Live From New York - James H. Miller [47]
GARRETT MORRIS:
People suppose that if you are in a cast, that means you automatically go everywhere together twenty-four hours a day and you can tell what every other member is doing and that in fact you think that’s good. I have always been an asshole with any cast I’ve been with. I was gone as soon as I could be. The fact that I didn’t hang out with the gang at Saturday Night Live is no reflection upon anybody but me. At that time, I was in my Carlos Castaneda thing, and so I was doing a whole lot of mysticism and stuff. I was a loner. And that actually cost me. Because with Saturday Night Live, I learned that the social life is just as important as your own talent. Particularly with writers, they have to hear you talk and get to know you.
I’m not saying anybody was racist, but there are stereotypical things people draw from action that is devoid of me sitting down, talking, and getting into people’s minds about what they think, et cetera, et cetera. For example, one time I said something about a particular duo of intellectual Jews at Saturday Night Live which was then spread all over the whole Jewish world and for like a year I had the reputation of being anti-Jewish because I told these particular Jews that they were for shit. The point is, no, I didn’t hang out, but later I realized it was something I should have done.
ALAN ZWEIBEL:
We loved television, quite frankly, and we had our own sensibility and we were given the opportunity to do it. But I think it was because of the love for television that anyone who ordinarily didn’t do television did this show. So Belushi could say, “I hate television.” I think what that really meant was, “I hate what they’ve done to television,” or “I hate what television is right now.” I don’t think that was anything against Newton Minow or the medium itself.
The one rule that we had, if there was a rule, was if we make each other laugh we’ll put it on television and hopefully other people will find it funny and tell their friends. So there was a purity about the intent.
There was a nobility to me and Gilda taking a subway ride, saying something to make us laugh, and then we would go back to the office afterwards and write it up and it’s on television a day later. There was an immediacy to it; it was just like, “This is the way the world works.”
HERBERT SCHLOSSER:
The word of mouth was starting to get around. It was either in our November or December board of directors meeting at NBC. Boards of directors, then as now, had old guys with ties and gray hair. And we did get flak about the show — bad taste and this and that. But one of the directors pulled me over and asked me if he could get tickets for one of his kids who was coming home from college.
CRAIG KELLEM:
We were beginning to get some action out there in that first year, but people were not making a lot of money. Then some guy came along — I cannot remember his name — who was doing commercials for the United States military, and the Saturday Night Live gang were hired to appear in these commercials. And Lorne, being a kind of a born snob, wanted no part of dealing with these people, but it was a good way for everybody to earn money. So I became the guy who was the link to the commercial guy and did all the coordinating and producing, as it were. And we actually made a series of commercials for the military. I never saw them. I’ve never even heard about them since. But it’s a fact. This guy spent thousands of dollars on this thing. Belushi did them because he wanted that money, and fast. They all made money, including Lorne, but Lorne kept a very pronounced