Live From New York Part 14

But Michael and I made our peace after the show. We did a couple of panels together at the Museum of Television and Radio and actually were on pretty pleasant terms. Then the shock came, when he died.

ROBIN SHLIEN, Production a.s.sistant: When Michael O'Donoghue got fired, he left this amazing note: "I was fired by d.i.c.k Ebersol. I did not leave the show, and if he should claim otherwise, he is, to steal a phrase from Louisa May Alcott, a lying c.u.n.t." It's very Michael. He posted it on the wall. d.i.c.k wasn't in yet, so those of us who were there immediately took it off and Xeroxed it and made copies, knowing that d.i.c.k would rip it down, which he did. But it survived.

BOB TISCHLER:.

There were two wakes for Michael. The one on the East Coast was the original, official wake, and they actually had the graph of his aneurysm from the MRI. And then they had a second wake at the Cafe Formosa in Los Angeles. You have to realize that a lot of people who were once friends or who once worked together - who had lots of issues between them - were suddenly in a room together. When anybody dies, everybody gets pulled together whether they like to or not. At Michael's wake, there were a lot of egos flying. A lot of people needed to be the center of attention.

JACK HANDEY:.

I went to Michael's wake. There was food and drink, and his wife, Cheryl, was there, and toward the end of the evening, people got up and sort of talked - telling stories about Michael. They had put the X rays of his head up as decorations so people could see where he had his ma.s.sive stroke or something like that.

There was some controversy after Lorne and Chevy Chase spoke. Buck Henry got up and said something to the effect that it was interesting that they got up to speak "when I think we all know what Michael thought of them."

LORNE MICHAELS:.

That's the blackest period for me. Buck later wrote me one of the most beautiful notes I ever received in my life in which he said, a year or two later, that at the time there were attack dogs running at me and he had joined the pack, and he apologized.

What happened was, Michael died on a Tuesday. He'd gone into St. Vincent's Hospital on Monday. My son, Eddie, was born on Wednesday before read-through in the same hospital. Friday night was a wake that I helped organize at Cheryl's. After visiting at the hospital and going to the studio around eleven o'clock, I went to the wake - with Chevy Chase. He and John were not on the best of terms but on another level really loved each other. Meanwhile, John was considered the real deal in Hollywood and Chevy was - well, you know. I remembered a time before all these people had joined the Belus.h.i.+ camp, they had been professionally in the John Belus.h.i.+ business. Then they switched over to the Michael O'Donoghue business. And somebody in their remarks took a shot at Chevy, as if you had to make a choice between loving Michael and loving Chevy.

JANE CURTIN, Cast Member: The fact that here we all were, our lives forever intertwined, and you had these love-hate relations.h.i.+ps with people, and things got said that were just so incredibly perfect and mean and funny and honest. Some people laughed, some people gasped. It was pretty cool.

ANDREW KURTZMAN:.

I came into the show through Tim Kazurinsky. He brought in several of us. My father had been a creative director at Leo Burnett in Chicago, and Tim had been in his creative group along with Jeff Price, who went on to be a screenwriter. A couple of playwrights and a lot of odd people came out of that agency. I was an accidental hire. I wrote Tim a funny letter asking for tickets to the show. Tim said, "This is quite funny. You should write a couple of sample sketches." And I won't say I dashed them off, but I wrote a bunch of sketches and then went back to a $90-a-week job at Barnes and n.o.ble. I forgot the whole thing for about two months, and then I began to get these strange phone calls at odd hours in the middle of the night from Kaz, saying things like "Blaustein loved the stuff." Shortly thereafter I was brought in.

BRAD HALL:.

d.i.c.k didn't really have a lot to say about the comedy. He would sort of go into the room and pick the sketches. It was much more like he was a judge than he was involved in the process at all. I noticed very quickly that on Wednesdays when we had these gigantic read-throughs that the very funniest sketch at the table would almost always get in the show. But so would the worst sketch. And it was a little bit like, oh G.o.d. And I think there was a strange moment when we would sit outside the door and wait for the great word or what was going to be chosen. And then you'd come in and there was always an explanation of some kind as to why things were chosen. But it never made any sense to us, because we just thought, "How about using the funniest stuff or the smartest stuff?"

d.i.c.k EBERSOL:.

The sets were made in Brooklyn in those days. And then they had to be broken down so they could fit on an elevator, whereas, you know, everything in the West Coast is horizontal. I mean, the big studios. They make the sets in one end of the building; they can be as big as you want. You push them down the hallway. The studio doors open up; they're thirty or forty feet high, and the thing wheels in. With Sat.u.r.day Night Live, everything has to fit into one of those small Rockefeller Center elevators. And so not only does it take a while to build the set, you have to then build it in such a way it can be broken down and then rea.s.sembled. So, from the end of read-through, you go back in a room and pick the elements of the show you want to take to dress.

I think one difference between Lorne and me was that I never wanted to go to dress more than three sketches too long. He has stronger feelings about the ability to repair things late. So he often-times will go to dress much longer than that. I mean he'll go a half hour or forty minutes longer going to dress, and obviously it's worked for him for a quarter of a century. I was more comfortable being about three long. But that's the big thing that you're facing, that Wednesday night deadline because of the sets.

DON NOVELLO:.

This was an amazing thing. I'm not sure of the year, but I would say early eighties. Bill Murray was hosting, I was a guest as a performer, and I really was like a writer for him. And at the end of the show, everyone's going up on stage to say good night, and there's a commercial break - two minutes, four minutes, whatever - and during the break, Ebersol suddenly comes running up and says, "It's on the news, Russia's invading Poland, and you should announce it." Bill said, "What should I do?" And I told him, wisely as it turns out, "That's a news thing. This is a comedy show. Why would you want to do it?" Ebersol says, "Come on, we've got thirty seconds, you're going to do it." Well, I was not going to stand there when he announced it, so I went and stood way in the back, even though I was one of the main guests. So Bill announced it to America that Russia had invaded Poland and "the poor people of Poland, our hearts go out to them." It was really almost teary-eyed. And it didn't happen. The "invasion" didn't happen, at least not that night. But I guess Ebersol wanted this to be the comedy show that broke it to America that Russia invaded Poland.

ANDREW SMITH:.

d.i.c.k was tremendously successful with the network. He could get anything out of the network, whether it was money or one thing or another. He understands network politics and that side of it, you know, better than anybody else. And, of course, his best friend was Brandon Tartikoff, which didn't hurt. He was brilliant at that side of being an executive producer. But he obviously wasn't a comedy writer and was somewhat foreign to comedy, although I guess there are some issues as to whether he invented the show with Lorne or not.

FRED SILVERMAN:.

There are very few people who can produce that show. I never got along particularly well with Ebersol, but I think he did a pretty good job, actually. He walked into a real mess and kept it going, to his credit. The show had had its ups and downs, but he managed to hang in there.

d.i.c.k EBERSOL:.

It was like a war, and most of it was about the fact that Fred just didn't like having a show that had that level of freedom that was attacking Fred. Sat.u.r.day Night Live does not work if it censors itself about its own company. You have to attack. I made a point the very first show I did by myself, in April of '81, of letting Franken do a piece on "Update." We were friends, but deep inside he thought he should produce the show, and I let him do a piece on "Update" the sum of which was that "d.i.c.k doesn't know d.i.c.k."

DAVID SHEFFIELD:.

Ebersol is a guy who walks the halls slapping a baseball bat into his palm. He is not easily intimidated. We were at a meeting one time, twenty minutes until air, and this pipsqueak guy from the network says "I just think we really ought to -" and d.i.c.k turned around and said to him, "Just shut the f.u.c.k up and sit in the corner."

He ran defense between us and the network. He kept the wolves away while we did the show. This is a good executive strategy. His great strength as producer of the show is he didn't try to do comedy. He left that up to us.

BRAD HALL:.

My big run-in with d.i.c.k came when there was this very funny sketch that got cut for time and he said, "Don't worry, we'll do it next week." And then, of course, it wasn't on the board the next week, and so I said, "You said we'd do it 'next week.'" And he denied having said it, of course. I'm a very even-tempered guy, but once in a while I'll get mad. I was absolutely in offense, because it just wasn't true. And good old Mary Gross, to her credit, goes, "We were all there, we all heard it." It was typical. I think everybody had things like that.

GRANT A. TINKER:.

I had so many larger problems that had to be dealt with that I just didn't get around to Sat.u.r.day Night Live, and no one was the worse for wear as the result. The show went on, and I did what I did, and just because the twain never met, it wasn't advertent on my part. I guess you could say it was inadvertent.

PAM NORRIS:.

I did not find d.i.c.k difficult to work for. I did not agree with a lot of his decisions, but he had what to me is a magical quality in a boss in that I felt like I could say anything to him. And I really quite often said very harsh things. He was okay with that. I never felt like he was going to be angry with me if I told him something he didn't like. I really am glad in a lot of ways to have dealt with d.i.c.k, because I never felt like he was some kind of royalty and that I needed to curry his favor somehow.

TIM KAZURINSKY:.

Somebody pointed out to me at read-throughs that Ebersol didn't really know what was funny. He would look over to Davey Wilson, the director, for some sort of indication. And, of course, Davey had done the show for so long that he was very tired. He only cared if it was easy to shoot. If it was difficult, he would just move his head from side to side and Ebersol would kill it. So he took a lot of lead from Davey.

ANDREW SMITH:.

His real name is Duncan d.i.c.ky Ebersol. He used to have a Dutch boy haircut. He would come to the office dressed like he was going to a country club - golf sweaters, plaid madras pants, that kind of stuff. He certainly had no embarra.s.sment about being a Wasp. It was really fascinating. It's as if he hadn't been down in the city very long.

When I first started working with him, he had this thing about contractions. I think his mother put the fear of G.o.d into him and told him that nice people don't use contractions. I cannot even do an imitation, but if you can think of talking without ever using a contraction, you will be able to a.s.sume what it is that I am talking about. It made him sound like a foreigner. And then he had this thing that you don't talk a certain way in front of women. You know, "You had better get that woman out of here before we talk about that." He wouldn't swear in front of them. He wouldn't say "f.u.c.k" or "s.h.i.+t" or anything like that. Or he'd spell it out or use a euphemism. He was much more comfortable in the company of men, which is not to make any kind of s.e.xual aspersions. Women were sacrosanct to him.

JIM BELUs.h.i.+, Cast Member: I supposedly threw a fire extinguisher at Ebersol. I don't remember throwing it at him. I remember going down the hall and getting really p.i.s.sed and grabbing the fire extinguisher off the wall and heaving it toward his office. I was a hungry, aggressive young man. I was a pain in the a.s.s to Ebersol, but not to the other actors.

Ebersol didn't even really hire me. Brandon Tartikoff was always a fan of mine, and he saw me do a big Second City benefit show that started the John Belus.h.i.+ Scholars.h.i.+p Fund. We invited everybody in the industry, and every studio gave like $7,500. Brandon saw that show, and I did quite a few Second City routines there, and he said to d.i.c.k, "Why don't you hire Belus.h.i.+?" And Ebersol goes, "You think so?" Brandon said, "Yeah, he was really funny." So Ebersol did.

TIM KAZURINSKY:.

The thing with Ebersol was that he was always looking for the lowest common denominator. The moral majority was really big then, and he didn't want to do anything to p.i.s.s anybody off or do anything controversial. I had just come out of Second City, and he tells me, "I don't want to do political things. I don't want to do controversial things. Who do you do impersonations of? Can you do Mickey Rooney?" I was like, "f.u.c.k off!" I remember John Candy's saying that was like the bottom of the comedy barrel. Mickey Rooney!

BARRY BLAUSTEIN:.

Reagan's election set the tone. There was a kind of impending doom hanging over the country, and there was palpably a move toward conservatism at the network. We tried ideas for sketches that the network would shoot down. The censors would say, "You can't do that." We'd point out they did something similar with Aykroyd three years earlier, and the censor would say, "Yeah, but that was then, this is now. Things are different." There was to be no mention of the Iran hostage crisis. Ironically, when the crisis was over, we did a whole show with every hostage sketch we could think of.

DAVID SHEFFIELD:.

Barry had an idea for a great hostage sketch, which was, a guy knows this woman's husband is being held hostage, and he goes over to console her and winds up hitting on her. The network said no. It was a strange time.

JAMES DOWNEY:.

I liked d.i.c.k Ebersol a lot. He gets a bad rap. He developed a play-book to run the show which I would argue they are definitely using these days. The way the show works now is Ebersol's formula: the popular characters in heavy rotation, the kind of pieces they pick. It's not a writer's show. Ebersol made no bones: "I'm pus.h.i.+ng Eddie Murphy, there's going to be a 'Mister Robinson's Neighborhood' or a Buckwheat every other show in alternation. I'm going to pretend 'The Whiners' are popular characters whether the audience thinks so or not, and we're going to keep doing it. It's going to be about the performers. The sets are going to be very simple."

The show has the feel of one- and two-person sketches, not the kind of things like Franken and Davis and I would write - complicated, plotty sorts of scenes - or like Jack Handey's stuff. I would argue that the show right now resembles the Ebersol show more than it resembles the old show. I think Ebersol kept the show on the air at a point where it might have been canceled. It's like Sam Houston holding the Texas army together long enough to hang on.

ANDREW KURTZMAN:.

Tim Kazurinsky, who came from a business environment, sort of clued me in by saying, "Watch Ebersol. Watch how he leaves the door opened or closed during a meeting. Watch who he has in his office." What was it they said about Lyndon Johnson? He never had a telephone conversation without needing to win a point. Even when d.i.c.k was yelling, he was subtly turning things so that the argument would go his way.

ELLIOT WALD:.

I don't remember who said the line - I've said it so much that someone said they thought I said it originally, but I didn't - but one of the writers said, "Every time somebody in the world lies, d.i.c.k Ebersol gets a royalty."

d.i.c.k and I would go head-to-head in meetings, but he would just ignore me, and I didn't particularly love that. I was always interested in who would fight him and who wouldn't. And I'm a confronter, so we got on very bad terms. I haven't seen him or looked in his direction since.

BOB TISCHLER:.

I had one big run-in with d.i.c.k before our last year. I said, "I know you're a publicity hog and you can't control yourself, but at least give me some kind of credit for this. I'm doing all the work. I think you should be much more in the background." He was dealing with the network and dealing with a lot of the nuts and bolts, and I was really running the show much more from the creative point of view, because he really did not have a good rapport with the writers. So I would do all the rewriting, and that would be a h.e.l.l of a lot of work. But he would just take all the credit, and I was very troubled by it and told him so. At one point I was going to leave the show - he was thinking of firing me, I was thinking of walking out. But we came together and settled it, so I stayed.

I ended up liking working with him a lot, because he is an excellent producer. He really knows how to deal with the network more than anybody I've ever met. It's just that he had a lot of shortcomings in knowing how to deal with creative people. d.i.c.k is a very strange animal.

ANDREW KURTZMAN:.

The toughest it ever got between me and d.i.c.k was at one point he said, "You're talking pretty big for a guy who was making $90 last week." That's sort of a d.i.c.kensian moment in my life. I had to get between d.i.c.k and a couple of people several times. With d.i.c.k there was always an element of fear. Like his argument with Andy Kaufman. I was standing there backstage where they screamed at each other. There was a certain amount of "f.u.c.k you" and screaming down the little entranceway leading into the studio there. It was a big confrontation. It was the show where Andy was voted off the air. I will say d.i.c.k was always in control. Even when d.i.c.k was out of control, d.i.c.k was perfectly in control.

ELLIOT WALD:.

There was one piece I remember very well that Jim Downey wrote that we were falling off our chairs about. It was hilarious. It was an alien s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p landing on Earth. The aliens come out and say, "We are superior, you shouldn't even bother to oppose us," and it becomes obvious as they talk that they stole the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p and haven't really read the manual or anything and really don't know how to run it very well. And in four minutes, it just had half a dozen wonderfully funny things. I remember that piece - and there were a million like it - where d.i.c.k just didn't get it. The writers all got it. d.i.c.k didn't.

TIM KAZURINSKY:.

I had done this running thing called "I Married a Monkey," where my wife was played by a live chimpanzee. And I did it because I knew that something would screw up and people would see that it was live. People would always ask me, "When do you tape the show?" No, it's called Sat.u.r.day Night Live. It's live. It became so slick, people forgot that it was live. So I thought, "I'll do this soap opera thing with a live chimp, and inadvertently I'll get to improvise." And it got to be very popular. And anything that took off, Ebersol wanted: "Let's do that again," you know. "Let's do another monkey thing." Even when you think it's played out, you still have to do them. "We need a monkey for this week." And I'd go, "Christ!"

And we used to hire these midget chimps Butch and Peppy, because they supposedly worked with Ronald Reagan in Bedtime for Bonzo. And the trainer told me one time, "Watch out for the chimps. When the hairs go up on their arms, they're ready to attack." So I was on the show one night, it was dress, and Madge, my "wife," is in a hospital bed with amnesia. So I'm sitting there next to her and suddenly I see the hairs on her arm go up. And I make this dash trying to get out of there, and she grabs me and gets my head in a headlock that was like steel. Fortunately she was tethered by a chain at the back of the hospital bed and I was able to pull my head free before she crushed my skull. Then she went berserk and ripped off her leopard skin negligee and diaper and revealed to the audience that Madge was really a male chimp. So, standing there on the bed now, he grabs his monkey member and starts masturbating - as if to say, "I'm a guy." Out in the audience, mothers are s.h.i.+elding their kids' eyes, and I thought, "Oh G.o.d, if this ever happened on-air, I'd probably have stayed and wrestled with the chimp. But for a dress rehearsal, get the h.e.l.l out of there."

So they sedated the chimp for the air show. I look over and he's just totally gla.s.sy-eyed. And the next time I worked with a chimp, its teeth had been removed. Then I found out from a production a.s.sistant that Ebersol was secretly taking out like ma.s.sive amounts of insurance on me when I worked with the chimp! And that's when I said, "No more. I'm not doing it anymore." I thought, "He's taking a million bucks of insurance in case I get killed. And f.u.c.k that. It's too bizarre. I mean, I'm not going to die for him."

JIM BELUs.h.i.+:.

Ebersol's an executive network manager. He's one of the tops in that field. I think he knew what worked, and what didn't work, and I think he really knew how to program the first thirty minutes to be the most successful. He knew the first thirty minutes of the show was the most-watched, so he really kind of messed around with the commercials to try to hold them back. As far as being a writer or a comic and telling you, "Why don't you try this gag," he was a little dry that way. Ebersol is like a lot of people in our industry; they're heat-seeking missiles. What they're looking for is the heat. He put that heat up there in the first thirty minutes. Sometimes, though, people like that don't know how to nurture something.

JOE PISCOPO:.

The Sinatra stuff was early on, and they had to talk me into that too, because I didn't want to disrespect my hero. When I first started doing him, I wrote him a letter and I sent him an alb.u.m through his attorney - we put out this "I Love Rock and Roll, Sinatra Sings the Rock Tunes" kind of thing. I was a North Jersey Italian American just like the Old Man, as we affectionately referred to Mr. S., and he couldn't have been nicer. Matter of fact, he sent out cease-and-desist letters to anybody who'd even think of doing him and he never sent me a letter. And he used to call me Jusep, which was Italian for Joseph. He would invite me to everything. He just liked it. And when I look at it now, it had a real edge to it, you know?

But he couldn't have been nicer, and I have the fondest memories, rest his soul, of the Old Man. He was just the greatest. When I first did him on SNL, he was at Caesar's Palace in Atlantic City and he was about to step onstage - the opening act was an old comic named Charlie Callas - and everybody was waiting for the Old Man, and at eleven-thirty for the first time it was me doing him, and everybody stopped in the room, and I heard this from everybody, and they just said, "How is this guy crazy enough to do Sinatra?" And Callas breaks his silence and says to the Old Man, "What do you think, Captain?" And Sinatra looks at me doing him and he says, "He's pretty good - the little p.r.i.c.k."

And when I met him, he said, "Hey Joe, baby, come here." I felt so comfortable, I said, "Can I call you Frank?" He said, "No." It was great, you know? He was just a wonderful, wonderful guy.

BOB TISCHLER:.

We had a piece on one show where people were jumping off a building, and in the sketch Frank Sinatra was supposed to jump, as was Mayor Koch, who played himself, and Joe says, "Frank wouldn't jump off a building." And Eddie turns to him and says, "Oh yeah - and Mayor Koch would?" That was one of many "Frank wouldn't do that" stories. There was another time where Billy Crystal was going to play Sammy Davis Jr. - Billy and I wrote this piece - and Joe was supposed to play Frank, and it was supposed to start in the Carnegie Deli and end up where Sammy would break-dance in front of the NBC studios, which we did. But when we told Joe that we wanted to start in the Carnegie Deli, he said that Frank would never eat in the Carnegie Deli, and he refused to do it until we put Frank in a limo.

Then there's the Stevie Wonder story. It was a sketch called "Ebony and Ivory," and it was supposed to be Frank Sinatra and Stevie Wonder - Joe and Eddie. In the sketch, which Barry and David wrote, Frank was supposed to be waiting for Stevie Wonder to show up at the recording studio, and Joe said, "Frank wouldn't wait for Stevie. Stevie would have to wait for Frank." And refused to do it that way.

It was sick.

ANDREW SMITH:.

Joe needed to think he was Frank Sinatra. All that stuff about Frank. And we wanted to write a sketch called "Frank Wouldn't Do That," because we'd pitch a sketch or something, and Joe would say, "No, no, Frank wouldn't do that." I once wrote a sketch - "The Gay Frank Sinatra Club." And, "No, not that, Frank wouldn't do that." So he really got a little squirrelly about this whole Frank thing. Joe saw his Frank thing not in comedy terms but as a tribute.

TIM KAZURINSKY:.

I always said I would love to have done SCTV. There were smarter producers and smarter people involved. Watching the talent wither on Sat.u.r.day Night Live, that was painful. You had really good writers trying to dumb down - and getting depressed about it and turning to drugs.

Good performers - Mary Gross, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Robin Duke - were given so little to do on the show that their confidence eroded. Robin Duke was hysterical in shows at Second City. And they gave her nothing. And the less they give somebody - well, you know what they say: If you have one line it's harder than if you have a big part. The confidence erodes week by week, and it can just destroy people. And that was a hard thing to watch. The Second City environment was much more nurturing back then, and to come from that into the Sat.u.r.day Night Live snake pit was not pleasant.

I always thought back to Aykroyd, who did Jimmy Carter with dark hair and a mustache, to the way it got prosthetically when I was there. I remember that at one point Joe Piscopo was whining to Ebersol that Gary Kroeger was going to use his foam prosthetic pieces to play Ed McMahon and that he thought those were his property, you know? When did it become about the prostheses? And isn't the parody in the writing and the wit, rather than the Rick Baker makeup?

ANDREW SMITH:.

If Joe thought he'd done a bad show - well, I remember one time sitting in Ebersol's office, and Joe went around the corner into Ebersol's bathroom and started banging his head against the wall in the shower, and there was this thud as, you know, he's thumping his head against the wall. And his wife, his first wife - this long-suffering, very sweet, mild girl - turned to us and said, "Joe is such a perfectionist. Poor Joe, he's such a perfectionist." What? Thud, thud, thud....

Lorne Michaels, executive producer of Sat.u.r.day Night Live, in the year of its birth, 1975. NBC president Herb Schlosser said, "No matter what anyone else tells you, the guy who created the show, and made it what it is, is Lorne Michaels." EDIE BASKIN Magnificent Seven. The original Not Ready for Prime Time Players (from left, clockwise): Chevy Chase, John Belus.h.i.+, Gilda Radner, Garrett Morris, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman. EDIE BASKIN Gilda Radner and John Belus.h.i.+ in the makeup room. Gilda "sat s.h.i.+va" for John because Lorne Michaels didn't want to hire him for the show. Michaels changed his mind. EDIE BASKIN The Star Trek sketch, a pivotal ensemble production from the first season (May 29, 1976), began a long SNL tradition of biting the network that fed it. Dan Aykroyd played Dr. McCoy, John Belus.h.i.+ was Captain James T. Kirk, and Chevy Chase played Mr. Spock, who vainly tried to prevent a network executive (host Elliott Gould) from canceling the series. EDIE BASKIN We, the women: Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, and Gilda Radner. Laraine shot up heroin, Gilda binged and vomited, and Jane went home each night to her husband and dog. EDIE BASKIN Lorne, Chevy, Dan, and John clown around at the Lincoln Memorial during a trip to Was.h.i.+ngton in 1976. John forgot his ID, but guards let him into the White House anyway. 1976 THE WAs.h.i.+NGTON POST. PHOTOGRAPH BY GERALD MARTINEAU. Reprinted with permission.

Jane Curtin emcees "Mr. U.S.A.," a male beauty pageant that flip-flopped gender roles. EDIE BASKIN "Samurai Hotel," with Belus.h.i.+ taunting host Richard Pryor. The network was so nervous over Pryor's appearance that executives ordered a five-second delay to catch obscene ad-libs before they aired. But director Dave Wilson says n.o.body was ever able to make a "delay" work anyway. EDIE BASKIN LEFT: Two insatiably wild and crazy guys: Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd as those swinging would-be babe magnets, the Festrunk brothers, not-so-fresh off the boat from Czechoslovakia and perpetually in search of "foxes" with "big American b.r.e.a.s.t.s." EDIE BASKIN RIGHT: Jane, Dan, and Laraine as the Coneheads, beer-guzzling visitors from another planet. Aykroyd originally conceived the characters as Pinhead Lawyers from France while smoking a joint - but there were worries that encephalitics in the viewing audience might be offended. EDIE BASKIN That (Second) Champions.h.i.+p Season: Stars and writers from the show's second year. Standing (from left): Al Franken, Dan Aykroyd, Alan Zweibel, Herb Sargent, Michael O'Donoghue, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Tom Davis, Lorne Michaels. Seated: Rosie Shuster, Marilyn Suzanne Miller, Tom Schiller, John Belus.h.i.+, James Downey. Foreground: Anne Beatts. Chevy and Bill got into a fistfight backstage; Chevy thinks John made it happen. EDIE BASKIN Some of the real musicians in the SNL band may have scoffed, and musical director Howard Sh.o.r.e had his misgivings, but Aykroyd and Belus.h.i.+ as Elwood and Jake Blues, the Blues Brothers, went from SNL warm-up act to a blockbuster movie directed by John Landis. EDIE BASKIN Bill Murray and Gilda Radner, as nerds Todd and Lisa, are convulsed in laughter at Dan Aykroyd's overexposed refrigerator repairman. Network censors told Aykroyd to keep his pants pulled up. He didn't care; he let them slide down anyway, and the audience roared. EDIE BASKIN Gilda Radner and NBC president Fred Silverman at an SNL party. Silverman's dream of turning Gilda into NBC's "Lucy" or Carol Burnett, and giving her a prime-time variety show, went up in smoke when Gilda simply said no. Silverman blamed Michaels and excluded him from conversations about his successor.NBC PHOTO Bill Murray, self-described "adopted" child of the SNL players. Given the daunting task of replacing Chevy Chase when he went off to Hollywood, Murray won over the audience with such inspired characters as Nick the (lousy) Lounge Singer and a speech in which he confessed, "I don't think I'm making it on the show." EDIE BASKIN Eddie Murphy, the biggest star, at least in terms of box office receipts, ever to emerge from Sat.u.r.day Night Live. Producer Jean Doumanian claims to have discovered Murphy, but he languished in the background until d.i.c.k Ebersol took over the show. If not for Murphy's talent and popularity, SNL would probably have died in the early eighties. EDIE BASKIN Joe Piscopo plays straight man to Eddie Murphy's hilarious impression of Gumby, the children's cartoon character, as a hardened old show business veteran. Fellow cast members were heard to observe, "Eddie Murphy's success went to Joe Piscopo's head." EDIE BASKIN Guests Barbara Bach and Ringo Starr flank Billy Crystal as Fernando, one of the durable characters Crystal created in the last year of d.i.c.k Ebersol's reign as SNL executive producer. Crystal was supposed to appear on the premiere of Sat.u.r.day Night Live in 1975, but an argument over the timing of his sketch led to his walking out the night of the show. He returned in triumph nine years later.NBC PHOTO One of the greatest of all SNL political sketches: A 1988 debate among contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, brilliantly written by James Downey, Al Franken, and Tom Davis and starring, from left, Kevin Nealon as Pierre "Pete" DuPont, Al Franken as Pat Robertson, Dan Aykroyd (making a special cameo appearance) as Bob Dole, Nora Dunn as Pat Schroeder, Dana Carvey as George Bush, and Phil Hartman as Jack Kemp. The sketch helped reestablish SNL's credentials as America's leading political satirist.NBC PHOTO LEFT: Martin Short and Billy Crystal as "Kate and Ali" - Katharine Hepburn, whom Short imitated flawlessly, and Muhammad Ali, another of Crystal's virtuoso impressions. With Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer, they formed an "all-star" team that once again saved SNL from going under.NBC PHOTO RIGHT: Norm Macdonald. Chevy Chase thought he was the best "Weekend Update" anchor since - well, Chevy Chase - but his stint in the anchor chair provoked the wrath of NBC West Coast president Don Ohlmeyer, who mounted a relentless, obsessive campaign to get Macdonald removed from the post in 1994. EDIE BASKIN Sometimes the envelope got pushed too far. Sinead O'Connor (center), host Tim Robbins, and Lorne Michaels during rehearsals for a 1992 show in which O'Connor shocked the audience - and everybody involved with the show - by tearing up a photo of the Pope at the end of a song. Director Dave Wilson ordered that the "applause" sign not be lit, and the sequence ended in deathly silence. EDIE BASKIN LEFT: Mike Myers and Dana Carvey as Wayne and Garth in "Wayne's World," a sketch that began life modestly in the "ten to one" spot (the last sketch on the show) and eventually became the basis of the highest-grossing movie ever spun off SNL characters. Carvey and Myers got along fine in the TV version; the movie set was another matter. EDIE BASKIN RIGHT: "Two guys named Chris, hired on the same day, sharing an office... .One's a black guy from Bed-Stuy, one's a white guy from Madison, Wisconsin. Now - which one is going to OD?" - Chris Rock on himself and fellow cast member, officemate, and friend, Chris Farley. EDIE BASKIN Letting it all hang out. Chris Farley romps through an "audition" for male strippers, with host Patrick Swayze. Farley idolized and emulated John Belus.h.i.+ even to the point of wearing Belus.h.i.+'s pants when he found them in the wardrobe department. But inner demons similar to Belus.h.i.+'s led to Farley's death at the same tragically early age, thirty-three. EDIE BASKIN "Good-nights" from one of the great shows of the nineties, with host Tom Hanks, musical guest Bruce Springsteen, and regular Chris Farley in the foreground. Hanks was one of the most frequent and hardworking guest hosts, pulling all-nighters with the writers and never behaving like a prima donna. EDIE BASKIN More stars than there are in the heavens - but too many of them really are in heaven. A rare reunion of cast members, writers, hosts, and producers from several eras of Sat.u.r.day Night Live at the Aspen Comedy Festival. At left, 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft moderates the discussion. Michaels sits front row, far left, and former executive producer d.i.c.k Ebersol is fourth from the right. NEAL PRESTON/2002 Comic Andrew Dice Clay with Michaels and a studio technician during rehearsals for what would be one of the most contentious SNL shows of the nineties. Cast member Nora Dunn refused to appear on the show because she found Clay's humor misogynistic. Clay insisted he was only playing a character in the same way members of the SNL cast did every week. EDIE BASKIN The Gap Girls in a sketch from the early nineties: David Spade, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley. Network executives were at the gates demanding changes and threatening Michaels. Among other things, they wanted Sandler fired because they didn't "get" his comedy; he went on to become a major movie star of hugely successful comedy films. Norman Ng for EDIE BASKIN Like b.u.t.tah. Barbra Streisand makes a surprise appearance during a special edition of "Coffee Talk," the Mike Myers sketch in which Myers (left) played talk-show host Linda Richman, a gabby yenta who sometimes told viewers to "talk amongst yourselves." Madonna and Roseanne look on. Norman Ng for EDIE BASKIN Dana Carvey as George Bush, Phil Hartman as Bill Clinton, and David Spade as Ross Perot greet the audience from "home base" in Studio 8H. For many younger viewers, SNL became a primary source of political information. EDIE BASKIN Molly Shannon as the beleaguered Catholic schoolgirl Mary Katherine Gallagher, with Ana Gasteyer, Cheri Oteri, and host Gwyneth Paltrow. Though Sat.u.r.day Night Live was often criticized as a "boys club," women writers were prominent from the beginning, and the casts of the nineties included some of the most talented women in the show's history. Mary Ellen Matthews for EDIE BASKIN Monica Lewinsky as herself and Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton. In recent years, celebrities spoofed on the show were more and more likely to make appearances - from Robert DeNiro to Janet Reno. Veteran writer James Downey thought it was a bad idea and that inviting infamous presidential f.e.l.l.a.t.i.onist Lewinsky onto the show was a "tacky" thing to do. Mary Ellen Matthews for EDIE BASKIN Sat.u.r.day Night Live reborn - again. In the second half of the nineties, the show went through yet another resurgence, thanks largely to a talented and relatively drug-free cast that included (from left) Will Ferrell, Chris Kattan, and Cheri Oteri. Frequent host John Goodman joins them. Ferrell, the most versatile "utility player" since Phil Hartman, left at the end of the 200102 season. Mary Ellen Matthews for EDIE BASKIN Friends of the producer. Michaels (right) greets host Alec Baldwin and musical guest Paul McCartney in 1993. Baldwin, one of the most popular recurring hosts, once asked Michaels if Rosemary Clooney could be his musical guest. Request denied. EDIE BASKIN Opening the twenty-fifth-anniversary special. Bill Murray reunites with Paul Shaffer for their first Nick the Lounge Singer sketch in years, doing the Bruce Springsteen song "Badlands." Murray later called it one of the highlights of his career. The sketch "killed" and got the show off to a rousing start. Mary Ellen Matthews for EDIE BASKIN Onstage at the twenty-fifth-anniversary prime-time special. Writers Robert Smigel, James Downey, and Tim Herlihy - arguably three of the show's best - with star Adam Sandler. The special earned spectacular ratings and reunited all the living cast members from a quarter-century of comedy - with the exception of Eddie Murphy, who refused to appear. Mary Ellen Matthews for EDIE BASKIN Jeopardy, SNL-style: Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek hosts one of the most popular and hilarious recurring sketches of recent years, with Michael J. Fox as Tom Cruise, Jimmy Fallon as former cast member Adam Sandler, and Darrell Hammond doing his wickedly ridiculous impression of Sean Connery. EDIE BASKIN Last-minute rehearsal. Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey, in background, go over jokes for a "Weekend Update" segment - always the last thing to be written. Fallon and Fey have brought "Update" back to its former prominence as the show's satirical centerpiece. Mary Ellen Matthews for EDIE BASKIN Cleaning up on Emmy night (from left): supervising producer Ken Aymong, coproducer Mike Shoemaker, Michaels, and coproducer Marci Klein. Michaels relies on these three colleagues, along with producer Steve Higgins, to handle the crises and complications of each week's show. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS Michaels in his ninth-floor office, which opens onto the balcony of Studio 8H. Behind him: the all-important lineup board on which each show's list of sketches is arranged on index cards. At right, Michaels's ever-present basket of fresh popcorn, religiously kept filled by his staff. EDIE BASKIN BARRY BLAUSTEIN:.

I knew d.i.c.k treated us better than other people. Everybody's allowed to write for anybody. And Eddie and Joe were hitting. And all the time we developed a relations.h.i.+p with Eddie. So I'm aware it was different. In the meetings to decide stuff, it was never, "You've got to put our stuff on." A lot of times we said, "No, let's not put that on." From our standpoint, we'd gotten a lot of pieces on the show. It was never, "Jeez, when is a piece of ours ever getting on there?" And we also tended to write more stuff.

ANDREW SMITH:.

I remember there was this wonderful Puerto Rican maid that Gilda had based the character of Emily Litella on. She was a lovely, lovely gal, and very small. She actually became a great friend, and we used to play tricks on her and chase her down the hall. But she was afraid to come into my office and clean because my office used to be Garrett Morris's, and that's where he used to freebase. She was afraid to come in, since that was where fire was. So for a long time my office never got cleaned, until I a.s.sured her it was totally safe to come in.

JIM BELUs.h.i.+:.

Let me put it this way. Those two years of Sat.u.r.day Night Live - '83'84 and '84'85 - were the toughest years I've ever spent in show business. Everything has been easy since. If you were a young physician and they threw you into Cook County Hospital or Bellevue for two years, that's what I equate it to. I'm really glad I did it. I'm very proud to be part of the legacy of Sat.u.r.day Night Live. The only thing I regret is I didn't have two more years to really kind of hit that full fruition of it.

Even my brother John left after four years. I said, "John, what are you doing leaving? It's like the hottest thing going." He goes, "Well, you know, Jimmy, it's like high school - freshman, soph.o.m.ore, junior, senior year, and then you've got to move on."

d.i.c.k Ebersol's initial version of Sat.u.r.day Night Live was efficient and commercial but fundamentally uninspired. It had little soul or spark, except for that provided by one magnificently conspicuous member of the cast - the man whom Doumanian had failed to feature. Now, allied with two of the show's best writers - Blaustein and Sheffield - Eddie Murphy blossomed forth during the Ebersol regime. He was fresh, funny, electrifying. He lit up the screen. Audiences who had wearied of the show's sameness and dropped away were lured back to see this spectacular new kid in town. Murphy had another loyal ally, or perhaps fervent disciple, in cast member Joe Piscopo. Offscreen, Murphy and Piscopo played the role of campus cutups - though to some observers, Piscopo seemed sycophantic in his adulation of Murphy and basked to the baking point in Murphy's refracted glow. And more than one insider reportedly remarked, "Eddie Murphy's success went to Joe Piscopo's head."

BRIAN DOYLE-MURRAY:.

Eddie Murphy wasn't too happy. He wasn't being used when he first started. And then he proved himself and he moved up. He was trying to get a spot on there at first, and they weren't really giving him a shake. I always liked Eddie, yeah. Yeah, in fact when Del Close came to teach improv, Eddie wasn't too up for that. He went, "Hey, I'm funny. I don't have to learn that s.h.i.+t."

NEIL LEVY:.

I had this tape of Elvis Presley's 1968 comeback concert, where he wore that black leather jumpsuit thing, and Eddie used to come in and watch that over and over - and a few years later he was wearing black leather.

I also remember sitting in the bathroom and you could see in pencil on the wall, "Eddie Murphy No. 1." And as he got famous, it got bigger. He put it in bigger writing and switched from pencil to pen. He told me when he was nineteen that he was going to be a millionaire before he was twenty-one. He said that to me. I never met anybody so sure that once he got his foot in the door he was going all the way.

MARILYN SUZANNE MILLER, Writer: Eddie Murphy had been some kind of a part-time guy under Doumanian, and Michael and I screened something, or saw some of his work, and d.i.c.k went, "This guy is unreal! He's got to be on the air." And we met with Eddie, and Eddie was very quiet. You know if you're great, and he just seemed to be saying, "Yeah, I'm great, what do you want to do?"