king of snl.
which is saying something when you consider who else was there
bill murray
eddie murphy
dan aykroyd
dana carvey
waynes world
farley, sandler, rock
all of em.
but im old enough to remember when saturday night live was just starting.
i believe i was 92 years old.
back then it was truly live. and weird.
and occassionally a little bit wild.
back in those days the wildest thing that you could find on television was harvey corman cracking up at tim conway and not being able to make it through a line.
so sex and drug jokes on network tv was pretty fascinating and no one in that original cast had that wild spirit that you could see just below the surface.
the samuri dry cleaner, the intolerant greek restaurant owner “no coke. pepsi.”, but particularily the weekend update reporter who could get heart attacks and die showed that dangerous edge which on live tv was riviting.
he was intense as joe cocker and subtle as jake blues.
but my favorite role of his was in Continental Divide when he plays tall skinny mike royko the chicago newspaper columnist.
who wrote one and two sentence paragraphs.
and talked about Chicagoians.
most people dont know that the Blues Brothers toured as a musical group for several years with Paul Schaeffer as the musical director and band leader.
they even opened for the Grateful Dead several times.
if mike royko was a blogger he’d post once a day and never on weekends. thats pretty much one reason idolize him.
when belushi starred in Animal House he was paid $40,000.
during his first season on saturday night live he was paid $750 a week.
i dont know why, but its nice to know the king got paid shit.