Live From New York - James H. Miller [30]
NEIL LEVY:
There was a feeling even before it started that something important was happening. It was almost like all the leftover spirit of the sixties found its way into this show — that spirit of rebellion, of breaking through whatever boundaries were left. There was something so special about being there that you knew from the moment you got there that this was going to work.
Of course, some writers weren’t so sure. Even Dan Aykroyd — he had a bag all packed. He said, “Neil, this show could fold in a second, and I got a nice little spot picked out on the 401, and I’m going to open a truck stop.” He had a whole plan! There were people who thought every paycheck was their last. At the same time, there was this infectiousness. It was a joyous thing, really. Everybody had been fired up with this concept of the inmates running the asylum, and the idea that the writers were the most important aspect of the show, and how we’d be able to do whatever we wanted — all the stuff that Lorne talked about. You could see that everyone there was on fire.
It seems in retrospect that everything was perfect — that it was this perfect, amazing, hilarious show, but even back then it was hitand-miss. They had a lot of clinkers. But the thing of it was, it had never been done before. And it was just the times. Nixon had just resigned, the Vietnam War had just finished — and we lost it — and America wasn’t laughing. And this show came along and said it’s okay to laugh, even to laugh at all the bad stuff. It was like a huge release.
CRAIG KELLEM:
We almost didn’t get on the air, because dress rehearsal went so poorly. I remember Lorne seriously asking the network people — or having me ask them — to have a movie ready to go, just in case. And I don’t think he was kidding.
George Carlin was the host when the show — then called NBC’s Saturday Night — premiered, on October 11, 1975. Only about two-thirds of NBC’s affiliated stations carried the show, which had received very little advance publicity from the network. Over the course of its ninety minutes, Carlin — “stoned out of his mind,” according to observers — delivered three separate comedy monologues, probably two too many. Iconoclastic comic Andy Kaufman lip-synched the Mighty Mouse theme song, a seminal and now legendary moment. There were also several numbers by musical guests Janis Ian and Billy Preston, an appearance from a new group of “adult” Muppets invented for the show by Jim Henson, and a short film by Albert Brooks.
The Not Ready for Prime Time Players — so named, by writer Herb Sargent, because Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell over on ABC at eightP.M.had a small comedy ensemble known as the Prime Time Players (one of whom was Bill Murray) — actually appeared very little on that first night. When they did, they were dressed as bees. The young performers were supplemented by an older Broadway actor named George Coe, who helped with narrations and commercial parodies and stayed around for one season only. The format was more like that of a traditional variety show, with nearly as much music as comedy and the repertory players there as laugh insurance, even filler.
Among the consistent elements from the beginning was the “cold open” prior to veteran announcer Don Pardo’s recitation of the bill of fare and the opening credits. Many a modern movie had started this way, with a “grabber” or “teaser” scene prior to the credits, but it was something new for a TV show. The very first cold open was new, too: an absurdist encounter between bad-boy writer Michael O’Donoghue, playing a teacher of English, and bad-boy actor John Belushi as a semi-literate immigrant who repeats everything O’Donoghue says — including, “I would like — to feed your fingertips — to the wolverines.” When O’Donoghue suddenly keels over with a heart attack, Belushi’s character dutifully does the same, falling to the floor. Thus did John Belushi feign death within the first three minutes of