by Hank Brockett
An optimist sees a meandering sketch on Saturday Night Live and says, “Well, that stinks. Maybe the next one’s funny.”
The pessimist stopped watching Saturday Night Live a long time ago.
Think of all the shows come and gone in the time since executive producer Lorne Michaels thought live sketch comedy could fill the void of Johnny Carson re-runs. Then try to figure out how the show survived the orange and lime-tinted 1970s to guffaw another day.
The question seems simple, but there are no easy answers. It’s like trying to explain what makes you laugh. You can build a case on examples, but the big picture remains up to your audience to figure out.
This uphill battle causes quite a dilemma for Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller, authors of the best-selling book Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. Such a rich cast of characters means page after page of quotable quotes and outrageous stories. And the oral history approach (stringing together interviews from dozens of sources) allows stories detailing John Belushi’s insane antics to flow nicely into even stranger fare, like an anecdote involving Milton Berle and a loose robe.
But developing the big picture from so many perspectives takes exacting care. The authors accomplish this by hopscotching to the highlights, avoiding let-downs in the process. Although the book features candid interviews with everyone from Will Ferrell to Chevy Chase, there are a few notable no-shows. Eddie Murphy continued his SNL boycott with this book, but that doesn’t stop his cast members from gushing about arguably the show’s biggest star.
In detailing how the show is created, the book is good. But when telling how that routine disintegrated on fateful occasions, the book transcends superlatives. This creates a notable difference between Live From New York and the 1994 book Saturday Night Live: The First Twenty Years. Although the newer book lacks the breadth of photos and sketch history, it’s able to give a perspective the television screen never could provide.
If you’ve watched the show for a long time, there’s no denying the waves of nostalgia Shales and Miller provide. Some of the most touching moments come from contemporaries of Gilda Ratner, an original Not Ready For Prime Time Player. Her memory remains pure with such remembrances like this one from writer Alan Zweibel:
“I remember Gilda used to say that she would search through Lorne’s desk hoping that she’d find a note in there that said, ‘I really like Gilda.’”
There’s not much focus on the character development process, although the writers receive ample time to tell their stories. In a way, this preserves such timeless classics as The Nerds (Ratner and Bill Murray) and Murphy’s great “James Brown Getting in the Hot Tub” with the mystery of creativity intact.
The greater theme, though, leads to a philosophical question that trumps most others. When the rebel grows up, does the dream die?
The anarchic spirit of the first five seasons grew into a more steady formula, subject to the ebbs and flows of what the audience and the creators thought was funny. With the edges polished, some consider the newer incarnations as pale imitators.
To each their own, but these folks are elitist idiots. The show always hit-and-missed, sometimes by design. In the book, Michaels details how not every sketch can “kill,” but the variety has to reach all kinds of funny bones.
For a glimpse the Comedy Central reruns can’t always provide (you never know when you’ll get a Roseanne Barr one), the 25th anniversary special provides a great reference point for the show’s long run. Those of us who weren’t able to see Chase behind the Weekend Update desk see just where his legend began, set to falter somewhere down the line. In a way, his career became as spotty as the show, with Christmas Vacation on the same resume as Vegas Vacation.
But the book and all the shows point to one real reason for longevity. As the writers and performers stumble backstage and party-goers stumble onto the couch at 10:35 p.m., there’s forever the chance for greatness. Your Adam Sandler songs are another’s Wild and Crazy Guys. To miss out would be uncool - and even the optimist knows there’s no escape from that stigma.