Live From New York - James H. Miller [154]
JAMES DOWNEY:
That last season Dick had, when Eddie Murphy had left, he had Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Chris Guest — that was one of the best years of the show ever. They did some really wonderful, original stuff. A lot of it sort of broke up the form of the show — a lot of it was on film and really had nothing to do with “live.” But it was really good stuff.
MARTIN SHORT:
SCTV was different. I did it for longer and it was in my hometown and it was the first show of that kind that I did, so there’s obviously a special place in my heart. But I have a great fondness for Saturday Night Live and that year. I think of it as more like an event than a working job. It was like putting out a paper or something.
MARGARET OBERMAN:
At one point I was asked to write for SCTV and I was pissed off at Dick about something, so I thought I’d go to Toronto and do that. I knew a lot of those people at SCTV, but once I went and thought hard and long about taking that job I decided not to and went back to Saturday Night. Because Saturday Night was really a writer’s show and SCTV was really a performer’s show. And there was a big difference. As a writer, it was a better place to be.
For five years Saturday Night Live had gone through highs and lows, sometimes seeming like the distressed damsel in a silent-movie serial, tied to railroad tracks and then being plucked up just before the train roared through. But what had Ebersol and his stars saved — the show or merely the title? Glorious tradition or mere commercial franchise? To some of the purists present at the creation of the precedent-shattering show, it seemed to have strayed far from its original mission and looked like it couldn’t shatter a precedent with a pickax. And yet anything that lasts has to change — and Ebersol’s final year, the one that starred Billy Crystal and Martin Short, is widely considered one of the funniest in the history of the show. The laughs were there, if not the heart.
BILLY CRYSTAL:
Here’s a story I never really told before: I got a movie out of my year on Saturday Night Live, with Gregory Hines, called Running Scared. But right before that was to start, Brandon Tartikoff called me and asked me would I consider becoming the permanent host of the show. At this point I was in California, the night before the screen test for the movie — which was a formality, because I knew I’d gotten the part, but the studio wanted to see me on film. It was actually a test to see if I could be convincing throwing a punch, which is most of what I ended up doing in the test. I was staying at Rob Reiner’s house because I had rented my house out; people were still living in it. I felt weird. I came home and couldn’t go home.
Brandon calls me at Rob’s and says, “Listen, this is what I’m thinking about. Would you be interested?” This is May or June, right after the season had ended. I said, “Of course I’d be interested, but let me know, because then I won’t test for the movie. I’ll turn the movie down, because I’ll have to come right back to New York and start planning.” Clearly I could not possibly do both the movie and the show. And he said, “Let me call you back.”
And I was ecstatic, because I felt I was ready for it. I can’t describe enough how comfortable I was on that show. And then we didn’t get a call. And what had happened was — this is all within twenty-four hours — Dick Ebersol decided not to come back, Lorne decided to come back, and not only was I not going to get what Brandon was envisioning, I was also not going to be a part of the show. Lorne wanted to start fresh and start with a whole new group of people. So the decision was sort of made for me. I would have come back, I would have liked that to happen. I’ve loved my career since then, but that would have been an interesting time if that had worked out. It may not have been the right thing. It may be that the show is great because it has guest hosts. Even thirty years later, it’s still fun to watch people do things you wouldn’t expect them to do.
I look at my year on Saturday Night Live fondly, as my