Live From New York - James H. Miller [103]
But Jean knew zilch about comedy. She didn’t have a clue. It was almost a lesson in how not to run a comedy show. She had a knack for pitting people against each other that was just antithetical to comedy. I don’t know why she thought that was a good way to work. She actually started rivalries where none existed before among the writers and cast, thinking somehow the strongest would prevail. That was not a formula for comedy.
JOE PISCOPO:
I didn’t want the job as a cast member on the show. And I told my agent at the time, Chris Albrecht, who is now an HBO executive, “I can’t do the show, man.” I’d be taking a pay cut, because I was making more money doing commercials — just being the working stiff — and I said, “I don’t want to do this.” But he said, “You’ve got to do it, it’s Saturday Night Live.”
HARRY SHEARER, Cast Member:
I went to Jean and said, “I know you’re not a fan of Lorne’s, and you know that I’m not a fan of Lorne’s, so you’re not going to have a loyalist sitting around saying, ‘Lorne wouldn’t have done it this way.’” I told her, “I’m willing to come work on your show. I think you really need to get some people around us, if you want me to come, who’ve got some experience, because you’re not going to have the slack that Lorne had at the beginning. You’re going to have to hit the ground running.” I suggested Christopher Guest and a couple others as people who should come in, and she said, “I’m not really sure I want people who know what they’re doing.” At that point, I knew I wasn’t coming back.
GILBERT GOTTFRIED:
If they just did reviews of the show and said it sucked, they would have been right. But the articles were like a whole other thing. It became like, even though the writers going in were considered terrible writers because she hired them, the minute she’d fire them, all of a sudden they became great writers. There was even an article in People magazine about three writers as if, because they were fired, that made them great, and they talk about how terrible she was. It was a weird period.
JEAN DOUMANIAN:
Even the censors became very, very tough on me. I couldn’t say something like “rolling off a log.” They thought there was an innuendo there. Then you think about what we got away with from ’75 to ’80. I mean, we were saying things like “golden shower” and they didn’t do anything about it. But the censors really became so tough on us, it was incredible.
DON NOVELLO:
I think Jean took some heat that wasn’t deserved. She took the hit for some bad ratings, but there were times that Ebersol got just as bad ratings. They chose her because she had “producer” in her title in the past, but she was more of a casting person. She found some good people that did well after her — Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo, a lot of them stayed on that she found. I never did a show when she was the producer, but I always liked her. She was a very nice woman.
PAM NORRIS:
I think a lot of people were there saying, “Why couldn’t I have been on the good show?” And it’s like, why don’t you make a good show yourself? One person has a tremendous amount of power at that show. At least they did when I was there. One person can write a great sketch. One person can write two great sketches. One person can write three great sketches. I mean, if you can sit down and write, you know, seventy minutes of pretty good material, you could have the whole show. So I just felt that when writers complained about things, they could have been writing something.
I think in a weird way it’s a privilege to stand on your own feet and not coast on somebody else’s reputation. The people who were working there had every chance to shine if they did something that was even a little bit good. It stood out like a quasar.
GILBERT GOTTFRIED:
Basically on that show they hire you as a performer and expect you to be an unpaid writer. They didn’t use me that much. I think the low point of what the writers thought of me was