Live From New York - James H. Miller [101]
JOE PISCOPO, Cast Member:
When we came in — after Lorne and all the original guys had left — the offices were completely empty. They even cleaned all the desks out. The pencils were gone. And when I tell you pencils, I’m not exaggerating. The offices were all reconfigured. It was like somebody came up there and just kind of bombed out everything, man. It was pretty wild.
ANDREW KURTZMAN, Writer:
I think we had the feeling of being a bit beside the point. Coming in the aftermath of this big cultural juggernaut — the first five years of the show — we were a little like the guy with the handcart behind the locomotive. Saturday Night Live had its own mythology in place. The big show had left town. We had a certain cheese-ball feel. It was hard work to book guest hosts for a while. “Pamela Sue Martin’s on the bubble, but she might say yes” — that kind of thing. You never really had the feeling that you could open your suit on the observation deck of the Empire State Building and yell, “I own this town,” because people were always saying, “Yeah, but you weren’t nearly as good as the original show.”
BILL MURRAY, Cast Member:
I knew Jean and liked her. I’d known her a long time. I’m not sure that she did the worst job in the world. They gave her no credit for trying. She had great connections in the music world and she got some great acts for the show. They didn’t really give her a full shot.
She did find Eddie Murphy and a couple other people who were really talented; they just needed some confidence. She was struggling, and they were having a hard time getting quality hosts. So I called up and I said, “I can’t get arrested. Is there any way I could work on your show?” So I went in there. It was a tough week. We worked really hard writing and rewriting, and the show turned out good, and I thought, “This could work.”
The cast saw how hard you have to work to do that show. I don’t think most of them ever worked that hard before. They were going through their first brush with fame, even at the level they were at. The world just wasn’t ready for a brand-new group, so it was incredibly tough for them.
ANDREW SMITH, Writer:
If you want to get philosophical about the problems of the subsequent years after the first five years, the actors were so cognizant of the success of the group that had gone before them — that Chevy and John and Gilda had broken out into these huge stars — that they began to have one eye on the audience and on the fact that Steven Spielberg might be watching, and only one eye on being funny. The first group that came through before me didn’t know how big they were going to be, so they were much freer and much more open and thus, I thought, a lot funnier than the subsequent people.
As soon as SNL or the Not Ready for Prime Time Players became a launching pad, then it wasn’t about just the comedy that was happening there. It was about future earnings or future career moves. And that’s kind of the cancer that is always threatening to eat away at the comedy on the show, even to this day. God knows, if I was an actor, I would feel the same way. It’s like a loss of innocence. You can’t not think about the fact that if you make the right moves on Saturday Night Live, you could become a huge, huge star. And so therefore when somebody wants you to play a turtle or something like that, you say, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t think that would look good.” I bet if those original guys knew how big they were going to be, they probably wouldn’t have done Killer Bees.
GILBERT GOTTFRIED, Cast Member:
Back then it was a big deal that the cast was changing and the producer was changing. Before we even hit the air, there were already articles being written in every paper and every magazine saying disaster was coming and how dare they continue Saturday Night Live with a different cast? And that this producer is not equipped to do the job and this cast is terrible.
DAVID SHEFFIELD, Writer:
A friend of mine named Patrick was auditioning as an actor on the show. Patrick got his big break as a men