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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

Interesting, Dirty, and Populated With Talent

Posted Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2002, at 6:48 PM ET

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Dear Tim,

The approaching Minnesota winter whistled through my open bedroom window last night, so when I awoke I decided that I wasn't going to agree with whatever you wrote about Tom Shales' and James Andrew Miller's Live From New York, newly published to much hoo-ha. We're like that here in passive aggressive Minnesota: You're cold because you left the window open, so you slag the Pulitzer-Prize-winning television critic of the Washington Post and his co-writer.

That said, I completely agree with you that Shales has both painted his masterpiece and presented, at last, a definitive work on Saturday Night Live. Compared even to Edie, that other great oral history, Live From New York is more interesting, dirtier, and populated with people far more talented than the dimwits who surrounded Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgewick in their glory days.

Shales' canvas is worthy. Despite SNL's unevenness over the last quarter-century, it's not exactly cutting-edge social commentary to remember how special Saturday Night Live was when it debuted in 1975 because it seemed the first show made for "us." More important than "us," however, was that Saturday Night Live was the first television show made for Tom Shales—he hailed its debut more than 25 years ago as "the freshest satire on commercial TV" that deserved added hosannas for occurring "nakedly, brazenly, and perilously live."

The old generation of pre-Shales TV critics had been a mostly fuss-budgety lot, always demanding more Edward R. Murrow Harvest of Shame pain-and-misery documentaries, even when Edward R. Murrow had moved on to grinding out propaganda for the U.S. government. A generally status-free job in the newsroom slightly above the obituary department, the old-guard TV critics were the men who hounded Jack Paar off the air for saying "water closet," who helped pull the plug on The Smothers Brothers Show for booking well-known Stalinist Pete Seeger.

Shales was the brightest of the baby boom TV critics, weaned via television on Vietnam's living-room war and Sen. Sam Ervin as Watergate's Moses. Still, even those in the media who liked Saturday Night Live didn't seem to know what the hell it was its first season. New York magazine made Saturday Night Live sound like a Chevy Chase vehicle, and put the preppie with the Harold Lloyd pratfalls on its cover. (This enraged John Belushi into a paroxysm of jealousy; he was redeemed when Chase quit the show after a year, tying McLean Stevenson's decision to leave M*A*S*H for worst career move in TV history.) Meantime, the New York Times thought Saturday Night Live was a music show, though the critic admitted he'd missed 40 minutes of the program.

Whatever Saturday Night Live was—and one shudders to think of the number of Ph.Ds Shales' and Miller's exemplary effort will provide primary material for in the future—Saturday Night Live's meaning has seemed as impossible to decrypt as the gibberish that Eddie Murphy was singing in his brilliant "James Brown's Celebrity Hot Tub" skits.

Not that vast forests haven't been felled in the trying. In fact, the best book review I ever heard concerned the biography of a Saturday Night Live hero. The book was Bob Woodard's Wired, the Watergate-buster's pathography of the putatively grimy life and death of John Belushi. The review: "Somebody should a drop a safe on Bob Woodward's head," from SNL stalwart Bill Murray. "Woodward had an agenda in getting everything so wrong. He's jealous. He knows that no matter how many Pulitzers he wins he's still going to rank behind John and then Red Grange as the most famous person to come out of Wheaton, Illinois."

Like all truly good definite works, Shales and Miller dish the dirt, or at least allow everybody else to kick dirt upon each other like Pete Rose and some woebegone umpire. Live From New York is already notorious among those in it: At the recent Friar's Club roast of Chevy Chase for Comedy Central, Paul Shaffer, the former musical director for Saturday Night Live, made an in-joke from the dais about the massive scatological sludge tossed between its covers.

If I have any small quibble, it's that I wanted more of Shales, briefly, even with a few words, interjecting himself in the narratives. Nothing blowzy, just something like ed .note from Shales: bull**** when he catches someone spinning a yarn. As someone said about Lucky Luciano or Roy Cohn, Shales has been so wired into the show for so long that "he knows where the bodies aren't buried."

In the meantime, we and scholars of the future are left to ponder: Was the show really Albert Brooks' idea? Was Robert Klein originally going to be the permanent host?

In the meantime, we can thank Shales for hooking on to a show that surprisingly still matters. This morning, I interviewed Jonathan Alter, the Newsweek columnist and political commentator who watched SNL as a teenager in Chicago. Last night, Alter attended the party at the Rainbow Room for the book and ran into Sen. John McCain, who's hosting the show this week.

"McCain was telling a story and referred to someone as a 'prick,' " remembered Alter, "and I thought it boded well for his campaign that here was someone willing not afraid to say that word to a reporter in public. I thought it also boded well for a show, that it still had the kind of cutting edge where it was still willing to have someone on as host willing to say 'prick.' "

That utmost critical point is made in Shales' and Miller's book, and it is a point that has somehow escaped each of the SNL tomes that preceded it. Ya think?

Best wishes,
Neal

the book club
entries

1 2 3 4

from: Neal Karlen
to: Tim Appelo

Interesting, Dirty, and Populated With Talent

Posted Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2002, at 6:48 PM ET

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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)