(Friday, November 11 11:49 AM)
By Rick Porter
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) As he was assembling his documentary "Live From New York: The First 5 Years of Saturday Night Live," director Kenneth Bowser realized he had a nearly perfect story arc involving the show's original cast.
"They rise up, fame and success happens to them, some handle it and some don't, then they crash, or they don't. And they all walk away together at the end," Bowser says. "You can't ask for a better three-act story structure.
"This one," he adds, "was more problematical."
"This one" is "Saturday Night Live in the '80s: Lost and Found," Bowser's follow-up to "Live from New York." The two-hour documentary, chronicling the decade after the departure of the original cast through extensive clips and interviews with cast and crew members, airs at 9 p.m. ET Sunday (Nov. 13) on NBC.
"This is a lot darker than the '70s show," Bowser says. "My favorite quote in the film [spoken by longtime writer Tom Davis] is 'That's showbiz. It's not a good time unless someone gets hurt.' To me, that's what the show's about to some degree."
"Lost and Found" tells the story of what might be called "SNL's" wilderness years. Following the 1979-80 season, the entire cast, which included Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin and Garrett Morris (John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd had departed the previous year), left the show, as did executive producer Lorne Michaels. Critics questioned whether the show should even continue.
Into Michaels' shoes stepped producer Jean Doumanian, along with a new cast that included Joe Piscopo, Gail Matthius and Gilbert Gottfried. The new show was pilloried, and "SNL" produced only 13 episodes that season. A bright spot did come late in the season, however, with the addition of a young comic named Eddie Murphy to the cast.
"I think people really do forget that it was Piscopo who emerged first," Bowser says. "He comes into the show and it's like, 'Oh yeah' -- he carries it for [the '80-'81 season] almost singlehandedly. Eddie doesn't show up until almost two-thirds of the way through the year in terms of really getting into some of the sketches. And as soon as he does, it's like, 'Oh my god, who's this guy?'"
With Murphy and Piscopo carrying the mantle, and another executive producer (Dick Ebersol, now head of NBC Sports) at the helm, "SNL" found surer footing in the next few seasons, adding performers like future "Seinfeld" star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tim Kazurinsky, Mary Gross and Jim Belushi along the way. Ebersol then blew up that cast prior to the 1984-85 season and recruited an all-star team that included Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest and Martin Short.
The Crystal year -- which included memorable characters like Crystal's Fernando and Short's Ed Grimley -- produced a lot of great material, so much so that Bowser says people have a hard time believing that the cast was together for just one season.
"People who talk to me, they correct me. ... 'No no no, you don't understand, [Crystal] was on, I'm pretty sure, for three years," he says. "And I go, 'Oh, okay, maybe I'm mistaken.' But yeah -- 'Fernando's Hideaway' and a lot of that stuff they did was so indelibly printed in people's heads."
Lorne Michaels returned to "Saturday Night Live" for the 1985-86 season, bringing with him a cast that included Robert Downey Jr., Randy Quaid and Joan Cusack. They've since proven their chops elsewhere, but that season was a disaster.
"You don't get more talented performers than Cusack, Downey and those guys, but they just drove the ship onto the rocks," Bowser says. "Not because of a lack of talent -- that just wasn't the best medium for them."
The "found" part of "Lost and Found," Bowser contends, comes with the arrival of Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey and the rest of the cast that would see the show into the '90s.
"I think people inside 'Saturday Night Live' and maybe I would argue that the funniest six years of the show were between '87 and '93," he says. "Those are brilliant years. It had gotten past the issue of they weren't the original guys. ... It got past all that old luggage. It was just itself."
Souce
By Rick Porter
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) As he was assembling his documentary "Live From New York: The First 5 Years of Saturday Night Live," director Kenneth Bowser realized he had a nearly perfect story arc involving the show's original cast.
"They rise up, fame and success happens to them, some handle it and some don't, then they crash, or they don't. And they all walk away together at the end," Bowser says. "You can't ask for a better three-act story structure.
"This one," he adds, "was more problematical."
"This one" is "Saturday Night Live in the '80s: Lost and Found," Bowser's follow-up to "Live from New York." The two-hour documentary, chronicling the decade after the departure of the original cast through extensive clips and interviews with cast and crew members, airs at 9 p.m. ET Sunday (Nov. 13) on NBC.
"This is a lot darker than the '70s show," Bowser says. "My favorite quote in the film [spoken by longtime writer Tom Davis] is 'That's showbiz. It's not a good time unless someone gets hurt.' To me, that's what the show's about to some degree."
"Lost and Found" tells the story of what might be called "SNL's" wilderness years. Following the 1979-80 season, the entire cast, which included Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin and Garrett Morris (John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd had departed the previous year), left the show, as did executive producer Lorne Michaels. Critics questioned whether the show should even continue.
Into Michaels' shoes stepped producer Jean Doumanian, along with a new cast that included Joe Piscopo, Gail Matthius and Gilbert Gottfried. The new show was pilloried, and "SNL" produced only 13 episodes that season. A bright spot did come late in the season, however, with the addition of a young comic named Eddie Murphy to the cast.
"I think people really do forget that it was Piscopo who emerged first," Bowser says. "He comes into the show and it's like, 'Oh yeah' -- he carries it for [the '80-'81 season] almost singlehandedly. Eddie doesn't show up until almost two-thirds of the way through the year in terms of really getting into some of the sketches. And as soon as he does, it's like, 'Oh my god, who's this guy?'"
With Murphy and Piscopo carrying the mantle, and another executive producer (Dick Ebersol, now head of NBC Sports) at the helm, "SNL" found surer footing in the next few seasons, adding performers like future "Seinfeld" star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tim Kazurinsky, Mary Gross and Jim Belushi along the way. Ebersol then blew up that cast prior to the 1984-85 season and recruited an all-star team that included Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest and Martin Short.
The Crystal year -- which included memorable characters like Crystal's Fernando and Short's Ed Grimley -- produced a lot of great material, so much so that Bowser says people have a hard time believing that the cast was together for just one season.
"People who talk to me, they correct me. ... 'No no no, you don't understand, [Crystal] was on, I'm pretty sure, for three years," he says. "And I go, 'Oh, okay, maybe I'm mistaken.' But yeah -- 'Fernando's Hideaway' and a lot of that stuff they did was so indelibly printed in people's heads."
Lorne Michaels returned to "Saturday Night Live" for the 1985-86 season, bringing with him a cast that included Robert Downey Jr., Randy Quaid and Joan Cusack. They've since proven their chops elsewhere, but that season was a disaster.
"You don't get more talented performers than Cusack, Downey and those guys, but they just drove the ship onto the rocks," Bowser says. "Not because of a lack of talent -- that just wasn't the best medium for them."
The "found" part of "Lost and Found," Bowser contends, comes with the arrival of Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey and the rest of the cast that would see the show into the '90s.
"I think people inside 'Saturday Night Live' and maybe I would argue that the funniest six years of the show were between '87 and '93," he says. "Those are brilliant years. It had gotten past the issue of they weren't the original guys. ... It got past all that old luggage. It was just itself."
Souce
