Last month, I wrote an extended article about Saturday Night during the 1980s and 1990s, focusing on two particular comic actors in
particular. But I live in New York, it’s Saturday Night and perhaps not by
chance, I start thinking about SNL.
As I mentioned in the original article, I spent a lot of time in my
childhood and teenage years watching reruns of SNL on Comedy Central over
and over. I’m not saying that I know more about Saturday Night Live from
that period than anyone else, nor am I pretending to be an expert in what is
funny. But for all of my adult life, one of the ongoing complaints that I’ve
read literally every year in the media, is that Saturday Night Live isn’t
funny anymore. This is such a recurring theme that the show itself has held on
to it for decades, and it becomes far more interesting when you learn that the
Overton Window for SNL seems to keep changing for every decade. The MTV
Generation didn’t think it was as funny when Norm MacDonald and Jimmy Fallon
were on it, Gen X didn’t think it was as funny when Tina Fey and Amy Poehler
were on it, and so on and son on. Every five years, no matter how great the
mass of talent that comes from it, no matter how many cast members go on to win
Emmys or awards in other fields, it is the fans of the show just before they arrived that think the series was funnier then. The
fact that each generation never knows how good they had it until its gone is
nothing new.
But the thing is, they are all right about one universal thing. Each
generation of SNL cast members and writers are funnier in a different way, and
each have had certain elements that make the series funnier by design. Having
watched far more than my share of it – and honestly more than I have wanted to
in the last decade, I think I have a certain level of qualification. So I am
beginning this recurring series of the many highs and many lows - occasionally in the same season – of SNL
over the years.
And I’m going to start this series by putting forth a blanket statement.
Everyone who says that SNL is not the same as was for a very long time
is absolutely right. Because however many comic stars have come out of SNL in
the last forty years, how many funny sketches there have been, how many brilliant
new characters and satirical portrayals they have done, there’s one thing SNL
hasn’t been for a very
long time. And that’s radically experimental
with their formula and approach.
And believe it or not, much of this radical and experimentation was at
its height during a period often considered the creative nadir of SNL by fans: 1981-1985, the years that Dick Ebersol was running the show.
If they are remembered today, they are remember for launching the career of one
of the greatest comic performers in history: Eddie Murphy. And to be clear, his
work on the show was one of the highlights of the near half-century of the show’s
run. But he was only part of some of the radical things that Ebersol and
company were daring to try during these years.
Perhaps most of it was done out of pure desperation. In 1980, after the
first group of Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players departed, the show had to deal
with a writer’s strike. The first group of performers they assembled were some
of the most dismal performers and writing that the series would ever see.
Murphy’s debut added some light and Joe Piscopo could occasionally come up with
something funny, but mostly the cast was trying to find their way and they had
no clear road map or direction. (Things were so grim that one of their youngest
performers would end up disappearing from the comedy portal for awhile before
becoming one of the greatest standup comics in history. It really says
something for where SNL was in 1981 that Gilbert Gottfried could not
find a single funny line that year.)
That doesn’t mean they weren’t occasionally willing to try. In a very
early appearance by Eddie Murphy, they did a sketch called ‘Scouting the Negro
Republican’ shot as if were a wildlife documentary that really resonated. And
they were occasionally willing to try to test the boundaries. In an episode
that parodied Dallas’ ratings blockbuster ‘Who Shot JR?”
cliffhanger, the series had an episode where individual cast members would be
shown spouting violence against fellow cast member Charles Rocket, that ended in
a cliffhanger. But mostly it was pedestrian at best, and woefully unfunny at
worst.
So in the fall of 1981, Ebersol took over and made some radical
changes. Murphy and Piscopo would be the sole hold-overs. Among his hires were
Mary Gross, future Tony winner Christine Ebersole, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Brad Hall,
and Tim Kazurinzky. Some of these hires were utilized better than others (Dreyfus
was never used to her full potential the three years she was there) but there
was a certain level of trying harder.
And more to the point, the show was willing to try things with the
format that not even the original series had ever tried. On one occasion, Chevy
Chase would do an entire guest host while being recorded from LA. (He did his
famous ‘land shark’ sketch and the punchline was when the door was opened,
Chase was there on a TV screen.) They would play at the idea of so many of
their most popular characters being overused – in one sketch Eddie Murphy’s Velvet
Jones and Joe Piscopo’s Jersey Guy announced that they were leaving because
they died of ‘overexposure’ (You don’t know how many times I wished that they’d
done the same thing for say, Bill Hader’s Stefan.) And they were more than
willing to poke fun at themselves in a way that was positive meta. Eddie Murphy
ended up guest hosting the show after Nick Nolte, his 48 Hours co-star was sick. He began the introduction by saying: “Live from New
York, it’s the Eddie Murphy Show!” Two weeks later, the show leaned into it further
by having guest host Lily Tomlin talking to Murphy, who was being waited upon
hand and foot and every other cast member playing another Murphy recurring
character. (Kazurinzky was Velvet Jones.) Tomlin admonished all of them
especially Murphy and they all left shame-faced. Then she shouted out: “Live
from New York, it’s the Lily Tomlin show!” (I will get back to her in a minute.)
Perhaps more than any other period they were willing to twist the
format on other things. At one point Murphy came out and told them they were planning
to boil ‘Larry the Lobster’ on live TV unless the viewers at home called in and
voted against it. He had to tell them several times this wasn’t a joke. (Larry
lived.) Andy Kaufman, the performance artist who had shown up frequently for
his bizarre comedy in the original era showed up on several occasion doing his wrestling
women bits. (This was done in connection with Letterman as well.) At one point
the outcry became so loud that they had the viewers phone in as to whether
Kaufman should ever appear on SNL again. Even he was stunned when over 60%
voted that he shouldn’t. (At one point, Kaufman was going to come back, but soon
after being voted off, he was diagnosed with cancer and died soon after.) And
this period would be famous for having stand-up comics have moments to do their
own bits. Steven Wright, Joel Hodgson, and Harry Anderson made some of their
first TV appearance on SNL during this period.
This willingness for experimentation is one of the reason I think SNL in
the early 1980s could often be hysterically funny. The other reason was during
this same period, many of the greatest names in comedy history made appearances
on the show – and got out of their way. When Tomlin hosted, she basically did
monologues from her act, and variations of the characters she’d made famous on
Laugh-In and her monologues. Nor was she alone. Sid Caesar, Flip Wilson, Jerry
Lewis, Don Rickles, and The Smothers Brothers all hosted the show during this
period, and all more or less just did variations on their act – sometimes in
the monologue, sometime in sketches. Caesar basically did a segment for the
news where he did his famous bit of almost speaking French, German, and
Italian.
Nor did even this lead to limits. Significant political figures also hosted,
most famously Ed Koch, who in a searing opening monologue utter excoriated Reagan
and what his problems with him. Edwin Newman showed up after leaving NBC and
was satirized by two characters for not being Paul Newman. And that actually
brings me to what may have been their most radical idea.
During the Ebersol years. Brad Hall was traditionally the man behind
Weekend Update. I say ‘traditionally’ because much of the time, they would let
the guest host do the job. This could be hysterical and not just when Robin
Williams was there. Usually the guest host wouldn’t do much, but occasionally
you could get absolute genius. Jesse Jackson hosted the show in October of 1984
(he’d competed in the Democratic Primaries that year) and they had him give
commentary to Reagan’s responses in the first Presidential Debate and he killed.
I still remember his response to Reagan using the word ‘wardrobe’ in reference
to the military. “He meant, of course, uniforms. ‘Wardrobe’ is for a war movie.
‘Uniforms’ are for a war.” Can you imagine anyone sitting in for Colin Jost or
Michael Che? Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey wouldn’t even let Jon Stewart do it when
he hosted!
I’m not saying SNL was perfect at this period or that everybody
loved the experimentation. I remember a lot of sketches that I thought were
funny at home, but that the audience either didn’t laugh at or in some cases, even
booed. But even that seems to prove a willing to swing for the fences that SNL was not willing to do in future years. Such behavior continued even in
their most legendary year – and what was considered their biggest failure.
To Be Continued…
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