Live From New York - James H. Miller [128]
MARGARET OBERMAN:
We always had to go down and get cabs for him at two in the morning, because no cab drivers would stop for a young black man. Not even him.
DICK EBERSOL:
By the end of the ’82–’83 season, Eddie already had had 48 Hrs. It had come out at Christmas of ’82, and then all through that winter, late ’82–’83, early ’83, he was making Trading Places. It became really apparent that, just on the launch of 48 Hrs., which had those glorious reviews for him, he was a movie star. I remember the Times in particular saying that his scene in that country-western bar was maybe the greatest scene an actor ever had in his debut movie. That, coupled with the fact that Paramount had already signed him, upon seeing the dailies before the film came out successfully, to a long-term deal that guaranteed him millions of dollars and had signed him and had him shooting Trading Places in Philadelphia and New York through that winter. It was going to be pretty hard to hold on to him. We had him for one more year, but they were making all the noises of, you know, being very resistant about it, and it could have been kind of a legal thing.
So I came up with this idea that, for the ’83–’84 season, which would be his last, he had to appear in ten shows, and I think that year we were committed to doing twenty. He had to appear in ten of the twenty and we would be done with him by March. And we also had the right to tape up to, oh, I think it was fifteen sketches to put in the other shows. We weren’t going to hide that he wasn’t physically there. That wasn’t the intent. But this was just to keep him available. They jumped at it and signed the deal. We kept ourselves from losing him, which would have hit us pretty hard.
ROBIN WILLIAMS, Host:
The first time I did the show was when Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo were on. Eddie had done a lot of great characters. I think he had just started to kick in the movies, but he was still on the show, which was great. It was an interesting time, because it was the new regime, not Lorne.
CHRIS ALBRECHT:
One thing for sure was that Eddie and Joe had a great chemistry together and they did a lot of stuff together, and it would be completely correct to say that Joe took Eddie under his wing at the very beginning. Eddie was a kid who hadn’t really done much, and Joe not only really, really loved this guy and was enamored of his talent but also was very protective of him. It wasn’t as if Joe was trying to latch on to any coattails; no one knew that he was going to become “Eddie Murphy.”
So Joe looked after this kid from the moment he showed up. And more than a couple people noticed that when there was an opportunity to return the support, none came. Eddie never helped Joe later on. Never gave Joe a part in a movie, never did anything. Never, ever helped Joe. Why not? I couldn’t answer that.
PAM NORRIS:
Before the beginning of the season, we knew that Eddie was going to be away a lot of the time doing movies. So what we wanted was a backlog of Eddie taped sketches. I wrote a lot of those. We basically just did a private show that was one Eddie sketch after another that we taped with a studio audience. And then those were later put into the shows.
ANDREW KURTZMAN:
I will say that the grumbling about that was to an extent about the star trip just as much as it was about the violation of the ethos of the thing. We do this live. It’s not supposed to be bigger than any single player — but here was an exception.
ANDY BRECKMAN:
For the live shows, they didn’t make any announcement that Eddie wasn’t really there, but he certainly didn’t show up to wave good night at the end.
DICK EBERSOL:
It would have been very difficult, I think, to have kept the show on the air without Eddie. The show would absolutely have launched for the ’83–’84 season, but he was still the main draw. And it would have been pretty hard, I think, to keep up the show long enough to get to the next year — which Brandon labeled my Steinbrenner