Live From New York - James H. Miller [69]
It’s always a tug-and-pull of how much direction you can give somebody, how much they trust you, how much they don’t, how much they trust their own instincts, the mood they’re in. It depends on the cast member. You have to know each cast member to get the best work that you can out of them.
STEVE MARTIN:
I think Lorne was reluctant to have me on. I was never reluctant. I wanted to be on the show from the first moment I saw it. But — it was one of those timing curves where, when the first show hit the air, I was not, you know, popular enough to really host it. Then there was a synchronicity in my rise to stand-up and records, and we sort of hit at the same moment.
In a strange way, I was new and old-fashioned at the same time. And maybe the irony of my performance hadn’t reached Lorne yet. I really don’t know. Lorne’s been one of my oldest friends and oldest supporters, so whatever you feel about somebody at first really doesn’t matter. I found that, in performers and sometimes movies, and especially art, that it takes a while to come to something that’s new. And a lot of times when the resistance finally turns to acceptance, it makes you a greater supporter of it or them.
JEAN DOUMANIAN, Associate Producer:
Nobody wanted to put Steve Martin on the show. I’d seen him on The Tonight Show several times. And I kept trying to get them to let Steve do the show, because I thought he was so funny. But, you know, the writers also wanted to be on the show. They said, “He’s our same age. If he could do the show, we could do the show.” I remember somebody falling out. And I remember running into Lorne and saying. “Lorne, give this guy a chance, he’s really, really good.” Lorne was reluctant to have him on, but when he finally did, Steve’s manager sent me a dozen roses. I was just so thrilled.
DAN AYKROYD:
The Czech brothers were, I guess, a combination — a grafting of characters. Steve had this character, the continental guy, and I had the Czech expatriate, the “swinging” Czech who was trying to talk like an American, trying to be an American, trying to have the inflection in the accent, the clothes. And so we took his continental guy and my Czech guy and we fused them into the Czech brothers. That’s essentially what happened there.
MARILYN SUZANNE MILLER:
I did something kind of different from other people. I started writing these things which they called in those days “Marilyn pieces,” which were pieces about either men and women or dramatic pieces, the most notable one of which I did with Belushi and Sissy Spacek, for which I won the Emmy. The pieces were like dramatic and they came from the tradition of those Richard Pryor, Lily Tomlin sketches that weren’t about the jokes but were about the character builds and were often kind of bittersweet.
One day Danny came to me and said, “Okay, you know those guys that come over and paw you and they used to be an engineer in Poland and now they drive a Camaro?” And I said, “Yes!” So he and Steve Martin kind of talked like them and left, and then I wrote the sketch, including that patois they use — “I will put my hands on your big American breasts.”
STEVE MARTIN:
At that point I was doing “I’m a wild and crazy guy,” and I said, “That’s the only act I have, wild and crazy guy,” so I did my thing that I was doing onstage. Danny’s was actually the more authentic character. And it was funny, because when we rehearsed it during the week it seemed so funny to us, so funny, and we went on with it and it seemed to go fine. It wasn’t anything special. But we decided to do it again, and for some reason when we did it the second time, the audience was prepped. It stuck in their heads or something, and they were right there cheering and laughing and going overboard. Between the first time we did it and the second time we did it, something jelled or happened. The crazy walk was something that was supposed to indicate coolness.
BILL MURRAY:
The original