A Reflection on Saturday Night Live
Part 1: The Early 1980s and the Era of Experimentation
Last month, I wrote an extended article about Saturday Night during the 1980s and 1990s, focusing on two particular comic actors in particular. But I live in New York, it’s Saturday Night and perhaps not by chance, I started thinking about SNL.
As I mentioned in the original article, I spent a lot of time in my childhood and teenage years watching reruns of SNL on Comedy Central over and over. I’m not saying that I know more about Saturday Night Live from that period than anyone else, nor am I pretending to be an expert in what is funny. But for all of my adult life, one of the ongoing complaints that I’ve read literally every year in the media, is that Saturday Night Live isn’t funny anymore. This is such a recurring theme that the show itself has held on to it for decades, and it becomes far more interesting when you learn that the Overton Window for SNL seems to keep changing for every decade. The MTV Generation didn’t think it was as funny when Norm MacDonald and Jimmy Fallon were on it, Gen X didn’t think it was as funny when Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were on it, and so on and son on. Every five years, no matter how great the mass of talent that comes from it, no matter how many cast members go on to win Emmys or awards in other fields, it is the fans of the show just before they arrived that think the series was funnier then. The fact that each generation never knows how good they had it until its gone is nothing new.
But the thing is, they are all right about one universal thing. Each generation of SNL cast members and writers are funnier in a different way, and each have had certain elements that make the series funnier by design. Having watched far more than my share of it — and honestly more than I have wanted to in the last decade, I think I have a certain level of qualification. So I am beginning this recurring series of the many highs and many lows — occasionally in the same season — of SNL over the years.
And I’m going to start this series by putting forth a blanket statement. Everyone who says that SNL is not the same as was for a very long time is absolutely right. Because however many comic stars have come out of SNL in the last forty years, how many funny sketches there have been, how many brilliant new characters and satirical portrayals they have done, there’s one thing SNL hasn’t been for a very long time. And that’s radically experimental with their formula and approach.
And believe it or not, much of this radical and experimentation was at its height during a period often considered the creative nadir of SNL by fans: 1981–1985, the years that Dick Ebersol was running the show. If they are remembered today, they are remember for launching the career of one of the greatest comic performers in history: Eddie Murphy. And to be clear, his work on the show was one of the highlights of the near half-century of the show’s run. But he was only part of some of the radical things that Ebersol and company were daring to try during these years.
Perhaps most of it was done out of pure desperation. In 1980, after the first group of Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players departed, the show had to deal with a writer’s strike. The first group of performers they assembled were some of the most dismal performers and writing that the series would ever see. Murphy’s debut added some light and Joe Piscopo could occasionally come up with something funny, but mostly the cast was trying to find their way and they had no clear road map or direction. (Things were so grim that one of their youngest performers would end up disappearing from the comedy portal for awhile before becoming one of the greatest standup comics in history. It really says something for where SNL was in 1981 that Gilbert Gottfried could not find a single funny line that year.)
That doesn’t mean they weren’t occasionally willing to try. In a very early appearance by Eddie Murphy, they did a sketch called ‘Scouting the Negro Republican’ shot as if were a wildlife documentary that really resonated. And they were occasionally willing to try to test the boundaries. In an episode that parodied Dallas’ ratings blockbuster ‘Who Shot JR?” cliffhanger, the series had an episode where individual cast members would be shown spouting violence against fellow cast member Charles Rocket, that ended in a cliffhanger. But mostly it was pedestrian at best, and woefully unfunny at worst.
So in the fall of 1981, Ebersol took over and made some radical changes. Murphy and Piscopo would be the sole hold-overs. Among his hires were Mary Gross, future Tony winner Christine Ebersole, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Brad Hall, and Tim Kazurinzky. Some of these hires were utilized better than others (Dreyfus was never used to her full potential the three years she was there) but there was a certain level of trying harder.
And more to the point, the show was willing to try things with the format that not even the original series had ever tried. On one occasion, Chevy Chase would do an entire guest host while being recorded from LA. (He did his famous ‘land shark’ sketch and the punchline was when the door was opened, Chase was there on a TV screen.) They would play at the idea of so many of their most popular characters being overused — in one sketch Eddie Murphy’s Velvet Jones and Joe Piscopo’s Jersey Guy announced that they were leaving because they died of ‘overexposure’ (You don’t know how many times I wished that they’d done the same thing for say, Bill Hader’s Stefan.) And they were more than willing to poke fun at themselves in a way that was positive meta. Eddie Murphy ended up guest hosting the show after Nick Nolte, his 48 Hours co-star was sick. He began the introduction by saying: “Live from New York, it’s the Eddie Murphy Show!” Two weeks later, the show leaned into it further by having guest host Lily Tomlin talking to Murphy, who was being waited upon hand and foot and every other cast member playing another Murphy recurring character. (Kazurinzky was Velvet Jones.) Tomlin admonished all of them especially Murphy and they all left shame-faced. Then she shouted out: “Live from New York, it’s the Lily Tomlin show!” (I will get back to her in a minute.)
Perhaps more than any other period they were willing to twist the format on other things. At one point Murphy came out and told them they were planning to boil ‘Larry the Lobster’ on live TV unless the viewers at home called in and voted against it. He had to tell them several times this wasn’t a joke. (Larry lived.) Andy Kaufman, the performance artist who had shown up frequently for his bizarre comedy in the original era showed up on several occasion doing his wrestling women bits. (This was done in connection with Letterman as well.) At one point the outcry became so loud that they had the viewers phone in as to whether Kaufman should ever appear on SNL again. Even he was stunned when over 60% voted that he shouldn’t. (At one point, Kaufman was going to come back, but soon after being voted off, he was diagnosed with cancer and died soon after.) And this period would be famous for having stand-up comics have moments to do their own bits. Steven Wright, Joel Hodgson, and Harry Anderson made some of their first TV appearance on SNL during this period.
This willingness for experimentation is one of the reason I think SNL in the early 1980s could often be hysterically funny. The other reason was during this same period, many of the greatest names in comedy history made appearances on the show — and got out of their way. When Tomlin hosted, she basically did monologues from her act, and variations of the characters she’d made famous on Laugh-In and her monologues. Nor was she alone. Sid Caesar, Flip Wilson, Jerry Lewis, Don Rickles, and The Smothers Brothers all hosted the show during this period, and all more or less just did variations on their act — sometimes in the monologue, sometime in sketches. Caesar basically did a segment for the news where he did his famous bit of almost speaking French, German, and Italian.
Nor did even this lead to limits. Significant political figures also hosted, most famously Ed Koch, who in a searing opening monologue utter excoriated Reagan and what his problems with him. Edwin Newman showed up after leaving NBC and was satirized by two characters for not being Paul Newman. And that actually brings me to what may have been their most radical idea.
During the Ebersol years. Brad Hall was traditionally the man behind Weekend Update. I say ‘traditionally’ because much of the time, they would let the guest host do the job. This could be hysterical and not just when Robin Williams was there. Usually the guest host wouldn’t do much, but occasionally you could get absolute genius. Jesse Jackson hosted the show in October of 1984 (he’d competed in the Democratic Primaries that year) and they had him give commentary to Reagan’s responses in the first Presidential Debate and he killed. I still remember his response to Reagan using the word ‘wardrobe’ in reference to the military. “He meant, of course, uniforms. ‘Wardrobe’ is for a war movie. ‘Uniforms’ are for a war.” Can you imagine anyone sitting in for Colin Jost or Michael Che? Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey wouldn’t even let Jon Stewart do it when he hosted!
I’m not saying SNL was perfect at this period or that everybody loved the experimentation. I remember a lot of sketches that I thought were funny at home, but that the audience either didn’t laugh at or in some cases, even booed. But even that seems to prove a willing to swing for the fences that SNL was not willing to do in future years. Such behavior continued even in their most legendary year — and what was considered their biggest failure.
To Be Continued…