Live From New York - James H. Miller [137]
TIM KAZURINSKY:
My theory on Bob Woodward and John Belushi goes like this: They’re both from the same town. Woodward, he’s like Salieri. No matter what the fuck he did — All the President’s Men, winning the Pulitzer, whatever — unfortunately he grew up in the same town where John Belushi grew up. And so he’s always going to be number two. And that’s why he wrote Wired.
PENNY MARSHALL:
We got sort of duped into that one.
DAN AYKROYD, Cast Member:
I wasn’t happy, because I think Woodward just gave up on it and handed it over to his researcher. Plus there were certain things that he just got patently wrong. He painted a portrait of John that was really inaccurate — certain stories in there that just weren’t true and never happened. So no, I wasn’t happy. This was my friend that was being besmirched. That’s the posture I took, and I live by it today. The book didn’t fill John out to the measure that he could’ve been appreciated. He just overlooked a lot. It was all about the drugs and the excess, not about the quality of work and the background in theater and the preparation and the respect that John’s friends had for him.
JIM BELUSHI:
Woodward — that cocksucker! That motherfucker. Hey, Bob, what’s with the girl who won the Pulitzer Prize, what’s with the eight-year-old junkie? “Oh, that just got right by us.” Bob! You’re the fucking editor, Bob! How did that fucking get by you? You check your fucking sources? My ass! Yeah, Woodward did a really nice job of making John look like a Bluto junkie. I don’t think Woodward’s capable of understanding what love is, or compassion, or relationships. He is one cold fish.
DAN AYKROYD:
I had eight years with John, and we had a ball every second, we had a ball. I mean, we had our disagreements, naturally, but we sure made each other laugh.
In any group you’re going to have people who precede the others. I just hope he’s waiting for me on the other side. I’m sure he will be.
Many stars were created by Saturday Night Live, but many talented people also passed through the show little noticed and little utilized. Billy Crystal might have hit it big ten years sooner if he hadn’t been bumped from the premiere back in 1975. Eddie Murphy was all but ignored during his first year in the cast. Jim Carrey failed an audition and wasn’t hired. Lisa Kudrow and Jennifer Aniston, both later stars of Friends, were passed over.
With Eddie Murphy having ascended to movie superstardom, Joe Piscopo’s services were no longer in great demand in Studio 8H, and he was not invited back after 1983–84. Other cast members who’d failed to make much of an impression also departed, and SNL was looking severely talent deprived. The show had the blahs and needed a new direction. The remedy decided upon was simple and yet, considering the show’s traditions, theoretically heretical: Instead of spending time and effort looking for new talent to introduce and nurture, the producers would turn the show over to established comedy stars — fairly well known performers who could generate their own material. The remedy didn’t come cheap: Crystal, acclaimed for his portrayal of a gay son on the ABC sitcom Soap, finally signed on as an SNL regular, at $25,000 per show. Revenge was sweet.
Martin Short, a stunningly imaginative comic actor who’d played a wide, wild range of characters on the SCTV satire series, got $5,000 less per show, but only because he waited until the last minute to say yes. They were joined by writer-comedians Christopher Guest and a returning Harry Shearer and given the daunting assignment of bringing Saturday Night Live back to life. It wouldn’t be the show Lorne Michaels had daringly envisioned half a decade earlier, populated by virtual unknowns, but at least it would exist.
DICK EBERSOL:
I went to Brandon and said, “I have an idea for next year.” By then I