I was able to get the first five seasons on DVD cheap when Circuit City went out of business. I watched the next cast but the deck was stacked against them with out Lorne Michaels there.
Just speaking of favorite era, I've been binging seasons 6+ (currently on 20), and I'd say seasons 14-18 are the most consistently funny the show, at least to that point, had. Season 14 is easily the best season. Totally consistent, not a clunker in the bunch. I say all this as someone who previously held seasons 3 and 4 in the highest regard and thought the '86-'93 years were a bit overhyped.
I'm confused, since I wasn't part of the thread you're basing this on. Are we just supposed to riff on Lorne? Is there any specific topic or question to discuss?
Really good article with Lorne Michaels... Lorne Michaels on 40 Years of 'SNL': Being "'Feared' Was Never My Goal" Some key highlights of the Q&A with Lorne: If you could get a do-over on any one season, which would you choose? 1985 [Michaels' first year back after a five-year hiatus]. I wanted to recapture what [we had had]. Dan Aykroyd was 22 [in 1975], I believe, and so was Laraine Newman. I think Bill Murray was, too. Gilda [Radner] and John [Belushi] were like 24. I was 30, Chevy [Chase] was 31. ... We were just younger, and so I wanted to get back to that and I maybe went too young. I think it wasn't thought through as much as I would have liked it to have been. But good things came out of that season, and then we adjusted the following year. What's the sketch that made you most nervous? Some time in the '90s, I was overseas and there was a bunch of people who had kids there. I didn't have kids then, but they talked about watching the show â they were baby boomers â with their kids, and I went, "Really?" I got back from the trip and we were doing a "Wayne's World" truth-or-dare skit with Madonna, and I watched it at dress and I went, "That's going to be a real squirm moment for parents and kids, so let's pull that back a little bit," which we did. So it morphed into a family show, without having to compromise that much, frankly. Who's the host who made you most nervous because he or she wanted to push it further than you did? The thing about hosts is that the smart ones, and there are mostly those, know that we know this room better. Sometimes somebody is determined to do something because they feel it's bold or it goes after something that they really feel should be dealt with, and you'll say, "I'm not sure it will play. We can still do it if you like, but you'll see how you feel at dress." Things can feel wrong or inappropriate, not because they're shocking but because they're not for this room. There's a formality to the show, weirdly, and when people betray that in some way or turn it into something that it's not, the audience reaction is not good. Any examples come to mind? When Sinead O'Connor tore up the picture of the Pope, you could hear a pin drop. I didn't know it was coming, obviously, because at dress, she had held up a picture of Balkan orphans, which I thought was really meaningful and what she wanted to do. I'm sort of all right with people taking chances and risks and all that, but I think everybody from the beginning has known that we were on the honor system, we went live and there was an understanding of trust that we had built up at the network that we would play by the rules, which we have. So I think most people don't want to be the person [who defies that trust]. They had that unfortunate thing with [castmember] Charlie Rocket [who got fired for saying "fâ" on the show], which was during the period I wasn't there. It wasn't like it was bold or it wasn't like there was any shortage of places that you couldn't hear that language.
Curious that he didn't mention Richard Pryor. Or not so curious, since Pryor brought in his own people and he was the one taking most of the chances, and succeeding. Then that was the first season, where Chevy was far ahead of the rest of the cast, and a lot of time was filled with extra musical guests, Albert Brooks, and... umm... the Muppets. Yeah. I get was he was trying with the 1985 cast, trying to be new all over again, but you can't go home again. Having that young cast that bonded was a job for different people by then. Lorne was too old, needed to do what he did in 1986 and beyond. That 1985 cast couldn't have worked in a million years.
Jay_Z I agree with you about Richard Pryor. This was the boldest skit I ever saw for a long time. It was a different time then and possibly everybody thought this was just funny. Now it has more energy to it. Watch Richard's fingers stop tapping when he registers where Chevy is going.
It's odd (and kind of disingenuous) that he focuses on age as being the flaw with that cast. Five of the nine cast members that year were in their 30s. The far more obvious issues were that only three of them (Lovitz, Dunn, Vance) had any background in improv comedy, while four of them (Quaid, Cusack, Downey Jr, and Hall) had no real background in comedy at all. Often SNL has a host who isn't particularly adept at comedy and has to be carried, but this season was like having a cast that was 50% hosts. Really bizarre casting choices there.
Only the audition tapes of Cusack, Quaid, Downey Jr and Hall that got them hired as cast members would indicate their sense of comedic timing. I don't see it in them now as dramatic actors except Downey's role in Tropic Thunder. I'm glad I missed those episodes back in the '80's.
Candy did leave "SCTV" in 1980 for his own show, though: "Big City Comedy", a sketch series intended to be "his". It flopped and he soon went back to "SCTV". O'Hara also departed for that same season...
Yep! Quaid and Cusack were obviously talented enough to be SNL mainstays under the right circumstances, but the show needed a better balance of "comedy personas" for that to happen. If Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman had been in the '85 cast, then I think Quaid and Cusack would have made the cut for '86. But Anthony Michael Hall and Robert Downey Jr. were totally out of their element.
Quaid had the persona of "pretty good host" to me. He wasn't particularly gifted at comedy (at least not until recently, when he's turned his real life into a performance art piece that would make Andy Kaufman jealous). In 1985 he mainly was cooperative and willing to do whatever silly things they asked of him, which usually meant playing things in broad, over the top manner. The idea of making someone known as a character actor into a regular cast member was pretty strange. It's sort of analogous to making Rip Torn a member of the original SNL cast. And putting serious actors like Cusack, Downey Jr., and Hall into the mix was even worse. Hall in particular was an inexplicable choice on so many levels. Casting him was analogous to putting Johnny Whitaker in the original SNL cast. Perhaps the most bizarre casting choice in SNL history. And then there was Terry Sweeney, with his corny, campy humor that was about 15 years past its sell-by date (he would have fit in great on Laugh-In). The casting that year was so perverse, it almost feels like Michaels arrogantly believed he could make the show work with damn near anybody in the cast.
Lorne's an interesting case. I recently read Saturday Night, which was released in '86 and covers the first ten years of the show, and I was surprised to find that the "hands off, sipping wine in his office" persona that I'd pin on the older Lorne already was there as soon as season 3. I get the sense that he's always been fairly timid, in a way, and not willing to cause scenes, or intervene in disputes, even when it's kinda necessary.
I read that book. Lots of good insight about the creation of the show , its varied casts , the hosts and the emergence of Eddie Murphy. Recommended.
I agree, but that style of humor wouldn't land right nor would it have translated to the timing of SNL's short skit motif. That style of exaggerated character study and elaborate setup and set design may have worked in an SNL video short, but still Downey's made to be funny with a lot of supporting help and crew, not the sort required of a stand up style comedian which also may work against that kind of comedic delivery as well. For example I never saw Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd as funny in their movies, as they were in their SNL skits especially Aykroyd's Fred Garvin and Irwin Mainway characters. But both were not stand up comedians the same as Downey. So what were they? Comedic actors? Certainly not character actors like a Don Knots type, so what made them funny on SNL but not in movies?
All of the original SNL cast except Garrett Morris and George Coe had extensive experience in improv comedy troupes (Second City, the Groundlings, National Lampoon Revue) performing sketch comedy live onstage. I would say they were best described as sketch comedians, as opposed to stand-up comedians. Given their experience, SNL was pretty much an extension of what they'd already been doing. By contrast, the bizarre 1985 cast had only three members who had any sketch comedy experience. I would disagree with the premise that Chase and Aykroyd were never funny in any of their films, but I do agree that their talents as writers and actors were best utilized in the sketch comedy format. Characters or ideas that are hilarious in short sketches may not be able to sustain over the course of an entire film, and writing an extended narrative is different than writing a brief sketch. At the same, time, I'd say Ghostbusters in particular is just as clever and funny as anything Aykroyd did on SNL.
Randy was competent. Which is saying something in this cast. Forgotten when Phil Hartman showed up. Joan Cusack wound up getting a lot of work as "the girl" in skits. Nora Dunn was fine but limited due to her icy persona. Danitra Vance was on as much of an island as Terry Sweeney, apparently had dyslexia as well and couldn't read cue cards. So Joan got the work. Victoria Jackson was better, and Victoria can't act. But she had her Victoria persona, you need to establish presence quickly on SNL, Victoria could do that and Joan couldn't. Acting is not really that important on SNL, it only comes up once in a while. Bill Murray is a lot better actor than he ever was on SNL. He was good enough on SNL to get by, but others have been better. Cecily Strong is someone in the current cast who really would rather act than do characters. I had forgotten that Damon Wayans was on that season as well. Didn't do much with it. One thing about the 86-87 and following years, everyone had a very distinct comic persona. The three women were very distinct from each other, as were the men. Really better than the original cast, where Gilda and Laraine were too close. No minorities, though, for a while. Lorne got aced out of that market by In Living Color and Mad TV for a while.
Is this something she's expressed in an interview? I think she's great at characters, but I also think she could probably be a very good actress, and it would be interesting to see her do that beyond SNL.
I like going back for some of the musical performances. This one of DEVO from 1978 (introduced by the late great Fred Willard) must've seen some jaws dropping. I was actually a fan of them for about year before this. They had interesting use of timing and time signatures in a lot of their music. They were at their robotic best in the early days.
Yes, but keep in mind that the Residents had their version out in 1976 and makes Devo's version sound like Barry Manilow by comparison. What's my point? SNL was cutting edge to a degree but they could have pushed the envelope even further. They limited and policed themselves to a degree.
Some day i want to see "The Best Little Whore House On The Prairie" sketch from the Robert Blake episode that has not aired since the original broadcast and nobody seems to have.
