Live From New York - James H. Miller [202]
CHRIS ROCK:
I got hired because In Living Color was on. SNL hadn’t had a black guy in eight years or something. In Living Color was hot, so they had to hire a black guy. Trust me, there was no black guys for eight years, man. Let’s put it this way: It didn’t hurt. I’m trying to help you with the backdrop of the time.
No black guy for eight years, and Eddie Murphy was under Dick Ebersol. So there was never really a black guy — a star anyway. Damon Wayans was on like six months or whatever and then he got fired.
Eddie was the biggest star. Anybody who says different is making a racist argument. Eddie Murphy has the biggest numbers in the history of movies. Grosses are people; it’s not dollars marching in, those are people. Belushi didn’t have a movie as big as Trading Places, and that’s not even Eddie’s biggest movie.
Blues Brothers is not as big as 48 Hrs. It’s not. Animal House had a cultural impact, but Belushi’s not the star of Animal House, he’s the breakout guy. It was still an ensemble; he was the best of the ensemble. Eddie Murphy’s a star, man. He’s probably the only guy of the SNL posse to embrace stardom — its Elvis.
He won’t talk to anybody about the show. He’s done with it. He’s not bitter about it, he loves it. He totally credits the show. I don’t want to speak for him, but I think he does get pissed when they make fun of him, only because the show would have gotten canceled if he hadn’t been there. There would be no show. So he deserves a pass on that aspect. The show would have absolutely gotten canceled. There were really no stars. Have you watched the reruns on Comedy Central, when they do the intros and Don Pardo is saying the names? The yell on Eddie Murphy is so much greater than for anybody else in the cast.
LORNE MICHAELS:
As the fifteenth anniversary approached, I met with Eddie Murphy. He couldn’t have been nicer, was very gracious, but there was a thing that Billy Crystal had said about him in a Playboy interview that Eddie didn’t like. So what I was told was that Eddie would come on the anniversary show, but he wouldn’t want Billy Crystal to be on. And I had already invited Billy Crystal. I think Eddie felt Billy was wrong for telling tales out of school.
TIM MEADOWS:
I think Chris Rock and I had a good time just being friends and experiencing and stuff, but I don’t think creatively he had a good time. I think it was hard for him to express his comic thoughts and stuff and the kinds of things he wanted to do. A lot of his stuff didn’t get on, and it’s the same as it is now. Chris and I would have maybe one sketch a week or every other week or whatever. I mean, we never had shows like Dana or Mike. I’ve never been in more than four sketches in a show, in the nine years I was there. I’ve never had a show like Will Ferrell, or Jimmy Fallon for that matter. Even when Jimmy was a featured player he had more sketches than I would.
CHRIS ROCK:
I was on the bench. Three years, sixty shows, I probably was on fifty-five, fifty-two of them. I had a talk with whoever the new black guys are now, Tracy Morgan and the other guy, I forget his name. They don’t really have stars now, so I told these guys they’ve got to assert themselves. When I got there, there were stars, real stars. Dana Carvey was a star of the show. Dennis Miller was a star. Mike Myers and “Wayne’s World” was really popular. Phil Hartman was big on the show. There were a lot of big people on the show. So for me to not get on wasn’t that big a deal.
Black people I guess stopped looking for me after the second year. You know what happened? It was like, when Eddie was on, there was nothing else for black people to watch. So his first year he didn’t get on until the end of the show, I