Live From New York - James H. Miller [116]
He ran defense between us and the network. He kept the wolves away while we did the show. This is a good executive strategy. His great strength as producer of the show is he didn’t try to do comedy. He left that up to us.
BRAD HALL:
My big run-in with Dick came when there was this very funny sketch that got cut for time and he said, “Don’t worry, we’ll do it next week.” And then, of course, it wasn’t on the board the next week, and so I said, “You said we’d do it ‘next week.’” And he denied having said it, of course. I’m a very even-tempered guy, but once in a while I’ll get mad. I was absolutely in offense, because it just wasn’t true. And good old Mary Gross, to her credit, goes, “We were all there, we all heard it.” It was typical. I think everybody had things like that.
GRANT A. TINKER:
I had so many larger problems that had to be dealt with that I just didn’t get around to Saturday Night Live, and no one was the worse for wear as the result. The show went on, and I did what I did, and just because the twain never met, it wasn’t advertent on my part. I guess you could say it was inadvertent.
PAM NORRIS:
I did not find Dick difficult to work for. I did not agree with a lot of his decisions, but he had what to me is a magical quality in a boss in that I felt like I could say anything to him. And I really quite often said very harsh things. He was okay with that. I never felt like he was going to be angry with me if I told him something he didn’t like. I really am glad in a lot of ways to have dealt with Dick, because I never felt like he was some kind of royalty and that I needed to curry his favor somehow.
TIM KAZURINSKY:
Somebody pointed out to me at read-throughs that Ebersol didn’t really know what was funny. He would look over to Davey Wilson, the director, for some sort of indication. And, of course, Davey had done the show for so long that he was very tired. He only cared if it was easy to shoot. If it was difficult, he would just move his head from side to side and Ebersol would kill it. So he took a lot of lead from Davey.
ANDREW SMITH:
His real name is Duncan Dicky Ebersol. He used to have a Dutch boy haircut. He would come to the office dressed like he was going to a country club — golf sweaters, plaid madras pants, that kind of stuff. He certainly had no embarrassment about being a Wasp. It was really fascinating. It’s as if he hadn’t been down in the city very long.
When I first started working with him, he had this thing about contractions. I think his mother put the fear of God into him and told him that nice people don’t use contractions. I cannot even do an imitation, but if you can think of talking without ever using a contraction, you will be able to assume what it is that I am talking about. It made him sound like a foreigner. And then he had this thing that you don’t talk a certain way in front of women. You know, “You had better get that woman out of here before we talk about that.” He wouldn’t swear in front of them. He wouldn’t say “fuck” or “shit” or anything like that. Or he’d spell it out or use a euphemism. He was much more comfortable in the company of men, which is not to make any kind of sexual aspersions. Women were sacrosanct to him.
JIM BELUSHI, Cast Member:
I supposedly threw a fire extinguisher at Ebersol. I don’t remember throwing it at him. I remember going down the hall and getting really pissed and grabbing the fire extinguisher off the wall and heaving it toward his office. I was a hungry, aggressive young man. I was a pain in the ass to Ebersol, but not to the other actors.
Ebersol didn’t even really hire me. Brandon Tartikoff was always a fan of mine, and he saw me do a big Second City benefit show that started the John Belushi Scholarship Fund. We invited everybody in the industry, and every studio gave like $7,500. Brandon saw that show, and I did quite a few Second City routines there, and he said to Dick, “Why don’t you hire Belushi?” And Ebersol goes, “You think so?” Brandon said, “Yeah, he was really funny.” So Ebersol