T h e N o
t R e a d y F o r C y b e r t i
m e W e b S i t e
“Live
from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”
It’s 1975. Here’s a list of five good reasons why Saturday Night
Live is destined to fail: 1. Nobody does live TV anymore. 2. Variety
shows are a dying breed. 3. Nobody hip wants to watch TV on a Saturday
night. 4. Nobody at all wants to watch TV on a Saturday night at 11:30 pm.
5. These so-called “comedians”? Never heard of them.
And now here’s the counter-argument: It’s funny…very funny. How
funny? Funny enough that arguments 1-5 just don’t matter. This was TV
worth staying up for, TV worth staying in for, TV worth talking about,
quoting, imitating, and committing to memory for later laughs. This was
the kind of funny that would make Saturday Night Live a TV
institution for more than a quarter century, still going strong today.
Former Laugh-In writer Lorne Michaels was the show’s original
producer, heading up an assemblage of talent that included several National
Lampoon magazine writers and a cast of show regulars known as “The
Not Ready for Prime Time Players”—Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy
Chase, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman and Gilda Radner. The
idea was that the regulars would present a series of comedy sketches
during the 90-minute program—broken up by musical numbers—while
hosting duties would go to a different guest host each week. George Carlin
was the first, and literally hundreds more would follow, including
everyone from semi-regular Steve Martin to folk singer Paul Simon to
consumer advocate Ralph Nader to pro athletes Fran Tarkenton, Joe Montana,
Wayne Gretsky and Michael Jordan.
It didn’t take long for word to spread about the late-night shenanigans
on NBC. The comedy was often outrageous (sparking a bit of controversy on
occasion), and several characters and sketches became running favorites.
Chevy Chase’s comic bumbling (especially as President Gerald Ford) and
“Weekend Update” news reports were popular enough that the comic
decided to move on after the first season, but there were plenty of other
shining moments: The Killer Bees, the Greek restaurant (“cheeseburger,
cheeseburger, cheeseburger…”), Belushi’s Samurai warrior, the
Coneheads (Aykroyd, Curtin and Newman), Belushi and Aykroyd as the Blues
Brothers, the clever land shark, the Czechoslovakian “wild and crazy
guys” (Aykroyd and Steve Martin), and a revised Weekend Update with
Curtin and Aykroyd (“Jane, you ignorant slut”) and commentary from
Radner’s Roseanne Rosannadanna and Emily Litella (“Never mind”).
Bill Murray joined the cast in 1977, adding characters like a crooning
lounge singer and nerdy high school kid Todd de la Muca (played off of
Radner’s equally nerdy Lisa Loopner), but the changes were just
beginning. The entire cast of regulars left in 1980, many moving on to
long careers in television and film (including the SNL big-screen
spinoff The Blues Brothers). Lorne Michaels left as well, and new
producer Jean Doumanian brought in an all-new lineup in 1980. Ratings were
disappointing, Doumanian was replaced by Dick Ebersol, and the cast was
once again overhauled, retaining only Joe Piscopo and a young comedian
named Eddie Murphy from the 1980 season.
This second wave of SNL programming was less successful than the first,
but it had its share of classic bits and unforgettable characters as well.
Among them: Murphy’s Buckwheat, Gumby, James Brown and Mr. Robinson’s
Neighborhood; Piscopo’s Ted Koppel and Frank Sinatra (the latter
performing a memorable version of “Ebony and Ivory” with Murphy’s
Stevie Wonder); Martin Short as the Pat Sajak-obsessed Ed Grimley; Billy
Crystal as Fernando of “Fernando’s Hideaway” (“You look mahvelous”);
Crystal and Tim Kazurinsky as a pair of security guards with very odd pain
experiences (“Don’t you just hate it when…”); and the infamous
moments when (on separate nights) frequent guest Andy Kaufman was voted
off the show permanently and cast member Charles Rocket let out a
televised F-word that got him fired.
Lorne Michaels returned to the show in the spring of 1985, and once more
the cast was overhauled for that fall season. Of this cast, only Nora Dunn
and Jon Lovitz (whose “pathological liar” was a season highlight)
stayed on for the 1986-87 season, which brought in newcomers Dana Carvey,
Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Victoria Jackson and Dennis Miller (the latter as
the snarky new Weekend Update anchor). This cast, along with later
additions Kevin Nealon and Mike Myers, sparked a bit of a renaissance for SNL,
giving the show its highest popular and critical appeal since the
departure of the original cast.
The late 80’s and early 90’s brought such memorable sketches as
Carvey’s Church Lady (“Well isn’t that special?”), lounge singers
the Sweeney Sisters (Dunn and Hooks), bodybuilders Hans and Franz (Nealon
and Carvey), Jackson’s various dumb blondes, Hartman as Unfrozen Caveman
Lawyer, Myers’ German talk show host Dieter (“Touch my monkey!”)
from “Sprockets,” Lovitz’s Master Thespian, Toonces the Driving Cat,
Myers and Carvey as the stars of basement metalhead community access cable
show “Wayne’s World,” and the singing trio of Tonto, Tarzan and
Frankenstein (Lovitz, Nealon and Hartman). As these sketches caught on,
Michaels began thinking in bigger and more profitable terms, and Wayne’s
World was spun off into its own blockbuster feature film.
Several other SNL films followed (everything from Coneheads
to a feature version of long-time writer/performer Al Franken’s
unlicensed therapist Stuart Smalley), and new talent was constantly
brought in as the late-80’s regulars began to move on. Chris Farley
became a major star thanks to hyperactive roles like motivational speaker
Matt Foley (“When you’re livin’ in a van, down by the river!”), as
did Adam Sandler with his goofy songs and cast of oddball characters
(Opera Man, Cajun Man, Canteen Boy, etc.). Julia Sweeney’s androgynous
Pat was another early 90’s favorite, as were Chris Rock’s militant
talk show host Nat X, Rob Schneider’s copy man (“The Steve-inator,
makin’ co-pies…”), and David Spade’s acid-tongued “Hollywood
Minute.”
The mid-90’s brought another cast turnover, though not all at once this
time. Early-90’s addition Tim Meadows stayed with the show through the
end of the decade, as new talents like Molly Shannon, Jim Breuer, Will
Ferrel, Darrell Hammond, Cheri Oteri, Chris Kattan and Ana Gasteyer
filtered in. With the new cast came sketches like Meadows’ Ladies Man,
Breuer’s Goat Boy, the boogieing Roxbury boys (Ferrel and Kattan),
Shannon’s Catholic schoolgirl Mary Katherine Gallagher, the “Spartan
Spirit” cheerleaders (Ferrel and Oteri) and middle school teacher lounge
act Marty and Bobbi Culp (Ferrel and Gasteyer).
Even with the show’s countless changes, Saturday Night Live has
had a few constants over its more than 25 years on the air. The
variety-style format made SNL a showcase for musical talent, from
huge acts like the Rolling Stones and Madonna to little-known
up-and-comers. The SNL stage has seen performances from Sting,
David Bowie, the Eurythmics, Tina Turner, Prince, Nirvana, ‘N Sync, and
unforgettable moments from Elvis Costello (who switched from “Less Than
Zero” to the incendiary “Radio Radio” in mid-song) and Sinead
O’Connor (who ignited a firestorm of controversy when she tore up a
picture of Pope John Paul II on stage).
Another constant in SNL canon has been its spoofery of television
commercials (from the Bass-O-Matic to Schmitt’s Gay Beer) and all things
political. In the years since Chevy Chase’s Gerald Ford, every U.S.
President from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan to George Bush to Bill
Clinton has been roasted on the show, along with parodies of the Nixon
tapes, the Iran-Contra affair, the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings
and the Clinton/Lewinsky/Linda Tripp/Kenneth Starr brouhaha. Every
political sideshow of the past quarter century has been fodder for SNL
sketches, and many an American youth learned all he or she knew about
contemporary U.S. politics from staying up late on Saturday nights.
After more than 25 years, Saturday Night Live has become many
things to many people. To some, it’s a springboard for film comedy
careers—Chase, Aykroyd, Murray, Murphy, Myers, Sandler, and so on. To
others, it’s a never-ending catchphrase factory, churning out
tee-shirt-ready quotes like “Consume mass quantities,” “I’m Gumby,
dammit!,” “Could it beeeeeeeee….Satan?,” “Not!,” and dozens
more mentioned already. To still others, it’s the source of endless
“small-screen sketch to big-screen comedy” conversions, as films like Superstar
and The Ladies Man keep that tradition alive into the new
millennium. But to most members of every generation from 1975 to today,
it’s still simply the best reason to stay up and stay home on a Saturday
night.
