Live From New York - James H. Miller [181]
St. Pat’s were our neighbors in Rockefeller Square, but I never had any problems from Catholics or from the Church or anything. I was arrested once in Rome when I was taking pictures of the Vatican, but that was for taking pictures without permission, they said. But I never had people complain.
ROBERT WRIGHT, NBC Chairman and CEO:
When I came to NBC, SNL was not on my radar of things that were broken, needed fixing, were under hospitalization, or were enemies of the people. I kind of stayed away from it. I knew by reputation that Lorne had a principality that had signed nonaggression pacts with other principalities. I didn’t need to be there. I had so many other things I was involved in, and I didn’t have any agenda with SNL. To me, if it was funny, that was good enough.
But I was only here a very short time when I got involved in an incident with Father Guido Sarducci. I’m a Catholic and I got a call from Cardinal O’Connor’s office. His assistant, a very well thought of young priest who was made a monsignor, and was like an executive assistant, called me to say that the cardinal wanted me to come over and he had some things he wanted to talk about. The cardinal talked about labor unions, but in the process he also wanted to talk about Guido. And I was very defensive about it. They were politely saying to me how many Catholic organizations had been really offended by his portrayal. I didn’t pretend to have any journalistic credentials, but I was really offended, because I thought it was very funny. And I felt that if I think it’s very funny and I’m an upstanding Catholic, then “why can’t you take a joke?” So I got very defensive about this whole discussion, it was something I kind of just stepped into, but I found myself defending it against, I think, the Catholic League at the time and some other groups. There are hundreds of them. I realized I had to stop defending the show in person because there were more groups than I had hours in the day. So that was my initial period. Nobody asked me to do this. I just got into this stuff and then I realized I had to get out of it.
When the show began, hosts — like musical artists — were chosen as much for their novelty as for their proven popular appeal. Hence the appearances of Ralph Nader, Julian Bond, Ron Nessen, and other non-performers in the host’s spotlight. The practice continued over the years — sports figures were added to the mix — but generally, the host pool became smaller and limited to stars of showbiz, oftentimes those with a movie opening very near the date of their appearance.
There were good hosts and bad, those who came with their own entourages and their own writers — thus alienating the SNL staff from the get-go — and those who just came to have fun, to spend a week at a kind of amusement park for the very, very privileged. Some tried to bail out as Saturday night approached. Some canceled at the virtual last minute. Some threw up. But most came and conquered and seemed to have a wonderful time. Some would say that, even having done it and enjoyed themselves, they still couldn’t picture themselves doing it again, while others took so naturally to the unnatural experience that they were invited back repeatedly; they were old reliables who, because they pitched in with gusto, inspired the writers and regular cast members to be at their best.
BUCK HENRY, Host:
There were people outside the cast that I look at and say, “They could have been cast members” — Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin, John Goodman,