Live From New York - James H. Miller [141]
JIM BELUSHI:
You bring an all-star in, you’ve got to pay him, and these guys were all-stars. I didn’t consider myself equal to Billy. I was not prolific. He’d write all night and he’d come up with these great things. He understood the medium. But anyway, I think I was making like fifteen grand myself, writing and acting — it wasn’t that far off. That show was not about money; that show was about launch.
ELLIOT WALD:
It was tough for the writers, especially since at the end of the season before, Brandon Tartikoff came down and said, just to the writers, “You guys have really carried the show. No, we have not had the stars that we used to have” — at that point Eddie had been off the show for a year — “but the show has gone on, the ratings have gone up, and it’s because of you guys. And you guys should be very proud of yourselves.” And then we come back in July or August and here are the new guys, and they all write for themselves, they all fit as a group, they’ve already been working together, and it’s like, “Well, if we need a piece, we’ll give you guys a ring.” It wasn’t, “We’ve got this brilliant new cast, and you guys should really learn to work with them.”
Now when Billy Crystal comes in your office and pitches a funny idea, I will guarantee you it’s funnier than when Elliot Wald walks into your office and pitches a funny idea. And I think the producers fell a little in love with being performed for. Marty and Billy and Chris are incredibly funny. But we found ourselves at the back of the bus virtually overnight.
Chris Guest is impossible to talk to. As Eugene Levy said in a piece about him, “Chris brings new meaning to the word ‘dry.’” The man is an emotional desert. He will not break his deadpan for any force on earth, so it’s very hard to interact with him in a friendly way. On the other hand, Marty is very nice, Billy is very nice — they were all great, but they knew what they wanted to do.
Billy Crystal is the only star-actor I ever saw at the show who wrote stuff for other people, for sketches he wasn’t even in. Billy is really a sweet guy in a lot of ways. I don’t hang around with him, so I don’t see the negative side at all. I’m sure there is one. In fact, they were all a pleasure to work with, but we were very much out of the limelight, and I think after the little speech, and after being on the show for three years, it was a bit of an emotional trauma. It was psychologically more difficult because a lot of times theirs were really good pieces. We couldn’t even say, “Look at that crap you’re putting on the air.” They were good pieces. Those guys know themselves and they’re good writers. There was probably a higher schmaltz level, because both Marty and Billy were just born to it. You know, Billy’s dad owned a nightclub, I think in Brooklyn, and Marty was like a boy singer who was on the CBC when he was seven years old, singing “The Impossible Dream.” They’re real show business kids, and so a lot of their stuff revolves around the conventions of show business.
ANDREW SMITH:
Billy Crystal was probably the most insatiable performer I have ever worked with. Once I saw him sitting on the stairs looking very, very depressed. It was the day before a show and I asked him what the matter was. He said that he felt he “just had to do more” on that week’s show. I told him he was in six out of eight sketches and that seemed a heavy load, but he was not to be soothed. He kept repeating that he had to do more.
I remember hearing him say on more than one occasion, “I think the kids need another Sammy,” meaning he thought it was time again for him to do his Sammy Davis Jr. turn — which would indicate he maybe suffered slightly from the Piscopo-Sinatra syndrome. I think it was Billy who turned to Martin Short in the middle of a large ensemble sketch and said, “It’s been three minutes since either of us has had anything to say. Maybe we should leave.”
MARTIN SHORT:
I was