<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We have discussed some of the <\/span>Saturday Night Live<\/span><\/i> crew previously so it seemed high time to shine the light on some of the others players who revolutionized comedy in the 1980s.\u00a0 We have already covered Dan Aykroyd (<\/span>FTV:\u00a0 Dan Aykroyd 4-1-20<\/span><\/i>) and Steve Martin (<\/span>FTV:\u00a0 Wild & Crazy Guy Part 1 & 2;\u00a0 9-8 & 9-15-21<\/span><\/i>) in depth.\u00a0 These pieces included some casual references to their <\/span>SNL<\/span><\/i> mates, but we only scratched the surface of the whole <\/span>SNL<\/span><\/i> phenomenon.\u00a0 Having recently picked up Nick de Semlyen\u2019s <\/span>Wild and Crazy Guys – How the Comedy Mavericks of the \u201880s Changed Hollywood Forever <\/span><\/i>(2019 Crown Archetype Books) for the second time, I felt it was time to give others the credit they deserve for upping the comedy game.\u00a0 I have a special affinity for <\/span>SNL <\/span><\/i>as the show first took to the air in the fall of 1975, a mere two months after I had begun my first year teaching in Ontonagon.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0De Semlyen starts his book with a bang in the <\/span>Prologue<\/span><\/i> with what could have been the 1978 version of the Will Smith\/Chris Rock Oscar slap incident of 2022.\u00a0 The 1978 version didn\u2019t get any press at the time as it happened backstage, it did not involve a wife, and it wasn\u2019t seen coast to coast on TV.\u00a0 It was later described by one of the principal\u2019s involved as, \u201c[It was really] a Hollywood fight;\u00a0 a don\u2019t-touch-my-face kinda thing.\u201d\u00a0 Director John Landis remembers it a little differently:\u00a0 \u201cIt was a huge altercation.\u00a0 They were big guys and really going at it.\u00a0 They were slapping at each other, screaming at each other, calling each other terrible names.\u201d\u00a0 The combatants in question were Chevy Chase and Bill Murray.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Chase had ruffled some feathers in the original Not Ready for Primetime Players camp when he ditched the show in the middle of the second season.\u00a0 Murray was brought in to fill the gap created by Chase\u2019s departure but as for winning over the audience, he got a slow start.\u00a0 The negativity surrounding Chase\u2019s departure had intensified when <\/span>SNL<\/span><\/i> writer Tom Davis reported Chevy telling him the reason he left;\u00a0 \u2018Money.\u00a0 Lots of money.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Chase had previously said he left the show because his then girlfriend did not want to move to New York.\u00a0 Most had already figured it was the call of Hollywood money speaking to him, not so much the language of love.\u00a0 The fisticuffs erupted when Chevy returned as the guest host during season three.\u00a0 It had been a relatively calm week until he made his way toward the stage for the cold opening.\u00a0 Chevy decided to stick his head into Murray\u2019s dressing room.\u00a0 There he found John Belushi, Murray, and Murray\u2019s brother, Brian Doyle Murray lounging on a couch.\u00a0 Having been needled by Murray earlier in the makeup chairs, Chase took the opportunity to needle Bill back, no doubt in his signature chafing manner.\u00a0 Comedian Dave Thomas (from the Canadian version of <\/span>SNL <\/span><\/i>called <\/span>SCTV (Second City lTelevision)<\/span><\/i>) was visiting Aykroyd that night and summarized the fracus as follows:\u00a0 \u201cThere was no love lost between those guys.\u00a0 Especially at that time, when it was fueled by extreme competitiveness, alcohol, drugs, and fame.\u00a0 Who\u2019s the most famous?\u00a0 Who\u2019s the funniest?\u00a0 Who\u2019s the best?\u00a0 I still think what happened that night could have been avoided, but Chevy is a provocateur.\u00a0 Chevy says things that make people angry.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Murray lunged at Chase and the hand-to-hand combat ensued.\u00a0 Bill later said it was half-hearted.\u00a0 His brother Brian, a full head shorter than both, inserted himself between the two until things settled down.\u00a0 As for the insult part of the bout, Murray probably landed the best shot when he wagged his finger at Chase and yelled, \u201cMEDIUM TALENT!\u201d\u00a0 With the pair pulled apart, Chase wandered off to start the show and no one in the audience or at home was any the wiser.\u00a0 Both SNL alums would end up in Hollywood (as would most of the rest of the cast of <\/span>SNL <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>SCTV<\/span><\/i>) as de Semlyen notes, \u201ccompeting, collaborating with each other, and creating a new golden age of comedy.\u00a0 And there was nothing \u2018medium talent\u2019 about it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0John Belushi had done a lot of behind the scenes whispering about Chase the week of the fateful slap-around.\u00a0 There was obvious resentment that Chevy had made the jump to movies before Belushi did.\u00a0 When Hollywood finally dialed his number, Bulushi almost ended up playing opposite Chase in his breakout role as John \u2018Bluto\u2019 Blutarski in <\/span>National Lampoon\u2019s Animal House.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>The studio suits were not convinced Belushi was the right man for the part, but they decided to hedge their bets, more or less, by demanding director Landis get Chase on board (to play the part of one of the Delta House frat brothers named \u2018Boon\u2019).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Landis did not like the edict, so in a meeting with producers Ivan Reitman and Matty Simmons (set up to convince Chevy to take the role), Landis orchestrated the discussion to do just the opposite.\u00a0 Landis said, \u201cListen, Chevy, our picture is an ensemble, a collaborative group effort like <\/span>Saturday Night Live<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 You\u2019d fit right in, whereas in <\/span>Foul Play <\/span><\/i>(another movie with Goldie Hawn Chase was being pitched at the same time), that\u2019s like being Cary Grant or Paul Newman, a real movie-star part.\u00a0 Don\u2019t you think you\u2019d be better off surrounded by really gifted comedians?\u201d\u00a0 The ploy worked.\u00a0 Landis received a brisk kick in the shins under the table from Reitman before Chase announced he \u2018would love to work with their team someday,\u2019 but he had decided to take the <\/span>Foul Play<\/span><\/i> offer instead.\u00a0 Landis limped away with his intended outcome.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The original 114-page treatment of <\/span>Animal House<\/span><\/i> was banged out by a writing team of Chris Miller, Harold Ramis, and Doug Kenney.\u00a0 The bloated (and sometimes overly raunchy) script was tweaked and tamed enough for conservative Universal president Ned Tanen to okay it.\u00a0 When they finally rolled on to the University of Oregon campus (the only place that had welcomed them to use their facilities), things started off poorly.\u00a0 Some of the cast members, including Tim Matheson, Karen Allen, and Bruce McGill, decided to visit a real life frat party, only to be pummeled by a group of drunk jocks.\u00a0 When Belushi arrived the next day, they had to restrain him from heading to the frat house to exact revenge.\u00a0 Instead, Landis had them spend an \u2018orientation week\u2019 watching World Series games and enjoying rowdy dinners before they commenced the thirty-day shoot.\u00a0 The only problem was Belushi\u2019s schedule.\u00a0 It called for John to film <\/span>Animal House <\/span><\/i>Monday to Wednesday before hopping a red-eye flight to New York to do that week\u2019s <\/span>SNL.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Yours truly can attest to the travel schedule because one must first take a regional jet to San Francisco to catch an overnight flight heading east.\u00a0 He would then reverse the process to get back to UO\u2019s Eugene campus at six a.m. Sunday morning.\u00a0 This may have been Belushi\u2019s big breakthrough, but he was too tired to enjoy it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Belushi\u2019s Bluto only had fifty lines of dialogue in the whole movie, but he was critical to the success of the entire film.\u00a0 He accepted his first movie for a lowball $35,000 fee but reasoned it was a stepping stone;\u00a0 his first step toward becoming a big star.\u00a0 Belushi was the only one in the cast given leeway to improvise his bits.\u00a0 For instance, the entire scene showing Bluto trying to cheer up Flounder (Steven Furst) after they had destroyed his brother\u2019s car.\u00a0 The inspiration came from Landis suggesting, \u201cImagine you\u2019re trying to make a baby laugh.\u201d\u00a0 Bluto\u2019s call to arms in the cafeteria (\u201cfood fight!\u201d) came after another lengthy improvised bit that ended with him splattering mashed potatoes all over the same frat boys who were harassing Delta House.\u00a0 His imitation of a zit escalated into the food brawl.\u00a0 Bluto\u2019s antics surely put the \u2018<\/span>Animal<\/span><\/i>\u2019 into the title.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Belushi\u2019s gonzo fighter pilot in another film with Landis, <\/span>1941<\/span><\/i>, was not much of a departure from Bluto.\u00a0 In fact, critics started calling the movie, \u201c<\/span>Animal House<\/span><\/i> goes to war.\u201d\u00a0 Belushi longed to break away from comedic roles and dialed back his over the top lifestyle to try on some more serious parts.\u00a0 The first film, 1979\u2019s<\/span> Old Boyfriends<\/span><\/i> was a downbeat drama that flopped.\u00a0 His second attempt at a more serious role was that of Ernie Souchak, a hardboiled city reporter who finds love in the mountains of Colorado with a reclusive eagle researcher in <\/span>Continental Divide.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 After the madness encountered shooting <\/span>The Blues Brothers,<\/span><\/i> Belushi used <\/span>Continental Divide<\/span><\/i> as his own personal detox project, dropping fifty pounds in the process on a diet of mostly cottage cheese.\u00a0 Audiences apparently preferred the \u2018Bluto\u2019 schtick more than the streamlined \u2018Ernie\u2019 and the movie tanked at the box office.\u00a0 Visiting Steve Martin in Beverly Hills, Belushi confessed he wanted his future to be that of a proper actor and not just as a clown.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0His next, and last, movie with Aykroyd was called <\/span>Neighbors<\/span><\/i> and as a dark farce, it could have been golden had Aykroyd not said, \u201cHey, let\u2019s switch them and try it.\u201d\u00a0 Instead of Belushi taking on the manic, crazy interloper, he would be the straight-laced, uptight neighbor to Dan\u2019s wild and crazy guy.\u00a0 Aykoyd later reasoned, \u201cWe\u2019ve played these other roles before, and we thought going against type would be more fun.\u201d\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t fun nor was it profitable.\u00a0 Screenwriter Carl Gottlieb noted, \u201cTheir public persona was pretty set.\u00a0 And <\/span>Neighbors<\/span><\/i> was like Abbott and Costello suddenly swapping places.\u201d\u00a0 The combined effects of bad reviews and another poor showing at the box office caused Belushi to turn on his buddy Aykroyd.\u00a0 John had some serious projects in mind and he blamed Dan for letting him down.\u00a0 He slid back into the behavior he had left behind before <\/span>Continental Divide<\/span><\/i> and doubled down on the party hearty life.\u00a0 The times he was sober and in control became the exception to the rule culminating in him taking (or being given, accounts vary) a fatal speedball (a mixture of cocaine and heroin) in the early hours of March 5, 1982.\u00a0 He was buried on March 9 at Abel\u2019s Hill Cemetery on Martha\u2019s Vineyard.\u00a0 Belushi had told Aykroyd it was the only part of the world where he could get a good night\u2019s sleep.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0John Candy and Rick Moranis both came into the <\/span>SNL <\/span><\/i>orbit from <\/span>SCTV.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>A powerful bear of a man, Candy\u2019s first notable films were <\/span>The Blues Brothers<\/span><\/i> (1980) and <\/span>Stripes <\/span><\/i>(with Bill Murray in 1981).\u00a0 Though <\/span>Stripes<\/span><\/i> was equated to being another derivative <\/span>Animal House <\/span><\/i>movie (\u201c<\/span>Animal House <\/span><\/i>goes to war, again!\u201d), it was more successful than other <\/span>SNL <\/span><\/i>casted movies like <\/span>1941 <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Meatballs<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 Candy had been the first choice for the part of Louis Tully in <\/span>Ghostbusters, <\/span><\/i>but he had turned the part down.\u00a0 Coming off the Tom Hanks\/Daryl Hannah sleeper hit <\/span>Splash<\/span><\/i> (1984), Candy wasn\u2019t going to do <\/span>Ghostbusters<\/span><\/i> for a bargain basement price.\u00a0 When he begged off, he suggested his old <\/span>SCTV <\/span><\/i>buddy Moranis for the part.\u00a0 John Candy\u2019s film resume did not suffer from declining the part (he went on to appear in 54 movies) but his last, like Belushi\u2019s, came too soon.\u00a0 John was in Durango, Mexico while filming <\/span>Wagons East<\/span><\/i> with Richard Lewis when he suffered a fatal heart attack on March 4, 1994.\u00a0 John Candy was just 43 years old at the time of his death.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Rick Moranis and another <\/span>SCTV <\/span><\/i>player, Dave Thomas, became unlikely stars mostly thanks to the meddling of the Canadian government.\u00a0 Radio in Canada was mandated to include at least 30 percent Canadian artists on their playlist.\u00a0 Eventually, this rule was passed down to the government funded CBC TV.\u00a0 They demanded the station air two minutes of \u2018something Canadian\u2019 during each show.\u00a0 Moranis\u2019s reaction at the time was outrage:\u00a0 \u201cI went ballistic because every single thing we were doing was Canadian.\u00a0 We were all Canadian.\u00a0 We were in Canada.\u00a0 We could be doing a parody of <\/span>War and Peace<\/span><\/i> and it would be Canadian.\u201d\u00a0 He and Thomas decided to fight back doing what they did best:\u00a0 make fun of the regulation by filming a series of two minute bits of \u2018truly Canadian\u2019 content to air with each episode of <\/span>SCTV.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0De Semlyen describes their act of rebellious comedy:\u00a0 \u201c[They] could be filmed doing the most stereotypical things imaginable:\u00a0 sitting in front of a map of the country, wearing parkas and tuques (usually called <\/span>Chooks <\/span><\/i>in the U.P.), frying up back bacon, chugging beer, and adding \u2018Eh?\u2019 to the end of every sentence.\u00a0 To their amazement, the show\u2019s bosses shrugged and agreed.\u00a0 After one day filming <\/span>SCTV, <\/span><\/i>the duo stayed behind when everyone else went home.\u00a0 With a skeleton crew consisting of one cameraman, one soundman, and a guy in the audio booth, they cracked open a six-pack, and shot over a dozen two-minute clips, one for each show of the season.\u201d\u00a0 Thus were born the \u2018true Canadian\u2019 characters of Bob and Doug McKenzie, purveyors of Canadian wisdom via <\/span>The Great White North.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>They recorded an album of the same name and eventually a movie, <\/span>Strange Brew.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 What they hadn\u2019t considered was their little act of rebellion became an unexpected phenomenon to the point it bothered Rick and Dave:\u00a0 their two minute segments began to overshadow the rest of the show.\u00a0 As Rick tells it, \u201cIt bothered me.\u00a0 <\/span>SCTV <\/span><\/i>was full of all these dynamic, interesting, colorful, and unusual sketches.\u00a0 <\/span>Rolling Stone <\/span><\/i>gave us a cover line saying we were \u2018<\/span>SCTV\u2019s<\/span><\/i> best joke.\u2019\u00a0 <\/span>SCTV <\/span><\/i>was much more than one best joke.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Strange Brew<\/span><\/i> came out in 1983 and it was a modest hit, but not a blockbuster.\u00a0 It was, however, the crack in the door that let Moranis slip through and become a movie star in his own right.\u00a0 After developing the nebish accountant character of Louis Tully in <\/span>Ghostbusters <\/span><\/i>(1984), his IMDb resume includes some notable turns like the <\/span>Honey, I Shrunk the Kids<\/span><\/i> trilogy and the big screen adaptation of <\/span>Little Shop of Horrors.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 After his wife, Ann Belsky, died of cancer in 1991 at the age of 35, Rick found his time making movies in direct conflict with his role as a single parent.\u00a0 In 1997, he stepped back and took what he describes as \u2018a 20 year hiatus\u2019 to focus on his family.\u00a0 The movie companies beckoned but Moranis took few offers in this period.\u00a0 Fellow actor Ryan Reynolds finally coaxed him out of retirement to make a commercial for Reynold\u2019s new Mint Mobile phone service.\u00a0 It happened because Reynolds confessed, \u201cI\u2019m just a huge fan\u2026no, seriously, massive.\u201d\u00a0 Reynolds confides he became emotional when Moranis agreed to do the commercial.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In 2021, actor Josh Gad reported Moranis had agreed to come out of movie retirement as well.\u00a0 He will reprise his role as Wayne Szalinski in a reboot of the <\/span>Honey, I Shrunk the Kids<\/span><\/i> franchise set thirty years after the events of the original film.\u00a0 The film, called <\/span>Shrunk<\/span><\/i>, is still in development and Gad says, \u201cFingers crossed I think we\u2019re going to hopefully be shooting early next year.\u00a0 That is the status right now.\u201d\u00a0 As far as the rest of the <\/span>Wild and Crazy Guys <\/span><\/i>still on the green side of the sod, one can only guess where they will turn up next.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Good times were had by all the SNL alums appearing in the\u00a0Ghostbusters\u00a0<\/em>video – even those who weren’t in the movie!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We have discussed some of the Saturday Night Live crew previously so it seemed high time to shine the light on some of the others players who revolutionized comedy in the 1980s.\u00a0 We have already covered Dan Aykroyd (FTV:\u00a0 Dan Aykroyd 4-1-20) and Steve Martin (FTV:\u00a0 Wild & Crazy Guy Part 1 & 2;\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-humor","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2517"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2520,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions\/2520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}