Live From New York - James H. Miller [153]
Back when neither of us was making much money, Murray and I would take these cheap flights to Hawaii. We had to stop in Chicago, and at the airport there’d be these baggage handlers just screaming at the sight of him, and he would take enormous amounts of time with them, and even get into like riffs with them. I enjoyed it, because it was really entertaining. We went down to see Audrey Peart Dickman once, and the toll guy on the Jersey turnpike looked in and recognized Murray and went crazy. We stopped and people were honking and Bill was doing autographs for the guy and his family.
I’ve yet to meet the celebrity who was universally nice to everyone. But the best at it is Murray — even to people who had nothing to do with career or the business.
TIM KAZURINSKY:
It got really, really depressing, and there was also the notion, I think from Ebersol — from Yale Business School, or wherever the freak he came from — of divide and conquer. I was like tops of the group. I was the old guy that people would come to for life advice and medical questions; I was Mom and Pop. And I noticed that Ebersol would keep the cast off balance. He would try and keep it divisive and pit people against each other, because if we were united, if we were unionized, he was fucked. And he always did everything he could to keep the cast from being cohesive. I remember my last year there, they offered me “Weekend Update” about three-quarters of the way through the season. And I said, that’s really fucked. Brad Hall would feel horrible. I mean, that’s just like yanking him in the middle of the season. Everybody’s ego was fucked-up enough. If you’re going to do something like that, do it at the end of the season. And I just said no. I didn’t have the stomach for it.
BRIAN DOYLE-MURRAY:
I got along with Ebersol. He was kind of goofy, but he’s basically a likable guy.
MARGARET OBERMAN:
I think Dick was made fun of by Lorne. They used to call him “Patches.” He was the NBC guy, kind of a suit. But I think that in a funny way he knew what he was doing. Look what he did. It was trial-and-error. He didn’t pretend to be a creative genius, and he did some really low-rent things. It was not at that time a very hip show to be on in a certain way. The first year I was there, the hosts were like — we used to call them “the Bobs” — Robert Culp, Robert Conrad. It was such a weird array of people.
But you know, Dick kept it afloat, and all these people came out of it, and there were some great moments. It wasn’t consistently wonderful — but then I don’t know if it was ever consistently wonderful since the original show, and even that wasn’t consistent, but the level of talent was so high you just didn’t care.
ELLIOT WALD:
I was always one of those people who stayed up late and loved to watch the sun coming up. By the time I left Saturday Night Live, I was phobic about watching the sun rise. I couldn’t stand to watch it getting light, because it meant time was running out and the pressure was on. So that changed in my life.
From a distance, they were wonderful years, and it was a good experience. But the closer in I focus, the more I remember exhaustion, disappointment, and pressure. The individual days of those years were so hard.
Those four years took about ten years off my life. Just the number of hours, the amount of pressure. The fact is that it’s enormous pressure to be funny, and beyond that it’s enormous pressure to be funny at a particular time. You’re funny on Monday and Tuesday. Being funny on Thursday just isn’t the same thing. So you’ve got from noon Monday ’til read-through on Wednesday.