Live From New York - James H. Miller [140]
Because these guys were coming in as stars to do their year in New York — stopping by to do Saturday Night Live — and even though some great comedy came out of it, I don’t think it was the best thing for the show. Because it was not home-grown talent — finding new people and making them stars. These were sort-of-stars coming in for a year. I think it affected the style of comedy, to tell you the truth. The comedy after them became much more about characters and star turns, so that a sketch, instead of being an ensemble piece, became one of these character pieces — a Brimley or a Grimley or whatever his name was.
The show before that was much more of an ensemble piece and a lot more democratic. In their year, because they were stars, the sketches were about a central character doing his sort of turn, regardless of anybody else in the sketch. I think there was a little shift. And since then, the thing seems to be driven much more by these sorts of characters that the actors come up with. Then they sort of build a situation around this person to do this character, rather than a situation sketch.
ANDREW KURTZMAN:
The resentment directed at Dick’s big stars was never about money. The resentment was simply that they were a little clannish, and that they leaned toward a certain style of their own. We’d had Joe Piscopo doing Reagan, but suddenly here comes Harry Shearer, and he felt very proprietary about his Reagan. “Well, sorry, but I don’t think we have to check out every joke with you, Harry. He’s president of the United States. We’ve got to do stuff on this guy.” I have not had much contact with Harry recently. I understand he’s much more relaxed now. He was a bit depressed then. He had the office next to mine, and sometimes he would be in there alone playing bass late at night. It was a real dorm-room kind of thing. You’d hear these depressed bass lines thudding through the walls next door.
ELLIOT WALD:
Harry’s impossible — impossible to get along with. And if he wasn’t as bright and talented as he is, nobody would put up with him for one minute. But the fact is that he is one of the smartest guys doing this stuff, and I’m always impressed by him.
BILLY CRYSTAL:
Dick Ebersol was a great producer for all of us in that way. It was an awkward situation where Harry, Marty, and Chris and I came in and yet there were still some remaining cast members from the year before — Jim Belushi, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mary Gross, Gary Kroeger. So it wasn’t Us versus Them, but there was definitely the sense that they were veterans with perhaps different sensibilities. This had been their turf, and here we come in. And there had to be a melding of the two. We had very specific ideas about what was to be the tone of that year after coming off some bad times for the show.
Setting the tone began that summer when we filmed some of the pieces that would become the strongest things for us during the year — the 60 Minutes piece we did that introduced the Minkman character and Nathan Thurm, and Harry as a great Mike Wallace; the two black ballplayers that Chris and I did — that was one of the finer pieces that we did that year; “Relatives of the Rich and Famous” had a really different tone to it. So matching all the tones was Dick’s job that year — and keeping everybody happy.
MARTIN SHORT:
They certainly paid us a lot of money, much more than what other people had ever been paid on the show. And gave us one-year contracts, so all of it was rare. I guess they didn’t assume there was a tremendous future to the show. They had lost Eddie Murphy and then Joe Piscopo within, I guess, half a