Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (47 page)

With John Madden, it was really about the closest I ever came to having a heart attack before I had a real one in February of ’96. In the last half hour of dress, John had, in effect, a second monologue, and basically it was bringing him out to tell some stories that he told normally about various crazy football players who had played for him on the Raiders. But it was so funny, we had helped him shape it into like a two- or three-minute monologue about an hour and ten minutes into the show.

So we were in a break and John was up on home base to do the second monologue when he said, in a booming voice, “Ebersol, Ebersol.” And I’m under the bleachers in approximately the same area that Lorne works at today. I stuck my head around the corner so he could see me. He said, “Come here a minute.” I came to about halfway to the stage area with a full house, whatever it is, three hundred–plus for dress. And he said, “I just want to tell you now I’m going to finish this dress rehearsal and then I’m going to leave. I’m not happy with how things have been going, and I’m enough of a trouper to finish it for this audience, but then I’m outta here. This is just the pits.”

I’m standing there and I’m dying. And he lets about two or three seconds go and then he gets the biggest smile on his face in the world and he said, “You know I’m a practical joker, don’t you?” The place went nuts. But in the meantime, I had just about had a heart attack.

ANDY BRECKMAN:

When Sam Kinison hosted, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed harder. He did a little bit of his act for the staff about necrophilia. There was an article in the paper about a guy who was caught having sex with a dead guy in a funeral home. The question was whether Sam could do the joke on the show. It was in the air all week whether or not it was something he would be allowed to do, and I guess they eventually decided he couldn’t.

DANNY DEVITO,
Host:

The first time I did it was when
Taxi
had just gotten a bunch of Emmys and they then promptly canceled the show. And we did a whole thing on
Saturday Night Live
where we blew up the ABC Building in the cold opening, and the taxi drove off the bridge.

The weird thing is that the show goes by so quick when you do it. They pull you from one spot to the next. You’re putting a wig on or a mustache and going, “Oh, this is the skit we’re doing, oh, I remember this is what we’re doing.” They’re in tune to it. They lead you around by the nose, basically. And it’s over before it seems like you started it. You have to go with the flow. And you can’t sit there and think about it too much, you have to just accept a lot of things in trust and go for it.

MARGARET OBERMAN:

There were scenes. There were definitely scenes. One was particularly nasty. It involved Michael Keaton, who was a friend of mine who had come to do the show and who was very hot off
Night Shift.
And between the Monday when Michael came in and the read-through, Dick decided he didn’t like him and brought in Michael Palin, who was a real friend of the show and would come in occasionally to do things and who everybody loved. And Dick sort of inched Keaton out and moved Palin in. And it was pretty nasty.

Keaton was really hurt and angry and never really understood it. It was aberrant behavior on Dick’s part. Keaton was one of those guys who as an actor in read-through was very laid-back and wouldn’t really give you too much, and Dick was convinced he was just bad and just lost all confidence in him. Palin didn’t know what was going on. He was oblivious. It was really awkward, one of those yucky, strange things that leaves a really bad taste in your mouth.

HARRY SHEARER:

I had been writing this series of Reagan sketches called “Hellcats in the White House,” none of which got on the air. And the last one, they had me in Reagan makeup from dress straight through air. So I spent eight straight hours in Reagan makeup, and I think Bob Tischler finally told me at twelve fifty-three the sketch was cut, and I said to him, “I kind of figured that out.” So for three straight weeks, I wasn’t on the air, and I just at that point decided I had better things to do with my time. I’m not the tantrum type, although I think I’m better at hiding my feelings than I am. I’m told that when I’m unhappy in a situation, people know it just by the cloud that gathers over me. So on January 13 at one forty-three A.M., Dick said, “You know, we should stop this.” And I said, “Well, I do too, but I think you have to pay me for the rest of the year.” He said okay and then I left. I had said to Bob Tischler early on, “Why is Billy Crystal getting all this exposure on the show?” And he said, “Billy’s stuff is more commercial than yours.” And I said, “But this is a late-night show. Why is that the calculation?”

When I left, Dick issued a press release saying “creative differences.” And the first person who called me for a comment on it read that to me and I blurted out, “Yeah, I was creative and they were different.”

DICK EBERSOL:

There weren’t many ego problems to deal with there — none at all, other than with Harry Shearer, who just got out of control. So by the end of January, I let him go. I had talked to each cast member before I did, and for the most part they were okay with it. A couple of them, who should go nameless, were sad, but they had to admit that the problem had gotten out of hand.

MARTIN SHORT:

Harry wanted to be creative and Dick wanted something else. Harry’s very smart and very prolific, and I think that he felt his voice should be represented on the show. When he wouldn’t get a chance, it made him very upset. If someone had said, “Harry, here’s eight minutes of show, do whatever you want, and the rest of the show will be what it is,” I think he felt there was an audience out there that would be interested to hear what he had to say. So that was a source of huge frustration between the two of them.

JAMES DOWNEY:

I used to walk down the street with Bill Murray and have to stand there patiently for twenty minutes of like drooling and ass-kissing by people who would come up to him. And Murray would point to me and say, “Well, he’s the guy who writes the stuff,” but they would continue to ooh and ahh over him. Murray can be a real asshole, but the thing that keeps bringing me back to defend him is I’ve seen him be an asshole to people who could affect his career way more often than to people who couldn’t. Harry Shearer will shit on you to the precise degree that it’s cost-free; he’s a total ass-kisser with important people.

Back when neither of us was making much money, Murray and I would take these cheap flights to Hawaii. We had to stop in Chicago, and at the airport there’d be these baggage handlers just screaming at the sight of him, and he would take enormous amounts of time with them, and even get into like riffs with them. I enjoyed it, because it was really entertaining. We went down to see Audrey Peart Dickman once, and the toll guy on the Jersey turnpike looked in and recognized Murray and went crazy. We stopped and people were honking and Bill was doing autographs for the guy and his family.

I’ve yet to meet the celebrity who was universally nice to everyone. But the best at it is Murray — even to people who had nothing to do with career or the business.

TIM KAZURINSKY:

It got really, really depressing, and there was also the notion, I think from Ebersol — from Yale Business School, or wherever the freak he came from — of divide and conquer. I was like tops of the group. I was the old guy that people would come to for life advice and medical questions; I was Mom and Pop. And I noticed that Ebersol would keep the cast off balance. He would try and keep it divisive and pit people against each other, because if we were united, if we were unionized, he was fucked. And he always did everything he could to keep the cast from being cohesive. I remember my last year there, they offered me “Weekend Update” about three-quarters of the way through the season. And I said, that’s really fucked. Brad Hall would feel horrible. I mean, that’s just like yanking him in the middle of the season. Everybody’s ego was fucked-up enough. If you’re going to do something like that, do it at the end of the season. And I just said no. I didn’t have the stomach for it.

BRIAN DOYLE-MURRAY:

I got along with Ebersol. He was kind of goofy, but he’s basically a likable guy.

MARGARET OBERMAN:

I think Dick was made fun of by Lorne. They used to call him “Patches.” He was the NBC guy, kind of a suit. But I think that in a funny way he knew what he was doing. Look what he did. It was trial-and-error. He didn’t pretend to be a creative genius, and he did some really low-rent things. It was not at that time a very hip show to be on in a certain way. The first year I was there, the hosts were like — we used to call them “the Bobs” — Robert Culp, Robert Conrad. It was such a weird array of people.

But you know, Dick kept it afloat, and all these people came out of it, and there were some great moments. It wasn’t consistently wonderful — but then I don’t know if it was ever consistently wonderful since the original show, and even
that
wasn’t consistent, but the level of talent was so high you just didn’t care.

ELLIOT WALD:

I was always one of those people who stayed up late and loved to watch the sun coming up. By the time I left
Saturday Night Live
, I was phobic about watching the sun rise. I couldn’t stand to watch it getting light, because it meant time was running out and the pressure was on. So that changed in my life.

From a distance, they were wonderful years, and it was a good experience. But the closer in I focus, the more I remember exhaustion, disappointment, and pressure. The individual days of those years were so hard.

Those four years took about ten years off my life. Just the number of hours, the amount of pressure. The fact is that it’s enormous pressure to be funny, and beyond that it’s enormous pressure to be funny at a particular time. You’re funny on Monday and Tuesday. Being funny on Thursday just isn’t the same thing. So you’ve got from noon Monday ’til read-through on Wednesday.

JAMES DOWNEY:

That last season Dick had, when Eddie Murphy had left, he had Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Chris Guest — that was one of the best years of the show ever. They did some really wonderful, original stuff. A lot of it sort of broke up the form of the show — a lot of it was on film and really had nothing to do with “live.” But it was really good stuff.

MARTIN SHORT:

SCTV
was different. I did it for longer and it was in my hometown and it was the first show of that kind that I did, so there’s obviously a special place in my heart. But I have a great fondness for
Saturday Night Live
and that year. I think of it as more like an event than a working job. It was like putting out a paper or something.

MARGARET OBERMAN:

At one point I was asked to write for
SCTV
and I was pissed off at Dick about something, so I thought I’d go to Toronto and do that. I knew a lot of those people at
SCTV
, but once I went and thought hard and long about taking that job I decided not to and went back to
Saturday Night.
Because
Saturday Night
was really a writer’s show and
SCTV
was really a performer’s show. And there was a big difference. As a writer, it was a better place to be.

For five years
Saturday Night Live
had gone through highs and lows, sometimes seeming like the distressed damsel in a silent-movie serial, tied to railroad tracks and then being plucked up just before the train roared through. But what had Ebersol and his stars saved — the show or merely the title? Glorious tradition or mere commercial franchise? To some of the purists present at the creation of the precedent-shattering show, it seemed to have strayed far from its original mission and looked like it couldn’t shatter a precedent with a pickax. And yet anything that lasts has to change — and Ebersol’s final year, the one that starred Billy Crystal and Martin Short, is widely considered one of the funniest in the history of the show. The laughs were there, if not the heart.

BILLY CRYSTAL:

Here’s a story I never really told before: I got a movie out of my year on
Saturday Night Live
, with Gregory Hines, called
Running Scared.
But right before that was to start, Brandon Tartikoff called me and asked me would I consider becoming the permanent host of the show. At this point I was in California, the night before the screen test for the movie — which was a formality, because I knew I’d gotten the part, but the studio wanted to see me on film. It was actually a test to see if I could be convincing throwing a punch, which is most of what I ended up doing in the test. I was staying at Rob Reiner’s house because I had rented my house out; people were still living in it. I felt weird. I came home and couldn’t go home.

Brandon calls me at Rob’s and says, “Listen, this is what I’m thinking about. Would you be interested?” This is May or June, right after the season had ended. I said, “Of course I’d be interested, but let me know, because then I won’t test for the movie. I’ll turn the movie down, because I’ll have to come right back to New York and start planning.” Clearly I could not possibly do both the movie and the show. And he said, “Let me call you back.”

And I was ecstatic, because I felt I was ready for it. I can’t describe enough how
comfortable
I was on that show. And then we didn’t get a call. And what had happened was — this is all within twenty-four hours — Dick Ebersol decided not to come back, Lorne decided to come back, and not only was I not going to get what Brandon was envisioning, I was also not going to be a part of the show. Lorne wanted to start fresh and start with a whole new group of people. So the decision was sort of made for me. I would have come back, I would have liked that to happen. I’ve loved my career since then, but that would have been an interesting time if that had worked out. It may not have been the right thing. It may be that the show is great because it has guest hosts. Even thirty years later, it’s still fun to watch people do things you wouldn’t expect them to do.