Belushi gets up there and makes jokes about you, because I respected his talent and he was funny. But I thought this piece that Franken did was just very mean-spirited and not very funny. I don’t think I called Lorne about it. I think I sent a letter, a note or something, to Franken and said in no uncertain terms that I thought he was way off base and that I wasn’t going to forget it. And I believe he left the show shortly thereafter. I don’t believe he stayed on the show very long. I don’t think Lorne put the sketch in there to be mean. He never did a sketch to be mean. That was not his style. I never blamed Lorne personally.

WARREN LITTLEFIELD,
NBC Executive:

Brandon was sitting in the audience and they had just done the “Limo” sketch and a page comes over and says, “Mr. Tartikoff, you have a phone call.” And he says, “Who is it?” And the page goes, “A screaming Mr. Silverman.” Brandon stopped for a second and then asked, “Did you tell him that you knew where I was?” The page said, “No, we were just told to find you.” Brandon said, “Okay then, tell him you can’t find me.”

Brandon just couldn’t take it. Here it was, midnight on Saturday night, and he just couldn’t take Fred screaming at him at that hour. We always thought that was a wonderful lesson that Brandon was imparting to us about survival in the executive ranks.

BARBARA GALLAGHER,
NBC Vice President:

I went to Lorne when I saw the “Limo for a Lame-O” sketch in rehearsal. He said, “Too much, huh?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Go talk to Franken.” So I go over to Al, and Al goes, “Wasn’t that the greatest?! Didn’t you love it?!” I said, “Al, I’m not going to censor you, it’s not my job. I’m just telling you it’s pretty dicey right now. Fred’s in a bad way, and this is really going to hurt him.” And Al said, “Good, because he hurt Lorne.” So I went back to Lorne, and Lorne said, “I’ll take care of it.”

Well, the bit was worse when it came on the air. I was home watching the show. The phone rang; it was Fred. When he couldn’t get Brandon, he called me. He said, “Did you know about this?” I said, “I did.” He said, “And you didn’t do anything about it?” I said that I’d told Al we weren’t going to censor him but that it was too much. Fred said, “You call Lorne and tell him how hurt I am and how could he do that, how could he let that go on at this time?” Fred had offered Lorne the world to stay on at
Saturday Night Live.
He wanted him to stay. He’d said, “Whatever you need, whatever you want — just stay.”

So I call over to Lorne and Al gets on the phone and says, “So, Fred’s pissed at me?” I said, “No, Al, he’s not mad at
you.
” Al said, “Well, it’s not Lorne’s fault.” I said, “Yeah, it is. He’s the producer.” Al said, “Lorne lets us do what we want to do.” I said, “Fred is really hurt. If you heard his voice, he is really hurting.” So Lorne gets on the phone. He says, “Is he mad?” I said, “No, he’s hurt, and he’s blaming you.”