Still Foolin' 'Em (14 page)

The plan was for me to do the show for just one year, so, to me, every week felt like a special. Plus, working alongside Chris, Marty, and the other talented cast members, I pushed myself to be as funny as I could. We created great new characters. There was Marty’s Ed Grimley and the hilarious send-up of synchronized swimming starring Chris and Marty and Harry Shearer. There was “Lifestyles of the Relatives of the Rich and Famous,” featuring Marty’s phenomenal imitation of Katharine Hepburn. Marty is one of the funniest people I have ever met, and also one of the kindest. His energy is relentless, and his fearless talent always inspiring. To this day we are the closest of friends. Chris and I worked together beautifully. He has a lightning-fast, funny mind, perfect timing, and a great ear that enables him to imitate odd people, like Red Skelton and Alan Arkin. He also has the rare ability to underplay—not unlike Peter Sellers—and physically can do just about anything. When I made him laugh I felt like I had accomplished something important. The only problem was we would laugh on the air in most of our sketches. Chris and I had big problems keeping a straight face.

Christopher Guest and me as the Minkman Brothers,
Saturday Night Live
.

Together we created the “I hate when that happens” masochists, the seventy-five-year-old Negro League baseball players Leonard “the Rooster” Willoughby and “King Carl” Johnson, and the Minkman brothers, who appeared in a hilarious spoof of
60 Minutes,
with Harry doing a perfect Mike Wallace imitation and Marty playing the Nathan Thurm lawyer character, who said, “It’s so silly that you would say that, why would you say that?” Makeup artist Peter Montagna transformed me into all of my characters as well as Sammy Davis Jr., who sang duets with Ringo Starr and Jesse Jackson. Some people didn’t realize it was me playing Sammy. My mother thought Eddie Murphy was still on the show; I had to do Sammy on the phone for her to convince her.

Sammy was so much fun to do. I even recorded my home phone machine message as Sammy. With some big band music in the background, I said, “Hey, it’s Sammy, grooving with the band. Leave your name and number, and I mean that.” Well, one night I come home and the message light was on. I pressed Play and heard the real Sammy say, “What the fuck is that?” Sammy called and Sammy answered. He said he wasn’t pissed, but I erased it anyway.

Fernando really took off, and I always looked forward to playing him, because “Fernando’s Hideaway” was the only sketch on the show that didn’t use cue cards. The set would be brought out right in front of the audience at center stage, and the crowd could see that we were just winging it. My favorite episode was when Barry Manilow was scheduled as the guest and didn’t show up at the last minute. Desperate, I convinced one of our crew, Bobby Ferracio, who weighed almost three hundred pounds, to play Barry, because as Fernando explained, he wouldn’t want to disappoint his audience. I asked Bobby questions like “What’s it like being a sex symbol?” He sang, “I Write the Songs,” and the audience just loved him. That’s what live television is all about. It was better than having Barry there. For a while we thought that for the rest of the season, Bobby would always be the only guest because everyone had canceled, but Bobby said no. “My neighbors made a big fuss,” he told me. “I can’t do it.”

“You look mahvelous!” No matter where I went (and still to this day), somebody would tell me I looked mahvelous, as if I had never heard it before, from Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy to Barbara Walters and my gardener. The encounter I’ll never forget was with Henry Kissinger, who not only told me I looked mahvelous but then introduced me to his wife: “Honey, this is my favorite, Billy Joel.” Other characters I did were Buddy Young Jr., an insult comic, who would become the basis for
Mr. Saturday Night;
Joe Franklin, a well-known talk-show host; and a character named Lew Goldman, an old Jewish weatherman who only gave the forecast for where his family lived. A writer on the staff named Larry David created him with me. I’m not sure what became of him.

“Three Amigos” with Martin Short and Jesse Jackson, when Jesse hosted
SNL
.

(Photograph © Fred Watkins)

We were older than the usual cast, the only drugs we did were antacids, and our comedy sensibilities were different, but it worked. People were talking about
SNL
again. All these years later, fans think that we were all there for a few years, when in fact it was just eighteen shows. Midway through the season, I started to feel that one year wouldn’t be enough. I was having too much fun. Nine years after getting bumped and slinking out of that great studio, I was thriving in it, and I finally had the career I wanted, doing the work I had always hoped I would get a chance to do. For four years I had only played Jodie; now every week I got the chance to play four or five characters.

It was exhausting as hell. The cast and writers would meet the host on Monday and get their ideas and thoughts, and then the cast members would have only two days to write the bits we wanted to do on the show, while hopefully the writers were writing parts for us as well. All proposed sketches had to be ready by Wednesday afternoon, which was read-through day. The entire cast, the writers, and the crew would meet and we would read every piece, and then Dick, who was the best producer I have ever worked with, would pick the sketches for the show. Before we knew it, we were rehearsing on-camera or shooting promos or a film piece or writing a feature for “Weekend Update.”

It seemed that I lived at 30 Rock. One Tuesday night around three
A.M.
, Marty and I were in our offices on the seventeenth floor, staring at the driving snow that was falling on the sleeping city. I poked my head out of the door: “Marty, you have anything?”

“Nope, I’m dry.”

“Want to grab a cab? It’s late and it’s snowing—let’s get out of here,” I said. Totally wiped out, we got into a cab and headed down Seventh Avenue. We were talking about how tired we were as the cab stopped for a light at Thirty-third Street. Marty was saying something when I heard it: the roar of a giant animal. Marty’s eyes lit up, and I turned and saw a huge tiger outside the window. I knew I was tired, but this was ridiculous. It roared again, and we wiped the condensation off the window and saw not only tigers but lions in cages and elephants walking in the snow. The circus was loading into Madison Square Garden. Led by his handler, the tiger joined the animal parade into the great arena. It was one of the most beautiful and surreal moments I’ve ever experienced. Marty and I had just left the office, and these animals were on their way to work.

After all the time I had put into comedy, I was finally where I had set out to be, and it was the time of my life. If nothing came out of this year, so be it. I had given it my best shot. As the season was winding down to its finish, I got a call from Peter Hyams, who was directing a movie called
Running Scared.
He wanted me to star in the film with Gregory Hines. I was overjoyed. It was a solid action-comedy script, and I flew to California to screen-test for the part. Then, the night before the test, Brandon Tartikoff called and asked me if I would be interested in hosting
SNL
on a permanent basis. He was toying with the idea of a wheel: four different rotating shows to run on Saturday nights, one of which would be
SNL.
I was thrilled but confused—everything was happening at once.

“Brandon, if this is real,” I said, “I have to know, because I’m screen-testing for this movie tomorrow, and it’s going to shoot when the show would be on, and I can’t do both. I won’t do the test. We’d have to start working on the show right away!”

“I’ll call you back,” Brandon said.

He never did. What happened was that Dick Ebersol suddenly stepped aside as producer, and Lorne Michaels came back to rebuild
SNL
. He wanted to start from scratch, so not only was I not going to host the show, I couldn’t go back to
SNL
even if I wanted to. I did the screen test and got the part.

My experience at
SNL
had been like getting lost in a snowstorm, retracing your steps, and then starting off again, this time in the right direction. Getting my first Emmy nomination was the icing on the cake. That was the most important year in my career, and I was very proud of the work we all did there and grateful for the chance, but it was time to move on.

*   *   *

In
Running Scared,
Gregory and I had a natural chemistry that Peter Hyams was able to orchestrate and capture on film. It was Peter’s idea to team us together, and he brought out the best in us. I got into great physical condition to play Danny, a tough, street-smart, wisecracking cop from Chicago. Gregory and I did most of our own stunts, and both of us, not being the biggest guys in the world, had to train intensely. This would also be the first time I would have to shoot a gun; before that I’d never even had one in my hand, unless you count using my index finger as a kid to shoot the bad guys: “Bam bam bam.”

We trained at a shooting range, and I was surprised and a little frightened by the power of a pistol and an Uzi submachine gun. The first day of filming was a shoot-out scene in a dingy drug dealer’s apartment. With movie bullets flying around me, I would have to run into a room, dive onto the floor, and shoot my pistol three times. I did the first take, hit the ground, and fired the pistol. Peter yelled, “Cut,” the crew applauded, and he called me over to the monitor, where he was cueing up the video playback. I was jazzed—this was a real movie! We watched the playback, and there I was, Mr. Tough Guy. I flew into the room, looking like a real cop, hit the floor, and when I fired the pistol, I shouted, “Bam bam bam!”

Running Scared
with Gregory Hines.

“You don’t have to make the sound—the gun will,” joked Peter. I had no idea I’d said a word.

*   *   *

Earlier that spring, I was asked to host an NBC special to be shot at the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, New York.
A Comedy Salute to Baseball
would air the night before the All-Star Game. Mickey Mantle was going to be a guest, along with Willie Mays. They had both been banned from baseball because they worked for casinos in Atlantic City as greeters and had just been reinstated by new commissioner Peter Ueberroth.

The show was to be a funny look at baseball and would feature Mickey and Willie doing sketches with me. When I arrived in Cooperstown, I was told that Mays had canceled at the last moment and it would just be Mickey.

The night before shooting, there was a production meeting at a restaurant directly across from the Hall of Fame. The director looked like a Hollywood stereotype: purple sweater tied around his neck and matching sunglasses … indoors! We were waiting for Mickey, who had been flown up privately. The man picking him up was a kindly older gentleman. He and his sweet wife were the owners of the bed-and-breakfast where we were all staying. A former neurosurgeon, he had undergone a major cancer surgery that had left him with a gap between his shoulder and his neck. He handled this huge deformity with dignity. It didn’t bother him, so why should it bother you? was his mantra. Well into the meeting, Mickey arrived. Still wearing the golf shoes he’d had on in Atlantic City before he got on the plane to Cooperstown, he kept pawing the young waitress as she led him to our table in the back; I knew right away that he was smashed. She pushed his groping hands away again, saying, “Mr. Mantle, please…”