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Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live

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from: Neal Karlen
to: Tim Appelo

The Best Lines Come From Life

Posted Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2002, at 6:56 PM ET

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Dear Tim,

I agree, but I disagree about your exegesis on the word "prick" as it relates to Live From New York. On one hand, I'm with you that SNL gave us humor cooked up by pricks for the enjoyment of too-cool-for-school same.

But I disagree that's anything new in comedy. On an assignment a decade ago, I had to sit at lunch for an hour every day for a year at the New York Friars Club, among nonagenarian comedians who often couldn't remember their grandchildren's names. Yet like the people chronicled in Live From New York, virtually all these comics—born around the time McKinley was considered a promising presidential candidate—never forgot one single grudge of their showbiz lives.

So, what's the difference between Milton Berle berating the never-was yukster who'd said hello at his table because "that sonuvabitch stole my act at the Passaic Theatre in November 1937"—and Billy Crystal, 27 years later, still blaming his manager for getting him bumped off SNL's first show, not to return for a long, long time?

Nothing. Well, there's talent. Or, as they say in professional wrestling (hey, Jesse Ventura is still my governor for a month), the ability to "get over"—win the crowd and make them tune in for more, even if it's pure shtick. Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin had the Coneheads. Billy Crystal had Fernando's Hideaway. Bill Murray had Nick the Lounge Singer scatting lyrics to the music from Star Wars.

Plus, it takes timing in front of the right people. Bill Murray had it—and still does, unlike so many of the SNL stars who flamed over the years. All ears were always turned to the SNL laff-o-meter, whether the camera was on or off. When Chevy Chase came back to host, he got into a fistfight backstage with Murray, his replacement. In the middle of the brawl, Murray—"foaming with anger," as director John Landis recalls in the book—calls Chase a "medium talent." Landis says, "And I thought 'Ooh boy, that's funny. In anger he says 'medium talent.' So Bill Murray—who is that guy?"

Similarly, back in vaudeville, lasting talents like Henny came up with their best lines by themselves, from life, sans writers. In 1939, while emceeing The Kate Smith Show, the SNL of its day, Youngman tried to shoo his spouse and her friends out from backstage before the show, just as NBC pages would have to do with hangers-on in Studio 8H 40 years later. "Take my wife," he implored a guard, "please."

The joke was real then, and lasted 50 years, just as what was real about SNL will also be funny in 2052. (Sorry to be repetitive from yesterday, but since nobody picks these skits, I still choose among my favorites Eddie Murphy's James Brown's Celebrity Hot Tub. And because no one says anything nice about him in the book or in life, Joe Piscopo's sportscast, where he'd use a dozen teams' bobble-head dolls to dramatize the day's action.)

No one remembers the lousy sketches on Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca's equally epochal Your Show of Shows—but you wish someone back in the 1950s had put together a book like Live From New York. If that biographer had Shales' and Miller's skills, we'd at last glean an idea from the paranoid, megalomaniacal, and brilliant Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Woody Allen, and Neil Simon about who really had to take out the trash on that show—and who had to eat it.

the book club
entries

1 2 3 4

from: Neal Karlen
to: Tim Appelo

The Best Lines Come From Life

Posted Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2002, at 6:56 PM ET

DISCUSS

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Tim Appelo writes about the arts for Seattle Weekly, the New York Times, and People. Neal Karlen is a free-lance writer in Minneapolis.

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Remarks From The Fray (Day 2):

This is a fabulous Book Club. I just wanted to echo the sentiment that SNL would have been better on tape--but barring that, it would have been better if the cast (especially the writing cast) had more freedom to be spontaneous. Early on cast members with a yen for improvising are told (not so politely) that it's verboten to go outside the script or the established blocking. Musn't screw up the pre-planned camera angles! Musn't run into the commercials! The irony is that the very "live-ness" of the show is what deadens it. The possibility of retakes would actually free the cast to go for it instead of standing there reading the cue-cards.

-- David Edelstein
(To reply, click here.)

There is nothing at all humorous about a Land Shark, or Operaman, or some rube making copies, or a samurai in a deli, or Gumby, or Polish playboys. Even if there was something funny in any of these skits none of the SNL crew, past or present, has found it.

So many great talents came from that cesspool, it has to be the writing. It speaks volumes that one of SNL's long-time hacks, Al Franken, is so revered. If ANYTHING SNL has done in it's history is his work, I can see why he still toils there.

-- Aegis
(To reply, click here.)

Aykroyd, Radner, Murray and many of the early SNL staff were alumni of Chicago's Second City (the Chicago and Toronto annex), considered one of, and perhaps most important, original centers of the art form known as Improvisational Theater. Along with Second City, Chicago's Improv Olympic was the hatchery for the likes of Mike Meyers and Tina Fey.

If you know anything about what is taught there, and notably the teachings of the late, great Del Close, you would understand why all the "scandal" and scandalous behavior discussed in these tell alls found its way into the sketches. The basis of the Chicago school of improv is REALITY. Their cardinal rule is to find the funny that permeates real life, in the day to day interactions between people.

Consequently, Bill and Gildna create the Nerds. Akroyd creates the Coneheads, who were far more reality-based than you would think. And Chris Farley creates the stumbling celebrity interviewer. It would be hard to imagine creating any enduring comedy based on anything other than reality, and a reality that is heavily based on complex and deep personal relationships and internal conflicts.

And that's why, IMHO, SNL is generally a pathetically immature and unfunny show. Apart from good political parody (as apart from true political satire, which does not exist anymore on television), SNL is just a bunch of silly, non-sequitor, fish-out-of-water horseshit-- the comic equivalent of a five dollar cocaine rock. One of their gags is too much, and a million of them is never enough.

Fortunately, the legacy of Del Close and the other improv pioneers is in the skills and education of several generations of comics and performers, including Bonnie Hunt, and is being practiced, today, throughout Chicago and other places where the Second City and Improv Olympic school of theater is taught and performed. The minute that performers forget that true comedy is based on both surprise AND recognition, and that recognition requires that comedy arise from reality, they become the hack crap artists that have stunk up SNL for decades.

-- doodahman
(To reply, click here.)

Comedy is a funny thing; we forget that we were different people when we saw these episodes. The things that made us laugh 20 years ago had as much to do with our own state of mind at the time as with the subject matter, the writing or the skill/talent of the preformers. SNL is as much a social record as a social commentary. Sure, we can see the immensity of the talent and lack there of in equal proporitons when we look at the show's running history, but the essence of the comic is of the moment. Comedy slips in between our conciousness and the actual event. It explodes our expectations and examines our prejudices and fears. A funny thing, comedy.-- Breathe

(To reply, click here.)

Remarks From The Fray (Day 1):

Appelo writes "... for 27 years SNL has been decreeing what funny means" and claims that "...we look to SNL to sort out how we should feel about [a real political crisis]".

SNL has enjoyed its highs and lows. In the seventies, it was ground-breaking and funny. Nearly on par with the great Monty Python. In the long period since, it has never equaled its initial incarnation but has occassionally obtained parity with other near greats like "The Kids in the Hall" or "SCTV".

Mostly, though, its been an irrelevant, insufferably long, painfully unfunny reminder of what was.

Aside from the original cast, Bill Murray, and Eddie Murphy, does anyone really care to hear anything more about these incompetents who've already used far too much federally awarded broadcast bandwidth? (Excuse any of the folks who were lucky or wise enough to get out with just a one-year sentence)

The average 30 minute situation comedy is funnier and more enjoyable than the 90-minute high-school talent show that is "SNL". Hell, Tom Brokaw is *funnier* than SNL---whether or not he's less influential...

The writer's are so void of ideas that they roll the same programme out week after week. A fake news conference with the president, washing-up celebrity delivers a (too long) monologue about his week with the show, a fake television commercial, a fake talk show, the celebrity host (softly) parodying his or her public image, an overly long fake news segment... blah blah blah. There's no edge, no perceived danger, nothing flows from these pathetic excuses for writers. And nobody---except drunk/stoned middle school boys---laughs.

The writers have very little to work with. The cast lacks a single player with timing, expressiveness, or animation. The guy that mimics Dick Cheney is bearable.Chris Kattan spends most of his on-screen time trying desperately to read his lines. Jimmy Fallon fumbles through "Weekend Update" without a clue. Compared to anyone on the current programme, Tim Kazurinsky is a supernova of comic brilliance.

SNL is a perfect example of the pathetic state of mass entertainment---particularly humor. I can't believe anyone watches SNL except as a comedown from a short night of drinking. If it's "decreeing what funny means", it's only by counter example.

-- Belushi's Ghost

(To reply, click here.)

Before ripping away, you should read the LIVE FROM NEW YORK book--one of the big highlights is Tim Kazurinsky, who has amazing things to say about Belushi and the Ebersol years. It was one of the revelations of the book.

As for whether the show is still funny, the ratings are still excellent and I think the 1996-2000 stretch had some amazing political humor, anchored by Darrell Hammond's amazing impressions and the as-always brilliant Jim Downey's writing. Plus, for the first time since the original cast, there was a whole batch of really funny women--Ana Gasteyer, Molly Shannon, Cheri Oteri, and Rachel Dratch.

And when was the last time you saw an original cast (or post-Chevy original cast) episode in the full? They were wildly uneven, sometimes terrible. Yes, there were highs that have never been surpassed, but don't make the mistake of thinking everything was funny. It wasn't.

-- radio c

(To reply, click here.)

It's not so much that Saturday Night Live is uneven. If that were the case, you could tune in every night with a 50/50 chance of being entertained. Most of us, though, will tune out SNL for months, or even years, when we know it's awful.

The show actually has its biggest impact over sustained periods of greatness, typified by cast and writer stability. The first, naturally, was from 1975 to 1979. Reruns from that period have not aged well -- too many cast music numbers and "variety" that just looks embarrassing today -- but individual bits like "A.M.I.S.H." and the Coneheads stay timeless. And the cast members have enough verve, and the writing enough daring, that attitude almost makes up for the deficiencies.

The second great era, from about 1986 to 1992, I think, was better than the first. The cast stayed the same from 1986 to 1990, the writing had a daring offensiveness to it ("I normally wear protection. But then I thought, 'When am I going to get back to Haiti?'") and in Dennis Miller, the show boasted the best Weekend Update host ever. I will not argue this last point.

So what brings the show downhill? When people pay attention. SNL made the fateful leap from groundbreaking trend to revered institution almost overnight in the late 70s, and the 1979-80 season passes that reverence onto its hosts. No more Rob Reiner being insulted by the cast; no more Michael Palin stuffing cats into his pants. Instead, you got Gilda Radner introducing her aunt to Kirk Douglas. After everyone suddenly realized SNL was "back" in the late 80s, the show calcified into safe, established characters, routines and impressions, going waaaaayyyy too hard for the character with the memorable catch phrase.

In both instances, the audience started drifting away, the show lost its street cred, and the cast began shifting, making crap. Thanks to Comedy Central, we can get the 1981-86 and 1993 to 1998 seasons nonstop, and realize just how awful Tim Kazurinsky and Brad Hall really were.

Unfortunately, that's the curse of SNL. It has to turn into garbage before new writers sift the refuse and turn it into gold.

-- BML

(To reply, click here.)

(10/17)