Jim Whalley - Saturday Night Live, Hollywood Comedy, and American Culture (2010) (A)

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Saturday Night Live, Hollywood Comedy,
and American Culture
10.1057/9780230107946 - Saturday Night Live, Hollywood Comedy, and American Culture, Jim Whalley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Taiwan eBook Consortium - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-03
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Saturday Night Live, Hollywood
Comedy, and American Culture
From Chevy Chase to Tina Fey
Jim Whalley
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, HOLLYWOOD COMEDY, AND AMERICAN CULTURE
Copyright © Jim Whalley, 2010.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2010 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
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and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978–0–230–10358–0
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Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: June 2010
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Printed in the United States of America.
CON T E N T S
List of Figures vii

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
One “I’m Chevy Chase and You, You’re Merely a Statistic”:
Self-reference and Stardom on Saturday Night Live 19
Two “I’ll Write You a Note Saying You’re Too Well to
Attend”: National Lampoon’s Animal House Takes
Saturday Night Live to Hollywood 41
Three “But the Kids Love Us”: The Development
of Bill Murray’s Star Persona from Saturday
Night Live to Ghostbusters 63
Four “I Don’t Even Like Myself ”: The Revision and
Retreat of Saturday Night Live Stars after Ghostbusters 91
Five “Age Is a Tough One for Me”: Selling Saturday
Night Live in the 1980s 115
Six “I Still Know How to Party”: Mike Myers,
Adam Sandler, and Generational Change on
Saturday Night Live 139
Seven “A Colourful, Emotional, Working Class Hero”?
The Development of Adam Sandler’s Fictional
and Extra-fictional Personas 161
vi Contents
Conclusion 187
Notes 197
Bibliography 221
Index 227
F IGU R E S
1.1 Host Paul Simon with Not Ready for Primetime

Players Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, Jane
Curtin and John Belushi on Saturday Night Live 31
2.1 Bluto ( John Belushi) announces a food fight direct
to camera in National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) 51
2.2 Theatrical poster for National Lampoon’s
Animal House (1978) 56
3.1 Theatrical poster for Meatballs (1979) 73
3.2 Theatrical poster for Stripes (1981) 80
6.1 Chris Farley, Norm MacDonald, and Adam Sandler
get covered in Tim Meadows’ blood on
Saturday Night Live 152
AC K NOW L E DGM E N T S
This book marks the end of almost a decade spent at the University of
East Anglia (UEA) in various capacities. I would like to thank all the
staff and students I’ve encountered in that time for making it a thor-
oughly pleasant experience.
More specifically:
—The book would never have been completed without the tireless
enthusiasm, guidance and wisdom of Peter Krämer. Across two con-
tinents, he has been a constant source of ideas, constructive criticism,
and good humor. Truly, he has put the super in supervisor.
—Thanks to Mark Jancovich and Diane Negra for invaluable advice
and encouragement in the planning and early stages of the project.
—Thanks to UEA’s brilliant Film and Television postgraduate com-
munity for questions, comments, and the occasional drink. Of these
fine people, Timothy Snelson and Daniel Martin must be singled out
for their warm friendship and biting sarcasm.
Away from UEA:
—I am extremely grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for
funding my study. It would not have been possible without their support.
—Frank Krutnik, Brett Mills, and Palgrave’s anonymous reader each offered
insightful comments and corrections that improved the final manuscript.
—Thanks to Brigitte Shull and Lee Norton at Palgrave Macmillan for
turning that manuscript into a book.
—Thanks to my family for love, laughs and letting me get away with
academia for so very, very long.
Finally, thanks to Kathryn Hinchliff. I’m fairly sure she talked me into
studying for a PhD, and I’m absolutely certain she got me through to
the end. The book is dedicated, with love, to her.
Introduction
Reviewing Spies Like Us, a big-budget spy comedy starring Dan

Aykroyd and Chevy Chase, in December 1985, New York Times film
critic Janet Maslin was moved to comment,
A funny thing, or rather a not very funny thing, happened to

movie comedy several years ago. It became possible to make a
blockbuster hit without the benefit of real humor, provided a
few Saturday Night Live alumni were on hand to affect the right
authority-baiting, devil-may-care poses [. . .] Spies Like Us [. . .] is
very much in the over-sized, overpriced New Comedy mode.1
Ignoring, for a moment, Maslin’s damning tone, the scale of her criticism
is remarkable; she accuses the “alumni” of a single television program
of instigating a new branch of Hollywood comedy. At the time of writ-
ing, her words would primarily have been targeted at five performers:
Aykroyd and Chase, as well as Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, and the late
John Belushi.2 All had risen to fame as cast members on NBC’s late-
night, live variety show Saturday Night Live (or SNL), which had begun
in 1975 and continues to this day. All had gone on to star, individually
and in various combinations, in hit films, fifteen prior to Spies Like Us,
which was the tenth biggest hit of 1985.3 A year earlier, Murphy with
Beverly Hills Cop and Murray and Aykroyd with Ghostbusters had made
the two highest grossing films of 1984, knocking the latest offerings of
perennial chart-toppers Steven Spielberg and George Lucas into third
(Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) and fourth (Gremlins) place.
No doubt to Maslin’s dismay, SNL’s inf luence on the film indus-
try was far from done. Since 1985, the show has continued to sup-
ply Hollywood with successful comic stars, among them Billy Crystal,
Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, and Tina Fey. Surveying the
2 Saturday Night Live & Hollywood Comedy
major trends in Hollywood’s use of comedian figures since the late
1960s, Frank Krutnik has said, “Since its launch in 1975, Saturday Night
Live has proved the single most inf luential showcase for filtering come-
dians into the mainstream.”4
Now in its thirty-fifth season, the structure of SNL has remained
essentially constant since its first episode. Together with a “guest host”
(a celebrity of some kind, generally from within the world of enter-
tainment), a regular group of in-house performers present a series of
comedy sketches, live, in front of a studio audience. These are inter-
spersed with occasional prerecorded comic short films and commercial
parodies, and performances from at least one musical guest. With no
explicit overarching narrative, a frequently acknowledged audience,
and its cast adopting a number of different roles each week, there is
much about SNL that does not immediately appear to lend itself to
the self-contained stories that form the vast majority of Hollywood’s
output.
Maslin’s claim regarding the film inf luence of SNL stars takes on
further significance in light of the critical reaction to SNL when it
began. From its first season the show was widely praised as an agent
for change in television. Before the broadcast of its fourth episode,
Washington Post critic Tom Shales declared,
[SNL] can boast the freshest satire on commercial TV, but it is

more than that. It is probably the first network series produced
by and for the television generation—those late-war and post-war
babies who were the first to have TV as a sitter. They loved it in
the ’50s, hated it in the ’60s and now they’re trying to take it over
in the ’70s.5
In both the film and television industries, the mid-1970s saw the first
members of the baby boom generation reach positions of creative power.
As will be discussed in greater detail here and in the first two chapters,
this was a generation that had already affected the media landscape
through its status as a huge audience with different tastes from their
parents and grandparents. In courting the baby boom, it is argued,
from the late 1960s films and television programs included more liberal
values and more explicit and experimental content.6
Yet, when boomers moved to being producers as well as consumers,
it is commonly reported that these trends were reversed. Beginning
around 1975 and increasing through the 1980s, many have identified a
conservative backlash in American film and television. Summarizing
Introduction 3
debates surrounding Hollywood in the 1980s, Stephen Prince has
said,
The myths about American film in the period are these: block-
busters took over the industry, leading to a general lowering and
coarsening of the quality of filmmaking; the films of George Lucas
and Steven Spielberg epitomized this blockbuster style and proved
detrimentally inf luential on a generation of American filmmak-
ing; and Hollywood film mirrored the politics of the Reagan
period, shifting to the political right and helping to popularize the
Cold War politics of the era.7
With regard to television, Erik Barnouw has argued that the networks
in the 1980s were “caught on a treadmill [. . .] recycl[ing] long-trusted
genres [. . .] increasingly obsessed with sex [. . .] Violence was pervasive
and increasingly ritualized.”8 For Jane Feuer, “television and Reaganism
formed mutually reinforcing and interpenetrating imaginary worlds.”9
Though in Prince’s view there is an element of truth in such conclu-
sions, he warns that “like all myths each also distorts by oversimplifying
complex and often contradictory realities.”10 These realities include the
opinions and creative intentions of those within the film and television
industries, and their relationship with the opinions and priorities of
their audiences. According to Richard Maltby, “Hollywood’s attitude
to politics has consistently combined a pragmatic concern for political
inf luence to secure its business interests with a desire not to damage
the profitability of its product with undue controversy.”11 If Maltby is
correct, then Hollywood had little to gain from supporting a conserva-
tive, Reaganite viewpoint. Michael Schudson has shown that despite
securing reelection, according to public opinion polls Ronald Reagan
was not a popular president.12 Paul C. Light notes that polls also indi-
cate that members of the baby boom generation “may have voted for
Reagan, but they certainly disagreed with his policies.”13
Moreover, surveys of Hollywood filmmakers’ opinions and content
analysis of hit films conducted by Stephen Powers, David J. Rothman,
and Stanley Rothman indicate that “far from being conservative or
reactionary forces in the society as many academics insist is the case, elite
directors, writers and producers now usually espouse liberal or leftist
perspectives that became prominent in the 1960s.”14 With this in mind,
the presence of SNL on NBC’s schedule over the last three decades,
and the success of a number of its former cast members as Hollywood
stars, provides an ideal case study to explore the relationships between
creative talent, the industries that employ them, and the audiences that
receive the results of their labors. Throughout, my analysis concen-
trates on two related areas: the comedian stars that SNL produced and
the importance of generational change and identity to their success.
To address these issues, I adopt an approach used by Peter Krämer
to study trends in Hollywood film both concurrent with SNL and in
the years immediately prior to its appearance. Krämer advocates under-
standing films (and in this case, television) as “products of their time,
locating the work of filmmakers ([. . .] not only directors but also pro-
ducers, scriptwriters, actors and so on) in the context of changes in the
film industry, in its audience and, more broadly, in American society.”15
Like Krämer, I use projects’ levels of popular success (indicated through
box office takings and Nielsen audience ratings) as a barometer of the
extent to which their content and promotion appealed to sections of the
American public, and of their impact upon future industry production
decisions.16
Rick Altman has written of the need for film studies to abandon
“our vision of the film industry as a self-confident machine produc-
ing clearly delimited generically defined products.”17 In its place, he
asks that academics recognize that production decisions are frequently
based around a process he terms “the Producer’s Game.” The rules of
the game are as follows:
1. From box-office information, identify a successful film.

2. Analyse the film in order to discover what made it successful.
3. Make another film stressing the assumed formula for success.
4. Check box-office information on the new film and reassess the
success formula accordingly.
5. Use the revised formula as a basis for another film.
6. Continue the process indefinitely.18
Altman’s Producer’s Game (which I would suggest can apply to tele-

vision, with the added factor that continuing programs can also be
revised) emphasizes the f luid nature of industry thinking, as producers
and executives with the power to finance productions strive to interpret
what their audiences wish to see. It also provides a basis, as Robert C.
Allen and Douglas Gomery have noted, to argue that correlations exist
between the content in hit films and audiences’ preferences.19
However, Allen and Gomery go on to stress the dangers of directly
reading “movies as ref lections or indices of societal beliefs or values.”20
Box office figures and Nielsen ratings may provide an indication of
Introduction 5
which films and programs reached the largest audiences, but they do not
reveal which elements of those films and programs viewers responded
to, or on what level. Having identified hits and misses I look for pat-
terns in content and presentation. To understand how these patterns
occurred, and therefore consider their significance, it is necessary to
contextualize them in terms of industry conditions and wider trends in
public opinion.
For industry, there are questions of who is playing the Producer’s
Game at a particular time, and who they consider their audiences to
be. Both of these factors inevitably inf luence the formula for success
derived from a given hit. Further, a successful project may empower
its makers to undertake their next project with less executive input,
so that repeated elements are the result of individual interests, not the
collective tastes of moviegoers.21 To assess artistic motives and inten-
tions, I largely rely on published interviews with participants as well
as documentation of production processes found in books, magazines,
and, with increasing regularity and depth, on DVDs and the Internet.22
Clearly, much of this material cannot be taken at face value, often act-
ing as promotion or protecting future personal or business relation-
ships. Therefore, a degree of critical evaluation is required, looking for
consistency and reasonable justifications for decisions made.
To then relate the work of individuals to the larger picture of
American society I refer to sociological analysis based on opinion polls.
As discussed later, research conducted by Daniel Yankelovich, William
Strauss and Neil Howe, and others uses polling data and survey results
to establish generational trends in outlook and values.23 I compare these
trends to hit patterns and trends in the demographic composition of
film and television audiences. In addition, I use contemporary reviews
of the films and programs in question to give an indication of the kind
of discourses that accompanied their release or broadcast. For periods
prior to the advent of the Internet, reviews offer the only consistent
record of in-depth contemporaneous opinions, with the added signifi-
cance that they had the potential to inf luence the opinions and deci-
sions of others through their dissemination to a wide readership.24
Star Comedians
As made clear at the beginning of this introduction, my interest in

SNL is centered on its role in the creation of an unusual number of
popular stars, and the fact that at least some of those stars were involved
in changing Hollywood’s approach to the production of comedies.
Analysis of film stars has emphasized their importance to the industry
as a means of attracting audiences.25 A star’s appeal depends on a com-
plex relationship between their fictional and extra-fictional personas.26
Fictional personas consist of accumulations of similarities from the per-
formance of one character to the next. Extra-fictional personas consist
of the public’s conceptions of the star as an individual in their profes-
sional and private lives. In contributing to a saleable image, fictional
and extra-fictional personas can enhance or contradict each other with
either positive or negative consequences for a star’s popularity at the
box office.
Interestingly, the same processes have not generally been found in
television, where critical emphasis has focused on the production of
“personalities” rather than stars. Summarizing debates around televi-
sion and celebrity, Graeme Turner writes, “One of the attributes of the
television personality is the ability to appear to eliminate the distance
between their performance and themselves.”27 As I will argue, there
was certainly an element of this effect in SNL’s success; yet as I have
suggested, from the outset the show also depended on clearly marked
and varied characterizations from its cast. Offering explicitly comic
performance for an acknowledged audience, the distance between per-
former and role has often been far greater, and more openly apparent,
than would usually be found in film. This distance is not necessarily
an impediment to the cast transferring their popularity into cinema.
Indeed, it places them in a long tradition of other comic stars adopted
by Hollywood, dating back to the silent era.
In 1981, in Comedian Comedy: A Tradition in Hollywood Film, Steve
Seidman noted the industry’s long-standing practice of using “already
recognizable performer[s] with a clearly defined [. . .] highly visible
extra-fictional personality,” and argued that a number of formal and
thematic similarities existed in the narrative films designed to show-
case them.28 Primary amongst these is a dual drive to cast the come-
dian as an outsider. Within a film’s fictional world, this occurs through
assigning the comedian figure a plethora of antisocial traits, such as
pronounced animality or childishness, which are used to justify their
inventive performance. Yet at the same time, the very nature of this
performance, whether in its excessiveness, or more directly through
looks or asides to the camera, also serves to position the comedian
outside the diegesis of the fictional world, thereby acknowledging its
constructed nature. For Seidman, the comedian’s outsider status cre-
ates tensions that the narrative seeks to resolve. At the conclusion the
Introduction 7
comedian is either assimilated into the film’s social world (at the expense
of their “eccentric behavior”) or comprehensively excluded due to an
inability to adapt.29 In an attempt to explain the enduring popularity of
this basic narrative trajectory, Seidman proposes it should be seen as a
myth: “This myth centers on the general problem of how to behave in
society: ‘growing up’ by attaining a socially acceptable personality i.e.
evolving a coherent identity, which in turn allows for the initiation of
the individual into culture.”30
Since its publication, Seidman’s hugely inf luential work has been
criticized in two key areas relevant to this study. First, Peter Krämer,
Frank Krutnik, Henry Jenkins, and others have questioned the ahistor-
ical nature of the tradition.31 Jenkins, for example, shows in What Made
Pistachio Nuts? (1992) how a particular combination of industrial and
social factors gave rise to the “anarchistic” form of early sound comedy
most commonly associated with the Marx Brothers. He concludes his
study with a suggestion for the direction of future academic enquiry:
Our task as historians of the comic genre must surely start with
an attempt to reconstruct the sounds of forgotten laughter. A key
concern must be to understand what made previous generations
laugh, to comprehend what laughter may have meant in different
contexts, and to gain some understanding of what gave that laugh-
ter its particular tone and resonance.32
For the stars of SNL, Jenkins’ conclusion, with its emphasis on gen-
erations, is particularly apt. SNL’s appearance in October 1975 came
toward the end of a famously tumultuous period in American history.
In contrast to the stable, perpetual society assumed in Seidman’s con-
clusion, America was not the same nation it had been a decade before.
Moreover, the nature of the changes that had taken place had left last-
ing divisions within American society. As will be discussed in greater
depth in the next section, much of the social change the nation expe-
rienced was closely associated with the maturation of the massive baby
boom generation.
Here, it is worth brief ly outlining Norman B. Ryder’s theory
regarding age cohorts and social change. According to Ryder, the baby
boom can more usefully be understood as a cohort: “the aggregate
of individuals (within some population definition) who experienced
the same event within the same time interval.”33 In a manner simi-
lar to Seidman’s comedian myth, Ryder suggests that as any cohort
ages, “society seeks and promotes a minimal degree of stability and
predictability, and frequently succeeds. The agencies of socialization
and social control are designed to give the new [cohort] a shape appro-
priate to the societal design.”34 However, social change occurs when
this process is impeded, either during times of crisis (such as war) or
because a new cohort is simply too large for their elders to control:
A cohort’s size relative to the sizes of its neighbors is a persistent
and compelling feature of its lifetime environment. As the new
cohort reaches each major juncture in the life cycle, the society
has the problem of assimilating it. Any extraordinary size devia-
tion is likely to leave an imprint on the cohort as well as on the
society.35
For its first fifteen years on air, the principal creative talents on SNL,
including its stars, were members of just such a cohort. From that
starting point, I want to investigate the extent to which the show and
the subsequent film careers of its cast represented or advocated social
change. I will also address how prominent such factors were in con-
temporary discussions of their success.
Though the explosion of the baby boom may be useful to contextu-
alize the group of performers that originally incurred Maslin’s wrath,
SNL’s long-running status means that both its performers and viewers
stretch well past a single generation. Plummeting birth rates in the
late 1960s and 1970s led to a far smaller generational cohort following
the baby boom. Arriving in force as performers and writers on SNL
from 1990, my aim in studying stars from this subsequent generation
(referred to here as Generation X) is to determine how far generational
identity has continued to play a role in their success. This is impor-
tant both for the ongoing debate regarding the relationship between
the film and television industries and society, and for investigating the
enduring aspects of SNL’s format and presentation that have enabled it
to maintain (or repeatedly reestablish) a close connection with the film
industry and cinema-going audiences over such an extended period.
This brings me to the second criticism of Seidman’s tradition. Philip
Drake has argued that Seidman’s identification of a “supposed opposi-
tion between performance and narrative” disregards the fact that the
narratives of such films are generally designed to support the comedian’s
performance, a situation of which the majority of audiences would be
fully aware and appreciative.36 Drawing on James Naremore’s distinc-
tion between representational (or realistic, effacing) and presentational
(acknowledged, ostensive) performance, Drake has used examples from
Introduction 9
Jim Carrey’s career to make a number of insightful observations on the
subject of comic performance and the pleasures it offers contempo-
rary viewers.37 Noting the preponderance of primarily presentational
sequences in films such as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and The Mask, he
concludes, “Questions of identification and character may be less rel-
evant here than those of recognition, play and the return of familiar
pleasures.”38
In relation to Jim Carrey, Drake’s comments would appear entirely
appropriate. Yet, although he names SNL stars (Murphy, Myers,
Sandler, and Chris Farley) in a list of performers whose films might
be considered along similar lines, I would suggest that in the hits of
the majority of SNL cast members (including several of Murphy’s and
Sandler’s) there is a different set of priorities at work. Tellingly, return-
ing to the nature of Maslin’s complaints, she sees the SNL stars’ reli-
ance on attitude (“the right authority-baiting, devil-may-care poses”)
over “real humor” (whatever that may be) as the foundation of their
significant but apparently unwarranted success. This indicates (and as I
show in later chapters, Maslin is far from alone in expressing such con-
cerns) that a sense of identification with their audience is of paramount
importance for their success.
As Drake states, there are notable similarities between Carrey’s rise
to stardom and the ascent of his SNL contemporaries. Carrey, too,
was first a member of an ensemble sketch show, in his case In Living
Color (Fox, 1990–94). That a number of stars originating from the same
show (SNL) should adopt the same stance with regard to the relation-
ship between performance and narrative in contrast to Carrey’s rein-
forces the need to address not only specificities of history, audience,
and medium, but also those of individual units within a given medium.
This is not to say Drake’s conclusions are irrelevant to SNL; presenta-
tional performance becomes central at different points in all of the case
studies I present. At these points I endeavor to suggest why shifts in
emphasis may have taken place.
In summary, then, this book seeks to continue the work of histo-
ricizing and contextualizing Seidman’s original observations in the
manner proposed by Jenkins and Krämer. Questions of star persona,
narrative, and performance are considered in relation to general trends
in American tastes and values as well as to the specific circumstances
surrounding the production of SNL and the films made by its cast
members. Ultimately, Saturday Night Live is both the subject of this
book, and the lens through which wider issues of the processes and
priorities of the contemporary film and television industries and their
ongoing utilization of comedians for creative and financial gain are
examined.
Hollywood and Generational Change
As June Edmunds and Bryan S. Turner state, the concept of generations
is most frequently associated with literary criticism or “common sense
or lay understanding of cultural change.”39 Yet as the earlier discus-
sion of Norman Ryder’s cohort theory indicates, a body of work exists
within the field of sociology devoted to establishing the social role of
generations.40 Invoking this tradition, Edmunds and Turner define a
generation as “an age cohort that comes to have social significance by
virtue of constituting itself as cultural identity.”41 Generations, then,
perform a comparable function to gender, race, or class as a way of
uniting and dividing groups of people. Like these other three examples,
identifying with a particular generation does not preclude identifying
with other types of social category. Shared generational experiences are
inf lected or even negated by identification with other kinds of social
groups. In studying the impact of generational change, I am careful to
incorporate such divisions in accounting for the potential scope of any
conclusions.
In their book Rocking the Ages (1997), J. Walker Smith and Ann Clurman
warn companies against the perils of “generational myopia” whereby
marketers “misjudge events and motivations by applying the perspec-
tive of [their own] generation without truly understanding the unique
generational experience of a different target group of consumers.”42 This,
essentially, was the painful and expensive lesson learnt by Hollywood in
the 1960s. Peter Krämer has shown that many of the changes the indus-
try experienced in the late 1960s and early 1970s can at least partially
be attributed to studios’ inability to rely on the regular attendance of
large segments of the American public.43 A watershed moment of sorts
was reached in 1969 when a high number of expensive films designed
to appeal to the widest possible audience failed to recoup their costs at
the box office. In response, studios turned with new vigor to the demo-
graphic groups that had long been their most consistent customers, those
in their late teens and twenties, particularly men. Following the example
of recent surprise hits The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde (both 1967),
Hollywood produced more films featuring graphic sex and violence as
well as broadly liberal politics. While a number of these films proved
extremely successful, their appeal was narrow. By 1972, cinemagoers
Introduction 11
between eleven and thirty accounted for 73 percent of ticket purchases.
Similar, though less extreme discrepancies were also intensified in favor
of the educated, well-off, and male.44
Perhaps the single most important factor for explaining Hollywood’s
predicament was the baby boom; the generation’s imposing bulk meant
that it required special attention. As Landon R. Jones has remarked
about the relationship between members of the boom and their elders,
“There was a generation gap, all right. But it was not between the
young and old. It was between the many and the few.”45 Beginning in
1946 and lasting until 1964, America experienced an unprecedented
surge in birth rates. After almost a century of steady decline, women
began having children in record numbers. In 1933, just 2.3 million
babies were born. By 1947 this number had risen to 3.8 million. For ten
consecutive years from 1954 to 1963 more than 4 million babies were
born each year. The result was a population bulge 75 million strong.
In 1964, four out of every ten people in the United States were under
twenty years of age.46
Immediately, the idea that a group so large, extending over eighteen
years, can meaningfully be claimed to have shared experiences may seem
unlikely. Undoubtedly, significant divisions existed because of gender,
class, race, and geography. Yet in several respects, prevailing cultural
and social trends meant that many boomers were exposed to the same
formative inf luences, distinct from those of the cohorts that came before
and after them. Not least of these was the postwar prosperity-fuelled
zeal for suburban uniformity that first sparked and then maintained
the tide of children. Jones writes of a “procreation ethic” in America
in the late 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. Unprecedented percentages
of Americans across all social groups were getting married and hav-
ing similar numbers of children. “The range of family sizes was being
narrowed at both ends, resulting in an enormous increase in the num-
ber and proportion of women who had two to four children.”47 From
such common beginnings, Paul C. Light offers four additional areas in
which the baby boom can be considered united:
They were raised with great expectations about their future,

whether thrust upon them in school or advertising. They wit-
nessed history through the unifying image of television. They
experienced social crowding which fuelled their desire for indi-
vidual distinction. And they shared the fears brought on by a new
generation of cold war weapons capable of ending their lives in a
moment’s notice.48
Together, these shared experiences resulted in a fifth, and most last-
ingly significant, unifying theme, “a revolution in social values that
continues to this day.”49
Looking at each of these factors in turn, the “great expectations” for
the boomers stemmed from the sense that after a prolonged period of
economic depression and war, America could afford to pamper its chil-
dren. At home, this meant increased devotion and expenditure, a situa-
tion Jones illustrates with the thirty million copies sold of Dr. Benjamin
Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care and the sugges-
tion that boomers were “the first generation of children to be isolated
by Madison Avenue as an identifiable market.”50 At school, this meant
a new focus on all children receiving a minimum standard of educa-
tion. It has been estimated that 90 percent of baby boomers finished
high school, whereas a majority of their grandparents had not. Also,
22 percent went on to graduate from college, a feat only 6 percent of
their grandparents achieved.51 What they learnt initially reinforced the
prevailing mood of optimism. According to Jones, “most baby boom-
ers grew up reading schoolbooks that presented a singularly glowing
(but unrealistic) account of American history.” But while teachers
and parents may have had the best intentions, this approach had long-
term consequences: “The danger of such a sanitized representation of
American reality is that it leads almost inevitably to cynicism.”52
A similar set of contradictions is evident in the generation’s experi-
ences with television. The baby boomers were the only generation of
Americans to grow up with television but without cable. With only
a handful of channels to choose from, and only one television set in
the house, most (“lower and upper classes, boys and girls, blacks and
whites”) will have seen the same programs.53 Therefore, most saw the
same idealistic view of family life and the same clear divisions between
good and evil.54 Yet television also brought them indisputable evidence
that the fictional world it presented was just that: a fiction, first with
news of the assassination of JFK, then with the horrors of Vietnam and
Watergate.
Television offered boomers knowledge of the adult world indepen-
dent from the views of their parents. However, of arguably more press-
ing concern was dealing with their peers. As Ryder predicted, Light
reports that “the two decades between the mid-1950s and mid-1970s
witnessed a reduced integration of American adults into the traditional
social structure.”55 Packed together in schools and colleges, the last
thing members of the boom needed was new ways to fit in. Crowding
instead cultivated “a lifelong commitment to individualism [. . .] a
Introduction 13
56
search for space and opportunity.” Such searching was given a sense
of urgency by the fourth of Light’s uniting factors, the looming threat
of the Cold War.
Encouraged to learn, constantly reminded of their own impor-
tance, barraged with goods, services, and entertainment, surrounded
by others in the same situation, and inclined to savor the present, it is
hardly surprising that the boomers’ outlook differed from that of their
parents. Using polling data collected between 1967 and 1973, Daniel
Yankelovich argues that the collective experiences of the boom’s forma-
tive years led to a shift in beliefs toward what he terms the New Values.
These involved three “categories of value change.”57 The first centered
on personal morality, an embrace of sexual freedoms including “casual
premarital relations” and tolerance of homosexuality, and the loosening
of ties to religion and patriotism.58 Though not part of Yankelovich’s
study, the greater racial tolerance of the baby boom would also fit
here.59 The second saw increasingly prevalent questioning of tradi-
tional social priorities, principally the assumption that everyone’s goals
in life should be a well-paying job, marriage, and family. In their place
came Yankelovich’s third category, a desire for “the vague concept of
self fulfillment,” something he defines as the “opposition to concern
with economic security.”60
Such changes did not occur instantly, nor did they affect everyone
to the same degree. Yankelovich describes how the ferment for change
began in the mid-1960s on college campuses. Initially, the radical
intensity of the students alienated other demographic groups, a situa-
tion magnified by bitter divisions over Vietnam. However, as political
tensions lessened other demographic groups began to adopt a more
measured version of their social ideals, a balancing process also evident
in students’ willingness to “synthesize [their values] with traditional
career goals.”61 Work, in the form of a challenging and worthwhile
career, became part of the quest for self-fulfillment. Discussing the
spread of the New Values, Yankelovich notes that they were taken up
far more readily by noncollege youth than by older generations.62
It is exactly these New Values that informed much of the cinema of
the period and helped to ensure its limited appeal up to 1972. After that
year, in line with a growing acceptance of moderate New Values, the
demographics of cinema audiences became less narrow, hand in hand
with a greater range of appeals within Hollywood product.63 It is this
period that forms the starting point of this study. Having so far existed
as a massive, inf luential but very definite segment within society, in
the mid-1970s the baby boom started to become the dominant social
voice. The oldest boomers were now over thirty, assuming positions of
responsibility and starting families (albeit in lesser numbers than their
parents). In Hollywood, this meant that boomers were not only the
target audience, but were becoming active and inf luential producers.
The cast of SNL was in the first wave of baby boom creative talent to
assume a level of control in television and film.
Yet just as the baby boom reached maturity, the conditions that
underpinned it were drawing to a close. Beginning in the early 1970s,
the U.S. economy stalled with double-digit rises in interest rates and
inf lation.64 Boomers were f looding the job market and finding there
weren’t enough entry-level positions to go around. This added to sev-
eral other reversals that had been building since the mid-1960s. The
social pressures for men and women to settle down and have children
were receding, coupled with the introduction of the pill in 1960 mak-
ing pregnancy easier to avoid. After 1964, the annual number of births
tumbled, dropping below four million annually for the first time since
1954. Marriages were less frequent and also less resilient; from a steady
three hundred and seventy-five thousand in 1961, the annual number
of divorces rose to over one million by 1975.65 The early 1970s saw the
introduction of cable (e.g., HBO began in 1975) giving viewers more
choice about the images and viewpoints that entered their homes.66
Crucially, faced with such conditions, polls show that baby boomers
broadly retained their liberal social values. Writing in 1988, Light con-
cludes, “On issues of social tolerance, there is no doubt that the baby
boom are the liberal anchor of American political opinion, becom-
ing ever more tolerant over time.”67 For Leonard Steinhorn, “there’s
little evidence to suggest there was any reversal [in the 1980s] of the
social liberalism that began in the 1960s, particularly on issues involv-
ing family, women, morality, sexuality, and overall tolerance.”68 Light
finds evidence of greater conservatism on “questions of political toler-
ance” such as the economy and crime, but warns, “it is one thing to
find a trend, quite another to draw a sweeping conclusion that the
baby boomers are the leading edge in the age of conservatism.”69 It
is against this backdrop that the first generation of SNL performers
enjoyed popular success.
But what of the next generation? There is much debate about where
to place the outer edges of the baby boom cohort. The most common
markers match the numerical boom itself, beginning after the war and
extending until births fell back in line with long-term trends in 1964.70
Generational historians William Strauss and Neil Howe, however,
move their dates forward slightly to include the “victory babies” of
Introduction 15
1943–45, but stop with the children of 1960 reasoning they were “the
last (pre-Reagan-era) students to show Boomish streaks of intellectual
arrogance and social immaturity.”71 This study uses the widest possible
set of dates, 1943–1964, with the proviso that those at either end of a
generational cohort are bound to display traces of their predecessors
and successors.
Light, for instance, makes use of the term “trailing boomers” to
describe those born at the end of the baby boom. He quotes trail-
ing boomer David Leavitt who claims, “Born too late and too early,
we are partially what came before us and partially what followed.” 72
With each passing year, trailing boomers were less likely to have clear
memories of the divisions caused by Vietnam and the political unrest
of the late 1960s, less likely to reach adulthood with married parents,
and less likely to walk into a fulfilling career. Still, they benefited from
the same confidence in numbers and visibility of the early boomers and
spent most, if not all, of their childhood certain that, bar a few errant
institutions, America was a good place to be and it was going to get
better.73
Again using birth rates as a guide, Strauss and Howe argue that
“what followed” the baby boom lasted until 1982 (when births rose
back to the level that prevailed when the baby boom began).74 Children
born in 1965 began to become ticket purchasing entities separate from
their parents in the late 1970s, but Generation X would not become a
significant force in Hollywood for another decade. As with the baby
boom, I concentrate on Generation X as producers rather than con-
sumers, a role they began to assume in earnest in the early 1990s. As
a (relatively) small generation following a large one, Ryder’s genera-
tional theory suggests an increased level of continuity with the recent
past. In some ways this would appear correct, with a number of the
New Values being retained and even intensified. However, some of
the economic and social conditions of their youth necessarily instigated
change. Perhaps the two most common characteristics used to define
the post–baby boom generation are “diversity” and “pragmatism.”
These usefully relate to the two extremes of their relationship with the
generation that preceded them.
Arguing for consistency between boomers and Generation X,
Steinhorn states:
On race, homosexuality, premarital sex, gender roles, the envi-

ronment, and issues involving personal choice and freedom, their
views are almost identical, and if anything, younger Americans
are pushing the country in an even more tolerant and liberal
direction—they may in fact be the most socially liberal generation
in our nation’s history.75
An increasing acceptance of diverse lifestyles points toward the contin-

ued dominance of the baby boom worldview for two reasons. First, it
indicates broad agreement with their ideals, limiting the grounds for
conf lict. Second, as lifestyles become more diverse, it becomes more
difficult to identify a single generational type. As a result, there is less
chance of consensus opinions forming. Supporting this latter develop-
ment, Smith and Clurman refer to a poll asking post-boomers what
their generation should be called. It found “only 10% of the respon-
dents chose ‘Generation X’ as the name of their age group. Nearly
half came up with labels so diverse they were lumped into the ‘Other’
category.” 76 Unable to even agree on a single moniker, such findings do
not bode well for locating other defining constants. Strauss and Howe
comment, “Far more than older generations, [they] come with myriads
of regional subgroups and ethnic minicultures, each thinking its own
thoughts, listening to its own music, laying its own plans, and paying
little heed to each other.” 77 For want of anything better, this study uses
Generation X as the name closest to gaining any sort of traction, and
because it seems to catch the “unknowable” element of the cohort.
The one exception to this rather unsatisfying combination of same-
ness and category defying variety is the sense that Xers were born into
hostile times. Unlike even the trailing boomers, most of Generation X
was brought up in what Strauss and Howe consider “among the most
virulently anti-child periods in American history.” 78 As the falling birth
rates suggest, the baby boom’s search for self did not initially involve
children. As a result of changing values, broken families, and a worsen-
ing economy, Geoffrey T. Holtz notes that between the early 1960s and
the early 1980s, the average amount of time a parent spent with their
child each week declined from thirty to seventeen hours.79 From early in
their childhood, Xers were under no illusions about their prospects, pre-
pared to fend for themselves at home, at school, and later in a job market
still oversaturated with baby boomers. Based on polling data, Smith and
Clurman find that such formative experiences have led to some percep-
tible changes in Xers’ outlooks from those of the baby boomers. There
is a returning division between work and personal life, with work seen
less as a defining vocation than as a means of supporting other passions;
“their emphasis on fun is part of a broader focus on pragmatism. The
bottom line is about survival, not about ideology or mission.”80
Introduction 17
The question for this study is how and when such changes may have
impacted on Hollywood. Given Generation X’s similarities to the baby
boomers, it is not clear how far the industry had to reconsider its address
to the youth market in the manner it had done twenty years earlier.
Moreover, there was not the same push to think of audiences in gen-
erational terms. Holtz calls Xers an “unheralded” generation in their
relative lack of media attention compared to the constant updates of the
baby boom’s progress.81 My aim is to discover the extent to which SNL
stars contributed to or fought against this lack of heraldry.
In order to track the progress of change, the seven chapters that fol-
low are broadly structured chronologically, both in terms of the sub-
jects of the chapters, and the content within each. Chapters one–four
address the creation of SNL and the subsequent careers of the original
cast, who appeared on the show from 1975 to 1980. Chapter one is
wholly concerned with the origins of SNL in the context of American
network television in the late 1960s and 1970s. Chapter two moves to
cinema, presenting National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) as the film
that ignited the industry’s interest in SNL performers. In chapters three
and four, the discussion concentrates upon a case study of Bill Murray.
Chapter five looks at developments on the show in the 1980s, asking
how SNL adapted to accommodate new casts and retain viewers’ inter-
est as its novelty value waned. Chapters six and seven are devoted to
the rise of Generation X as successors to the baby boom as producers
and as audience. Here I focus on Adam Sandler as the most successful
of the second generation of performers to appear on the show. In the
conclusion I summarize my arguments and suggest how they relate to
more recent developments on the show and its casts’ big screen careers,
particularly those of Will Ferrell and Tina Fey.
CH A P T E R ON E
“I’m Chevy Chase and You, You’re Merely a

Statistic”: Self-reference and Stardom on
Saturday Night Live
Over the course of its first season (October 11, 1975–July 31, 1976),
Saturday Night Live (or SNL) gradually acquired a reputation in press
accounts as a new and important force within the television industry.1
Initial reactions, however, were often far from encouraging. Reviewing
the premiere, Variety began by noting, “Irreverence is not enough,”
before concluding that, for the show’s in-house performers, The Not
Ready for Primetime Players, “the question is whether they are ready
for any day-part.”2 In the New York Times, John J. O’Connor was left
similarly unimpressed by the second episode, writing, “even an off-
beat showcase needs quality, an ingredient conspicuously absent from
the dreadfully uneven comedy efforts of the new series.”3
The beginnings of what would become a deluge of largely posi-
tive coverage came when critics such as Washington Post’s Tom Shales,
quoted in the introduction, argued that SNL represented something
“more” than just another program.4 In addition to valuing the show
artistically, Shales, drawing on an interview with SNL’s producer
Lorne Michaels, positioned it as a site of social and industrial conf lict,
with sides drawn along generational lines (elsewhere in the article he
talks of “battles” with network censors). In this context, traditional
standards of critical evaluation—whether a sketch was amusing or
well-performed—were superseded by debates regarding the show’s
capacity for innovation and representation of a particular point of
view. As the first network-sponsored baby boom voice, the makers of
SNL were to be forgiven occasional lapses in their material because,
despite their irreverence, they were pursuing an altogether higher
calling: to change television.
By the end of November, O’Connor had been won over, conclud-
ing his assessment of an episode hosted by Lily Tomlin with the state-
ment, “For however long it lasts, Saturday Night is the most creative
and encouraging thing to happen in American TV comedy since Your
Show of Shows [NBC, 1950–54].”5 For TV Guide’s Cleveland Amory,
reviewing SNL in January, it was “part of the strange new virus that
has infected TV this season: the idea that if you can’t be good, be col-
legiate,” although he went on to advise that those who had yet to see
it were missing “some rare—if uneven—fun.”6 In both cases, there is
a clear sense that the show presented a welcome challenge to the cur-
rent televisual order. The February 2, 1976, edition of Time included a
feature that was perhaps the most colorful in evoking SNL’s situation,
describing its creators as a “small, subversive group of iconoclasts [. . .]
throwing the airwaves into disorder, tossing barbs at the presidency,
the system, the revolution(s), motherhood, feminism, civil rights and
democracy.” 7
The Time quote is important both for demonstrating the centrality
of the image of those involved with SNL to the show’s success and
because, despite the number of targets listed, only the airwaves were
harmed. Ultimately, the purpose of SNL was to entertain. The only
point of contention was that, in order to entertain their peers, the baby
boomer creative team felt that a wider range of subjects and techniques
was required than those with which the television industry had previ-
ously been comfortable. In addressing the show’s innovations and pop-
ularity, academia has so far focused on SNL’s relationship with the rest
of television. David Marc, Scott R. Olson, Michael Dunne, and Josh
Ozersky have all discussed SNL as, to use Olson’s term, “metageneri-
cism”: using audience awareness of television conventions as a source
of entertainment.8 Little has been said about the appeals of the show
itself, either its construction and presentation, or the composition and
star personas of its cast.9
This chapter addresses how SNL succeeded in selling itself to par-
ticular audience groups as an authentic, different voice within network
television, through the broadcasts themselves and through promotion
in other media. In particular, I am interested in how the developing
fictional and extra-fictional star personas of the show’s repertory per-
formers, The Not Ready for Primetime Players, inf luenced and were
inf luenced by this process. By deliberately emphasizing its baby boom
Self-reference and Stardom on SNL 21
credentials, SNL’s appeal relied as much on who performed its material
as on what they performed, a situation that provided the cast with con-
siderable celebrity status amongst the audience groups most desired by
the entertainment industry. Some cast members were better positioned
to exploit this status than others. Discovering what factors enabled
them to do so forms a major part of this study.
Beginnings
The need for network television to concern itself with the specific tastes
of the baby boom generation became apparent in the late 1960s. As
described by Todd Gitlin among others, up to this time a show’s worth
to advertisers was calculated via its total number of viewers, the seem-
ingly reasonable thinking being that each additional pair of eyes was
another potential consumer. However, research into consumer demo-
graphics had long since revealed that some pairs of eyes tended to spend
considerably more than others, and by the late 1960s the technology
for measuring the make-up of audiences was such that some were able
to exploit this information. Gitlin notes, “When the trailing network
let the ad agencies know that they could get a quality buy at NBC, it
changed the rules of the game.”10
Yet, a 1969 Variety article by Les Brown highlighted a number of
problems with the new reasoning. He argued that although networks
talked in terms of eighteen- to forty-nine-year-olds being the most
desirable age group, “the choicest slice of life” for advertisers was actu-
ally those between eighteen and thirty-five. Networks preferred to use
the wider category because they were more successful wooing older
viewers. According to Brown, adults under thirty-five, and especially
those under twenty-five, rarely watched television as
A lot of them are in Vietnam, a lot of others studying at col-

lege, and as for the rest, anybody interested in doing fieldwork
on 18–25 primetime might check the more sociable beer stubes,
film houses, pizza joints, hamburgeries, discotheques and parking
lots. They are a mobile folk for whom home entertainment means
going to someone’s pad to listen to a particular kind of music,
preferably in stereo.
Using two “ratings disasters” from ABC’s most recent season, Music
Scene and New People (both 1969–70), as examples, Brown concluded
that “a program schedule designed expressly for the 18–35 viewers is
not going to catch them in large enough numbers to be viable.”11 In
order to placate their youth-conscious advertisers, then, networks had
to concoct programming that enticed the young that were available,
while retaining the reassuring mass of sedentary, spendthrift maturity.
As the developments between 1968 and 1975 demonstrate, such a solu-
tion was fraught with difficulty.
The first show that is generally credited with connecting with the inter-
ests of the baby boom was the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967–69),
a comedy-variety program hosted by Dick and Tom Smothers, actual
brothers who had built their career on a double act consisting of folk
songs (Dick on bass, Tom on guitar) and comic bickering. Their Comedy
Hour debuted in the fall of 1967 in CBS’s 8 p.m. Sunday time slot against
NBC’s hugely popular Bonanza. Its rise and demise has frequently been
used to demonstrate the tensions of the period.12
In terms of structure and appearance, the show was nothing new.
The brothers appeared in front of a studio audience each week in
formal attire to present banter and sketches interspersed with guest
stars and musical acts. A direct line can be drawn from the Smothers’
cheery, clean-cut professionalism through the history of broadcast pre-
sentational comedy to its origins in vaudeville, a form that has been
described as “diversified, contrasted and all-embracing [. . .] appeal[ing]
to all classes of people and all kinds of tastes.”13 Where they differed
was in the subjects and opinions their comedy began to adopt. As Josh
Ozersky states,
The Smothers’ innovation [. . .] was in producing a show whose

youth-appeal came not as a result of smoke-filled deliberations in
the boardroom but as a direct result of its makers’ own youth [when
the Comedy Hour started Dick was 30, Tom was 28] and exposure
to the antiwar movement, antiauthoritarianism, and the “cultural
insurrection” of Norman Ryder’s demographic theory.14
In its first year, the show managed to achieve a delicate balance

between family entertainment and sociopolitical progressiveness, and
was rewarded with the eighteenth largest audience of the 1967–68
season.15 However, with ratings success came greater inf luence, allow-
ing the brothers to replace several of their original, network-assigned
writing staff with writers closer to their own age and tastes. In its sec-
ond season, the show became less concerned with maintaining its fam-
ily friendly credentials than striking covert blows for the liberal left.
Increasingly, references were made to the counterculture, in particular
drugs and opposition to the Vietnam War. In response, CBS became
ever-more willing to censor the Comedy Hour, a practice that, largely
thanks to the vocal Tom Smothers, was widely reported by the press.16
On April 4, 1969, CBS cancelled the show mid-season, on the tech-
nicality that tapes for an upcoming episode had been submitted late. On
the front page of the New York Times and elsewhere, the cancellation
was assumed to have political motive.17 After its first season the Comedy
Hour had fallen from the top twenty network programs, although its
makers insisted it remained popular with the eighteen–thirty-four
demographic. As internal political pressure started to outweigh the
economic benefits, CBS chose to end their association, publicly con-
tributing further to the rift between the young and television.
Very much the product of NBC’s smoke-filled boardroom delibera-
tions, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In (1968–73) approached the problem
from the opposite angle. Again using the variety format, the show was
more formally daring, being largely assembled from rapidly edited one-
line gags and featuring costumes and sets that ref lected contemporary
youth culture. Equally, Laugh In had its network’s backing in broaching
taboo subject matter, including drug use, politics, and sex. But balanc-
ing the innovation was the reassuring, forty-six-year-old presence of
its hosts, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. Also, the sheer pace of the
show tended to counteract its content. As Aniko Bodroghkozy points
out, “By the time the viewer got the message behind the joke, two or
three other non-political jokes or blackouts had already whizzed by.”18
Bodroghkozy also recounts what Rowan felt the difference between
the two shows amounted to: “Whereas the Smothers Brothers used
comedy as a platform for politics, his variety series used politics as a
platform for comedy.”19
In the short-term, this rapid-fire approach proved highly successful.
Laugh In topped the annual Nielsen ratings in 1969 and 1970. Yet by
1971 it had fallen to thirteenth, and was out of the top twenty a year
later. The rapid slide has been attributed to two broad and closely related
movements in television trends. First, as David Marc has discussed,
there was a general decline in the popularity of “vaudeville-style pre-
sentation,” a situation he attributes to its uneven, unpredictable nature:
“Performance comedy is only as good as an individual performance;
the human element looms too large.” 20 But it can also, at least partially,
be explained by the rise of the “relevant” (as it has been termed by
Gitlin) sitcom.21 Shows such as All in the Family (CBS, 1970–83) and The
Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970–77) debuted in the 1970–71 season,
providing direct reenactments of the very generational conf licts and
misunderstandings that had smothered the Smothers and Laugh In had
attempted to laugh off. All in the Family, in particular, was a ratings tri-
umph, finishing first in the Nielsen ratings for five consecutive years.
The show’s premise centered on the tensions between conservative
blue-collar worker Archie Bunker (played by Caroll O’Connor) and
his liberal, university-educated but unemployed son-in-law Michael
“Meathead” Stivic (Rob Reiner). Once again, success came from a care-
ful balance, rather than from explicitly taking sides. As Bodroghkozy
notes, “All in the Family’s satirical humor cut in all directions, skewering
the pompous, know-it-all ‘Meathead’ almost as much as the know-
nothing Archie.”22 For older or conservative viewers, the criticisms of
Archie’s opinions and behavior appeared in the context of their largely
sympathetic portrayal in the majority of network television’s output.
No such alternatives were available to those who shared Meathead’s
point of view. Located well away from primetime, Saturday Night Live
was an attempt to fill this void.
In their history of SNL’s first fifteen years, Doug Hill and Jeff
Weingrad suggest that the catalyst for the development of the show was
when Johnny Carson began to express concern to NBC that affiliate
repeats of The Tonight Show (1954–) on Saturday nights was leading to
overexposure.23 In 1954, NBC had pioneered the concept of post-11
p.m. network programming, a time when the networks traditionally
handed the airwaves back to their affiliates. The Tonight Show offered
a mix of chat, stand-up comedy, and music and since 1962 Carson
had served as host, utterly dominating ratings in the timeslot on week
nights.24 At such a late hour, Carson was able to assume he had an adult
audience, and tailored his material and tone accordingly. But many of
these adults could be expected to hold traditional values, limiting the
extent to which Carson (fifty years old himself in 1975) could appeal
to younger viewers.25
Although the Saturday repeats were both cheap and popular, NBC
elected to keep their three-million-dollar-per-year star happy, in the
process creating space for a new venture. The network’s president
Herb Schlosser felt the slot could be used to target young viewers and
“develop talent that could move into primetime.”26 He gave the task
of creating such a show to Dick Ebersol, who was director of weekend
late-night programming. Ebersol in turn enlisted Lorne Michaels, a
former writer for Laugh In, as producer.
The package that Michaels presented diverged from recent industry
trends in several respects. Most immediately evident was a return to
the variety format. Ref lecting the varied, multimedia interests of the
baby boomers (as referred to in the Les Brown quote given earlier) the
show was to consist of sketches by a regular, in-house cast, interspersed
with short films and spoof commercials, and one-off acts from a range
of guest performers, primarily comedians and musical acts. Freed from
sitcom’s need to filter issues through a set group of characters in a fixed
situation, sketches could address subjects from a range of angles, includ-
ing the worlds of entertainment and politics, as well as tensions and
idiosyncrasies within the domestic sphere.
To write and perform in the program, Michaels recruited a team
with little or no television experience. Initially, six performers were
hired.27 The most famous were John Belushi (then aged twenty-six)
and Gilda Radner (twenty-eight), who were then starring in an off-
Broadway review called The National Lampoon Show. In his book Going
Too Far, Tony Hendra details at length the genesis of print humor and
improvised performance comedy that combined under the banner of
the National Lampoon magazine in New York in the early 1970s.28 Over
the previous decade, the two fields had thrived, providing uncom-
promising takes on subjects from which more established entertain-
ments tended to shy away. The National Lampoon was one of several
humor magazines to have emerged from American campuses in the
1960s. By 1974, issues were selling up to a million copies.29 At the same
time, improvisational comedy troupes established in Chicago (first The
Compass and later Second City), San Francisco (The Committee), and
Los Angeles (The Groundlings) were attaining national renown. Based
in small venues and offering a “set” of short sketches, these comedy
clubs often appeared to owe as much to rock and jazz music as comedy,
with innovation and attitude prized over polished professionalism.
The link with music was continued when members of Second City
(including Belushi) were invited to contribute (along with Christopher
Guest and Chevy Chase) to a predominantly musical National Lampoon
record album. Titled Lemmings (1973), the album was split between a
series of political sketches and a lengthy parody of the Woodstock festi-
val. To best utilize the cast’s creative talents, it was decided that record-
ing would take place at the end of a limited theatrical run. However,
ticket sales were so impressive that the run was extended, and eventu-
ally succeeded by the touring National Lampoon Show and the syndi-
cated National Lampoon Radio Hour (1973–74).
Joining Belushi and Radner were Laraine Newman (twenty-three,
a former Groundlings member who had worked brief ly for Michaels
on a Lily Tomlin television special), Garrett Morris (thirty-eight, a
New York theater performer), Dan Aykroyd (twenty-three, a member
of Second City’s Toronto franchise), and Jane Curtin (twenty-eight, a
performer with Boston’s The Proposition comedy club). A similar trend
was evident in the hired writing staff, which included Chase (thirty-
one), Michael O’Donoghue (thirty-six), and Anne Beatts (twenty-eight)
from the writing staff of The National Lampoon, and the inexperienced
comedy team of Al Franken (twenty-four) and Tom Davis (twenty-
three). From the outset, the line between cast and writers was blurred,
with Aykroyd in particular frequently contributing sketches, and Chase
quickly becoming the star of the first season, despite never signing a
performing contract.
Given the nature of the cast’s performance history, and the youth-
orientated credibility of much of the team, the decisions to broadcast
live and from New York were also vitally important, a state of affairs
still preserved in the show’s introductory cry, “Live from New York,
it’s Saturday Night!” By the mid-1970s, live television was becoming
increasingly scarce. Even topical shows such as The Tonight Show were
shot hours in advance, allowing time for retakes, edits, and, for its
makers, a social life. Yet performing live allowed for an immediacy
and danger essential to improvised comedy but long since absent from
television schedules.30 Each trip, stumble, or stif led giggle by a per-
former served to highlight that anything could happen. And, given the
censorship woes of the Smothers Brothers, a live broadcast meant that
audiences could rest assured that if anything did happen, they would be
able to see it. A prerecorded show, and the editing process that implied,
arrived having been carefully screened by its network, and automati-
cally could be assumed to be devoid of contentious material. Despite
the many practical backstage compromises necessary to keep a show
on air for more than one week, live broadcast retained an element of
uncertainty. The New York setting also contributed to the hip, cutting-
edge tone. While most of television had decamped to the production
line of Hollywood, insisting on New York as a location comparatively
suggested a close proximity to trendsetting metropolitan culture.
It must be noted that of the ideas listed so far, none were exclusive
to Michaels. One month before SNL’s launch, ABC debuted a show
titled Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell (1975–76) that ostensibly
offered the same combination of live sketches and music, as well as
taking Michaels’ preferred title. Indeed, in casting its sketch perform-
ers, the Primetime Players, Cosell’s show had gone to many of the
same sources as NBC. Belushi and Curtin had both auditioned for
the rival show and Bill Murray, a member of Cosell’s team, had been
31
on Michaels’ short-list. However, for reasons already given, the very
fact that ABC’s show appeared in primetime (8–9 p.m.) would ulti-
mately count against it. At that hour, the show still had to retain older
viewers, a situation exemplified by the fifty-seven-year-old sportscaster
Cosell as host. With a severely limited scope for satire and a similarly
restricted choice regarding musical acts (the first episode’s major draw
was the Bay-City Rollers, purveyors of clean-cut, family-friendly pop),
Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell was cancelled after four months.
In this way, Cosell proved less a rival to SNL than a useful demonstra-
tion of what the NBC show was going to avoid, something Michaels’
quickly capitalized upon by labeling his performers The Not Ready
for Primetime Players, a direct reference to the f loundering ABC pro-
duction. From its very first sketch, SNL showed that it was targeting
a specific, rather than general audience. Appearing before the opening
titles (a technique known as a cold open that has remained an SNL
feature to the present), the sketch featured Belushi as a foreign student
receiving English lessons from Michael O’Donoghue. O’Donoghue
gives Belushi a series of increasingly violent phrases involving wolver-
ines to repeat. When O’Donoghue suddenly has a heart attack and falls
to the f loor, Belushi thinks for a moment, then clutches his own chest
and repeats the action. At this point, the sketch is interrupted by Chase
who walks onto the set wearing a denim shirt and f lared jeans, holding
a clip board and wearing a headset. After glancing at the bodies on the
f loor he grins into the camera and declares, “Live from New York, it’s
Saturday Night!”
Not only was the sketch willfully odd (why wolverines?) and some-
what macabre, the appearance of Chase, then unknown to most
viewers, as a technician also functioned to announce that the show’s
production credentials were as authentically of the baby boom as its
performers. In comparison to Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell,
the episode’s musical guests and host fulfilled this promise. Performing
two songs each were Billy Preston, collaborator with The Beatles and
The Rolling Stones, and Janis Ian, a controversial figure whose songs
dealt with issues including racial prejudice and child abuse. In place of
a regular host, SNL promised a different guest host each week. For the
first episode, Michaels selected George Carlin, a comedian who had
been arrested in Milwaukee in 1972 for performing a routine called
“The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television.” Although Carlin
had since made appearances on the Tonight Show, there any act was
performed in the context of trying to please the all-powerful Carson.
As Bill Carter states, “More than anyone, comics came to see Carson’s
show as their main chance.”32 Despite him refraining from using any of
the seven unsayable words, to make someone such as Carlin the host,
the authority figure, of a network program was a definite statement
that SNL was to be something new, at least as a location for types of
entertainment unavailable to those who couldn’t attend club venues in
major cities.
Constantly changing hosts meant that the show wasn’t forced to asso-
ciate itself too closely with the public image of a single figure, while
potentially enticing new viewers every episode in the form of fans of
that week’s host. Yet, as the early reviews and initially modest view-
ing figures indicate, simply providing a stage for contentious acts and
material was not enough to achieve success. For SNL to become the
cultural event that it did in terms of inf luence and media coverage, the
show had to establish a level of consistent identification with its target
audience. It did this through The Not Ready for Prietime Players.
Introducing the Not Ready for Primetime Players
As Chase’s appearance at the end of the opening sketch indicates, from

the very beginning SNL was at pains to highlight its position within its
own medium. Yet, as Michael Dunne has argued, SNL was certainly
not the first program to bring self-reference to American television.33
Many of the networks’ early comic stars, including Jack Benny and
George Burns, drew on their experiences in radio and vaudeville to
create formats that provided the characterization and routine of sit-
uation comedy while acknowledging the stars’ status as entertainers
before a studio and home audience.34 More recently, the importation
of Monty Python’s Flying Circus had demonstrated the humorous poten-
tial of a free-wheeling deconstruction of televisual conventions.35 SNL
would combine these two approaches, offering the intellectual, anar-
chic pleasures of Monty Python with the emotionally engaging familiar-
ity of “real” people (the cast) directly addressing the audience from a
consistent setting (studio H8 in the Rockefeller Building).
To date, scholarship has concentrated on how SNL reacted to the
rest of the television industry, both through using accepted conven-
tions as a basis for humor, and by pushing what was considered permis-
sible for broadcast by a major network. In a 1977 Playboy interview,
Lorne Michaels insisted, “We’re all employed by one of the largest
multinational corporations in the world and we’re paid large chunks of
money to, if not bite, at least nibble at the hand that feeds us.”36 Since
SNL had been commissioned, the potential appeal of such a practice
had increased significantly; in the latter half of the 1970s the behind-
the-scenes activities of the networks came increasingly under public
scrutiny. The decade had started with the progressive All in the Family
secure at the top of the ratings, making a celebrity out of its producer,
Norman Lear. But by 1975, debates and lawsuits on the potential effect
of television on minors led to the creation of an all-network “family
hour” between 8 and 9 p.m. In the view of Ozersky, this significantly
altered the industry, resulting in the previously lowly ABC network
scaling the Nielsen charts with the likes of Happy Days (1974–84)
and Charlie’s Angels (1976–81), a feat that placed ABC executive Fred
Silverman on the cover of Time.37
In making television its subject, SNL pursued two related strate-
gies. First, the show played on viewers’ comfortable familiarity with
television’s past and forms. In the words of David Marc, “They cre-
ated a shadow play of cultural memories that is capable of exquisite
power.”38 Sketches were frequently based on established formats such
as the talk show, the game show, and the sitcom. Sometimes the for-
mat would form the basis of a fictional creation (most enduringly the
Coneheads, an “ur-sitcom” based around aliens in suburbia).39 In other
instances specific programs were parodied, such as in the first season
episode hosted by Desi Arnaz where the worlds of I Love Lucy (CBS,
1951–57) and The Untouchables (ABC, 1959–63) were combined with
violent, histrionic results. In either case, the point was not lost that
networks relied on predictability and refined formulas that offered
a deeply skewed representation of reality (a charge from which SNL
itself was not exempt, a state of affairs the show often but not always
acknowledged).
Second, and with perhaps more significant consequences, network
thinking, particularly that of NBC, was regularly directly attacked as
reactive, unimaginative, and appealing to viewers’ basest instincts in a
constant quest for advertising revenue. The first episode of the fourth
season, for example, included a spoof commercial for a new show called
“Network Battle of the T’s and A’s,” highlighting the preponderance of
programming that relied on scantily-clad, buxom women. The stakes
were raised in 1978 when Silverman was placed in charge of NBC’s
programming, with disastrous consequences.40 As the network’s rat-
ings plummeted, SNL started to run sketches featuring John Belushi
as Silverman, in one case suggesting that, Charlie’s Angels-style, the
executive was still actually working for ABC undercover, sabotaging
their rival.
At the same time, the show endeavored to practice what it preached,
raising subjects from which television had previously shied away. When
Robert Pekurny investigated the production of SNL in its fifth season,
he noted:
The satirical, political, religious and sexual elements of SNL’s pro-
gram content seemed to me to go beyond the bounds of accept-
ability I discovered in my previous research on NBC’s Broadcast
Standards Department. Writers and various NBC executives
agreed that SNL “went further” in dealing with topics such as
sex, religion, current events or discussion of pending legal cases
and was freer in its language than any other network program.
Yet, the BSD editor assigned to SNL and the Vice President of the
BSD repeatedly denied in an interview that the standards for SNL
were different from those for other NBC programs.41
Pushing sexual and expressive freedoms and challenging institutions,

the charges Pekurny levels against SNL follow closely the first cat-
egory of value change identified by Yankelovich surrounding issue of
personal morality. As the Michaels’ Playboy quote suggests, there is a
question of the extent to which SNL was able to use its uniquely attrac-
tive audience to disregard the codes of conduct that governed the rest
of television, or whether, noticing the dividends the show was return-
ing, and with no meaningful numbers of alternative viewers to upset
at such an hour, NBC unofficially turned a blind eye. But regardless of
the show’s actual revolutionary worth, what seems clear is that it was in
the interests of all involved that SNL appear to be a renegade element.
In this regard, much of the show’s press was essentially uncritical; the
New York Post was happy to report, for example, “NBC censors have
abandoned as vain any attempts at sanitizing SNL says producer Lorne
Michaels.”42
Certainly a contributory factor to getting potentially controversial
content broadcast was that, in its approach to material, SNL was clearly
a continuation of the policies of Michaels’ former employer, Rowan and
Martin’s Laugh In, rather than the more politically committed Smothers
Brothers. Subjects were selected for their humorous potential, not to
convey a particular message. As Josh Ozersky has argued, this is evident
in the show’s treatment of Presidents Ford and Carter: “it was never
their policies as much as their personal mannerisms that bore the brunt
of the assault.”43 No consistent higher cause was served beyond the
desire to make more amusing television. As Marc Eliot states, “Their
only legitimate realm of satire was television itself.”44
However, in rushing to praise SNL for lashing out at its surroundings,
critics have tended to afford insufficient attention to the image presented
of the show itself, both during broadcasts and in print media. As much
as it was concerned with television in general, SNL was equally, if not
more, interested in itself. No clear barrier existed between the material
presented on air and the process of its creation, with the latter frequently
forming the subject of the former. This commitment to self-reference
positioned The Not Ready for Primetime Players as protagonists in the
ongoing narrative of the show’s production and reception. As the series
progressed, this loose, sometimes implicit narrative allowed the Players,
to varying degrees, to build distinct star personas, as well as providing a
framing context for all other aspects of the show.
In early episodes, this was achieved largely through the Players dress-
ing as bees. The first show included an unremarkable sketch set in a bee
hospital with a procession of bee parents reacting to news of whether
their offspring are drones, workers, or queens. In the second episode,
host Paul Simon appeared surprised to find himself joined on stage by
the cast again in their bee costumes, only to inform them that their num-
ber had been cut, “because it didn’t work last week” (see figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1 Host Paul Simon with Not Ready for Primetime Players Gilda Radner, Laraine
Newman, Jane Curtin and John Belushi on Saturday Night Live.
At the conclusion of the third show, a supposedly dramatic scene
featuring host Rob Reiner and wife Penny Marshall was ambushed by
the bees, leading to an angry confrontation between Reiner and John
Belushi.45 Reiner is eventually coerced into apologizing as Belushi
rages, “You see, we’re just like you were five years ago, Mr. Hollywood,
California, number-one-show big-shot. That’s right, we’re just a bunch
of actors looking for a break, that’s all.”
These early encounters set the tone for much of what was to fol-
low. At any time sketches or links could “collapse” to reveal the sup-
posedly genuine process of bringing them to air. Sometimes, as with
the encounter between Belushi and Reiner, the f luency of the dia-
logue and the manner of the participants’ reactions almost imme-
diately signaled that this apparent break in presentation was no less
scripted than the scene that preceded it. On other occasions, a more
low-key approach, combined with audience knowledge that the show
was live, meant that, initially at least, the effect could be convinc-
ing. For instance, during her monologue Louise Lasser (hosting the
penultimate episode of the first series) appeared to become extremely
f lustered, forgetting lines and repeating herself.46 As she continues,
the studio audience around her becomes perceptibly uncomfortable,
laughing nervously and lapsing into silence. Only when Lasser f lees
suddenly from the stage to her dressing room, followed smoothly
by a clearly preplanned roaming camera is the illusion shattered.
The sequence concludes with a procession of The Not Ready for
Primetime Players as “themselves” attempting to talk Lasser into con-
tinuing with the show.
In either case (and it is one of the more remarkable aspects of SNL’s
long history that these events have almost always been intentional),
such transgressions were effective because they offered an exaggerated,
simplified version of the show’s real status within the television indus-
try. Were a program to claim to be taking the viewer genuinely behind
the scenes, there would inevitably be an element of disingenuousness,
given the awareness of those on camera of the camera’s existence and
their resulting self-censorship. But by making backstage events the sub-
ject of humor, SNL effectively bypassed this issue, proceeding from
the assumption that its intended audience was already aware of the dif-
ficulties, compromises, and egos inherent in television production and
therefore basing jokes upon shared knowledge. For the show to present
a scripted sketch based on Belushi’s professional insecurities indicated a
greater level of intimacy and familiarity with the viewer than might an
impromptu tour of his dressing room.
The idea that the makers of SNL were “ordinary” pioneers in the
rarefied world of broadcasting was reinforced by the focus of the back-
stage elements of the show. The Players were depicted as somewhat
amateurish and naïve, struggling to maintain standards against the
pressures of the ninety-minute live format and the demands of the net-
work, while competing with each other for career-enhancing exposure.
Common “plotlines” included relationship problems, the ramifications
of substance abuse, and petty infighting over press coverage. The scope
and realism of SNL’s escapades beyond the “fourth wall” increased as
members of the production staff also began to appear as “themselves.”
Michaels’ on-screen character remained poised between being one of
the gang and being a Machiavellian conduit between the show and
the network. Aged only thirty when SNL began, the producer looked
convincingly naïve when, during the eighteenth episode, he launched
an appeal for The Beatles to reform on the show, offering as incentive a
check for three thousand dollars. Yet prominently displayed on his desk
were framed photographs of Nixon and Ford, and it was as a member
of the establishment that he would regularly quell cast members’ on-air
disputes over pay, material, and conditions.
While such concerns could intrude at any point, three areas of the
show were used with particular frequency. The first of these was SNL’s
cold openings. Occurring before the opening titles, the subject of this
segment would often be some last minute problem with the night’s
broadcast. For example, for the second season episode hosted by Sissy
Spacek, the program began with the cast, led by Dan Aykroyd, stalling
for time after the apparent death of the show’s director Dave Wilson.
Only when Wilson hears the traditional introduction to the show,
“Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night,” is he revived and the show
able to continue.
Similarly, the host’s introductory monologue, such as the Louise
Lasser example given earlier, was a natural space for the Players to
appear out of character, given that the hosts were addressing the audi-
ence as “themselves.” Together, the cold opening and the monologue
made explicit from the start of each week’s episode that all that was to
follow was a continuous, live undertaking by a small group of individ-
uals. Viewers were therefore primed to watch proceedings as a whole,
rather than as a collection of individual sections. Whether a particular
episode returned to backstage issues in subsequent sketches or not, this
narrative was always brief ly resolved at the show’s conclusion when the
host returned out of character to thank the Players, the crew, and the
audience, having survived their ordeal.
The Players were also afforded the additional, albeit more contrived
showcase of the regular “Weekend Update” spoof news section. Here,
they could again appear as “themselves,” though within the confines of
the fictional news show that often, but not exclusively, featured its own,
self-contained backstage plots. In the first season, “Weekend Update”
was anchored by Chevy Chase, the second by Jane Curtin, the third
by Curtin and Aykroyd, and the fourth and fifth seasons by Curtin and
Bill Murray (who joined the cast midway though the second season).
Chase would begin each week being “caught” in the middle of a sex-
related phone conversation. When Curtin succeeded him she built a
persona in opposition to his loose carefree approach, as a serious, prin-
cipled journalist (making no reference to the fact that the stories she
reads are invented) who is frequently undermined by the incompetence
and lack of professionalism that surrounds her.
At various stages, the anchors would be joined by Players using
their own names sporting titles such as entertainment correspondent
(Murray in seasons two and three) and station manager (Aykroyd in
seasons four and five). However, the reality of “Weekend Update”
was complicated by Players either appearing under their own names
but clearly in character (Laraine Newman, for instance, would often
appear as a roving reporter with a f lat, exaggerated monotone delivery)
or in an entirely different guise (most enduringly the sixteen appear-
ances by Gilda Radner as frizzy-haired social commentator Roseanne
Roseannadanna).
The continuity of backstage situations between or even during epi-
sodes was far from perfect. A marriage, death, or any other change in
the status quo was far more likely to be forgotten than to return at a
later date. Yet the attitudes, preferences, and opinions of the players
were broadly consistent, to the extent that jokes and entire sketches
could be based around them. In the first season, much of the backstage
material focused on the sudden rise of Chevy Chase. As a performer,
Chase benefited from a limited but highly developed range of skills,
combining leading-man good looks and charm with expert physical
slapstick, to offer, in the words of William Paul, the “silly suavity” of a
“schlemiel Cary Grant.”47 For much of his relatively brief tenure with
the show, Chase was rarely made to hide his looks or diverge from
his skills. This was evident in his unlikely casting as President Ford, a
role for which Chase used no make-up and which was based entirely
on the president’s supposedly accident-prone nature. With the weekly
showcase of “Weekend Update,” Chase was quickly able to provide a
memorable name to go with his instantly recognizable talents while
other cast members toiled in ensemble, character-based obscurity. At
the start of the second episode he also opened the show with an elabo-
rate comic fall. Whether in character or as himself, it was soon routine
for Chase to conclude each week’s cold opening with a similar bone-
crunching tumble.
Chase’s falls demonstrate the importance of repetition and simplifi-
cation in establishing a firm extra-fictional persona on the show. Once
a performer can be expected to react in a particular fashion, the expe-
rience for fans becomes one of anticipation of timing and detail. In
repeating actions and behavior, SNL sacrificed a degree of danger and
realism in exchange for a feeling of familiarity and an informal contract
with the viewer that if they continued to watch future shows, favorite
events may return.
As a result of his exposure, Chase became the focus of early press
reports of SNL’s success. In John J. O’Conner’s positive reappraisal
of the show Chase was mentioned on five occasions while the other
Players were presented only as a list. By March of the first season it
was not unusual to see Chase predicted as the next Johnny Carson.48
Undercutting such pronouncements and the growing mystique of star-
dom, Chase’s elevated position immediately became grist for SNL’s
comedy mill. Sketches featured him apologizing to the rest of the cast
about his greater celebrity (in one instance leading to a voodoo attack
from a jealous Garrett Morris), and complaining that his regular falls
were becoming stale (only to be convinced otherwise by Michaels).
Though, as the Belushi/Reiner example given earlier illustrates,
Chase’s dominance was far from all-consuming, it was not until his
departure early in the second season, as David Marc has observed, that
the other Players were truly able to shine.49 Without an obvious target
man, the show and its press coverage (to the extent that the two can
be separated) became more interested in the dynamics of the ensemble,
with individual Players considered for their roles within the group.
For their June 1977 feature on SNL, for example, Playboy thought it
necessary to interview “the entire crew of loonies.”50 On air, this shift
was noticeable as early as Chase’s final episode, with host Buck Henry
devoting his monologue to dispelling the “junk” that had been written
in the press about each Player in turn, inadvertently associating them
with mafia debts, bestiality, and cannibalism.
Viewers could come to expect certain roles to be maintained. At
opposite extremes were Belushi and Radner. Belushi served to represent
the perceived risk and excess of the show. Either backstage or appearing
on “Weekend Update” as commentator and sometime weatherman,
Belushi would launch into angry tirades, eventually working in an
argumentative catch-phrase of, “but noooo . . .,” the “o” torturously
elongated for dramatic effect. Perhaps uncomfortably in retrospect, his
very real dependency on narcotics was also the basis for humor; for the
opening of the January 22, 1977, episode, the premise was that Belushi
was too wasted to perform the opening line, a situation that changes
the instant his doctor threatens to stop his supply of drugs. Again, the
image of Belushi as a wild force of nature was perpetuated by media
coverage. A 1977 cover interview in Crawdaddy magazine (titled “The
Most Dangerous Man in Television”) delighted in the sordid details:
“He knocks over a bottle of tequila, drenching a half-written mono-
logue. Both hands reach for his wide, pale forehead. ‘I haven’t slept in
three months!’ Shadows of monsters play across his face.”51
In contrast, Radner’s backstage persona depended on a girlish inno-
cence. This was in place as early as the third episode when she appeared
alone on stage to list all the things she had eaten that day. Whereas
Belushi, and by extension SNL in general, was assumed to be all too
familiar with the widening gap between traditional values and modern
society, Radner projected relatively wholesome obliviousness. An epi-
sode hosted by Elliott Gould began with her telling Gould how much
she had enjoyed their night together, an encounter he clearly believed
to be a one-night stand. Repeatedly through the episode the pair reap-
pear, each time with Radner increasing the stakes, enquiring about
further dates and introducing her mother.52 When the end credits roll
Gould and Radner are getting married. In this way, as SNL’s popular-
ity widened further into the mainstream, Radner became a safe entry
point into the show for publications with readerships that might take
issue with some of its more outré elements. For a July 1978 TV Guide
cover interview, “The Gilda Radner the audience sees on television is
very much like the one who is sitting across the table picking at a chef ’s
salad that will keep her bony thin.”53
On the show, these personas were prevented from becoming restric-
tive and repetitive through the range of performance and the differ-
ent dynamics between Players evident in character-based sketches. For
example, the final episode of the third season featured a parody of
The David Susskind Show, a long-running talk show. It uses all four
male cast members in roles they had played before. Murray is Susskind,
Belushi is Henry Kissinger, Aykroyd is talk-show host Tom Snyder,
and Morris is heavyweight boxer Leon Spinks. The sketch begins with
Murray/Susskind noting it is Mothers’ Day, so each of his guests is
joined by their mother, played respectively by Newman, Curtin, and
Radner, who mimic the impersonations of their male counterparts.
This situation has been used by David Marc in his analysis of SNL to
illustrate the show’s satiric power, arguing that the continued copying
and embellishment of Snyder’s mannerisms “costs Snyder a measure
of his manipulative power.”54 Yet, equally, the sketch is entertaining
due to the skill with which the female Players are able to replicate and
extend already extremely acute parodies. The trio of Kissinger, Snyder,
and Spinks have been selected not because their biographies make them
especially susceptible to mother-based ridicule, but because of their
impersonations’ previous success on SNL and the resulting potential
for the female Players to effectively parody the men’s parodies. Curtin’s
Mrs. Snyder is particularly impressive, the ease with which she matches
Aykroyd standing in marked contrast to the victimized brittleness
she displayed just three sketches earlier on “Update,” supposedly as
“herself.”55
As well as inviting its audience to witness a heightened recreation
of backstage life, particularly during its first three seasons SNL made
efforts to suggest that they could participate in proceedings. Commercial
breaks were regularly signaled by the camera swooping in on an audi-
ence member before superimposing a caption along the lines of “parked
overtime” or “farewell TV appearance.”56 In the first season an appeal
was made for viewers to send in their own short films, with the cheer-
ful proviso that, in doing so, they waived all rights to their material
(eventually three were shown). In season three, an “anyone can host”
contest was launched, where viewers could write in to argue why they
should be given the chance to appear. Five genuine finalists were then
selected and presented on the show and subjected to a postal vote. The
eventual winner was eighty-year-old Miskel Spillman, who claimed
she wanted to have “one last cheap thrill before I die.” Having finally
broken into television, the baby boomers had set about removing some
of the barriers that had previously alienated their generation from the
medium.
However, apparent in all these instances is the sense that the public
should feel privileged to be made fun of. Because, although in several
respects it sold itself as “below” the professionalism of the rest of televi-
sion, SNL operated under the assumption it was really above it. Far from
its players not being ready for prime-time, prime-time wasn’t ready for
them. This could be seen through the caliber of celebrity with which
the show was able to associate. An added tension to Michaels’ Beatles
pitch was that despite the amount he offered, it wasn’t entirely implau-
sible that it might work. Indeed, George Harrison was a musical guest
the following year, and was given $750 on air for his efforts. Moreover,
the cast often appeared superior to their hugely famous hosts, because
the meeting was taking place on their territory.
Hosts could largely be split into four categories: comedians (Carlin,
Lily Tomlin, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin), film stars (Gould, Carrie
Fisher, Kirk Douglas, Bert Reynolds), musicians (The Rolling Stones,
Ray Charles, Paul Simon, Frank Zappa), and occasional novelties such
as Ron Nessen (President Ford’s press secretary), Ralph Nader, and
television veterans such as Arnaz. Regardless of who was appearing,
some element of SNL’s mix of sketch performance, live transmission,
national audience, and relative freedom of expression was a depar-
ture. Hosts’ nerves or concerns would frequently form the basis of
their monologue, and part of the show’s appeal was to see if they then
proved themselves game or self-aware enough to match the Players.
The cold opening of Shelley Duvall’s 1977 episode dramatized this ten-
sion, with Duvall finding herself bullied by the three female cast mem-
bers. Momentarily abandoning their usual personas, the trio adopts the
demeanors of New York gang members. When Duvall breaks down
under their taunts, they feel pity:
“We know how you feel, we were once serious actresses.”

“Really?”
“Yeah, but being on TV quickly made us tough.”
Gradually, the show came to acknowledge the importance of the Players

to its success. When SNL began, The Not Ready for Primetime Players
were announced collectively with their names appearing grouped
together, alphabetically. From the January 31, 1976, show, the names
still appeared together, but were individually read out by announcer
Don Pardo. From May 1976 each player had their own title card, with a
photo and name. Beginning with the 1978–79 season, the “Not Ready
for Primetime Players” title was dropped, with the cast instead being
announced as “starring” in the show.
The extra-fictional personas SNL built for its cast, therefore, differed
from contemporaneous television conventions in two seemingly con-
tradictory respects. First, the cast were shown to be closer to their audi-
ence through similarities in their tastes and social perspective, and by
removing the sheen of production values that gave television a degree
of mystique. Each week, baby boom viewers could tune in to see peo-
ple much like themselves making waves in a medium many may have
thought had abandoned them. Yet equally the Players, through their
talent and daring, were seen to be the very pinnacle of contemporary
stardom, not just on television but across American culture, a situation
constantly reinforced by their interaction with stars from film, music,
and current affairs. As with so much of what would occur with the
SNL cast, Chase was the first to make the situation explicit through his
customary “Weekend Update” introduction, “I’m Chevy Chase and
you’re not.” The remark includes the viewer in the sense of acknowl-
edging the self-regard of celebrity. But it also accurately ref lects Chase’s
elevated position, the inference, of course, being that we can never be
like him, though we should certainly like to be.
The success of SNL in its first five seasons was based upon the prem-
ise that an increasingly widespread set of values and opinions were not
being represented on American network television. In presenting mate-
rial that broadly advocated a liberal social agenda, the show was seeking
to ref lect rather than alter trends in American life. For the primarily
young sections of society who shared this point of view, SNL not only
offered comedy and other entertainment aimed at their specific tastes,
but also a weekly enactment of their growing inf luence on American
society as a whole through challenges to television as an institution.
As a double affirmation of baby boom values, SNL proved unex-
pectedly popular. In their history of the show, Hill and Weingrad claim
that in its first four years on air, SNL’s estimated number of viewers rose
from 7.5 million to in excess of 20 million, figures that didn’t take into
account college dormitories. These viewers weren’t just being poached
from other stations; in the same period, the number of homes watch-
ing television between 11.30 and 1 a.m. on Saturday nights jumped
from 20.6 million to 26.6 million.57 SNL was actively enticing people
to stay in and watch late-night TV. Better even than the quantity was
the quality: as the New York Post reported toward the end of the first
season, according to NBC, SNL could boast “the highest concentra-
tion of 18-to-34-year-olds watching any TV show.”58 With such draw-
ing power amongst this demographic, the cast of SNL, as the show’s
most prominent and most easily transferable element, would seem to
be obvious targets for other media, particularly film. However, as is
outlined at the start of the next chapter, at the time no recent prec-
edent existed to suggest how a transition of this kind might take place.
Hollywood needed a template. And they found it in National Lampoon’s
Animal House (1978).
CH A P T E R T WO
“I’ll Write You a Note Saying You’re Too

Well to Attend”: National Lampoon’s
Animal House Takes Saturday Night
Live to Hollywood
In July 1978, two films were released featuring SNL cast members in
major roles. The first, Foul Play, teamed Chevy Chase with Goldie
Hawn in what Variety described as a “crime-suspense-romantic
comedy.”1 In several respects, it was a continuation of trends already
evident in Hollywood production cycles. When it became a success
(the tenth highest grossing film of the year), the result was a further
teaming of Hawn and Chase (Seems Like Old Times [1980]) and the start
of Chase’s career as a leading man.2 The second was National Lampoon’s
Animal House. Described by its studio, Universal, as a “screwball col-
lege comedy for the seventies,” it featured John Belushi as part of an
ensemble of largely unknown actors.3 Though it had a number of clear
antecedents, Animal House was more of a departure from current stu-
dio practice. Made for considerably less money than Foul Play, it went
on to become the third biggest hit of 1978 and the highest grossing
comedy in history to that point. In its innovation and level of success,
Animal House had significantly wider inf luence on the production of
Hollywood comedy and the careers of the cast of SNL. This chapter is
concerned with the nature of that inf luence and how it came about.
It begins with a short overview of the relevant production trends in
Hollywood in the 1970s, including comedy (and more specifically come-
dian comedy), and attempts to appeal to youth audiences. It then looks
in more detail at the conf luence of factors that led to the production of
Animal House, including its initial genesis and the decision to cast Belushi,
before proceeding to closely examine Belushi’s role within the finished
film, comparing it to his appearances on SNL and previous comedian
narratives. The chapter concludes by addressing the impact of Animal
House’s success on industry trends and the ways in which the cast of SNL
were seen as marketable commodities within them.
Trends in Hollywood Comedy, 1968–78
There is not space here for an in-depth survey of the state of 1970s
film comedy. Considering the numerous books chronicling the devel-
opment of the New Hollywood, the position of comedy within the
industry during the period (with the exception of Woody Allen) has
been comparatively neglected.4 Without a significant body of work to
reference, I am here restricted to some observations pertaining to the
potential transference of SNL stars into film. In terms of star attrac-
tions (i.e., those who repeatedly appear in annual top twenty gross-
ing films), the biggest names in pre-1978 Hollywood comedy were
Burt Reynolds, Barbra Streisand, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, the Pink
Panther, and Woody Allen. Immediately, it is apparent that the comic
climate was not in The Not Ready for Primetime Players. Coming
from a recording career and musical theater, Streisand was a singular
phenomenon and a one-woman industry, successfully turning her neu-
rotic free spirit persona to intimate Broadway adaptations (The Owl
and the Pussycat [1971]) and overblown genre pastiche (What’s Up Doc?
[1972]). Similarly unrepeatable, while the three 1970s sequels to The
Pink Panther (1964)—Return of the Pink Panther (1975), The Pink Panther
Strikes Again (1976), and Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)—featured a
central comedian performance from Peter Sellers, they were curious
reminders of travelogue sex farce from another era, before the tumult
of the late 1960s.
Allen, Brooks, and Simon had all begun their careers in television
sketch comedy, but as writers for Sid Caesar in the 1950s.5 Moving
into cinema, all three became known as comedy auteurs, rather than
as comic performers, marketed as the creative force behind the projects
with which they were associated.6 Simon operated solely as a screen-
writer, his name prominent in successes including Barefoot in the Park
(1967), The Odd Couple (1968), Plaza Suite (1971), The Sunshine Boys
(1975), Murder by Death (1976), and The Goodbye Girl (1977). Before his
first film, The Producers (1968), Brooks had enjoyed hits as both star (on
NATIONAL L AMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE 43
a series of albums beginning with The 2000 Year-Old Man [1961]) and
creator (the television series Get Smart [NBC, 1965–70]). In Hollywood,
this f luctuation would continue, yet his greatest successes, The Producers
winning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the huge
box office of Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein (both 1974), found
him largely or entirely behind the camera. Only Allen tied his fame
consistently to comedian performance. However, although from his
directorial debut, Take the Money and Run (1969) onward Allen’s films
were consistently profitable, only two, Everything You Always Wanted to
Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972) and Annie Hall (1977),
were among the top twenty hits of their years.
Despite belonging to an earlier generation, aspects of Simon, Brooks,
and Allen’s work referenced and embraced many of the New Values.
Like individual sketches on SNL, these appeared in the form of parody
(as in the issues of race raised in Blazing Saddles) or through the dynam-
ics of specific relationships (the complications of sex and drugs in Annie
Hall). Absent, however, was SNL’s macro narrative of widespread social
change. Perhaps oddly, in this respect it was Reynolds who offered the
nearest indication of a possible route for the SNL cast. Jacob Smith
has argued that although Reynolds began his career as an action hero
“marked by the squinting, unemotional style of Clint Eastwood,” his
star persona was substantially altered by a series of talk show appear-
ances where he self-depreciatingly lampooned his serious image.7
Elements of his small screen jocularity were incorporated into his film
roles, most prominently through bursts of unrestrained laughter. For
Smith, “The shades of comic, childish and even somewhat ‘feminine’
qualities under the stereotypically masculine front serve [. . .] to ref lect
the social changes of the time.”8 In The Longest Yard (1974), Smokey and
the Bandit (1977), Semi-Tough (1977), and Hooper (1978), Reynolds found
great popular success playing a series of good-humored rogues clashing
with authority.
Yet Reynolds’ appeal depended upon an ideologically vague “south-
ern, ‘Good-Old-Boy’ ” identity that was a far cry from the young, urban
sophistication being peddled by SNL.9 Elsewhere in Hollywood, con-
temporary social and cultural clashes were being dealt with more directly,
but the results were rarely comedies. Beginning with The Graduate
(1967), a number of highly successful films were made dealing with the
consequences of the New Values in American Society. Among these,
M*A*S*H (1970), American Graffiti (1973), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest (1975), Shampoo (1975), and Network (1976) had significant comic
elements, but all were tempered by a strong, sometimes predominant,
dramatic emphasis culminating in down-beat or at best ambiguous end-
ings. Even M*A*S*H, the most consistently comic of these films and
one that allows its anarchic protagonists a degree of victory within the
confines of their overseas military post, strikes a more somber note when
its heroes attempt to imagine life back within the United States.10
Therefore, while in intending to speak directly to the baby boom the
production of SNL can be seen as the television networks attempting
to catch up with the film industry, in presenting a narrative of power
and success it went beyond anything the big screen had offered. This
is evident in Hollywood’s use of the only two youth-orientated comic
performers to gain a foothold in the industry prior to 1978, Richard
Pryor and Goldie Hawn. In the late 1960s, Pryor had begun to per-
form stand-up comedy that, in the view of Bambi Haggins, “embodied
both the rage and the vulnerability inherent in the burgeoning tide of
heightened black awareness.”11 By the mid-1970s he had built a sizable
following through touring and comedy albums and had hosted SNL
in December 1975. He had also cowritten Blazing Saddles and in 1976
appeared alongside Saddles’ star Gene Wilder in Silver Streak. In Silver
Streak, Pryor plays a character based upon his stand-up persona, but
while he featured prominently in the film’s advertising (and was given
much of the credit for its success), his role was strictly supporting in
nature, arriving an hour into the narrative as a foil for Wilder. At no
point does the film (which, away from Pryor’s scenes, is a conventional,
if somewhat raunchy, comic thriller) allow the comedian to become its
main concern, instead using him as an incidental attraction. Moreover,
Pryor’s character, a thief on the run from the police, is always kept out-
side the dominant social structure, at the end escaping in a stolen car.
In many ways Pryor’s opposite, Hawn, had become famous as a cast
member on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In (NBC, 1968–73), developing
a ditzy, carefree hippy persona. In 1969 she was cast in a similar role in
Cactus Flower, starring alongside Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman,
for which she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Hawn offered
a bright, largely harmless representation of the social change of recent
years, more needy than proactive, that was adapted for a series of films
in the 1970s including Dollars (1971), Butterflies Are Free (1972), The
Sugarland Express (1974), and Shampoo. Though Hawn had come from
a presentational comic background, these films, like those discussed
earlier, worked to present cohesive fictional environments, mixing
scenes of serious drama with more humorous content. Shampoo and
The Sugarland Express end on a bitter note for Hawn’s characters: in the
former she finally realizes that her relationship with Warren Beatty is
hopeless and in the latter her desire to win back her child leads to the
death of her husband.
When, in 1978, Chevy Chase appeared in his first film, Foul Play,
it was clearly inf luenced by Hollywood’s experiences with Hawn and
Pryor. Hawn was also cast in the picture, acting as the central pro-
tagonist and given top billing ahead of Chase. Foul Play was written
and directed by Colin Higgins, the writer of Sliver Streak, and it shares
the earlier film’s blend of thrills, romance, and comic diversions. Like
Pryor in Silver Streak, Chase is granted considerably less on-screen time
than his costar. Foul Play follows Hawn as a librarian who acciden-
tally becomes embroiled in an assassination attempt on the Pope. Chase
plays the police sergeant assigned to her case. As on SNL, he is required
to combine disarming charm and confidence with moments of bum-
bling slapstick. To an extent, his casting as a policeman also ref lects
his SNL status. He is presented as a rogue element within the San
Francisco Police Department; a hand-painted sign hangs in his office
declaring, “This man is on suspension. Do not speak to him politely.”
We later discover his suspension was the result of arresting the mayor
for speeding.
Compared to the treatment of the much more controversial Pryor, the
film’s willingness to allow Chase’s mild subversion within an established
institution was something of a departure. However, for the most part
Chase acts responsibly and the film concludes as a standard romantic
thriller of the period, with a car chase followed by Chase killing the
intended assassin and winning Hawn’s affections.12 Released on July 14,
1978, Foul Play went on to take $44.9 million at the domestic box office,
Hawn’s biggest hit after Shampoo (which took $49.4 million). Evidence
that the film was not seen as a major development for the industry
beyond the successful teaming of Hawn and Chase is that their next film
together, Seems Like Old Times, was written by Neil Simon and sold as
the latest in a long line of the writer’s hit romantic comedies.13 Instead,
the future of Chase’s career was more shaped by the success of Animal
House, a film he was offered but rejected in favor of Foul Play.
John Belushi and National Lampoon’s Animal House
As its title suggests, much of National Lampoon’s Animal House origi-

nated from within the pages and organization of the National Lampoon
magazine. In October 1974, the magazine reached its highest ever cir-
culation, selling 1,000,096 copies of the month’s issue.14 Concurrently,
their touring sketch review The National Lampoon Show, written by
and starring John Belushi, Brian Doyle-Murray, Bill Murray, Gilda
Radner, and Harold Ramis, was doing well on campuses around the
country. Arriving in New York early in 1975, the live show was han-
dled by Ivan Reitman, a producer of low budget Canadian horror films
including Cannibal Girls (1973) and David Cronenberg’s Shivers (1975);
he convinced the Lampoon’s owner, Matty Simmons, that the National
Lampoon brand could also be transferred into film.15
Initially, the task of achieving this was given to Ramis, a member of
Chicago’s Second City comedy group who had been recruited for The
National Lampoon Show by Belushi. According to Ramis, Reitman’s
original idea was simply to adapt the live show, which consisted of a
series of unconnected sketches on subjects ranging from Patty Hearst
to Archbishop Makarios.16 Left to his own devices, Ramis instead
attempted to work some of the jokes and tone of the revue (described in
a New York Times review as setting “new boundaries for impropriety”)
into a narrative of his own devising, based on his college experiences.17
Titled “Freshman Year,” the script was not well received, leading to
Ramis being joined on the project by Doug Kenney, one of the maga-
zine’s founding editors. As a writer Kenney had come to specialize in
satiric nostalgia for 1950s and early 1960s America, highlighting the
glossed-over cracks in the postwar prosperity that had been the basis
of the baby boom’s upbringing (Kenney himself was born in 1947).
Together with P. J. O’Rourke he had edited a big selling Lampoon book
called High School Yearbook (1974), an often darkly humorous take on
the American high school experience circa 1964.18
Hardly satirical, but featuring an ambiguous mix of longing and pity,
George Lucas’ 1962-set American Graffiti had shown that young cinema
audiences were receptive to recreations of their recent past, taking $115
million domestically. The film follows four friends in Modesto, California,
on the last night before two of them are set to leave for college. Ramis’
recollections of Animal House’s development process show that he and
Kenney were conscious of Graffiti. Temporarily abandoning the concept
of “Freshman Year,” they completed a treatment about the early years of
Charles Manson that could be sold using a variation of Graffiti’s “Where
were you in ’62?” tagline. Theirs would ask, “Where was he in ’63?”
Titled “Laser Orgy Girls,” this too was rejected, with Reitman encour-
aging them to make another attempt at the college setting.19 Accordingly,
a second established Lampoon writer, Chris Miller, was brought aboard.
Like Kenney, Miller dealt in educational reminisces, having written a
number of pieces based upon his fraternity days.20
Together, the three of them fashioned Animal House’s premise and
structure. Set on a university campus in 1962, their script shared more
than a common year with Graffiti. Like Lucas’ film, Animal House fol-
lows a group of friends across several interlocking narratives. Both
films end with bursts of text informing the viewer of the fictional
characters’ fates during the political and social upheaval of the years
that followed. But, as their concept for “Laser Orgy Girls” might sug-
gest, Animal House’s writers had a very different take on the period. As
Tony Hendra has shown, the film’s episodic narrative allowed Kenney
and Miller to include aspects of some of their Lampoon stories; a comic
strip by Kenney featuring a fraternity pledge wrestling with his con-
science about whether to take sexual advantage of an unconscious girl,
for instance, is instantly recognizable in the final film.21 In Graffiti, the
year 1962 is significant for two reasons. It is the first year that youths
who can be considered part of the baby boom graduated from high
school. It is also the last year untainted by the sequence of Vietnam-
related events popularly seen to begin with the assassination of John F.
Kennedy. Using the same year but concentrating on youth in the next
stage of education, Animal House unavoidably uses characters of an age
generally considered to pre-date the generational shift.
That the central characters were supposed to relate to current youth
audiences is evident in Animal House’s writers’ initial casting ideas. In
addition to drawing upon the magazine’s past successes, the writers
also looked to their stage and radio connections as issues of poten-
tial casting arose. Though numerous other comic performing talents,
notably Ramis and Christopher Guest, had close association with the
Lampoon, none had achieved the level of exposure enjoyed by the cast
of SNL. Again according to Ramis, the four most prominent members
of the “animal house” fraternity at their film’s center were written with
specific Not Ready for Primetime Players in mind: “We always saw
John [Belushi] as Bluto. There was no question there. Chevy [Chase]
was supposed to be Otter, [Dan] Aykroyd was going to be D-Day and
Bill Murray was supposed to be Boon.”22 The inclusion of Aykroyd,
never previously part of the Lampoon, and the absence of non-SNL
affiliated Lampoon performers hint that the organization was interested
in reclaiming the comic reputation Lorne Michaels had borrowed
from them when casting SNL. Some of Chase, Belushi, Murray, and
Gilda Radner’s most popular SNL routines had originated in work
for the Lampoon. However, whilst one may spot similarities between
Chase, Aykroyd, and Murray’s star personas and the characters that
finally appeared in the film, only the writer’s plans for Belushi came
to fruition. In Ramis’ words: “As it turned out, John was the only one
who wanted the gig.”23
With Belushi on board, Reitman and Simmons had a package with
three clearly saleable assets, although by the time they were ready to
start filming in October 1977, none was entirely compelling. The
Lampoon had a demonstrable audience, but this had declined since the
high of October 1974; Graffiti had been a hit in 1973 depicting early
1960s youth, but no film had copied this success in the four years since;
Belushi was a star on SNL, but, as I have argued, after Chase’s depar-
ture the show placed greater emphasis on the Players as an ensemble.
The assets were enough to sell the package to Universal (the studio that
had made Graffiti), but in order to produce the film, the studio made
two additions. John Landis was recruited as director, based upon his
work on Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), an as yet unreleased, indepen-
dently financed sketch comedy film.24 Also, the studio felt a second star
name was needed, resulting in the casting of Donald Sutherland, star
of M*A*S*H, the nearest hit film to Animal House’s tone, as a wayward
lecturer.25
Totaling less than five minutes across three scenes, Sutherland’s
involvement was more insurance policy than major change. Landis, on
the other hand, was charged by Universal to assist on a further draft
of the screenplay. In the view of Thom Mount, then head of produc-
tion, “The script, while terrific, still needed refining, and we thought
Landis could help with that.”26 Landis claims, “My major contribution
in working with the writers was to say that there had to be good guys
and bad guys. They couldn’t all be pigs. Bluto, as he was originally
written, was essentially a thug rapist.”27 As part of this process, Landis
continued to tune both the part of Bluto, and the film as a whole, for
Belushi’s particular skills:
I changed Bluto fairly dramatically because John Belushi was

going to play the part. When I saw what a great talent John was,
I decided, “OK, Bluto becomes a cross between Harpo Marx and
the Cookie Monster and we take out forty percent of his dia-
logue.” Now in conventional terms Tim Matheson is the lead of
that movie, Otter. The movie is designed, however, for Belushi’s
entrances and exits.28
Throughout his career to date with Second City, the Lampoon, and
SNL, Belushi’s performance style and star persona had been developed
for a live, acknowledged audience. In incorporating aspects of this
persona, Animal House can be considered part of Steve Seidman’s come-
dian comedy tradition, and in several respects it shares the techniques
and narrative devices associated with the comedian comedy subgenre.
Yet, due to the specific nature of Belushi’s star image, and the partici-
pation of the Lampoon, these techniques and devices are used for a very
different cultural function than the comedian films that went before.
To situate Belushi within the confines of its fictional world, Animal
House conforms to the traditions laid out in Seidman’s analysis.
Beginning with his barely disguised name (Bluto’s full name is John
Blutarsky), Belushi plays a character closely related to the comically
exaggerated extra-fictional persona he developed as a cast member
on SNL. Bluto shares the aggression, penchant for intoxication, and
authority-baiting demeanor that underscored Belushi’s performances
as “himself.” These traits are central to establishing Bluto’s outsider
status from the film’s dominant social system, the traditional university
hierarchy represented by the dean and the campus’ most privileged fra-
ternity, Omega. At the film’s outset, a clear contrast is drawn between
the powerful, exclusive Omegas (as their president, Greg Marmalard
smugly points out to a potential pledge, “We have more than our share
of campus leaders”) and the rowdy, fun-loving Delta house, of which
Bluto is a member. The two fraternities are introduced through their
annual efforts to recruit new pledges. The Omegas present an image of
urbane superiority; all in attendance are neatly attired in evening wear,
chatting in groups while a piano tinkles pleasantly in the background.
The Deltas takes a different approach. As two freshmen arrive, a loud
and raucous party is in full swing, with drinking, dancing, and gam-
bling very much in evidence. Windows, bottles, and laws are broken.
In the aftermath to this event, the dean, with the assistance of the
Omegas, resolves to remove the Deltas from campus by revoking their
charter. Their efforts to catch the Deltas in banishable behavior and the
Deltas’ retaliatory hijinx provide the structure for the film’s parade of
humorous and satirical campus goings-on.
As Landis notes, despite his disruptive actions Belushi’s scenes give
the film some sense of order. Like many comedians before him, as
Bluto Belushi assumes the position of a trickster, passing from one mis-
chievous exploit to another.29 Bluto is the freshmen’s, and therefore the
audience’s, first introduction to the “animal house.” He stands outside
the front of the building, urinating into a hedge while drinking beer
from an outsize brandy glass. When the freshmen attempt to ask him if
they have the correct location, he turns to address them, in the process
urinating on their trouser legs. Boozily oblivious to the drenching he
has caused, Bluto invites the newcomers inside, pausing proudly at the
doorway before allowing them (and us) to enter. Immediately, there-
fore, all the events that take place in the Deltas’ name have Belushi’s
endorsement. Even as the clash between the Deltas and the rest of soci-
ety expands to include the endeavors of numerous friends and foes, the
film periodically returns to show further episodes of Bluto’s activities.
Continuing the links with Seidman’s analysis of Hollywood’s assim-
ilation of comedians past, Bluto’s actions are governed by animalistic
and childish impulses.30 Rather than depend on plot contrivances to
justify Belushi’s comedic foolings, his motivation comes from within;
he is powerless in the service of his appetites and emotions. This can
be seen in one of the film’s most famous comic sequences, set in the
university canteen. Unshaven and wearing a stained sweatshirt, Bluto
stands next to the bins where diners scrape their leftover food, failing
utterly to make eye contact with female students who pass by. One
diner leaves a half-finished bowl of soup with a golf ball f loating in it (a
reference to an earlier scene). His interest piqued, Bluto plucks the ball
out of the bin and takes an exploratory bite. Finding the results to his
liking, he finishes it off.
The full extent of Bluto’s extraordinary appetite is then shown as
he proceeds to the canteen’s self-service line. Constantly in motion,
he piles his tray high with all the different foods on offer, fitting the
overspill into his pockets and mouth. The link to animal behavior is
made explicit when a disgusted onlooker (and friend of the Omegas)
accuses him of being “a P.I.G. pig.” The scene also shows Bluto at play;
making his way to a table, he spots an Omega whose horse has recently
died. Bluto creeps up behind him and whinnies and snorts like a horse,
dancing lightly out of the way before the Omega can strike him. Once
he sits down, he continues to use impressions to antagonize. Addressing
a group of Omegas, Bluto requests them to “See if you can guess what
I am now,” before stuffing his mouth with meringue. Pausing for a
moment to looks of consternation, he then slams his fists into his bulg-
ing cheeks, spraying white goo over his fellow diners: “I’m a zit, get it?”
This leads to Bluto being pursued around the seating area by an enraged
Greg Marmalard. Darting between tables and causing disruption, Bluto
effects his escape by yelling “food fight” directly into the camera, at
which point the entire canteen descends into anarchy (see figure 2.1).
The scene is driven entirely by Bluto’s lust for women, food, and mis-
chief as a context for Belushi’s overtly comic, knowing performance.
However, Animal House diverges from the Comedian Comedy tradi-
tion in two important respects. Though an outsider, Bluto is far from
Figure 2.1 Bluto ( John Belushi) announces a food fight direct to camera in National Lampoon’s
Animal House (1978).
alone. He is merely the most animal of a whole fraternity of young

men with the very same goals and aspirations. And in order for these
goals to be achieved, it is society at large that is compelled to change. In
addition to Bluto, the film also follows Otter, a suave, highly proficient
sexual predator; Boon, Otter’s friend, torn between fraternal activities
and his long-term girlfriend; D-Day, a mechanically minded version of
Bluto; and the two aforementioned pledges, quickly renamed Pinto and
Flounder. As William Paul has noted, the fraternity is not only identified
through contrast to the current social order, it also has its own internal
hierarchy, in which Bluto is a major figure.31 This becomes significant
in the film’s closing act, as the Deltas, now expelled thanks to terrible
grades (Bluto achieves a 0.0 average) and for hosting an infamous toga
party, go all-out against their former institution. The catalyst for this
course of action is Bluto, who, seeing the other Deltas despondent,
launches into an angry, inspirational rant clearly drawn from Belushi’s
SNL persona. Soon Otter takes up his battle cry, concurring, “I think
this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture on
someone’s part.” The scene again ends with the camera trained straight
on Belushi’s face as he yells, “Let’s do it!”
The venue chosen for their revenge is the annual university parade
through the local town center. The plan is to cause general chaos. Bluto,
Otter, Boon, and D-Day occupy a grotesquely modified car (complete
with “Death Mobile” daubed in red across its pitch black paint work),
which they use to ram the assembled f loats and spectator stand. Other
fraternity members are enlisted to hijack the marching band, and gen-
erally impede the procession with boxes of marbles and trip wires.
Once the surprise of the attack has faded, the Deltas begin to scatter,
their gesture revealed in all its futility and stupidity. Several Deltas are
captured; others manage to escape. For Bluto/Belushi it appears the
traditional fate of the comedian awaits. Unable to assimilate into soci-
ety, he is to be excluded.
Yet Animal House’s narrative actually ends with a series of freeze
frames, each superimposed with text detailing a different character’s
fate. The two principal members of Omega, we learn, endure highly
unpleasant futures. Marmalard’s caption reads, “Nixon White House
aide, raped in prison, 1974.” Douglas Neidermeyer, a military fanatic
(and owner of the dead horse), is “killed by his own troops in Vietnam.”
All of the Deltas fare significantly better. Otter is a gynecologist in
Beverly Hills, Flounder becomes a sensitivity trainer, and Pinto is the
editor of the National Lampoon. Boon and his girlfriend Katy, we are
told, get married in 1964, but get divorced in 1969. The final freeze
frame is saved for Bluto. After the Death Mobile’s initial assault, Bluto
emerges wearing a homemade pirate costume and scales the side of a
nearby building. From this vantage point he spies Marmalard’s girl-
friend, Mandy Pepperidge, to whom he has been silently attracted
throughout the film. Sensing an opportunity, Bluto grabs a parade ban-
ner and uses it swing down to street level, where he bundles Mandy
forcefully into a car, and drives away. The film freezes on the pair
driving slowly through the countryside, Mandy now resting her head
lovingly on Bluto’s shoulder. Their caption reads, “Senator and Mrs
John Blutarsky, Washington D.C.”
On one level, these captions are obviously not to be taken seriously.
Each is a joke, playing upon our expectations of what we have come
to know about the characters during the film. Particularly in the vio-
lence and political reference of the Omegas’ comeuppances, the cap-
tions evoke the satiric distance of the Lampoon. Furthermore, given
the film’s 1962 setting and young, ensemble cast, the “what happened
next” conclusions could be seen as a loose parody of American Graffiti.
Mocking recent political and cultural history, such an ending is in
keeping with then-editor P.J. O’Rourke’s description, soon after the
film’s release, of his magazine’s philosophy: “What we do is oppressor
comedy [. . .] Our comic pose is superior. It says, ‘I’m better than you
and I’m going to destroy you.’ It’s an offensive, very aggressive form
of humor.”32
But at the same time, the gags provide the only resolution to the
characters’ narratives, narratives that earlier aspects of Animal House
have worked to emotionally involve the viewer in their outcomes. As
described earlier, from the opening scenes of the two fraternities, the
film aligns us with the fun-seeking, anarchic, supposedly inclusive
Deltas against the career-minded elitism of the Omegas. Each victory
by Bluto and friends over their rivals is meant to be enjoyed on the basic
level of good (or, at least, fun) triumphing over evil. For Chris Miller
the theme of the film he cowrote was simple: “Fun is good.”33 In inter-
views, Landis and the film’s composer, Elmer Bernstein, make much of
the former’s decision to have Animal House scored “as if it was a serious
film.”34 Using dramatic cues in this way serves to involve rather than
distance the viewer from the action onscreen.
Similarly, the film takes the unusual step of using its comedian’s
extra-fictional privileges to draw us into the fiction. In two instances
described earlier, the camera is positioned so that Bluto appears to be
speaking to the cinema audience, the only character given this oppor-
tunity. In each case the line he delivers is a rabble-rousing call to action,
as if we should join him in causing mayhem. A third scene makes his
awareness of an audience explicit. Late at night, Bluto attempts to spy
on the bedrooms of Mandy Pepperidge’s sorority house. Waiting until
Mandy has returned from a date with Marmalard, he finds a ladder and
looks in through an upper-f loor window. There, he is greeted by the
sight of a half-dozen members of the sorority enjoying a pillow fight
in various stages of undress. When the returning Mandy declines the
chance to become involved, Bluto achieves the unlikely feat of bounc-
ing the ladder across to her window. Here, the camera is positioned
behind Bluto, the back of his head filling the left-hand quarter of the
screen. The other three quarters share his view of Mandy undress-
ing and beginning to caress herself, following her sexually unfulfill-
ing date.35 At this point, Bluto turns to acknowledge the film viewer,
grinning and raising his eyebrows at “our” joint good fortune. Turning
back to the window, he sees Mandy slide her hands down into her
knickers, a development that proves too much for him to take; with a
look of comic stupor on his face, Bluto topples backward on the ladder,
falling heavily to the ground. Reviewing the film for New York maga-
zine, David Denby, for one, chose to accept the comedian’s invitation
to join proceedings: “Just before Belushi faints dead away, he turns to
us and f lashes a huge conspiratorial grin. At that point I realized that
Belushi was right and that resistance to the movie’s crudity was hope-
less; I enjoyed seeing that girl undress, too.”36
Having been enlisted to the Deltas’ cause, the viewer is therefore
primed to take pleasure from the fraternity members’ eventual tri-
umph, however unearned and unlikely. Taking the closing captions at
face value, then, Animal House’s narrative is not one of assimilation, but
of replacement. Like SNL, the film offers the spectacle of an institu-
tion being overrun by a group of young iconoclasts, made palatable and
entertaining using comedian traditions. More so than SNL, however,
there are questions regarding who can be included in the group, and
what New Values they represent. Animal House presents a utopian pro-
totype of baby boom self-indulgence, whereby the person who indulges
most (Bluto) enjoys the greatest success. From this perspective, even the
two most notorious events of recent American history, Watergate and
Vietnam, are recast as the final purges on the generation’s road to inevi-
table success. The main villain in the film, Dean Wormer, is shown to
be petty and corrupt, yet most of his illegal activity remains unknown
to the Deltas; their rebellion is founded on the restrictions placed upon
their cavorting.
Most important, considering the supposedly egalitarian leanings of
the Deltas, are the vast swathes of society excluded from their activities.
Befitting its 1962 fraternity subject, both the Deltas and the Omegas
are exclusively white, male, and, to the extent that money is never
mentioned, wealthy.37 For the Deltas to extend membership, informal
or otherwise, in the direction of either gender or race would involve
contradictions and qualifications beyond the scope of the fraternity’s
fun-seeking mission. In order for nonwhites to join proceedings with
any degree of sincerity, the film and the fraternity would have to
engage with the reasons why alternate ethnicities have previously been
excluded, an act that would require a level of introspection and social
consciousness at odds with the carefree attitude they ultimately con-
spire to celebrate. A similar barrier exists between the Deltas and the
numerous women they court through parties and more devious meth-
ods (which include Bluto’s spying and an extended road trip sequence
where Otter pretends to be the boyfriend of a recently dead girl in order
to elicit sympathy from her friends). Women cannot be the Deltas’
equals because they are targets, seen as objects for sex and little else.
The film attempts to dance around these issues by suggesting that any
rejection comes from those outside the Deltas’ social sphere. During
the road trip, Otter, Boon, Flounder, and Pinto take their dates won
by Otter’s deceit to a bar run and frequented entirely by blacks, on the
pretext that a black musical group they had hired for a party, Otis Day
and the Knights, are playing there. Having expected to be welcomed
with open arms, they instead receive a frosty, even hostile reception as
the clientele understandably recoil from these silly, privileged youths
invading their space. The joke is at the expense of the Deltas and their
unjustified confidence and sense of entitlement.38 Principally through
Boon’s relationship with Katy, the Deltas are also shown to be below
the level of maturity and intelligence of women their own age. In sev-
eral scenes, Katy tries to talk Boon into leaving the fraternity behind
(“I’ll write you a note saying you’re too well to attend”). Though, as
the closing caption tells us, Boon does eventually “grow up” and marry
Katy, it does not last, their union ending before the close of the decade.
The two female characters seen to engage most wholeheartedly in the
Deltas’ lifestyle are a thirteen-year-old girl Pinto meets at a super-
market, and the Dean’s wife, who is drunkenly rebelling against her
husband. Instead of the “oppressor comedy” described by O’Rourke,
the Deltas are morally and culturally inferior to those who, by their
actions, they alienate. But simultaneously, as we have seen, it is with
the Deltas that the film asks the audience to identify, and then asks
to cheer when they assume the dominant roles in society. It is better,
somehow, to be worse.
Immediate Inf luence of Animal House
In keeping with the film’s content, Animal House’s marketing placed

Belushi as the most prominent member of an ensemble. The poster
featured a cartoon image of the outside of the Delta fraternity with
caricatures of all the major characters enacting events from the narra-
tive. Standing on the roof, holding aloft a “Delta House” f lag, Belushi’s
caricature is substantially bigger than the others (see figure 2.2). On
release, the film received a largely positive critical reception, most crit-
ics concluding, like David Denby, that the crudity and lack of subtlety
were sufficiently compensated by the film’s pace and general enthusi-
asm. Furthermore, several (including Andrew Sarris in the Village Voice,
David Ansen in Newsweek, and Rex Reed in the New York Daily News)
joined Frank Rich in Time in noting that Belushi gave the film’s “one
true star performance.”39 This was in marked contrast to the assessment
of the Lampoon’s contribution. In Variety’s view, “Lampoon magazine
fanatics might have wished for more pungent material,” a sentiment
echoed by Richard Corliss in the New Times, who expressed his dis-
appointment that, unlike the magazine’s tougher content, “the entire
enterprise is almost . . . uh . . . nice.”40
Figure 2.2 Theatrical poster for National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978).
In his book Laughing Screaming, William Paul identifies Animal House
as the start of a shift in the Hollywood studios’ comedy film output
of the late 1970s and early 1980s toward a subgenre he terms “Animal
Comedy.” By any standards, Animal House was phenomenally finan-
cially successful. Costing in the region of $3 million dollars, it returned
$120.1 million at the domestic box office, the third highest gross of its
year and, at the time, the highest grossing comedy in history. In Paul’s
view, Hollywood responded by copying and elaborating on its themes,
narrative, and excesses. Looking at films including Meatballs (1979),
Caddyshack (1980), Stripes (1981), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982),
Porky’s (1982), Bachelor Party (1984), Police Academy (1984), and Revenge of
the Nerds (1984) among others, Paul finds “comedies that are defined by
their raunchiness and apparent desire to push beyond acceptable bounds
of good taste.”41 This impulse is usually framed within the confines of a
specific institution, where a young, sexually motivated, predominantly
male group stages a series of escalating skirmishes against an equally
male ruling elite, eventually emerging victorious. Like Animal House,
the young group’s anarchic energies are “paradoxically presented as a
stage en route to the assumption of power [. . .] The revolution these
films posit is not so much a change in the power structure itself as in
the occupants of the seats of power.”42
Tracing Animal Comedy’s immediate antecedents, Paul looks exclu-
sively at cinema, finding a general turn toward episodic, group-based
narratives in the work of Blake Edwards and “buddy” films such as
Butch Cassidy and the Sun-Dance Kid (1969). More specifically, he offers
M*A*S*H (1970) and American Graffiti as “the two clearest progenitors”
of the subgenre, singling out M*A*S*H in particular for its anarchic,
antiauthoritarian tone.43 Yet in doing so, Paul underplays the impor-
tance of comedian performers, particularly from SNL, in the formative
stages of the production trend.
At the time of Animal House’s release, the film was quickly perceived
as a new development for the film industry. The New York Post, for
example, boldly announced, “A new movie era is here, and National
Lampoon’s Animal House is its prophet.”44 On September 15, 1978, a sec-
ond film was released that appeared to confirm the Post’s suspicions. Up
in Smoke, a Paramount production, was written by and starred Cheech
Marin and Tommy Chong, a comic double act who had released sev-
eral LPs of “stoner” orientated humor. Though distinct from Animal
House in focusing only on a central duo and eschewing a set location
for a film-long road trip, Up in Smoke shares the earlier film’s anti-
authoritarian tone and embrace of intoxicant-fuelled debauchery. Its
plot follows Cheech and Chong as they unwittingly smuggle a van
made from processed marijuana into the United States, all the while
chased by an incompetent police force. The November 8 edition of
Variety announced that during October, Animal House and Up in Smoke
accounted for 23 percent of all money spent at the North American
box office.45
Up in Smoke eventually earned $44.3 million, the eleventh biggest hit
of the year, prompting Paramount to commission a sequel, appropri-
ately titled Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie (1980). In the case of Animal
House, by far the bigger hit, studios began to consider not only further
films with Belushi, but also the potential of his SNL costars, a decision
no doubt made easier by the success of Chase in Foul Play. Certainly,
Animal House’s popularity was considered attributable to Belushi by
enough of its audience to have a positive impact on SNL’s viewing fig-
ures. Between the second and third season the average rating had risen
substantially from a 7.5 Nielsen rating for the 1976–77 season, to a 9.5
for the 1977–78 season, which concluded two months before the film’s
release.46 Though it is difficult to translate Nielsen ratings into num-
bers of viewers with any degree of accuracy, they were undoubtedly
surpassed by the 51.3 million tickets represented by Animal House’s tak-
ings (based on an average ticket price of $2.34).47 When SNL returned
for its fourth season, the yearly average leapt to a 12.6 rating. Hill and
Weingrad report that 1978 was the year when merchandising based
around the Players and their characters truly took off, with a vast range
of T-shirts, toys, games, and posters.48 The show even received its
own comic, a one-off “Marvel team-up” between The Not Ready for
Primetime Players and Spiderman.49
SNL and Belushi were not shy in referring to Animal House’s success.
In place of the usual guest host/musical act combination, the first show
of the fourth season (October 7, 1978) boasted only the first American
network television appearance by the Rolling Stones in over a decade.
Assuming the host’s usual duty of the opening monologue was the then
mayor of New York, Ed Koch. Koch announced he was appearing on
SNL for two reasons, first to thank viewers from other states for the
recent loan that saved the city from bankruptcy (“We want to say to
all of you out there, ‘thanks for the loan; you won’t be sorry’ ”) and
second to present Belushi (a “great New Yorker” despite hailing from
Chicago) with a certificate of merit in light of Animal House’s continu-
ing success. Joining the mayor on stage, Belushi is at first pleased, then,
predictably, angry when he realizes the extent of his award is a piece of
paper. Ranting, “Animal House has made $60 million; does New York
have $60 million?” he complains that he received just “900 bucks” for
his work on the film, some distance short of the $35,000 he was actu-
ally paid. He goes on to wonder why he has returned to the show at
$450 per episode (again a gross under-exaggeration) when he could be
making films in Hollywood.
This, too, was less than accurate. Before the fourth season began,
Belushi had already signed a contract to make 1941 (1979) for Steven
Spielberg for a fee of $350,000.50 He was to be joined on the project
by fellow Player Dan Aykroyd. Together they were described in the
official book charting the film’s production as “heroes of America’s
youth.”51 1941 was a vastly expensive undertaking, eventually costing
$26.5 million. As well as featuring Belushi, the film shows the inf luence
of Animal House in its use of an ensemble cast (including Tim Matheson
and a cameo appearance by John Landis) spread across several anarchic
stories. However, set against scenes of panic in Los Angeles follow-
ing the attack on Pearl Harbor, 1941 found no common cause and no
sense of celebration to unite its dozens of characters in an era alien to
the experiences of contemporary youth. As the film’s twenty-eight-
year-old writer Robert Zemeckis admitted to Rolling Stone, “None of
us were even born when the Japanese attacked.”52 Crucially, Belushi,
playing a manic fighter pilot named Wild Bill, is utterly detached from
the other characters, including Aykroyd’s, and ends the film a cap-
tive of the Japanese. On release, 1941 took $31.8 million domestically,
a significant disappointment considering the costs and the personnel
involved.53
During the fourth season, Bill Murray was also cast in his first
film. Cowritten by Harold Ramis and produced and directed by Ivan
Reitman, Meatballs (1979) was a more modest affair. As I will address in
greater depth it the next chapter, the film replicates much of the spirit
and structure of Animal House, substituting a contemporary summer
camp setting in place of a 1962 campus, and, befitting its younger sub-
jects, receiving a PG instead of R rating. Murray plays a camp councilor
who leads his young charges to victory in competition against a more
costly, exclusive summer camp across the lake. Independently produced
in Canada for 1.6 million Canadian dollars, Meatballs outgrossed 1941,
taking $43 million.
If it appeared that a pattern for success was emerging for Hollywood
to exploit SNL, the pattern was confirmed by the varying fortunes of
films in the following year. With the exception of Garrett Morris, all of
The Not Ready for Primetime Players starred in studio releases in 1980.
Late in 1979, Gilda Radner made her debut appearance on Broadway
in Gilda Radner: Live from New York, a lavish variety show produced by
Lorne Michaels. Recordings of the show were released as an album and
a concert film in cinemas in March 1980 (the latter directed by Mike
Nichols). Murray joined Chase (who was perhaps seeking to correct
his decision not to appear in Animal House) to star in Caddyshack, a
golf comedy written, produced, and directed by two of the writers of
Animal House, Kenney and Ramis. Alone, Murray appeared as Hunter
S. Thomson in Where the Buffalo Roam while Chase also starred in
Seems like Old Times and Oh Heavenly Dog, a children’s comedy costar-
ring celebrity hound Benji. Jane Curtin starred in How to Beat the High
Co$t of Living, a comedy inf luenced by Fun with Dick and Jane (1977)
about three cash-strapped suburban wives who decide to stage a mall
heist.54 Laraine Newman starred with Dudley Moore in Wholly Moses,
a contemporary comedy involving the Old Testament. Finally, Belushi
and Aykroyd starred in The Blues Brothers. Directed by Landis, this
was a thirty-million-dollar musical comedy, based on characters named
Jake and Elwood Blues that Belushi and Aykroyd had debuted on SNL.
Reinforcing the view that the show had seized the zeitgeist, an album
recorded by the pair in the guises of Jake and Elwood, A Briefcase Full
of Blues (1978), had reached the number one position in the American
album charts inducing Universal to fund a film adaptation.55
Of these eight releases, three—The Blues Brothers (tenth with $57.2
million), Seems like Old Times (fifteenth with $43.9 million), and
Caddyshack (seventeenth with $39.8 million)—were among the top
twenty highest grossing films of the year. The other five did not make
the top fifty. While the success of Seems like Old Times was complicated
by the participation of Hawn and Simon, Blues Brothers and Caddyshack
continued to show that what cinema audiences wanted from SNL was
adversarial, group-based, and male.
Despite their obvious strengths, Curtin, Morris, Newman, and
Radner all suffered, to varying degrees, from the white, male bias
sometimes evident on SNL that limited their exposure and too often
made them the punch line, rather than the perpetrators, of jokes (e.g.,
see the discussion of the one hundredth episode in chapter three). In
histories of the show, this bias is commonly attributed to the predomi-
nantly white, male writing staff and the competitive, aggressive atmo-
sphere of production meetings where ideas were pitched with Belushi
the major culprit.56 Though Radner and Curtin had each developed
strong personas on the show, they existed in contrast to the dominant
mode of macho confrontation. Taken out of context from the rest of
the Players, they could not attract SNL’s core audience, a significant
number of whom, it must be remembered, had been motivated to tune
in by Animal House.
Newman and Morris were further disadvantaged. Newman repeat-
edly showed herself to be a subtle and varied comic performer. However,
she did not cultivate a backstage persona to give her work focus. In a
number of respects, Morris was ill-equipped for the SNL fame game.
With no black writers, and unable to create material for himself, he
was largely used as a utility player. In addition, he was by six years the
oldest cast member (born in 1937), and the only one not to come from
an improvisational comedy background. Though he could be effective
(particularly in musical sketches), it is noticeable that Morris frequently
struggled in the live format, stumbling when reading cue-cards and
mistiming punch lines. Hill and Weingrad report that Newman and
Morris were also the cast members least able to cope with the heavy
drug intake that characterized SNL’s production at this time, leaving
them physically and mentally ill-suited to challenge their position in
the show’s pecking order.57
Through its use of Belushi’s star persona, Animal House created/
revealed a market for the aspects of SNL he represented. This affected
the narrative forms Hollywood employed to assimilate comedian stars.
Rather than wacky perennial outsiders, comedians could now be the
heroic representatives of an alternate social order. Though based on the
social change America had experienced since the 1960s, the new order
Animal House celebrates is an extremely narrow view of the period,
focusing on the opening up of further opportunities for hedonistic
pleasure for those who already enjoyed positions of privilege.
The film’s success also opened the film industry to a new genera-
tion of largely white, male comic performers, beginning with Belushi,
Chase, Aykroyd, and Murray but then expanding into other areas of
television and stand-up comedy. The careers of Steve Martin, Robin
Williams, Tom Hanks, Michael Keaton, John Candy, Rick Moranis,
Eddie Murphy, Billy Crystal, and Steve Guttenberg among others can
all be followed back to Hollywood’s attempts to capitalize on the pop-
ularity of Animal House.58 In the next chapter I trace how this trend
developed from its low-budget, independently produced origins to
being a staple of studio production using the career of Bill Murray as
a case study. From a late, low-key arrival on SNL, Murray became
the biggest star to emerge from the show’s first five years, following
Meatballs and Caddyshack with Stripes and then Ghostbusters (1984), the
first comedy in Hollywood history to take more than two hundred
million dollars at the American box office.
CH A P T E R T H R E E
“But the Kids Love Us”: The Development of

Bill Murray’s Star Persona from Saturday
Night Live to Ghostbusters
Despite his prominence in the success of Animal House (1978), subse-

quent projects that sought to amplify Belushi’s contributions resulted
in disappointing financial returns. 1941 (1979) and The Blues Brothers
(1980) concentrated on the anarchy of Belushi’s persona, presenting
extended sequences of mayhem at such expense that otherwise decent
returns (the films were the fifteenth and ninth biggest hits of their
years) were construed as failure. Alone, Belushi’s destructive lean-
ings meant that the amusingly unlikely triumphs he had achieved as
part of the ensembles of Animal House and SNL became impossible. In
1941, having blown up a gas station and shot down a friendly plane,
Belushi ends the film a prisoner of the Japanese. In The Blues Brothers,
he, together with Aykroyd, may raise the five thousand dollars needed
to save an orphanage, but in the process they cause millions of dollars
in damage and the film concludes as it started, with Belushi’s character
in prison. In reality, Belushi’s personal life appeared to confirm that his
dedication to excess could not end happily when, on March 5, 1982, he
died of a drug overdose.
As Belushi’s Hollywood Odyssey progressed toward tragedy, two
other beneficiaries of Animal House, writer Harold Ramis and producer
Ivan Reitman, also embarked on a series of attempts to build on their
big hit. With Meatballs (1979), Caddyshack (1980), Stripes (1981), and
Ghostbusters (1984), the pair, now also acting as directors, made a quar-
tet of films that refined the “us versus them” mentality of Animal House.
In all four cases, the films relied on the star personas of SNL performers
as shorthand for the group sensibility that would emerge victorious. Yet
instead of Belushi, it was Bill Murray that Ramis and Reitman used as
the basis of their plans.
The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the ways in which
Murray was the SNL cast member most able to build on the break-
through made with Animal House and Belushi. Looking first at his time
on SNL, then his roles in Meatballs, Caddyshack, and Stripes, and finally
at Ghostbusters, a major studio production that repeated Animal House’s
feat of becoming the most successful comedy in history, I want to sug-
gest that Murray’s initial Hollywood success was grounded in his abil-
ity to represent, however disingenuously, a larger cause. In Laughing
Screaming, William Paul is highly critical of an “inner emptiness” to
Murray’s persona that leads to contradictory impulses where “power in
his films is invoked and celebrated at the same time that it is denied.”1
I would argue that, like the animals of Animal House, Murray’s ultimate
goal is personal enjoyment, and that power provides the means for him
to enjoy himself. This is not to say the films’ narratives are unproblem-
atic, as they seek to present Murray’s pursuit of selfish amusement as a
workable, positive model for society.
Discussing the differences between Chevy Chase and Murray on
SNL, Paul observes, “Chase is cool, but Murray is hip.”2 Tracing the
origins of the concept of “hip” John Leland starts with the secret cul-
ture of slaves: “a subversive intelligence that outsiders developed under
the eye of insiders.”3 Much of Murray’s appeal depends on a knowing,
ironic detachment from events around him. Authority figures, insti-
tutions, and attitudes that Murray, through his self-centered beliefs,
opposes are met not by Belushi-style destruction but by a stubborn
refusal to sincerely engage.4 Using this less direct form of insurgency
leaves the door open for Murray to eventually thrive in the system he
has previously undermined. It also provides the criteria for differentiat-
ing between “us” and “them” both within the fiction and among view-
ers. Murray is aligned with those who share his awareness that there is
no higher calling than individual happiness.
But assessing the implications of hipness within contemporary
white culture, Leland continues, “At its worst, hip glosses over real
division and inequity, pretending that the right argot and record col-
lection can outweigh the burden of racial history.”5 On SNL and in
films, Murray can be accused of exactly this tendency, in relation to
race, as well as gender and class. In refining Animal House’s appeals, his
films also refine its shortcomings, making Murray’s cultural victories
Bill Murray—From SNL to GHOSTBUSTERS 65
appear more complete even while less is actually achieved. In all four
of Murray’s early hits with Ramis and Reitman, traditional hierarchies
based on wealth and class are challenged, to be replaced with near iden-
tical structures based around cynicism and self-awareness. In each case,
the test of who prevails depends on an appreciation of Murray’s ironic
performance style that was first nationally showcased on SNL.
Bill Murray on Saturday Night Live
More than any of the other Not Ready for Primetime Players, Murray’s
persona would come to ref lect the overall ethos of SNL in its combina-
tion of awareness and chaos. Murray was a late addition to the show,
drafted in following Chase’s departure. In some respects, he would
serve a similar purpose to Chase, only with the emphasis reversed.
Throughout the first season, Chase was the focus of SNL, with both
sketches and the show’s press geared toward supporting him. He was
better looking, more confident, and had more blatant comic talent that
the other Players, in every way exceptional. Murray, on the other hand,
benefited from being the most typical. Neither his mid-west, working-
class upbringing nor thinning-haired, acne-scarred appearance singled
him out for stardom. His manner and outlook made him not just part
of the team, but its center. Whereas Chase was the first to go, Murray
was the last to leave.
Between the second and the fifth seasons, Murray appeared in more
than three hundred sketches in a variety of guises from Paul McCartney
to Francis Ford Coppola. Despite displaying talent for mimicry, he
rarely played the same real-life figure twice. The exceptions tended to
be interviewers and talk show hosts, such as Walter Mondale and David
Susskind, supporting more comic performances by other cast members.
Similarly, Murray played more than his share of nondescript husband/
boyfriend/father roles in support of other Players’ fictional characters,
for example, as Ronnie Getsetter, bemused foil to the Coneheads on
two occasions.
While viewed in its entirety Murray’s work on SNL appears wildly
varied, his own recurring characters—by definition those favored most
by Murray and/or the viewers—depended on a narrow range of traits.
All shared unshakeable self-confidence backed-up by unpredictable,
occasionally unsettling energy. The earliest had been developed dur-
ing his days with Second City and the National Lampoon Radio Hour
and were very much showcases for Murray alone. These included a
“bum” character—named Honker by Murray but never called that on
air—and several variations on a hipster showbiz persona.6 For Honker,
Murray stuck out his lower lip to one side, causing him to slur his
words as if drunk or mentally impaired. The contents of his speeches
did little to alter this impression, consisting of rambling monologues
of self-aggrandizing fantasy. Opening the second episode of the fourth
season, Honker took a seat in the SNL audience, and proceeded to hold
court to nearby audience members about the Yankees’ prospects for
the upcoming season. He is, he insists, a troubleshooter for the team
and a good buddy of several of the players. Only after two minutes of
enthusiastic, unfocused lies, with genuine audience members laughing
around him, does he realize he’s not in Yankee Stadium and bellow
SNL’s opening line.
During his first two years, Murray debuted four characters based
around tendencies for insincerity in the entertainment industry. In
order of their first appearances, these were a director character given
to hyperbole, a “Weekend Update” entertainment correspondent using
Murray’s own name, a lounge singer called Nick, and Jerry Eldini, a
hectoring talent agent. Though the details of their professions allowed
Murray and his writers to introduce different jokes (Nick, for instance,
specialized in spectacular manglings of film and television theme
music), each employed the same strategy of high-tempo ingratiation,
forsaking engagement with the situation at hand for a constant stream
of unsubstantiated opinion, and outdated slang. This approach can be
seen in Murray’s first “Update” appearance of the third season, where
he presented a review of The Deep (1977).
Initially addressing the audience, he began with a string of what
would become his catchphrases: “Hello everybody, and I mean that,
now get outta here, hello, I love ya.” Taken alone, any of these phrases
would already be a trite means of engaging with an audience. Together
and quickly repeated, they entirely lose their original meaning. Murray
does not mean what he says. This gap between language and its effect
is employed toward two distinct kinds of entertainment, Murray never
fully committing to either. First, he provides a target for ridicule, some-
one unaware of how deeply unfashionable he sounds, who believes that
the more he tells an audience he loves them, the more they will think
it is true. But at the same time, there is a sense that, far from being
oblivious to the judgment of viewers, the “Murray” character simply
doesn’t care. Referring to himself as “the party animal,” he imme-
diately admits that he missed the critics screening and therefore will
base his comments on the ten seconds of clips he shows the viewers.
Seemingly making up his views as he speaks, Murray concerns him-
self only with the performances of stars Nick Nolte, Robert Shaw,
and Jacqueline Bisset and addresses them directly, presuming they must
be watching the show. Of Shaw’s geographically uncertain accent, for
instance, Murray asks the actor, “will you fix that up and regain my
respect?” The sheer confidence and force of Murray’s delivery makes
his assertions of chummy superiority compelling. It is worth noting
that, whereas when the other Players appeared on “Update” their task
was to render current affairs entertaining, Murray never left the realm
of show business, fully committing himself to SNL’s project.
Murray’s later characters were developed in conjunction with other
cast members. Together with Aykroyd he presented “X-Police,” a series
of three sketches where a pair of fired policemen try to continue enforc-
ing laws, their violent approach invariably resulting in the accidental
slaying of their suspects. With Gilda Radner, Murray starred in thir-
teen sketches as “nerds” Lisa Loopner and Todd DiLaMuca. The first
of these featured Murray and Radner in a band called The Nerds with
host Robert Klein. The trio appears on a radio station to promote their
album “Trying Desperately to be Liked.” Each conforms closely to
stereotypes of the academically successful but socially inept. Klein has
greasy, severely parted hair and a stoop; Radner talks in a nasal whine,
her upper lip wet with snot; Murray has his trousers pulled up close to
his armpits and sports a pocket protector. They introduce themselves
using their school nicknames, Spaz, Four-Eyes, and Pizza Face, and
delight in childish games and phrases such as giving each other “Indian
burns” or referring to Hell as “H-E-double hockey sticks.” The first
installment was given a nasty edge by the conduct of Aykroyd’s inter-
viewing DJ, who is openly and sarcastically cruel. But beginning with
the nerds’ second appearance the sketches introduced a more accepting,
even celebratory approach, taking place in the nerds’ own environ-
ments, where Todd and Lisa consistently triumph, for instance, in their
third sketch thwarting the lecherous advances of host Michael Palin’s
piano teacher.
For all of these, Murray’s most prominent characters, the basis for
humor is a chasm between the self-image they believe they project and
their actual reception by other characters and SNL’s audience. As the
characters’ creator, Murray positions himself as an arbiter of comic taste,
a role that viewers accept as long as they continue to laugh. Murray
is hip because of his ability to understand the behavior of others, to
see about themselves what they cannot. Protected by layers of charac-
ter and irony, the implication is that he himself is immune from such
treatment, never indicating sufficient belief in anything to be pinned
down. The one exception, and the element of Murray’s persona that
prevented him from slipping into nihilism, is the relentless dedication
of his performance.
For his characters, this energy saved them from becoming exercises
in sneering mockery. As I have already discussed, his correspondent,
Nick, Todd, Jerry Eldini, and others, cannot easily be dismissed as
objects of derision because of the resilience of their delusion and the
apparent spontaneity of their actions. While there is desperation about
their need to variously entertain, persuade, or be accepted, there is
equally an almost joyous certainty that through desperate means they
are succeeding.
For Murray, his raw effort demonstrated that, if nothing else, he was
sincere about his commitment to SNL and the entertainment and val-
ues it offered. This relationship became most evident during the fifth
season, Murray’s last and the last of most of the original cast and crew.
Thanks to the success of Animal House and their first Blues Brothers
album and with filming complete on 1941, Belushi and Aykroyd chose
not to return for a fifth year. To replace the departed duo, Lorne
Michaels recruited a new cast member, Harry Shearer, and promoted
several of the show’s writers to “featuring” status. Yet none of these
new faces were given opportunities to begin to build personas or char-
acters that might plug the gaps left by Belushi and Aykroyd. This left
Murray as the only remaining cast member able or allowed to fully
embody the show’s original freewheeling aggression, a situation dem-
onstrated by the opening sketches of the one hundredth episode.
Acknowledging the importance of The Not Ready for Primetime
Players to the show’s success, the one hundredth edition forwent a host
to focus on the cast. But for Curtin, Morris, Newman, and Radner, this
initially meant participating in a cold opening séance sketch that mini-
mized their involvement in favor of departed stars Belushi and Michael
O’Donoghue. Sat around a crystal ball, the four of them attempt to
summon “the spirits of those who are no longer with us,” succeed-
ing first in producing O’Donoghue, who claims the show “sucks rub-
ber donkey lungs” since his departure, and then Belushi. Belushi, too,
has little good to say, criticizing the nature of his return, yet it is he
who gets to open the episode. Following the credits, Murray was then
introduced alone to perform the monologue. Dressed in a suit and tie
and carrying a briefcase, he launched into a song that he had first pre-
sented as part of the 1973 tour of the National Lampoon Show. As was
by now the familiar Murray style, the song required a marked disparity
between sentiment and presentation. Murray plays a commuter, sing-
ing about the greatness of the city of New York and his life within it.
But all of the details he lists are mundane in the extreme: his ability
to buy subway tokens the night before to avoid queues; the fact that
his office building has its own deli. Regardless, Murray works himself
toward a crescendo of emotion, f linging himself around the stage and
yelling until his throat is hoarse. At one point he attempts a midair
summersault, landing with a crash on his back.
As a summary of SNL to date, its improvisational stage origins, its
relationship with New York, the song and the performer were well
chosen. Murray’s actual feelings about the city may remain impen-
etrable, but his dedication to this kind of humor is clear. He will risk
physical harm in the name of ironic detachment. The performance
even found space to celebrate SNL at its lowest moments. As he pauses
to catch his breath, Murray catches sight of a sign on the subway station
set that bans spitting. Having read it, he gobs directly on to it, result-
ing in whoops of approval from the studio audience. In a sketch that,
on stage, was praised by the New York Times as “devilish satire,” the
action betrays SNL’s willingness to pander to adolescent conceptions
of rebellion.7
Murray’s preeminence was reenforced by his appearances as “him-
self,” on “Update” and backstage. For the fourth and fifth seasons,
Murray was promoted to the role of “Update” coanchor alongside
Curtin, but brought with him his mocking informality and pet sub-
ject, the latter via a frequent new segment, “Bill Murray’s Celebrity
Corner.” As a special correspondent, Murray could be just another
annoying thorn in Curtin’s side, but as her equal a new dynamic devel-
oped between them, parodying the manufactured camaraderie of eve-
ning news teams. For the first episode of the fourth season, Murray
presented a character much like his correspondent, seemingly amazed
that wars were taking place and, during the regular “Point-Counter
Point” debating segment, immediately capitulating and agreeing with
Curtin’s argument. Yet later, Murray would not cede the upper-hand
to his coanchor so easily. Adopting a more laid-back style, Murray’s
hipster character was relegated to a facet of his persona rather than
its entirety, something that could be turned off and on at will. Now
Murray’s “Update” performances could be either playful or dismissive,
based upon his greater awareness of any given situation.
In the episode broadcast on March 10, 1979, for instance, Murray
interrupted usual proceedings to give Curtin back an earring she had
left at his home, adding, “Laraine found it.” The boastful inference—on
live television—that Murray is not only sleeping with Curtin, but also
fellow Player Newman, leaves Curtin acting uncomfortable and embar-
rassed and Murray quietly smug. The following week, Curtin attempted
to turn the tables, presenting Murray with his watch claiming that the
week’s musical guests, the Chieftains, had found it. However, Curtin’s
plan backfires in her choice of partners. Purveyors of Irish folk music,
the Chieftains were a collection of seven dowdy-looking middle-aged
men, ill-suited for provoking Murray’s jealousy. While some in the
audience whoop at Curtin’s adventurousness, Murray’s only reaction is
a sideways glance of incomprehension rather than discomfort. Though
blatantly untrue, there is nothing in the presentation of either exchange
to distance Murray from the message behind them: that promiscuity
is to be celebrated as long as the right people are involved, and that
Murray considers himself in a position to judge who qualifies.
As early as April 1978, Murray’s SNL persona was considered inter-
esting and cohesive enough for Rolling Stone to dedicate a feature to
him.8 Titled, “Bill Murray: Maniac for All Seasons,” the article com-
bined interview material with a recounting of his progress on the show
to date. Praising Murray as “a comic actor of uncommon subtlety,
depth, wit, dexterity and something crazy about the eyes,” the author,
David Felton, composed what amounted to an extended fan letter to
the star, concluding by mimicking the language of Murray’s correspon-
dent character, “I’m sorry if that sounds rough, but that’s the way I feel.
Now get outta here, I mean it.” Just over a year later, the film Meatballs
would seek to capitalize on this sense of adulation.
Bill Murray, Film Star
Meatballs was described in Newsweek as “Animal House’s kid brother.”9

Despite the earlier film’s success, Meatballs was a smaller scale produc-
tion, independently shot and financed in Canada. Written by Ramis,
Dan Goldberg, Len Blum, and Janis Allen, and produced and directed
by Reitman, it sought to recreate much of Animal House’s structure and
themes in a setting that called for a younger cast. Meatballs is set in a sup-
posedly American summer camp called Camp North Star, catering for
children between around eight and sixteen. Like Animal House, it uses
an ensemble cast to tell a number of stories, united by a loose narrative
of group conf lict. Across the lake from North Star is Camp Mohawk,
an exclusive and expensive rival organization. Just as with the Deltas’
clash with the Omegas, the inevitable rivalry between the two camps
is billed as the fun-orientated multitude against the success-orientated
elite. Also like Animal House this distinction is almost painfully relative,
events taking place entirely within the narrow, predominantly white
band of children whose parents desire and can afford any kind of sum-
mer camp experience for their offspring.
However, as the youthful status of the camp inmates might suggest,
Meatballs was not a slavish copy of its predecessor; indeed demographi-
cally it was more ambitious. For all its innovation, Animal House was
very much a product of the New Hollywood of the late 1960s and early
1970s (when its production process began), pitched at an audience that
was assumed to consist largely of young baby boom males. Perhaps
aided by its recent historical setting, Animal House had successfully
passed off the then twenty-nine-year-old Belushi as part of the same
age cohort as the target audience for its R rated humor. Rated PG and
set in the present day, Meatballs attempted no similar sleight of hand for
the twenty-eight-year-old Murray. While the studios may have priori-
tized teen and young adult viewers, they had not abandoned children
and families. In 1976, Paramount (Meatballs’ eventual distributor) had a
hit with Bad News Bears, about an alcoholic former minor-league base-
ball player (Walter Matthau) who is contracted to coach a baseball team
consisting of disadvantaged kids.10 Though the team ultimately come
second in the local league (this being the same year as Rocky, after all),
the children are able to bolster their self-esteem and Matthau regains
some self-respect. Meatballs borrows Bad News Bears’ off-beat mentor
dynamic, but keeps the learning strictly one-way.
The differing inf luences of Animal House and Bad News Bears are
incorporated in Meatballs through three narratives, framed by the inter-
camp conf lict. Most prominent in terms of screen time is the summer-
long progress of the camp’s councilors-in-training (CITs). Roughly
similar in age to the fraternity members of Animal House, they indulge
in a similar combination of pranks and sexual/romantic escapades.
Diverging from the Landis film, both male and female perspectives are
offered in roughly equal measure and, in keeping with Meatballs’ PG
rating, the escapades are rather more romantic than sexual. Second, we
are shown the travails of an unpopular, introverted twelve-year-old
named Rudy (played by Chris Makepeace). Third, and least developed,
there is romance between boys’ head councilor Tripper (played by
Murray) and girls’ head councilor Roxanne (Kate Lynch). Roxanne’s
stance is depicted as exasperated but amused and then finally endeared.
She endures Tripper’s romantic advances for much of the film, which,
in typical Murray fashion, largely consist of accusations and denials. In
many ways, the relationship mirrors that between Katy and Boon in
Animal House, but whereas that union is ultimately doomed by Boon’s
immaturity, Meatballs finds no similar failing in Tripper.
If Murray’s romance is given little space, it is compensated by his
prominent position as role model to the younger characters around
him. Throughout Meatballs, Tripper/Murray is portrayed as a sexual
and social ideal, a situation clearly conveyed in the film’s marketing.
The poster featured Murray reclining nonchalantly against a fence
while four young, barely dressed women drape themselves around
him. Were it not for the camp setting visible on the peripheries and
Murray’s disheveled garb, the image would be entirely appropriate for a
1960s Bond film (see figure 3.1). The tag line, “The summer camp that
makes you untrustworthy, disloyal, unhelpful, unfriendly, discourte-
ous, unkind, disobedient and very hilarious,” confirmed the film’s
twisted instructional, inspirational intent.
Meatballs opens with Tripper waking at 7 a.m. to make the first
announcement of the day over the camp’s PA system. Making no effort
to hide in his voice that he is still in bed and barely conscious, he
requests all staff (their charges are yet to arrive) stand for the National
Anthem, before playing a brief blast of bagpipe music. He then adopts
Murray’s insincere entertainer inf lections to inform those listening of
the weather and breakfast arrangements (“all the gruel you can eat”).
Straightaway, therefore, it is revealed that Tripper is based upon Murray’s
extra-fictional SNL persona: laid-back, in control, and capable of con-
scious comic performance. More than being another character, the film
implies, Tripper and Murray are one and the same.
The connection is made explicit in an early scene where Tripper
tricks a local news reporter into believing he is Mohawk’s director of
entertainment Jerry Eldini, the same name Murray used on SNL for
his agent character. As Eldini, Tripper gives a long, seemingly impro-
vised speech outlining the program of events Mohawk attendees can
expect for their one-thousand-dollar-per-week fee, concluding with
“Sexual Awareness Week” where “We import two hundred hookers
from around the world, and each camper, armed with only a thermos
of coffee and two thousand dollars cash, tries to visit as many coun-
tries as he can.” The credulous reporter is shown accepting all of this
with growing amazement. Within the context of Meatballs’ fictional
world, Tripper’s conduct offers the same attractions as that of The Not
Ready for Primetime Players within NBC, the spectacle of a position
of responsibility (be it broadcaster or camp councilor) being used for
f lippant amusement in a manner that separates those who appreciate
Figure 3.1 Theatrical poster for Meatballs (1979).
the joke from those who do not. This attitude becomes the principal
skill taught at North Star. Throughout, Tripper’s boss, Morty (Harvey
Aktin), stands as a last bastion of sincerity and honest endeavor. Yet,
rather than offering any meaningful resistance to Tripper’s tomfoolery,
his task in the film is to ineffectually but well-meaningly enforce the
camp regulations that Tripper lampoons. When Morty is not falling
foul of Tripper’s practical jokes, he is smiling with indulgent pride at
the obvious connection his employee has with the kids.
The film’s biggest scene, for Murray’s performance and the camp
conf lict narrative, comes at the end of the first day of the climactic
“Olympiad.” Mohawk have not only soundly beaten North Star, but
done so with violence and cruelty. At a depressed meeting that night,
Morty attempts to rally his troops with clichés of optimism and camp
spirit that fall on deaf ears. As one CIT mutters that North Star will con-
tinue its twelve-year losing streak, Tripper seizes the f loor. Denouncing
both previous viewpoints, he emphatically proposes a third analysis of
the situation: “It just doesn’t matter.” Lunging, yelling, and tearing at
his hair like Murray’s SNL New York commuter, Tripper explains that
there’s no dishonor in defeat; the Mohawks outclass them physically,
with their facilities, and through their expectations of success. Equally,
even if North Star were to win, he posits, nothing would be gained
because, “all the really good looking girls would still go out with the
guys from Mohawk because they’ve got all the money.”
In its comic exaggerations of the gulf in finance and attitude between
the two camps and, once again, the wildness of the commitment to a
minor cause, the speech is intended to be received in the same way
by Tripper’s onscreen and Murray’s off-screen audience. Frequent
cutaways to staff and campers’ reactions leave some ambiguity about
whether it is the character or the actor laughing at the performance
before them, a feature noted by Vincent Canby in the New York Times
who wrote of Murray’s status throughout the film, “the other actors are
clearly enchanted by him.”11 As with the sign spitting on SNL, there is
an element of empty-headed rebellion for rebellion’s sake in Tripper’s
actions. Earlier in the film he impresses the teenage CITs by ripping up
and throwing away a copy of the camp rules in front of them. However,
the film goes to elaborate lengths to show that heartfelt disengagement
is a route to success. After their pep-talk in enthused apathy, North
Star attack the second day’s events with renewed, enlightened vigor,
their goal now to humiliate the humorless Mohawks rather than to
avoid defeat. Often this involves turning the Mohawks’ underhand tac-
tics against them. Following North Star’s eventual narrow victory, the
camp’s councilors and CITs convene at a final, farewell campfire sing-
a-long. We are shown that everyone—with the exceptions of Morty
and a seemingly asexual obese trainee—has paired off into couples. All
sit on the ground around the fire except Tripper and Roxanne who sit
above them on a log, the couple all the other couples can aspire to be.
Yet at the same time, Murray’s involvement with the twelve-year-
old Rudy offers some balance to the orgy of self-regard. Tellingly,
Rudy’s only aff liction is an ill-defined melancholy, the cure for which
proves to be one-to-one tuition in sarcasm, self-awareness, and jog-
ging. Meatballs includes several scenes where Tripper intentionally seeks
to help Rudy, either through example or advice. When Rudy attempts
to leave the camp, Tripper tracks him to the local bus station. There,
he undercuts Rudy’s protestations of unpopularity with jokes before
reassuring him, “You make one good friend in a summer, and you’re
doing pretty well,” making it clear with a conspiratorial smile that he
is that friend. Soon, Rudy begins joining Tripper on daily runs (a pas-
time explained away by Tripper: “It takes my mind off sex.”), experi-
ence that proves invaluable when Tripper volunteers him to enter the
Olympiad’s final deciding race.
Despite Tripper’s tendency for f lippancy, the film and Murray take
the relationship between councilor and boy seriously. Rudy’s scenes
are accompanied by wistful string and f lute music, scored by Animal
House’s composer Elmer Bernstein. For the final race the musical theme
returns with additional urgency, indicating the emotional investment
the film expects its audience to have made in the success of camp North
Star and the building of Rudy’s self-esteem. When he wins, the celebra-
tion is prolonged and heartfelt (and contrasted with lingering shots of
the defeated Mohawks), with Tripper at the center. In his celebration,
and when delivering Tripper’s few sincere lines, Murray’s performance
is naturalistic and seemingly sincere, so much so, in fact, that Meatballs’
ultimate sincerity, and niceness, was considered notable in many of its
decidedly mixed reviews. For Variety, for instance, the sentiment was
to be applauded, a “sign of pic.’s class,” though for Time the man/boy
bonding was so thick that it “takes on an unintended air of homosexual
romance.”12
Released on June 29, 1979, Meatballs took forty-three million dollars
at the North American box office, the seventeenth biggest hit of the
year. Considering its tiny cost, this was a significant achievement, yet
it only amounted to just over a third of Animal House’s domestic gross.
One possible explanation for the limited scale of Meatballs’ success can
be found in the film’s modular approach to enticing its desired audience
groups. While the film opens and closes on Murray’s character, he is
rarely the subject of what occurs in between. Other than his f leeting
scenes with Roxanne, Tripper remains personally and professionally
constant, limiting the film’s appeal for the comedian’s fans. Similarly,
the CITs may receive the bulk of the running time but the outrageous-
ness of their experiences (and, therefore, marketability) is curtailed
by Meatballs’ attempts elsewhere to woo younger audiences. Only the
child-orientated storyline offering the fantasy of a popular adult seek-
ing the friendship of a child can be considered uncompromised; how-
ever, as the Time quote given earlier indicates, this had the potential to
alienate as large an audience as it attracted.
Murray’s next two comedies would deal with these concerns in very
different ways, though both abandoned the family market potential
of a PG rating. More so even than Meatballs, Caddyshack, released on
July 25, 1980, and financed by mini-major Orion, was a production
in thrall to the success of Animal House. Here, the script was by two
of Animal House’s three writers, Kenney and Ramis (together with
Brian Doyle-Murray), and Ramis also served as director for the first
time. Beginning with its “It’s the snobs against the slobs” tagline, the
film once again sought to create a clear-cut conf lict, this time at an
exclusive golf club with the young working class caddies against their
older moneyed patrons. In addition to Murray, the makers doubled
their SNL representatives by casting former Animal House target Chevy
Chase. Yet, as with Meatballs, the film recognized that its comic stars
were too old to play caddies. As well as age, the comedians (also present
is a then-resurgent Rodney Dangerfield) are separated from the other
characters by performance styles.
This is most pronounced in the case of Murray. He plays Carl, a
delinquent groundskeeper clearly based upon his Honker sketch char-
acter. Like Honker, Carl deals in bulldozing self-delusion, creating
extended fantasies that fool no one, but are delivered with such force
and conviction that any listener feels compelled to agree. Like Honker,
Murray plays Carl with heavy-lidded eyes, drooping lip, and a pro-
nounced slur. For most of the film, Carl has little contact with the other
characters, instead pursuing a mischievous—and, to the viewer, clearly
animatronic—gopher. Like his prey, Carl is blatantly, and intentionally,
artificial. Again, Vincent Canby’s New York Times review highlighted
the pleasures of watching Murray perform: “You don’t for a minute
believe him—you are always aware of the distance between the per-
former and the performance,”13 but on this occasion, the characters are
not in on the joke.
With Murray, Chase, and Dangerfield actively undermining the
verisimilitude of events onscreen, the viewer is not encouraged to
identify with the plight of the caddies, which includes such supposedly
emotive incidents as a pregnancy scare.14 Murray is even kept apart
from the inevitable triumphant climax; as with Seidman’s comedian
comedy tradition, the film equates his performative excesses with his
character’s social status so that, unable to change, Carl is last seen slink-
ing away from the golf club having blown up its greens rather than its
gopher. Rated R and produced at a cost of $6.5 million, Caddyshack
took slightly less at the box office than Meatballs, earning $39.8 million
to finish the seventeenth biggest hit of 1980.
A year later Stripes (directed by Reitman, written by Ramis, Dan
Goldberg, and Len Blum) would acknowledge that Murray’s appeal
to young audiences did not require representatives of said youth to be
present on screen.15 Produced for nine million dollars for Columbia
Pictures, the film’s plot involves friends John Winger and Russel Ziskey
(played by Murray and Ramis in his film acting debut) joining the army
when their lives go awry (in Winger’s case failing as a photographer
and cab driver and being dumped by his girlfriend). Immediately, the
pair, aware they are older and better educated than the average recruit,
clash with the military’s insistence on obedience and routine. At first,
this lands them in trouble with their drill sergeant Hulka (Warren
Oates) and, because of the punishing training that results, makes them
unpopular with the other new recruits. Quickly, Winger and Ziskey
start f lirtations with two military policewomen named Stella Hansen
and Louse Cooper (P.J. Soles and Sean Young) who, again following
the romantic logic originated in Animal House, are drawn to the leads’
rebellious spirit.
Stripes resolves their predicament in two stages. First, Winger suc-
ceeds in luring all the recruits on a drunken, and forbidden, night at a
female mud-wrestling club. When the military police hear about the
breech, the recruits are taken back to barracks, except Winger and
Ziskey who slip away with Hansen and Cooper. They return early the
next morning to discover that their platoon, temporarily without their
drill sergeant, have been issued an ultimatum: perform successfully
in the graduation parade that afternoon, or be forced to repeat all of
basic training. Although initially defeatist, Winger suddenly decides to
intervene, giving a Meatballs-style speech of inspiration and taking con-
trol of the few remaining hours of practice. At the parade, the platoon
arrive late and half-dressed. In front of assembled troops, officers, and a
watching crowd, Winger leads them through a farcical approximation
of a drill, a charade neither he nor the crowd take seriously. At its con-
clusion, the general in command demands an explanation. But when
he hears that the platoon were forced to complete their training unsu-
pervised, he announces this is exactly the kind of enterprising, creative
approach the army needs and awards the platoon with a prestigious, top
secret assignment in Europe.
There, the film stages Winger and Ziskey’s final triumph. The
assignment involves testing a new “urban assault vehicle.” Left to guard
it at night, Winger convinces Ziskey to join him in using the vehicle to
visit Hansen and Cooper, who are now stationed in Germany. While
they again enjoy themselves, their absence is discovered and the rest of
the platoon are sent to retrieve them. Unfortunately, the platoon take
a wrong turn into Czechoslovakia where, accused of invasion, they are
imprisoned. When the vacationing foursome hear about the capture,
they resolve to use the assault vehicle to rescue them, Winger reason-
ing that Czechoslovakia is only as dangerous as Wisconsin. The rescue
involves gunfire, explosions, but no casualties. Somehow, despite hav-
ing caused an international incident by absconding with an experi-
mental weapon, Winger, Ziskey, Hansen, and Cooper are rewarded
for their bravery. The film ends in a fashion similar to Animal House’s
closing captions, using the covers of fictional magazines to reveal the
characters’ fates. Last is Winger, who appears grinning on the cover of
“Newsworld” (clearly meant to be Newsweek) with the headline, “The
New Army. Can America Survive?”
After the more overtly presentational comedy of Caddyshack, Stripes
returned Murray to his extra-fictional SNL persona used in Meatballs:
largely sarcastic and distanced, occasionally breaking into conscious
comic performance to entertain himself or others. In her positive
review of the film, Pauline Kael advised that enjoyment was depen-
dant on a previous appreciation of this persona: “Anyone who stum-
bles into it without having seen Murray on TV may be f loored—he’s
not someone you fall in love with at first sight.”16 Like Meatballs, the
film not only provides the spectacle of this persona finding success,
but also demonstrates that others will succeed if they follow Murray’s
example. As the cover of “Newsworld” suggests, Stripes is about the
reinvention of the entire Army in Murray’s cynical, fun-loving image.
In advocating social change on this scale, Stripes reintroduces Animal
House’s sense—lost to some extent in the younger focus of Meatballs and
Caddyshack—that the values of one generation are usurping another’s.
By reducing these values to sex, drink, and insubordination, the film
continues to present the baby boomers’ achievements in a way that
appeals to youth, perhaps more so, increasingly, than these values might
appeal to actual members of the baby boom.
As in Meatballs, Stripes is careful to balance what could be consid-
ered an entirely selfish ideology with the suggestion that, even when
not governed by a socially dictated moral code, Murray has an innate
understanding of when some degree of responsibility is required. In
Meatballs it was the problems of Rudy; in Stripes, it is the climactic
rescue of the platoon. It should be noted that this understanding only
extends to those sympathetic to Murray’s point of view. To those who
oppose him, or, worse, fail to see the joke, he is as vindictive and petty
as possible.
Interestingly, Oates’ drill sergeant Hulka, who provides the main
resistance to Murray’s worldview, is not portrayed with the same dis-
tain as the dean in Animal House, the Mohawks in Meatballs, and the
club members in Caddyshack. From the outset he is alert to Winger’s
sarcasm. When Winger confronts him directly about the pointlessness
of marching he responds, “I’m not talking about all that crap. I’m talk-
ing about something important, like discipline, honor, duty and cour-
age.” The implication is that Hulka developed his attitude at a time
when seriousness was necessary (Oates was fifty-two at the time of
filming). Now, the enemy is only as dangerous as being in Wisconsin.
Hulka’s closing cover is the front page of a newspaper announcing
his retirement. The last time Winger and Hulka meet, Hulka gives
Winger an accepting smile and makes to shake his hand. As Winger
responds, Hulka quickly withdraws his hand, leaving Winger grasping
at air. Winger, the supposed master of cynicism, has been tricked into a
moment of sentimentality, demonstrating Hulka’s understanding of the
new order. In this way, the film manages to argue that change in the
military is required without belittling the achievements and sacrifices
of the past.17
Although the platoon provides Stripes with a group dynamic, the
film diverges from its predecessors by presenting its conf lict as a single
narrative with Murray and Ramis at its center. For the film’s market-
ing, Murray appeared alone. The poster was based upon the traditional
army recruitment campaign, with Murray standing in for Uncle Sam.
Casually smiling and pointing at the camera, he is accompanied by
the phrase, “I want YOU for U.S. army” (see figure 3.2). Like Landis’
framing of Belushi’s rallying cries in Animal House, this direct address
suggests a sense of connection between the comedian and his audience.
The poster also clearly conveys the limited extent to which the film
believes such a connection can cross the gender divide: the recruiting
Figure 3.2 Theatrical poster for Stripes (1981).
image is shown pasted on a wall with two young, blonde women, their
backs to viewer, gazing at Murray with interest. Stripes relentlessly
presents women as powerless to resist the central duo’s charms or sim-
ply as sex objects, not least in the bizarre mud-wrestling sequence. The
advertising campaign, and the film, proved successful; opening on June
26, 1981, with an R rating, Stripes went on to take $85.3 million at the
domestic box office, the fifth highest return of the year. As a result,
Murray became the first SNL cast member to feature in the top ten of
Quigley Publishing’s annual poll of the stars cinema exhibitors consid-
ered the biggest box office draws, placing tenth for 1981.18
In the three years between the release of Stripes and Ghostbusters,
Murray’s public image was sustained with occasional appearances as a
guest on network television and an unbilled supporting role in Tootsie
(1982). Having left SNL in May 1980, he returned as guest host twice
in 1981: in March for the final episode of the troubled—and therefore
shorter—sixth season, and in December for the Christmas episode of
the retooled, Eddie Murphy-centered seventh season (both seasons are
discussed in chapter five). Occurring three months prior to and five
months after Stripes’ June opening, neither appearance can be consid-
ered a direct promotion of the film, with Murray treated very much
as a returning, hugely popular cast member, rather than as a current
film star. When his film career is referenced, the effect is to continue
to blur the lines between his film characters and his extra-fictional
star persona. The March episode, for example, opens with the belea-
guered new cast filing into Murray’s dressing room to ask how they
can improve, prompting Murray to lead them in a repeat of the “it just
doesn’t matter” chant from Meatballs.
In February 1982, Murray was the main guest on the first episode
of Late Night with David Letterman (1982–93), NBC’s successful attempt
to attract a similar audience to SNL’s for their 12.30–1.30 weeknight
timeslot. Introduced as “comedian Bill Murray” and with nothing to
promote, Murray’s only purpose on the show was to entice his fans to dis-
cover Letterman’s similarly ironic sensibility. Accordingly, Letterman’s
interview of Murray assumes the tone of a loosely rehearsed sketch,
Murray swinging rapidly from wild congratulation to bitter accusa-
tions while Letterman soldiers on with bland questions, both men fre-
quently lapsing into giggles. As with his returns to SNL, Murray’s Late
Night performance reinforced his commitment to an exclusive comedy
of awareness.
More difficult to quantify, but potentially more important to main-
taining and extending his public profile, Murray also took a sizable
supporting role as Dustin Hoffman’s friend and roommate in Tootsie.
Released on September 17, 1982, Tootsie, about an out-of-work actor
who pretends to be a woman to land a job, was not only nominated for
ten Academy Awards, it outgrossed Animal House, taking $177 million
at the U.S. box office. In July 1983, Tootsie was still in over four hun-
dred theaters. Murray’s name and image were not used in promotion
for the film, but his character and performance were broadly consis-
tent with his SNL persona. As a struggling New York playwright, his
main function in the film is to mock Hoffman’s situation, one of only
two characters to know Hoffman’s secret. Yet again playing someone
wryly detached from events around him, the level of continuity with
Murray’s earlier roles in Meatballs and particularly Stripes shows the rep-
resentational basis of those films’ approach. In its prestige and strong
romantic emphasis, Tootsie can also be assumed to have had a substan-
tially different, older audience to Murray’s other films, many of whom,
both as parents and in their own right, would be instrumental to the
success of Ghostbusters.
Ghostbusters and Family Adventure
While in many regards Ghostbusters was a clear continuation of the suc-

cessful strategies of Stripes, it also absorbed inf luences from two other
important sources that would enable it to achieve far more financially
than any of the SNL-related films that went before. The project was
originally conceived by Dan Aykroyd as a vehicle for himself and John
Belushi. Since the problematic releases of 1941 and Blues Brothers (each
of which had drawn a large audience), the pair had made one further,
no less compromised production in Neighbors (released December 1981,
taking $29.9 million, the twenty-fourth biggest hit of the year).19 Since
Belushi’s death, Aykroyd had failed alone in Doctor Detroit (1983, taking
$10.6 million, sixty-eighth for the year) and enjoyed his biggest success
to date teaming with Eddie Murphy in Trading Places (1983, $90.4 mil-
lion, fourth for the year, see chapter five). His concept involved a team
of janitor-like workmen whose job it is to travel across space and time
disposing of troublesome ghosts.20
Though Aykroyd’s treatment was unusable in terms of structure and
expense, the premise interested Ivan Reitman and Columbia Pictures.
In 1977 Star Wars had reawakened Hollywood’s desire to attract truly
mass audiences. In the years since, the projects that succeeded in sell-
ing the greatest number of tickets (in order of success: E.T.—The Extra
Terrestrial [1982], Return of the Jedi [1983], The Empire Strikes Back [1980],
Raiders of the Lost Ark [1981], Superman [1978]) were all what Peter
Krämer has termed “family-adventure movies.”21 These are films that
are intended, and manage, to appeal to all age groups, especially

children and their parents, by combining spectacular, often fantas-
tic or magical action with a highly emotional concern with famil-
ial relationships, and also by offering two distinct points of entry
into the cinematic experiences they provide (childish delight and
absorption on the one hand, adult self-awareness and nostalgia on
the other hand).22
Doing battle with inter-dimensional ghouls certainly fit the descrip-

tion of “spectacular, often fantastic or magical action.” Moreover, the
connection to horror implied by ghosts fit with the darker direction
the family-adventure production trend was taking in the early 1980s,
evident in Poltergeist (1982), Gremlins (1984), and Indiana Jones and the
Temple of Doom (1984). However, under the guidance of Reitman and
with a script eventually cowritten by Aykroyd and Ramis, it can be
argued that Ghostbusters reverses many of the approaches Krämer iden-
tifies as typical of the family adventure format, albeit to reach the same
final goal.
In terms of Murray’s character, Ghostbusters very much picks up where
Stripes left off. Murray plays Dr. Peter Venkman, a “parapsychologist”
at Columbia University. Venkman has a similar attitude to academia to
that expressed by Winger about the military. He is introduced conduct-
ing a spurious experiment on two student volunteers, a geeky-looking
boy and an attractive, preppy girl. As Venkman holds up a series of
cards, the students take it in turns to guess what symbols appear on the
reverse side. Wrong answers are rewarded with an electric shock. It is
immediately apparent that Venkman’s interest in the experiment is not
scientific. He takes great pleasure in tormenting the boy while wooing
the girl, to the extent of falsifying their results. Though the girl gets
none of her cards right, Venkman claims each guess is correct, openly
f lirting as he proclaims her a phenomenon. The girl is entirely taken
in by what she assumes is professional interest, oblivious to his obvious
intentions. Even when the boy gets close to the unlikely feat of guess-
ing a card correctly, Venkman elects to shock him anyway, to drive
him off and get the girl alone.
Clearly, this should be despicable behavior; a scientist is abusing his
position, using students for torture and sex. Yet in the context of the
scene, the students are shown to deserve to be exploited for their lack
of awareness. In his dealings with them, Venkman uses Murray’s mock
sincerity, making his deception evident to anyone alert enough to the
layers of his performance. To some extent this mirrors Kael’s com-
ment regarding Stripes that some prior appreciation of Murray’s style
is necessary to identify with him, although in this case the viewer is
given additional assistance by being shown the card symbols kept hid-
den from the students. Set up in this way, Ghostbusters appears to indi-
cate it will follow a similar path to its predecessors, detailing Murray’s
progress within the confines of a well-defined institution.
But just as Venkman moves to take advantage of the girl, his col-
league Dr. Ray Stantz (played by Aykroyd) bursts into the room with
news of events at the New York Public Library, seen earlier by the
viewer, where ghosts are causing disruption. If the preceding scene was
not enough to convince the viewer of Venkman’s cynicism regarding
the paranormal, his conversation with Aykroyd on route to the library
provides confirmation (“As a friend, I have to tell you you’re finally
going round the bend on this ghost business”). Yet down in the stacks
the pair, together with the third member of their academic team (Egon
Spengler, played by Ramis), encounter a ghost for themselves, a trans-
parent Victorian reader who turns monstrous when disturbed. When,
having run screaming from the library, the trio returns giddy to the
university, they find they are being kicked off campus by their dean.
Venkman demands to know the reasons why, offering as defense “but
the kids love us.” The dean replies, “We believe the purpose of science
is to serve mankind. You, however, seem to regard science as some
kind of dodge or hustle. Your theories are the worst kind of popular
tripe, your methods are sloppy and your conclusions are highly ques-
tionable; you are a poor scientist Dr Venkman.”
Thus disgraced, Venkman, Stantz, and Spengler are left to fend for
themselves in the outside world. Based on their recent experience, they
decide to start the firm Ghostbusters, the eventual success of which
forms the basis of the film’s narrative. Despite Venkman’s earlier skepti-
cism, his (and Murray’s) sensibility is closely entwined with the concept
of ghostbusting. Though all three men are fired, the dean’s comments
make it clear the University’s wrath is aimed at Venkman. Throughout
the film, Stantz and Spengler demonstrate themselves to be highly
competent, if eccentric, scientists. Once the decision to open the busi-
ness is made, they immediately produce equipment for trapping and
containing ghosts that functions perfectly. As a result, Ghostbusters is
not initially the story of man’s struggle against the supernatural, but
of Venkman’s struggle to find success and happiness in contemporary
New York.
Like Stripes, this struggle is presented in two distinct acts, the first the
road to personal success, the second a demonstration of helping others
that, far from suggesting sacrifice, leads to even greater personal reward.
In the first section business begins slowly as the Ghostbusters work to
overcome New Yorkers’ disbelief of their trade. Their first client, Dana
Barrett (played by Sigourney Weaver), is repelled by Venkman’s greater
romantic interest in her than professional interest in her haunted apart-
ment. Soon after, the successful trapping of a ghost in a prominent hotel
provides the spark of publicity they need. In this ten-minute sequence,
Venkman is able to cement the centrality of Murray’s persona to the
ghostbusting concept. During the pursuit he offers a constant stream of
sarcastic comment, as well as destroying hotel furniture whenever it is
necessary or amuses him. The same steam-rolling force is applied to the
aftermath of the trapping, with Venkman cajoling and threatening the
hotel’s manager into paying a colossal bill and then loudly announcing
the team’s services to a crowd drawn by the commotion.
A montage sequence follows, depicting the Ghostbusters’ now rapid
rise. Further paranormal exploits are juxtaposed with media coverage,
including magazine covers, newspaper headlines, news reports, and
interviews. Of all the films associated with SNL, Ghostbusters comes
the closest to conceptualizing its characters’ success in the same terms as
that experienced by the cast members on the show. As much as the qual-
ity of their service, the Ghostbusters are judged by their ability to catch
the public’s imagination, for which Venkman’s showmanship is invalu-
able. As with SNL, the New York setting is consistently foregrounded,
using the city to give scale and significance to their endeavors. Also, the
montage ends with the recruiting of a new, black Ghostbuster, Winston
Zeddemore, played by Ernie Hudson. He is first shown arriving at
the team’s headquarters in answer to an advertisement. Barely glancing
in his direction, Venkman and Stantz hire him immediately. Such an
attitude could be intended to show the pair’s enlightenment on mat-
ters of race, but in his later treatment by the film and the Ghostbusters,
Zeddemore has much in common with Garrett Morris. Though he
risks as much as the other three, it is made repeatedly clear that he is
only their employee. In terms of narrative importance and the quality
and number of his comic lines he again suffers in comparison.23
At the same time, Venkman has persisted in his interest in Barrett,
and she is beginning to warm to his relentlessness. During the mon-
tage, she is seen in her kitchen, amused by a radio report that after a job
at a nightclub the Ghostbusters “stayed on to dance the night away with
some of the lovely ladies who witnessed the disturbance.” However, at
the half-way-point in the film, the various hauntings are given focus:
all are part of an inter-dimensional demon’s scheme to destroy man-
kind. In the process, Barrett becomes possessed by one of the demon’s
assistants. The Ghostbusters, meanwhile, find themselves in prison after
Venkman is too open in his contempt of a city environmental agency
officer who enquires into their affairs. The film resolves, then, with
Venkman and his team scoring a series of victories. In a performance
similar to his earlier treatment of the hotel manager, Venkman coerces
New York’s mayor into freeing his team and supporting their plan
to defeat the demonic menace.24 Without hesitation, the Ghostbusters
confront the demon and eventually overcome it. No longer possessed,
Barrett forgets all her reservations about Venkman and the two of them
kiss, passionately. The final scene of the film shows Venkman happily
accepting the adulation of a cheering crowd (including representatives
of several religions apparently praying to the Ghostbusters as saviors) as
Barrett embraces him.
In continuing to show the rewards wrought by Murray’s distanced,
antiauthoritarian humor, Ghostbusters can be seen as offering similar
pleasures to a similar audience as Stripes. Upon its release, the film
was largely very well received by critics, with the effectiveness of
Murray’s persona being a common theme. In Newsweek, David Ansen
found that “Murray sets the movie’s distinctive tone of wacked-out
cool,” while Richard Schickel in Time considered the project “a once-
in-a-lifetime opportunity [for Murray] to develop fully his patented
comic character.”25 Similarly, Joseph Gelmis in Newsday concluded,
“The comic tone of Ghostbusters is blasé [. . .] Murray is a hoot, our
representative, refusing to take anything seriously, def lating pompos-
ity. In the end, he gets the girl, naturally, because a truly funny person
is irresistible.”26 In New York, David Denby, who felt that Ghostbusters
was “the one in which a generation of comics puts it all together,” also
noted, “It’s Bill Murray’s movie.”27
Yet by taking him out of an institutional context, and forcing him
into wider society, it can also be said that Ghostbusters reacquainted
Murray with viewers closer to his own age. Particularly in the first
half, the challenges facing Venkman, Stantz, and Spengler are those of
the vast majority of adult America. This is made explicit immediately
following their expulsion from Columbia when Stantz warns Venkman
about the perils of the private sector, telling him, “You’ve never been
out of college.” In college (or summer camp, or the army) problems
are condensed into a self-contained, linear hierarchy, an experience
increasingly distant to large parts of the baby boom. Kicked off cam-
pus, Venkman and friends are quickly confronted by mortgage worries
and professional uncertainty.
In addition, at least in comparison to his opening student encounter,
Venkman must contend with a grown-up relationship. Continuing the
film’s celebration of self-awareness, the signal that Barrett will be more
than another sexual conquest for Venkman is that she is not taken in by
his ironic patter. When Venkman attempts to employ his usual barrage
of platitudes in her apartment, Barrett observes that rather than acting
like a scientist, he is “more like a game show host.” The accuracy of
this comment, pinpointing the source of Murray’s insincere approach,
renders Venkman uniquely, if only temporarily, speechless. Later, there
is something genuinely touching when, following a renewed play
for her affections outside the Lincoln Centre, Barrett agrees to meet
Venkman for dinner. As she walks away, Venkman catches sight of a
roller-skater pirouetting around the fountain and, on the spur of the
moment, mimics the action. For a character whose every utterance
is generally cloaked in irony, this simple motion, apparently done in
joy and without consideration of his appearance to those around him,
speaks volumes for the power Barrett, the one who has seen through
his act, has over him. Although such subtleties are abandoned once
Barrett becomes possessed, and the film ends, like Meatballs and Stripes,
with the female lead clinging adoringly to Murray’s arm, these small
first-half instances serve to create an engaging and prominent romantic
aspect to Ghostbusters’ otherwise fratish charms.
Ghostbusters, therefore, reverses family adventure norms by primar-
ily seeking to retain the young, male audience that had previously
made Murray’s films successful, and by allowing its hero to be the
very embodiment of self-awareness in the modern, adult world. All
of which raises questions about the film’s ability to reach children.
After the film’s release, the New York Post reported that toy companies
were “initially gun shy” about developing products tied to the film.
The article quotes Reitman saying, “The Columbia merchandising
department had a hard time convincing the manufacturers the movie
would be a success.”28 Yet a number of reviews found Ghostbusters to
be ideal children’s fare; Sheila Benson in the Los Angeles Times, for
instance, commented, “Parents may be the happiest recipients of all of
Ghostbusters.”29
For children too young to aspire to, or perhaps even comprehend
Murray’s “horny hipness” (to quote Rex Reed in the New York Post),
the importance of Aykroyd’s supporting character must not be underes-
timated.30 In contrast to Murray’s Venkman, Aykroyd’s Dr. Ray Stantz
is an enthusiast and a believer. According to David Denby, “He’s a
lot like a kid awed by the miracles of a toy chemistry set.”31 From the
moment he bursts in on Venkman’s opening teacher-student liaison,
it is Stantz who introduces all the child-friendly aspects to Venkman’s
narrative. Stantz insists Venkman join him to investigate the library
where the first ghost is witnessed. Tellingly, in the aftermath Stantz
can barely control his glee that “we actually touched the ethiric plain,”
whereas for Venkman the excitement lies in his realization that “the
franchise rights alone will make us rich beyond our wildest dreams.”
When the time comes to choose the company’s headquarters, Stantz
overrides the many practical objections voiced by Venkman and
Spengler about an abandoned firehouse because it still has a pole to
slide down, exclaiming, “This place is great! We should sleep here,
tonight, you know, to try it out.” At the film’s climax when the demon
demands the Ghostbusters choose the form of mankind’s destruction,
Stantz instinctively turns to childhood memories (“I tried to think of
the most harmless thing, something that could never destroy us, some-
thing I loved from my childhood”) in the process conjuring up a giant
Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
Like Meatballs, Aykroyd also presents the fantasy that Murray would
befriend and value someone still possessing childlike traits. If not in
screen-time and narrative focus, Stantz is presented as Venkman’s con-
fidant and professional equal. In an early scene, a reaction shot shows
Stantz laughing appreciatively at Venkman’s sarcastic humor. His enthu-
siasm does not make him unaware. Twice during the film, Venkman
playfully slaps Stantz when he acts in haste. But when Venkman fails
to grasp a scientific concept, Stantz slaps his back, admonishing him,
“You never studied.” In the final showdown with the Marshmallow
Man, significant emphasis is placed on their friendship, with them call-
ing in acknowledgment to each other as they face their foe.
Released on June 8, 1984, with a PG rating, Ghostbusters took $13.6
million in its first three days, the fourth highest opening weekend of
the year. It went on to gross $229.2 million, the second highest total
for a 1984 film after Beverly Hills Cop.32 In adjusted dollars, it remains
the thirty-second highest grossing film of all time. Once again, there-
fore, there is a symmetry between the behind-the-scenes and onscreen
stories of SNL cast members’ experiences. Just as the Ghostbusters find
success, acceptance, and increasing responsibility in New York, their
creators (here Aykroyd, Ramis, Reitman, and Murray) were able to
bend the recently established Hollywood conventions of the family
adventure film to fit the narrative model they had developed from
SNL and its stage and print precursors.33 Indicative of the close con-
nection between art and life, Murray’s representational approach to his
performance encourages association between his fictional and extra-
fictional personas. That so many Americans were willing to pay to see
Murray as Peter Venkman wisecrack his way to financial, romantic,
and social bliss (the gross represents approximately 68.2 million ticket
sales) mirrors the cheering crowds who greet Venkman’s final triumph
over apocalypse.34
Ghostbusters and its reception mark the arrival of SNL’s specifically
baby boom inf lected voice, originally conceived and presented as out-
side the mainstream, at the very heart of American culture. Yet in
the form in which it arrived, its claims for difference were limited.
Beyond Murray’s preoccupation with self and its amusement, the other
two categories of social change outlined in Yankelovich’s New Values,
personal morality and social priorities, are highly compromised. Both
Venkman’s relationship with Barrett and his life-risking participation
in saving the city are presented as consistent with his outlook at the
beginning of the film. But in comparison with his conduct in his intro-
ductory scene, he has altered to meet society’s long-standing expecta-
tions, embarking on a career that contributes to society and entering
into a stable, monogamous, age-appropriate relationship. Similarly,
Ghostbusters appears to advocate sexual and racial equality, but as I have
shown earlier, both the Dana Barrett and Winston Zeddemore char-
acters are finally subordinate to the three white, male, middle-class
Ghostbusters. Rather than being part of a conscious conservative back-
lash as some have claimed, the film’s conclusions stem from a drive to
portray the comprehensive victory of Murray’s “enlightened” point of
view, in the process whitewashing over (or failing to perceive) continu-
ing, very real rifts in society.35 Nine years after the debut of SNL and its
hailing as the work of a “subversive group of iconoclasts,” Ghostbusters’
tone was sufficiently inline with public consensus for critics such as
David Ansen to label it “wonderful summer nonsense.”36
Moving forward, the film’s widespread appeal also had implica-
tions for the future of the humor of division practiced by Murray and
other comedian stars who f lourished after Animal House. Now firmly
ensconced as social, cultural, and industrial insiders, the question for the
next chapter is how long the conf lict-based outsider narrative would
continue to hold relevance, both for the stars and for the various audi-
ence groups who attended their films.
CH A P T E R FOU R
“I Don’t Even Like Myself”: The Revision

and Retreat of Saturday Night Live Stars
after Ghostbusters
In his second volume of Hollywood adventures, William Goldman

includes an account of his involvement in the making of Memoirs of an
Invisible Man (1992). Goldman was first approached by Ivan Reitman
in 1985 with a view to turning H.F. Saint’s novel of the same title into
“another Ghostbusters: a special-effects-filled comedy-action f lick.”1
To realize his ambition, Reitman had already enlisted the services of
Chevy Chase, the only white, male Not Ready for Primetime Player
with whom he had not previously collaborated on film. After complet-
ing a first draft, Goldman met with Chase to discuss possible improve-
ments. Chase took the opportunity to outline his vision of the project
as “an investigation of the loneliness of invisibility [. . .] a sad, serious
drama.”2 Reitman and Chase’s ideas proved incompatible, resulting in
Reitman and Goldman leaving the film. When Memoirs of an Invisible
Man reached American screens in February 1992, its director was hor-
ror specialist John Carpenter and its tone wavered between the glib
humor of Chase’s early hits and the darker, dramatic emphasis that had
interested the star. The film failed to find a substantial audience, taking
$14.4 million, the seventy-ninth highest grossing film of the year.3
Chase’s unwillingness to make the film that his and Reitman’s track
records suggested had the greatest chance to be successful highlights
the artistic and industrial questions facing the original SNL cast mem-
bers from the mid-1980s onward. Their success was closely tied to
baby boom experiences, but also to youth and rebellion. As the 1980s
progressed, satisfying both these criteria became increasingly prob-
lematic with youth and the baby boom parting company. However,
concentrating fully on one group was no more straightforward. On
the one hand, the combative, group aspects of their generation that
they represented were becoming less prominent. Their predominantly
male audience were less likely to define themselves in relation to their
male friends than their partners and children. On the other hand,
there were significant challenges for the stars and their collaborators in
appearing fresh and relevant to new young audiences as their own ages
grew nearer forty than twenty. Moreover, pursuit of either group was
further complicated by the personal priorities of the SNL stars. They
had achieved fame and industrial inf luence because their tastes and
experience chimed with filmgoing audiences. As Chase’s travails with
Memoirs of an Invisible Man demonstrate, there was no guarantee this
correlation would continue.
This chapter charts the different ways in which the careers of Chase,
Aykroyd, and Murray adapted across the 1980s into the 1990s. It begins
by sketching the decisions made by Chase and Aykroyd, showing a
halting, uncertain relationship between maintaining the tone of past
successes and acknowledging their and their original audiences’ chang-
ing circumstances. By the end of the 1980s they were no longer major
box office draws. In contrast, Murray’s post-Ghostbusters career is char-
acterized by two clear periods where the star, apparently for personal
reasons, sought to change the types of film with which he was associ-
ated. Unlike Chase and Aykroyd, Murray did continue to attract a sub-
stantial audience, until 1993’s Groundhog Day. This was to be the final
film starring a Not Ready for Primetime Player to reach the top fifty
at the American box office.
The Declining Popularity of Chevy Chase

and Dan Aykroyd
Throughout their careers as film stars, Chase and Aykroyd had to juggle
the particular cultural cachet bestowed by their association with SNL’s
success with their more traditional performative gifts. For Chase, this
meant finding a place for physical slapstick. For Aykroyd, there was
always a tension between his leading man status and ability to disappear
into diverse characters. In 1983, Chase starred in National Lampoon’s
Vacation as family man Clark Griswald. Since Animal House, the National
Lampoon brand had been attached to two other productions—Movie
The Revision and Retreat of SNL 93
4
Madness and Class Reunion (both 1982) with little success. Vacation was
based on a short story titled “Vacation ‘58” by John Hughes, originally
published in the Lampoon magazine in September 1979. The story is
told from the point of view of a boy in his early teens remembering a
cross-country road trip to Disney Land. Though the boy’s account is
peppered with “gee-whiz” excitement, it is obvious the holiday was a
disaster, with the father becoming ever more angry and unhinged with
each delay, mistake, and disappointment. The story ends with the fam-
ily arriving at the theme park to find it closed for cleaning, provoking
the father to storm the gates with a gun and bite Walt Disney, actions
that lead to his arrest by the police. Like many Lampoon articles of the
period, the story is a satire of 1950s conformity; on finding the park
shut, the father rants, “I bought a son-of-a-bitch color TV just to watch
your son-of-a-bitch program! You owe me!”5
Both in general structure and a number of specific incidents, the film
version, also written by Hughes, follows the story closely. However,
it is set in the present day and uses the father as the central charac-
ter, thereby retaining its baby boomer viewpoint. Clark Griswald is
a bumbling idealist who just wants to spend more quality time with
his family. Often his corny plans and failure to execute them are the
film’s source of humor, but he remains sympathetic through his good
intentions: while the climactic theme park showdown remains (now at
“Wally World”), the owner relates to Griswald’s plight and allows the
family to use the park. Despite its family focus, Vacation is not a family
film, receiving an R rating from the MPAA. Incidents on route include
the deaths of an elderly aunt and her dog, and the Griswald children
acquiring marijuana and pornography. A large portion of the narra-
tive, not found in the original story, involves Griswald’s sex life, as first
he and his wife Ellen (played by Beverly D’Angelo) struggle to find
intimate moments away from their children, and then he is tempted
by the sexual advances of a young female motorist. This latter incident
ends with Griswald and the unnamed woman naked in a hotel pool, at
which point he realizes he cannot bring himself to cheat on his wife.
Yet the film does not suggest this is a sacrifice, as Ellen, who witnessed
the exchange, joins Griswald at the pool, stripping naked for him and
the audience.
Like Ghostbusters, Vacation takes adult situations and presents them
in a way that primarily, but not exclusively, addresses a young, male
audience. Again, this approach proved successful (albeit to a far lesser
degree) as Vacation took $61.4 million at the domestic box office, the
eleventh biggest hit of 1983. In publicity for the film, parallels were
drawn between Chase’s personal situation and that of Clark Griswald.
For example, the September 12 cover of People advertised its Chase
interview with the line, “Chevy Chase’s new high, fatherhood:
Goodbye drugs, hello baby—Chevy thrives again, at home and in
Vacation.”6 The same year, John Hughes also wrote Mr. Mom, featuring
another baby boom comic star (this time Michael Keaton) struggling
with family responsibilities. Rated PG and featuring much larger roles
for Keaton’s wife (Terri Garr) and young children, Mr. Mom was the
first successful family-orientated (in setting and audience) comedy of
the 1980s. Significantly, it outgrossed Vacation by $3 million, finish-
ing as the ninth biggest hit of the year. Across two sequels, European
Vacation (1985) and Christmas Vacation (1989), the more objectionable
elements of the Griswald family’s adventures were toned down, to the
extent that Variety considered the third installment, “Solid family fare
with plenty of yocks.”7 However, both still included enough sexual-
ity and aggressive content to warrant PG-13 ratings and were hits of a
similar magnitude to their predecessor, grossing $49.4 and $71.3 mil-
lion, respectively.
In addition to European Vacation, in 1985 Chase also starred in Fletch
and Spies Like Us, productions that returned to Animal House’s “fun
is good” dynamic. Fletch, based on a 1975 novel of the same name
by Gregory McDonald, follows Chase as an alimony-evading reporter
who solves a murder-plot and exposes police-run heroin smuggling
before absconding to Rio with the murderer’s attractive wife. Spies
Like Us teamed Chase with Aykroyd as reluctant government agents
stumbling on a U.S. Army scheme to start World War III. It ends with
the furthest extension of the detached, amusement-seeking worldview
advocated by the SNL-related films; having thwarted the army, Chase
and Aykroyd are assigned to broker peace with the Soviet Union, a task
they achieve by challenging their Russian counterparts to a game of
Trivial Pursuit. Both films found considerable audiences, Fletch taking
$50.6 million and Spies Like Us $60.1 million, meaning that Chase was
the top-billed star in the tenth, twelfth, and fourteenth highest grossing
films of 1985. Such consistency led to Chase being listed at number five
on the 1985 Quigley chart of bankable stars by American exhibitors.8
Following this high, however, Chase’s popularity began to wane. In
1986 he joined Steve Martin and Martin Short in The Three Amigos, a
lavish spoof western produced by Lorne Michaels and directed by John
Landis that, perhaps like 1941, had little to offer audiences who had not
been drawn to its target genre in over a decade.9 In 1988, Chase made
a more concerted foray into family entertainment with the PG-rated
Funny Farm, about a city reporter who moves with his wife (Madolyn
Smith) to the country, so he can write a novel and start a family. All
does not go to plan, of course, and various encounters with local folk
leave the couple on the verge of divorce. However, selling their house
requires renewed engagement with the community that ends with them
happily assimilated within it. Chase’s progression from cocksure city
slicker to small-town stalwart matches Seidman’s comedian tradition,
raising the question of whether Chase’s persona now needed to “grow
up.” Notably, Funny Farm was also the first SNL-related comedy since
Chase’s initial collaborations with Goldie Hawn to allow its female
lead her own subplot, as Smith secretly becomes a successful children’s
author while Chase’s literary aspirations gradually expire. Receiving
amiable reviews, Funny Farm provoked a similarly mild reaction from
audiences, making $25.5 million, the fortieth highest grossing film of
the year.
But rather than persevere in this vein, Chase’s next two pictures,
Caddyshack II (1988, also featuring Aykroyd replacing an absent Murray)
and Fletch Lives (1989), explicitly attempted to evoke earlier hits, and
performed relatively poorly at the box office, making $11.8 million
and $35.2 million, respectively. In both cases, the films were sav-
aged by critics for lacking energy and invention. Canby, for instance,
found Fletch Lives to be “the bitter end of a worn-out series,” despite
only being the second installment.10 A watershed moment of sorts was
reached in 1991, as Chase again joined Aykroyd, this time to star in
Nothing But Trouble, a dark cartoonish comedy that Aykroyd wrote and
directed. Damned by Variety as “wretched excess,” the $40-million
budgeted film took just $8.5 million, since which Chase has not had a
film finish in the top seventy-five for its year.11
Away from Chase, a similar pattern can be seen in Aykroyd’s career,
with the added complication that he never developed a widely appeal-
ing persona as a solo star. After death dissolved his partnership with
Belushi, Akyroyd had hits with Eddie Murphy in Trading Places (1983),
Murray in Ghostbusters, Chase in Spies Like Us, Tom Hanks in Dragnet
(1987), and John Candy in The Great Outdoors (1988).12 The latter two
productions show the different approaches common to baby boom
comic stars after 1984. In both, though Aykroyd received top billing,
he relies upon his costar to build a connection with the viewer while
his own character incorporates traits that allow narratively excessive
performance and that are curtailed by the end of the film.
A semi-spoof of NBC’s long-running cop drama, Dragnet contin-
ued the promotion of the fun is good ideology. Aykroyd (who also
cowrote) plays Sergeant Joe Friday, nephew of the original show’s main
character. Schooled in his uncle’s emotionally reserved, by-the-book
style of law enforcement, Friday is appalled by his fun-loving, reckless
new partner Pep Streebeck, played by Hanks. Insubordinate, slovenly,
and sex-obsessed, Streebeck strongly resembles Hanks’ earlier role in
Bachelor Party (1984), one of the key examples of William Paul’s animal
comedy. As such, he remains essentially constant throughout the narra-
tive while encouraging Friday to lose his anachronistic attitude and his
virginity.13 Rated PG-13, the film shows the ongoing determination
to make baby boom experience (the Dragnet series ran from 1951 to
1959 and from 1967 to 1970) relevant for the next generation of youth.
A New York Times article on the film explained the makers’ thinking:
“Producers hope to draw two audiences: Adults who watched the series
as children and children who are made aware of the programs through
promotional materials ranging from T-shirts to lunch boxes and con-
stant re-runs on independent television stations.”14
The Great Outdoors, meanwhile, sought to replicate the family-
centered entertainment of Mr. Mom and the later Vacation films. Also
written by Hughes and rated PG, it features Candy as a bumbling father
who takes his wife and children on a cabin holiday. Aykroyd plays
Candy’s wealthy, pompous brother-in-law who unexpectedly brings
his family to the same location. A series of comic clashes follows, end-
ing with the revelation that Aykroyd’s character has lost his job and his
fortune.
In 1989, a new dimension was added to Aykroyd’s extra-fictional
persona when he won a supporting role in Driving Miss Daisy, a film
described by Variety as “a touching exploration of 25 years of change
in Southern race relations (1948–73).”15 Playing a son who coerces his
elderly mother into accepting a black chauffeur, Aykroyd was praised
for “shedding his smart-ass comic persona” and was rewarded with an
Oscar nomination for best supporting actor, one of nine nominations
the film received.16 Driving Miss Daisy was the ninth biggest hit of
1989, taking only $6 million less than Ghostbusters II (which is discussed
later). However, most of the publicity and credit for the film’s success
was focused on top-billed stars Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman.17
Like Chase, Aykroyd continued to predominantly appear in PG-13 and
R rated youth-orientated comedies, to diminishing returns at the box
office and in critical reception. My Stepmother is an Alien (1988), The
Couch Trip (1988), and Loose Cannons (1990) varied in their use of the
star from romantic lead to comic foil, but none ranked higher than sev-
entieth for their year. Since Nothing But Trouble, Aykroyd has appeared
in numerous comedies and dramas, but almost exclusively in secondary
roles.
For both Chase and Aykroyd, there are signs that in the late 1980s
there were attempts to associate the stars with different types of film
to those they had made directly after leaving SNL. These included
family comedies and more prestigious, dramatic fare. In both cases,
there is evidence that change was motivated by the personal prefer-
ences of the stars. Yet without high profile success in either field, their
ability to affect change was based on their continuing popularity in
youth-orientated comedies. Their failures in this area can be attributed
to a number of factors: a lower quality product resulting from cre-
ative indifference (Chase, for instance, now characterizes much of his
later output as unreturned “favors”), increasingly confused, contradic-
tory star personas, changing tastes of youth, and the widening age gap
between performers and their audience.18 No longer iconoclasts, Chase
and Aykroyd were unable to find compelling reasons for audiences to
see them any other way, effectively ending their careers as major stars.
Bill Murray’s Star Persona: The Razor’s

Edge to What About Bob?
In some respects, Murray’s post-Ghostbusters career mirrored those of his

SNL compatriots but with two important differences. His greater level
of early success enabled him to pursue new ventures more consistently
and, after a spectacular false start, these ventures proved profitable,
maintaining his position within the industry. With an unblemished
comedy track record, Murray was able to make demands in return for
making Ghostbusters. Principal amongst these was that Columbia first
finance an adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, star-
ring and cowritten by Murray. Released after Ghostbusters in October
1984, the film was marketed and reviewed as a departure for the star.
Murray himself drew a clear distinction between The Razor’s Edge and
his comic roles, recounting to Us magazine how he insisted on the
project, “Or there’ll be no more ‘Biggie Goes to College’ movies.”19
In these terms, Ghostbusters was a means to an end, not a film he was
personally interested in making.
Unfortunately for Murray, the destination of this personal journey
chimed with neither audiences nor critics. In The Razor’s Edge he plays
a volunteer American ambulance driver in World War I who spends the
years after the conf lict traveling Europe and Asia searching for his life’s
meaning. Through focusing on the acquisition of total self-knowledge,
the film is a logical progression from Murray’s comedy. Indeed, his
performance in The Razor’s Edge is remarkably consistent with his ear-
lier comic roles. Murray’s character is frequently consciously amusing,
for example, pretending to be a seal to impress a female acquaintance.
In an interview supporting the film’s U.K. release, Murray explained
the decision to retain elements of his comic persona, saying, “My expe-
rience in meeting people who are on some sort of search for anything is
that, the more they understand about themselves, the better their sense
of humor becomes. They gain a much wider viewpoint, because they
can laugh at themselves.”20
Yet such awareness was singled out by many reviewers as a funda-
mental problem. Roger Ebert, for instance, wrote, “But the f law in
this movie is that the hero is too passive, too contained, too rich in
self-irony, to really sweep us along in his quest.”21 Given a wide release
in 1,036 theaters, The Razor’s Edge grossed $6.5 million, ninety-eight
places behind Ghostbusters on the 1984 box office chart. As an isolated
incident it would be unfair to draw conclusions from the film’s failure
regarding Murray’s sensibility and its proximity to popular culture,
regardless of generation. Murray responded by temporarily withdraw-
ing from cinema, not appearing in another starring role until the release
of Scrooged in November 1988.
As with his shorter hiatus after Stripes, during the intervening years
Murray maintained connection with audiences through occasional
guest appearances on television and in a film, this time Little Shop of
Horrors (1986). In March 1987, he hosted Saturday Night Live. Both the
cold opening and monologue served to reestablish the original context
for his star persona in terms of opposition and difference. As the epi-
sode starts, Murray is informed that there is still one episode remaining
on his NBC contract and is coerced by Lorne Michaels into fulfilling
his obligation. For his monologue, Murray begins by acknowledging
and explaining his public absence (“I took some time off, got to know
my friends, my family a little bit, had a few dinners, a few drinks, a
glass of wine, the next thing you know a year’s gone. You reorder, you
have second helpings, and three years are gone.”) and then explains his
return as a response to the box office success of Crocodile Dundee (1987);
by hosting, he explains, he’s “gonna try to help this country regain her
natural, genetic, racial comic supremacy.” As with the conclusion of
Spies Like Us, the SNL brand of humor is being targeted abroad hav-
ing, apparently, achieved its aims domestically. Furthering the aura of
continuity, Murray reprised two of his original characters in Nick the
Lounge Singer and Honker, and returned to “Weekend Update” to
predict Oscar results.
Discounting the barely registered blip of The Razor’s Edge, it would
appear that the producers who enticed Murray back to the cinema were
hoping for the same consistency from their star. Discussing his decision
to pay Murray six million dollars to return to cinema with Scrooged,
the film’s producer Art Linson said, “For each year that Bill didn’t
work, his fee probably went up.”22 The film’s trailer attempted to draw
parallels with its star’s biggest hit, announcing, “Anyone who thinks
he hates Christmas is wrong; it’s ghosts he hates.” Before Scrooged’s
release, Murray also agreed to appear in a Ghostbusters sequel, a project
described by Dawn Steel, then president of Columbia Pictures as, “In
the dollars and cents point of view, it’s probably the most important,
eagerly awaited sequel in the history of Columbia Pictures.”23
However, in interviews supporting the releases of the films, Murray
discussed them as again distinct from his earlier work. While titled
“The Rumpled Anarchy of Bill Murray,” a lengthy article in the New
York Times found Murray discussing his Scrooged character in unapolo-
getically conciliatory terms: “He’s a crumb, a pig, yet audiences who
know the story know he’s going to change.” In the same piece he
expanded on this theme in relation to Ghostbusters II: “Like Scrooged,
it’s a story about innocence restored, and good values, and the power
of faith in ordinary people. It sounds corny but I’d like all my stuff
from here on out to be things you wouldn’t be afraid to let your kids’
kids discover decades from now.”24 To Starlog he explicitly described
how the Scrooged script was altered to meet his wishes, “There was a lot
I didn’t like. To remake the story, we took the romantic element and
built that up a little more. It existed in the script’s original version, but
we had to make more out of it.”25
Foregrounding family, romance, and “good values,” Murray’s inten-
tions for the films were very different to his output of the 1970s and
early 1980s, including The Razor’s Edge. Significantly, the impetus for
change came not from previous failure or a shift in industry thinking,
but from the personal priorities of the most powerful creative element.
In the case of Ghostbusters II, Murray’s views were echoed by his two
long-standing cinematic collaborators. For Harold Ramis, again cow-
riter and costar, the sequel was a “metaphor for urban decay . . . It’s just
our way of saying people need to come up with humane solutions.”26
As producer and director Ivan Reitman remarked, “I don’t want to
sound pretentious but the film is comforting to young people dealing
with the unknown.”27
Scrooged initially appears to offer a version of Murray, and surround-
ing range of attractions, very close to his Ghostbusters role. He plays
Frank Cross, “the youngest president in the history of television.” In the
opening scenes, Cross is shown ruling his network with equal helpings
of sarcasm and cynicism. During a board meeting, he berates his execu-
tives for failing to exploit viewers’ fears in promoting their upcoming
Christmas schedule. Scrooged is an updated version of A Christmas Carol
and, as such, Cross encounters four ghosts intent on showing him the
errors of his past, present, and projected future. They, too, are subjected
to Cross’s sarcastic wit as, familiar with Dickens’ story, he challenges
them to change him.
Despite the self-ref lexive premise, Scrooged sticks closely to A
Christmas Carol’s narrative structure, presenting its protagonist as some-
one whose worldview is in urgent need of alteration. Given the strong
connections between Cross and Murray’s earlier roles, the question
becomes whether the film believes the ideology of those previous films
to be wrong. To a large extent, this issue is circumvented by a general
tone of comic and dramatic hyperbole in Murray’s performance and
Cross’ character. Cross is portrayed as someone so invested in himself
that he has lost all empathy with other people. He is like a version of
Murray’s earlier characters from Ghostbusters and Stripes, but without
the outward-looking third act, someone who used his cynicism to find
success but then kept on going.
Unlike Murray’s earlier hits, Scrooged dwells on the negative con-
sequences of his selfishness. A recurring motif is Cross gulping down
tumblers of scotch to better cope with his situation. We see the unem-
ployed executive become a homeless drunk. Cross’s secretary, a widow
with several young children, struggles to provide for her family when
Christmas bonuses are revoked. A tramp Cross refuses to give two dol-
lars is later shown to have frozen to death. Though rich and powerful,
Cross is also lonely and bitter, alienated from his family and, we dis-
cover, still pining for a woman he met in his teens and then abandoned
to pursue his career. The woman is played by Karen Allen, and she is
essentially required to reprise her character from Animal House. Scenes
of Cross’ past show him and Allen first meeting in 1968, and while he
becomes increasingly self- and career-orientated, she remain altruistic.
In the present, Cross remarks more than once that Allen is “Still trying
to save the world.” Unlike in Animal House, in Scrooged Allen is shown
to have the correct outlook.
In presenting Cross’ transformation, Murray’s performance is mark-
edly different from his previous starring roles. Once the ghosts start to
appear, Murray signals their growing effectiveness by pushing Cross
closer and closer to hysteria as he begins to doubt his sanity. From
laughing with Cross, the film moves toward laughing at him, drawing
on Murray’s SNL-showcased skills for emphatic, unpredictable perfor-
mance. Clear separation is therefore evident between star and character;
we continue to laugh with Murray as the creator of Cross’ misfortune.
Scrooged ends with Cross hijacking his network’s live international
broadcast and making an impassioned speech on the importance of
family and friendship. As his argument builds, so does the intensity of
his delivery, until he is yelling and tears well in his eyes.28 This inspires
a mass sing-a-long of “Put A Little Love in your Heart.” As the end
credits appear on screen, Cross/Murray beckons to the film camera
and directly addresses the cinema audience. He begins by exclaiming,
“Feed me, Seymour, feed me,” a reference to Murray’s cameo in Little
Shop of Horrors, and an indication of some degree of break from Cross’
earlier emoting. He then directs different sections of the cinema audi-
ence to join in the singing, including, “You, who was making all the
noise through the whole movie.” The effect is twofold. On the one
hand, the viewer is invited to join in the community spirit. On the
other, Murray is able to distance himself from the embarrassments and
excesses of Cross’s travails by stating that he knew it was just a movie
all along.
On release, critics were divided about the wisdom of Murray’s
change in direction. Again impressed by Murray, Pauline Kael was one
of only a few major critics who endorsed the film as a whole, saluted
the star for “trying to take the kinks out of his soul—or, at least, out
of Bill Murray the hipster character’s soul.”29 More common among
generally positive responses were reviews such as Janet Maslin’s that
praised Murray’s initial comic performance (“the perfect comic sensi-
bility for the 80s: casually cynical, serenely mean-spirited, strictly out
for number one”) while ignoring or downplaying the reversal of the
final message.30 More common still, however, were reviews that found
Murray incompatible with the sentimentality of the original Dickens
material. Of these, David Denby, who lavished praise on Ghostbusters,
was particularly savage, finding the ending “ ‘sincere’ garbage that vio-
lates everything [Murray] has ever stood for.”31
Scrooged opened on November 23, well placed to take full advantage
of the Christmas period. In its first three days it grossed $13 million,
the fourth highest opening weekend of the year and an apparent vin-
dication of the producers’ faith in Murray, around whom all advertis-
ing was based. However, the film failed to sustain this level of public
interest, eventually taking $60.3 million, only the thirteenth biggest
release of 1988. In terms of tickets sold, this made Scrooged Murray’s
least successful film to date, representing 14.7 million customers, less
even than Meatballs (17.1 million) and just over a fifth of the numbers
achieved by Ghostbusters (68.2 million).32
Given Scrooged’s divergence from the established formula of Murray’s
earlier hits, its demise had little bearing on the projected success
of Ghostbusters’ sequel.33 As its “They’re back!” tagline indicated,
Ghostbusters II aimed to offer more of whatever 68.2 million ticket pur-
chasers found so attractive first time around. Yet while it features no
recantations on the scale or prominence of Scrooged, in its selection of
which of Ghostbusters’ components to replicate, which to expand, and
which to redress or discard, Ghostbusters II presents a different sensibil-
ity to its predecessor, a change described by Variety as “baby boomer
silliness as opposed to the juvenile silliness of the original.”34
Again offering a narrative where New York is threatened by an evil
being, the sequel makes two important changes. First, the evil (named
Vigo) is fueled by the negative emotions of the city’s inhabitants.
Second, the Ghostbusters’ reasons for intervening are personal rather
than professional. Since events in the first film, the business has gone
bankrupt and the Ghostbusters have moved on to different careers.
Venkman and Barrett have split up and Barrett has a young child from a
subsequent, short-lived marriage. It is only when the child becomes the
focus of the evil being’s plans that the Ghostbusters become involved,
and Venkman has a chance to patch up his relationship with Barrett.
In this new context, Venkman’s ironic disposition is used more for
comic relief than as a narrative focus. For instance, when their enquires
accidentally cause a citywide blackout, the team finds itself in court.
Venkman is put on the stand, but his bullying, joking performance
has no effect on the disbelieving, hostile judge. The Ghostbusters are
freed and allowed to practice their trade only when the ghosts of two
executed killers appear and attack the judge, enabling the Ghostbusters
to save him. Here, heroic action is effective where comic awareness is
not.35 In tandem with this increased prominence for the simple virtues
of visually exciting heroism, the film finds space to comment upon itself
in an extra-textual manner absent from the original. When a doorman
asks Harold Ramis’ Egon Spengler for a piece of equipment for his kid
brother, Spengler retorts, “a proton pack is not a toy,” an inside joke for
parents all too aware of the extensive range of Ghostbusters merchan-
dise—including proton packs—connected with the franchise. Here the
different possible readings of the line is typical of the distinct levels of
engagement Peter Krämer argues is central to family adventure movies,
providing a child-orientated narrative made palatable for adults.
Though blunted professionally, Murray’s self-aware humor still
proves effective romantically, and Barrett’s feelings for Venkman
retread their familiar passage from suspicion to smitten. The failure
of their previous union is explained as the result of a lack of commit-
ment on Venkman’s part, a lack he is shown to have corrected prior
to the start of this film. During his first scene with the baby, he says
“I could have been your father. I should have been.” A further subtle
alteration to Venkman is made when he takes Barrett to a restaurant (a
scene intercut with the other three Ghostbusters dealing with a river of
slime under Manhattan). She proposes a toast to “the most charming,
kindest and most unusual man I’ve ever broken up with.” While both
charming and unusual, at no point in Ghostbusters would it be easy to
call Venkman kind, yet the statement is made as long-standing fact.
Kindness is also the film’s solution to its other narrative strand. Alone,
the Ghostbusters are no match for Vigo. It is only when the people of
New York unite behind them that the combined force of goodwill is
enough to prevail. As in Scrooged, community and family are lauded
over individual success.
Ghostbusters II received largely cheerful, but few wholly positive
reviews. Several joined Variety in noting a gentler overall tone while
also chiding the makers for their lack of innovation. Even the most
negative of the major critics (in this case Newsweek’s David Ansen) was
in no doubt “it would be miraculous for this sequel to fall on its face.”36
In its opening weekend, it appeared any such miracles had been safely
avoided, as the film grossed $29.5 million, then the highest opening
weekend in history. Yet, as with Scrooged, initial interest quickly dwin-
dled; Ghostbusters II finished with $112.5 million, less than half that of
the original and, in terms of tickets sold, less popular than Stripes (28.3
million tickets compared to 30.7 million).
Different approaches again can be found in Murray’s next two proj-
ects, Quick Change (1990) and What About Bob? (1991). With Quick
Change, for the first time in his career, Murray also served as a producer
and director, sharing the former duties with Robert Greenhut and the
latter with the film’s writer, Howard Franklin. This was Murray’s first
R rated comedy since Stripes, and he retained his self-aware core per-
sona from that picture and the Ghostbusters films. However, Quick
Change’s thematic concerns were more consistent with his more recent
output. Murray plays Grimm, a town planner so sick of New York he
decides, together with his girlfriend (played by Geena Davis) and best
friend (Randy Quaid), to rob a bank and escape to Fiji. The actual
robbery, for which Grimm wears a clown costume, goes perfectly, the
trio slipping away from the scene undetected within the first twenty-
five minutes of the film. Their problems begin as they try to escape
the city to the airport. In rapid succession they encounter a series of
examples of why Grimm is so eager to leave: labyrinthine, menacing
streets; a married couple driven half insane by repeated break-ins; a
gun-wielding thief; an immigrant cab driver who speaks no English;
organized crime; petty public workers. Throughout, Grimm maintains
a wry commentary on the horrors around him, but his detachment has
no effect on his powerlessness.
Unlike Ghostbusters II, the film can conceive of no solution to the
city’s problems. Quick Change’s “happy” ending sees Grimm and his
companions make their plane and exit the country. Even Murray’s
heightened awareness cannot overcome America’s failings. Six years
after the domineering spirit of Ghostbusters, Quick Change revives
Murray’s focus on individual happiness, but now it is at the expense
of his engagement with the rest of society. As in Ghostbusters II, Quick
Change also introduces issues of family in a way that protects Murray’s
basic self-interest. From the outset, Davis’ character is pregnant and
looking for the right moment to inform Grimm. Finally imparted
in the film’s closing stages, the news is warmly received. Murray can
accept fatherhood thrust upon him, without the neediness planning for
a child might imply.
Although Variety was optimistic for Quick Change’s chances “given
the dirth of summer comedies,” it took just $4.7 million from 1,596
theaters in its opening weekend, finishing with $15.7 million, only the
eighty-second highest grossing film released in 1990. Critics were full
of praise for the imaginative heist, but could not agree on the effective-
ness of the capers that followed. In the New York Observer, Nicholas
Nicastro suggested the film had been poorly marketed: “Images of Mr.
Murray in his clown suit suggests this mostly grown-up comedy is
some kind of matinee.”37
With What About Bob? Murray was afforded the opportunity to cre-
ate a distinct comic character. In the film, Murray plays Bob Wiley,
a man beset with numerous psychological issues who latches himself
emotionally to whichever psychiatrist is unlucky enough to offer treat-
ment. As the film begins, the latest recipient of this dubious honor is Dr.
Leo Marvin, played by Richard Dreyfuss. Marvin has time for only one
meeting with Wiley before leaving on a month-long family vacation.
Unfortunately, Wiley is instantly obsessed with his new doctor, and
he resolves to track him to his holiday home. Murray’s performance as
Wiley represents a new variation of his impulsive hyperbole. In com-
fortable surroundings—essentially anywhere in immediate proximity to
Marvin or his family—he is relentless in his good cheer, cracking corny
jokes and exclaiming his gratitude for the marvelous effect Marvin has
had. But left alone, Wiley’s behavior is erratic and disruptive. This can
involve the onset of any of a bewildering array of psychological disor-
ders and a disregard for social conventions. Getting off a bus in the town
where Marvin’s home is located, Wiley immediately starts bellowing
out his psychiatrist’s name in the hope he might be nearby.
Whether comfortable or not, the humor of the characterization
comes from Wiley’s lack of self-censorship and his apparent oblivi-
ousness to the impression he gives to others. Just like his similar SNL
characters, it is possible to distinguish the excesses of Wiley from the
skill and control necessary from Murray to realize him. David Denby,
for instance, marveled that Murray “seems to be making up the per-
formance as he goes along,” an indication that the performance can
be enjoyed as a conscious creative act.38 Thus separated from the bag-
gage of Murray’s extra-fictional persona, the film is free to follow the
traditional comedian comedy structure, as Wiley gradually loses the
disruptive aspects of his personality. With the family as an anchor, Bob
becomes predictable and guileless, to the extent he marries Marvin’s
sister and, we are told in a closing burst of text, trains as a psychiatrist.
In the extremity of his winsomeness he remains a comic character, but
within social norms. Given a moderate release in 1,463 theaters, What
About Bob? opened with $9.2 million, and then continued on to make
$63.7 million, demonstrating greater staying power and selling a mar-
ginally greater number of tickets than Scrooged.39
After a four-year absence, Murray had returned with four films
attempting to modify the context in which his star persona was under-
stood. Through their opening weekends, Scrooged and Ghostbusters II
each demonstrated a strong, continuing public desire for Murray’s
comic talents, while their comparatively low final grosses and lukewarm
reviews can be argued as indicating dissatisfaction with the experience
they offered. In different ways, Scrooged, Ghostbusters II, and What About
Bob? removed Murray’s core persona from the center of their narra-
tives. Either through mis-marketing or its downbeat subject matter,
Quick Change proved an anomalous commercial failure. All four films
articulate some degree of lack of compassion in contemporary relation-
ships that requires addressing, without directly implicating Murray’s
persona as a cause.
Revision of Bill Murray’s Star Persona
in Groundhog Day
With Groundhog Day, Murray finally brought the corrective, inclusive

project evident in Scrooged, Ghostbusters II, and What About Bob? to his
extra-fictional SNL persona. The film marked his sixth—and to date
final—collaboration with Harold Ramis, who directed and rewrote
the original screenplay by Danny Rubin. In narrative and theme,
Groundhog Day most resembles Scrooged; Murray plays a cynical, career-
orientated member of the television industry who is forced through
an unexplained supernatural manipulation of time to reassess his val-
ues and become a “better” person. Where the films differ is that in
Groundhog Day, he plays a Pittsburgh weatherman forced to relive the
same day over and over again. More importantly, the version of Murray
in Groundhog Day bears a much closer resemblance to his earlier work
with Ramis than the manic jabbering that predominated in Scrooged.
The parameters of Murray’s comic performance in Groundhog Day
are precisely defined in the opening scene. Murray’s character, Phil
Connors, is introduced in the middle of presenting a forecast using
a blue screen. We see that Connors is a skilled and self-aware pre-
senter, lightly mocking the dullness of his subject while still including
necessary information (“Over California they’re going to have some
warm weather tomorrow, gang wars and very over-priced real estate”).
During the forecast he remains upbeat, maintaining without discern-
able irony the underlying performed enthusiasm expected of local news
broadcasting.
This slips when he returns to the news desk to inform the show’s
viewers of his impending trip to cover the annual Groundhog Day fes-
tivities in nearby Punxatawney. Apparently as banter, the news anchor
brightly observes this will be Connors’ third year attending the event.
Suddenly struggling to hide his contempt, Connors corrects her that
this will be his fourth time in Punxatawney. While the anchor wishes
viewers goodnight, Connors keeps a joyless half-smile fixed on his face,
springing up and away from the desk the moment the all-clear is given.
Free from the television camera, Connors lashes out at his coworkers
with withering sarcasm. In this black mood, he is shown his new pro-
ducer for the Groundhog trip, Rita, played by Andie MacDowell. Like
Connors, Rita is also introduced against the blue screen. In contrast to
his deft manipulation of the technology, she appears delighted by it,
her blue coat making her head and hands appear to f loat on the moni-
tors. Catching sight of her, Connors raises an eyebrow in interest and
watches her play for a moment, the slightest f licker of a smile begin-
ning to form at the corner of his mouth. Then she realizes she is being
observed and laughs in embarrassment. Again the focus of attention,
Connors remembers himself, checks left and right for an audience, and
responds to an observation that Rita is fun with a derisive, “Not my
kind of fun.”
He is capable, therefore, of two levels of performance, the first
ref lecting self-awareness, the second self-denial. It is the nature of this
second level that distinguishes Groundhog Day from Murray’s earlier
work.40 Connors’ outward demeanor and attitude are very similar to
those of Murray’s characters in Stripes and Ghostbusters, John Winger
and Peter Venkman. What Groundhog Day does, at first subtly, and then
with increasing force, it to indicate that in some respects the cynical
distance in Murray’s persona is artificial, and that in maintaining this
pose, it is Connors, not society at large, that has missed the point.
Once the film leaves Pittsburgh for Punxatawney, Murray’s long-
standing persona remains at the fore for the next forty-six minutes of
screen time. On route to the town, Rita counters Connors’ objections
to their assignment, insisting that people like the Groundhog festival.
Connors retorts, “You know, people like blood sausage too; people are
morons.” Again, Murray’s character is setting himself apart from and
above mainstream society based on criteria of intelligence and percep-
tion. During the film’s early stages he reiterates this belief with varying
degrees of specificity, applying the “moron” label to two local hecklers
and referring to the entire town as “hicks.” In the majority of scenes,
the viewer is invited to join Connors in this position of superiority
as he mocks the comically exaggerated happiness and naivety of the
townsfolk. All greet Connors with unrestrained enthusiasm, which he
proceeds to sarcastically undermine without them realizing.
Having covered the main Groundhog ceremony, Connors, Rita,
and their cameraman are prevented from leaving Punxatawney by
an unpredicted snowstorm (further evidence of Connors’ fallibility).
Waking in the B&B on what he presumes to be the next day, the
first sign that Connors is reliving the previous day again is his radio
playing the same song, “I Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher. The
song becomes a symbol of Connors’ loathing of his predicament. For
Murray’s persona, the selection is interesting because of Sonny and
Cher’s close association with the type of general audience, family-
orientated entertainment SNL was intended to counteract.41 Indeed,
The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour (CBS, 1971–74) was cancelled the
year prior to SNL’s premiere.
Faced with living the same day again, Connors’ reaction is entirely
rational. The first time it happens, his principal emotions are anger,
bemusement, and unease as he alternately blames human error, con-
spiracy, and extended deja vu. The second time, wholly understand-
able fear is evident, though more at the state of his own mind than at a
f law in the external world. Although, in his distress, Connors’ actions
are now occasionally unintentionally comic, he remains aware of how
absurd he must appear. By the end of the second repetition, after unsat-
isfactory consultations with a doctor and psychiatrist, he has begun to
accept his problem is real. Sitting, late at night, in a bowling alley with
the two heckling “morons” from earlier, he muses about why he should
get stuck in this particular, miserable day. Thinking back, he recalls a
better time: “I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lob-
ster. Drank pinocaladas. At sunset we made love, like sea otters. That
was a pretty good day. Why couldn’t I get that day over, and over, and
over?” Apparently, the identity of the girl is not important; Connors
identifies happiness as physical: sun, food, drink, and sex.
These priorities continue once he becomes aware of the potential
advantages of his situation. Without a tomorrow his actions have no
consequence. He now literally expresses his outlook in terms of dif-
ference and rebellion, excitedly exclaiming, “I’m not going to live by
their rules any more,” as he slams a car he is driving into postboxes and
signs. In a café, he orders the entire menu, gorging himself while Rita
looks on in disgust. Notably, it is during his discussion of this section
that Ryan Gilbey, in his monograph on Groundhog Day, elects to discuss
Murray’s star image, quoting Pauline Kael, “We like Murray because
of his oddity and because he seems so fundamentally untrustworthy.”42
At this stage, Murray has the jump on everyone, and immediately sets
about abusing his unique circumstance.
Able to repeat encounters indefinitely, Connors’ first targets are sex
and money. In the café, he quizzes an unknown woman about her
school days, using the information on the next repetition to feign famil-
iarity and get her into bed. Similar tactics are evident when he exploits
a moment of confusion involving the drivers of a security van. Timing
their reactions, he is able to pick up and walk away with a bag of money
completely unnoticed. In spending the money, Connors reveals himself
to share Murray’s predilection for off-beat public performance, arriv-
ing to a date in a white Roles Royce, dressed and sounding like a Clint
Eastwood cowboy.
Most of the film’s coverage of Connors’ selfish manipulation of
the time loop, however, is dedicated to his pursuit of Rita. From the
beginning of the film, he has expressed his attraction in typical Murray
fashion, insisting that Rita adores him despite her protestations to the
contrary. Now armed with the ability to learn her likes and interests,
Connors embarks on a coordinated campaign to win her over, with sex
still his goal. Across an unspecified number of repetitions, he adapts to
her responses, disingenuously claiming interest in vermouth, French
poetry, and world peace.
Yet Groundhog Day does not allow such behavior to be successful.
Connors succeeds in constructing what, for Rita, constitutes a perfect
date, ending with them dancing alone on a bandstand in the snow.
Though he has lied a great deal to get here, Connors’ shared delight
in the moment appears genuine. However, as Rita tries to bring the
evening to a close, he tries to push for sex. She objects good-naturedly,
until he claims he loves her. It is apparent from Connors’ delivery that
he does not think he means it, and for Rita, who has only known
him for a day, the claim rings entirely false. She finds no charm in
Connors’ insincerity, angrily telling him, “I can’t believe I fell for this
[. . .] I could never love anyone like you, Phil, because you could never
love anyone but yourself.” Connors replies, “That’s not true, I don’t
even like myself.” At the time, his protestation seems part of the act,
an attempt to rectify his error. But as further Groundhog Days pass,
his words become true if they were not already. In montage, we see
Connors’ numerous efforts to recreate his previous near success, all
ending in an indignant slap from Rita as his contrived spontaneity fails
to convince. Conceding defeat, Connors becomes depressed and bitter,
struggling to leave the hotel, tormented by Sonny and Cher.
This turn in the plot is not unexpected. Throughout, while
Connors’ cynicism is presented as legitimately appealing, like Scrooged,
Groundhog Day is always careful to show its negative side. Unlike Stripes,
Ghostbusters, or even Scrooged, awareness alone is not enough to secure
career advancement. Early in the film Connors complains, “Some day,
someone’s going to see me interviewing a groundhog and think I don’t
have a future.” He is alone and unhappy in his job. On each repeti-
tion he is approached by an old man begging in the street. His natural
reaction is to pretend to look for change and walk on. Any doubt that
Connors’ meanness could simply be the result of haste is dispelled dur-
ing the section when he is enjoying the time loop as he brightly assures
the old man, “Catch you tomorrow, Pops.” According to the film’s
moral code, Connors suppresses sentiment and empathy, traits he pro-
fesses to deplore in others. Though we never discover how the time
loop is occurring to him, by the conclusion there is no doubt why, as he
is freed the moment he learns to put others before himself. However,
a sign of how deeply entrenched the film believes his problems to be is
that suicide is a more natural response than change.
One morning, utterly bereft of motivation, Connors associates his
plight with the groundhog itself, kidnapping the animal and driving
them both off a cliff to their death. When he still wakes up the next
(same) day, there follows another montage, now of suicide attempts.
Only when it appears Connors is trapped for eternity does he con-
fide in Rita about his situation, using his impossible knowledge of the
townsfolk’s lives as evidence. The two bond discussing his experiences.
They end up in Connors’ room, lying on the bed, but all he now wants
is companionship. He tells Rita, “The worst part is you’ll have forgot-
ten all about this [in his tomorrow] and you’ll think I’m a jerk again.”
The statement implies that Connors has already changed, but when
Rita tries to comfort him he adds, “That’s alright, I am a jerk,” indicat-
ing improvements still need to be made.
The scene ends with Rita asleep on Connors’ shoulder. He is reading
a book of poetry, a pastime of Rita’s he had earlier mocked. Finishing a
passage, he turns to her and confides in a heartfelt whisper:
I think you’re the kindest, sweetest, prettiest person I’ve ever met
in my life. I’ve never seen anyone who’s nicer to people than you
are, and the first time I saw you something happened to me. I
never told you, but I wanted to hold you as hard as I could. I don’t
deserve someone like you, but if I ever could, I swear I would love
you for the rest of my life.
For Connors and Murray’s persona, this is an important event. Nothing

about Murray’s tentative, earnest delivery suggests any distance between
him and his character’s perspective. Within the fictional world, the fact
that Connors waits until Rita is asleep before addressing her indicates
the difficultly and newness of unguardedly expressing his feelings.
Suddenly, kindness and sweetness have supplanted the supposedly pro-
tective insincerity that drove him to suicide.
Awaking alone, Connors has a new resolve to help others rather than
himself. He gives the old man all his money, and brings coffee, pastries,
and enthusiasm to the filming of the groundhog ceremony, much to
the surprise of Rita and Larry the cameraman. When he commenced
his seduction of Rita, Connors asked her to describe her ideal man. In
the view of Kristin Thomson, “The image she paints is essentially the
popular 1980s feminist notion of the caring, sharing male: unashamed
to cry; sharing housework and child rearing; artistic, sensitive, and
kind.”43 Rita’s answer included the ability to play a musical instrument.
Now seeking to improve himself for her, he visits a local piano teacher,
paying her one thousand dollars for an immediate lesson. A third mon-
tage shows Connors mixing altruism with self-improvement.
Connors’ last Groundhog Day is a catalogue of good deeds: chang-
ing tires; saving lives; lighting cigarettes. It culminates in a town party
where he plays virtuoso piano and is thanked and congratulated by a
cross-section of Punxatawney residents. Cajoled into entering a bach-
elor auction, he is won by a beguiled Rita. Out in the snow, he again
asserts his love for her, but this time the frankness of his demeanor
convinces and they kiss. The film cuts to Connors awaking having
made it to tomorrow, Rita in the bed beside him. Reinforcing the
theme of heart and soul over mind and body, it is made clear sex was
not on Connors’ mind, Rita reacting to his delight in her continuing
presence saying, “Why weren’t you like this last night? You just went
to sleep.” As they move outside, Connors’ final four utterances high-
light the journey he has taken. Still in the bed, he asks Rita, “Is there
anything I can do for you, today?” placing her happiness first. Outside,
he is taken aback by the new fallen snow, stating, “It’s so beautiful,”
acknowledging his own feelings. As they walk down the stairs, he
announces, “Let’s live here,” suggesting he now places community
and friendship ahead of his career. After another kiss he adds, “We’ll
rent to start.”
This qualifying final line provides reassurance that although he is
happy, ecstatic even, Connors has not lost his sense of perspective.44 As
Roger Ebert noted in his 2005 reappraisal of the film for his “Great
Movies” series, “Phil undergoes his transformation but never loses his
edge. He becomes a better Phil, not a different Phil.”45 Through the cli-
mactic party scene, and Connors’ successful wooing of Rita, Groundhog
Day retains the sense of triumph from Murray’s earlier work.46 While
the film preaches community, Murray’s persona still makes him excep-
tional. Connors is the best at being humble.
As Ryan Gilbey has observed, Groundhog Day’s reputation has grown
steadily in recent years so that it now regularly features on “best of ”
lists such as Ebert’s.47 On its release on February 12, 1993, reviews
were warm rather than ecstatic and the American public responded
accordingly: Groundhog Day grossed $70.9 million (representing a fur-
ther million ticket sales over What About Bob?), the thirteenth biggest
hit of 1993. But what was Murray to do next? By suggesting that, for
all his supposed awareness, the long-standing Murray persona does not
understand himself, Groundhog Day undermines the disruptive appeal
of his characters’ initial stance, making them seem less daring than mis-
guided. Ultimately, Groundhog Day not only provides an alternative to
Murray’s all-conquering cynicism, it argues it was never viable, a situa-
tion with which Murray would appear to concur, given his decision to
make the film and to use a close proximity to his SNL and early-film
self as the basis for Connors.
Since Groundhog Day, Murray has maintained a diverse presence
in American film, from Polonius in a modern day Hamlet (2000) to
himself in Michael Jordan–Bugs Bunny team-up Space Jam (1996). If
there is a predominant trend to his willfully eclectic selections, it has
been toward what Jeffrey Sconce terms “New Smart Cinema.”48 In
Rushmore (1998), Lost in Translation (2003), The Life Aquatic with Steve
Zissou (2004), and Broken Flowers (2005), Murray offers sadder, more
sedentary versions of his core persona, sharing Phil Connors’ failings
but not allowed his magical redemption. Often critically lauded, these
films reach only a limited audience; the most popular to feature Murray
in a leading role, Lost in Translation, was the sixty-seventh biggest hit for
its year. Groundhog Day, therefore, remains a fitting final unqualified
mainstream hit for The Not Ready for Primetime Players.
Having looked at the careers of The Not Ready for Primetime
Players from the 1970s, across the 1980s, and into the 1990s, there are
clearly patterns in the types of film made by former stars of SNL and
the extent of their success at the domestic box office. The cast members
who attained a degree of lasting film stardom originally did so through
broadly representational performance offering characters based upon
their extra-fictional personas as hip, self-aware creators of comedy. In
this context the largely presentational approach of their work on SNL
was included as clearly marked, conscious acts of performance by the
characters within the fiction.
Beginning in the mid-1980s, however, this approach began to lose
its luster, both for the stars and for their prospective audiences. Tales
of social and cultural insurrection were old news to SNL’s original
fans, many of whom, like its creators, were now approaching middle
age. The result was a shift in focus from establishing social position to
smaller scale concerns such as interpersonal relationships and mental
well-being. In terms of narrative trajectory, if not always in tensions
between performance and character, these films more closely resemble
Seidman’s tradition, as the comedian star begins the films emotionally
outside society’s conventions, gradually learning to curb his excessive
traits.
While none of these films approached the levels of success of Animal
House and Ghostbusters, they continued to find substantial audiences. As
a result, representations of baby boom experience continued to form a
major strand of Hollywood comedy into the 1990s. In the next chapter,
I show that, over the following decade, subsequent SNL casts rein-
forced rather than challenged this emphasis. During the 1980s, only
two major film stars, Eddie Murphy and Billy Crystal, were produced
by the show. Both fit into the same trends, and appealed to many of
the same audience groups as their predecessors, The Not Ready for
Primetime Players.
CH A P T E R F I V E
“Age Is a Tough One for Me”: Selling

Saturday Night Live in the 1980s
For his monologue beginning the final episode of SNL’s fifth season
on May 24, 1980, host Buck Henry announced that the show would
be returning for a sixth year, but with an entirely new cast. He then
proceeded to introduce the new team, one of whom proudly sported
a jumper with “I’m Lee Mayman and you’re not” emblazoned on the
front. All of them, Henry insisted, would be preparing by spending
the summer at NBC’s comedy camp in upstate New York. Neither the
identities of the replacement cast, nor their program of training was
genuine, merely providing a source of humor for Henry’s monologue,
yet the awkward, overtly corporate tone of the presentation accurately
ref lected the dilemma facing NBC in the summer of 1980.
As I have argued, regardless of the actual views of the network’s exec-
utives, SNL had originally succeeded in presenting itself as challenging
the established televisual order. It was in this context that backstage
aspects of the show, including the personas of the cast as creators and
trailblazers, became instrumental to its success. In turn, Belushi, Chase,
Aykroyd, and Murray were able to repeat their television achievements
in a series of hit films. After five seasons, however, the trail had been
well and truly blazed. In May 1980, Variety revealed SNL was NBC’s
most profitable show not in primetime.1 As an established franchise,
SNL’s outsider image became difficult to justify, gradually leading to
changes in the show’s focus and its relationship with viewers.
This chapter considers the different ways in which SNL was posi-
tioned and sold during the 1980s and the resulting impact these deci-
sions had on the careers of cast members. In contrast to the glut of
stars produced in the first five years, over the next decade only two
SNL cast members—Eddie Murphy and Billy Crystal—were able
to convert their exposure on the show into bona fide film stardom.
Notably, both tapped into the same demographic and cultural trends
outlined in the previous two chapters focusing on Bill Murray. From
1980 to 1984, Murphy replayed the comedy of division practiced by
his predecessors with a new emphasis on race. Arriving on the show in
1984, Crystal proved adept at exploring baby boom fears as the genera-
tion approached middle age. After Crystal’s departure in 1985, SNL
achieved a new stability through a fundamental shift in emphasis, away
from self-reference and star performers toward the topicality, variety,
and execution of individual sketches.2
Eddie Murphy, Race, and Superstardom
The 1980–81 season of SNL was inconvenienced by the departure of

not only the cast, but also, with very few exceptions, the writing and
production staff. The new cast, comprising of the same three men/
three women split as the original one (though all were white), therefore
had to contend with winning over and retaining an unusually large
audience for the time slot without any reassurance that their mate-
rial was suitable for the task. Before the season began, press coverage
focused on how the new arrivals compared to their predecessors. The
New York Post, for instance, reporting on rehearsals for the season pre-
miere, found that Charles Rocket “seems to have taken on the Bill
Murray-type roles” while Gil Gottfried “is the man with dozens of
voices and characters—like Dan Aykroyd.” Joe Piscopo was used “as
John Belushi was, to freak out, yell, add passion to skits.”3 Once the
first show aired, however, press attention moved to issues of quality
and taste. For Kay Gardella most of the premiere “was so disgusting
and tasteless that throwing up would have been a compliment.”4 John
J. O’Connor noted a similar tendency, writing, “It has now become a
question of how far commercial television can go compared with per-
missive cable television.”5
In this climate, discussion of the show remained at the level of nega-
tively comparing the current season to the past, rendering irrelevant
attempts in episodes to build the personas of individual cast members
in a manner similar to when SNL began. Rocket, selected as anchor
of “Weekend Update,” was at the center of many of these efforts. On
February 21, for example, the show staged a Dallas (CBS, 1978–91)
Selling SNL in the 1980s 117
style assassination attempt on his life having given other cast members
motives to kill him. Reaction from viewers followed the view of crit-
ics, albeit to a less damning extent. From an average 12 rating and a 36
percent share for the fifth season, SNL’s sixth year fell to an average of
8.9 and 28 percent.6 In an April 1981 article labeling the season “the
debacle of the year,” TV Guide reported that bad press had forced NBC
to halve the price of thirty-second commercials on the show from sixty
thousand to thirty thousand dollars.7
Though little short of disastrous for NBC, and for SNL’s new pro-
ducer Jean Doumanian, this downturn in the show’s fortunes provided
the ideal backdrop for the rise of Eddie Murphy. Murphy, born in
1961, was nineteen when he was hired as a supporting player for the
sixth season, having performed stand-up around New York for the
previous three years. In sketches, he was initially confined to walk-on
parts, or supporting roles when a black character was deemed necessary.
But beginning with the third episode he appeared regularly as a cor-
respondent on “Weekend Update,” often speaking on issues of race and
class. In the first of these appearances, Murphy argued against a ruling
in Cleveland that high-school basketball teams must include at least
two white players (“I don’t see no judge saying that every two bath-
room attendants have to be white”). Later topics included the benefits
of eating dog food for the poor and a loophole in the Emancipation
Proclamation allowing whites to reclaim black slaves.
Positive audience reaction led to Murphy starring in sketches, which
again were well received.8 Doumanian elected to highlight Murphy’s
ascendance, including a segment in the January 24, 1981, episode where
Murphy announced to viewers that he had been promoted to full cast
member. At the end of the season Doumanian was fired along with her
entire cast, with the exceptions of Murphy and Piscopo. Dick Ebersol,
the NBC executive most involved in SNL’s creation, was brought back
to produce the show. As reported by Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad,
his approach involved rekindling a sense of continuity with SNL’s
origins.9 Several writers were persuaded to return including Michael
O’Donoghue and Al Franken (both of whom also had an on-camera
presence) and in Ebersol’s first season Chase, Murray, and Belushi made
appearances.
Continuing in essentially the same form with the same emphasis
in tone and content as it always had meant the criteria for judging
SNL’s success remained in the two categories used for the sixth season:
the personas and talent of the cast, and the quality and innovation of
the material they presented. Though the live format and the show’s
structure still emphasized a sense of narrative around making the show,
this now was restricted to the micro level of relationships between cast
and hosts and SNL’s history. To a large extent the macro narrative of
SNL’s position within television and the wider culture was lost. The
major exception was Murphy who, in his willingness to use race as a
source of humor, can be seen as a continuation of the attitude toward
sex, drugs, and politics from the earlier seasons. An early recognition
of Murphy’s standing came from James Walcott in the New Yorker who
wrote at the beginning of the seventh season that Murphy, “who com-
bines sass and ease with a low-key friendliness, is a young black comic
and impressionist who seems capable of giving the entire history of
black television an inspired goosing.”10
Notably, this included SNL’s past treatment of race. Although
Garrett Morris was one of the original players, he had struggled to rise
above the role of black utility actor, unsupported by writers and unable
to self-generate material. A brief indication of the first era’s attitude
toward race can be found in the Buck Henry sketch mentioned at the
start of this chapter. In Henry’s faux-cast the only black member is a
short, bouncily enthusiastic woman, yet Henry still labels her “the next
Garrett Morris,” suggesting gender, physical appearance, and person-
ality are eradicated by race. Still in his first season, Murphy made his
opposition to such thinking explicit, using a “Weekend Update” slot
to argue against being drafted on the grounds that he was needed to
“The Black Guy” on the show. As an alternative he offered the draft
board, “a guy whose very name scares the hell out of me,” holding up
a picture of Morris.
Analyzing Murphy’s later stand-up films Delirious (1983) and Raw
(1987), Bambi L. Haggins suggests that “Murphy’s routines used the
blue tone of Richard Pryor (particularly in terms of language and sexu-
ally explicit content) while excising his socio-political edge.”11 Pryor
famously had a difficult relationship with network television, being
subjected to a four-second delay when hosting SNL and having his
own 1977 NBC show cancelled after four episodes. The Pryor/Murphy
relationship can be considered similar to that between SNL and the
Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour discussed in chapter one; for Murphy the
subject of race was a way to entertain, rather than entertainment being
a way to raise the subject of race. This can be seen in one of Murphy’s
most high profile SNL characters, a grown-up version of The Little
Rascals’ Buckwheat. The Little Rascals was a collection of Hal Roach
and MGM live action shorts made between 1929 and 1944 that were
broadcast in syndication on American television from the mid-1950s.
They conformed to the racial stereotypes of the period of their produc-
tion, with the black Buckwheat being easily scared, naïve, and capable
of only garbled English. Yet Murphy’s character finds humor only in
Buckwheat’s absurd dialect and appearance without addressing their
implications.
With regard to Murphy’s more accusatory material delivered direct
to camera, such as the “Weekend Update” segments mentioned ear-
lier, issues of performance and audience once again become para-
mount. Considering Morris’ distinctly secondary role on SNL, there
was little to directly attract and, as Murphy’s comments indicate,
much to actively repel black audiences. Though Murphy’s prominence
assumedly brought a larger black audience to SNL, he was still alone in
an otherwise white cast.12 Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude
that fans of the show remained predominantly white.13 Certainly, this
appears to have been Murphy’s own conception of his audience; receiv-
ing a round of applause for a January 1983 “Weekend Update” piece
chastising Ronald Reagan for opposing a Martin Luther King holiday,
Murphy adlibbed, “You see, Ron, this is white people clapping.” For
white viewers, laughing with Murphy’s humor and delivery was con-
sistent with the supposed superior awareness central to SNL’s success.
Appreciating his jokes, applauding his opinions, distanced the viewer
from the prejudice and racism he identified. An important aspect of
Murphy’s persona was his propensity to grin during or at the end of even
his angriest sketches and routines, offering reassurance that he was only
joking. Reporting on Murphy’s popularity in Newsweek, Gene Lyons
noted, “When he smiles he can get away with almost anything.”14
Of course, making discrimination safe to laugh at runs the risk of
insinuating it is no longer a problem. It can be argued that the nar-
rative of Murphy’s success presented on SNL and portrayed in other
media reinforced this conception. After the early announcement of his
promotion to cast member status, ongoing developments in his career
continued to feature on SNL. By far the most sustained example came
midway through the 1982–83 season following the release of Murphy’s
first film, 48 Hrs. on December 8, 1982. Murphy’s costar in the film,
Nick Nolte, was supposed to host SNL the following Saturday, but
dropped out due to illness.15 Murphy was selected by Ebersol as a
replacement and began the episode by explaining the situation to view-
ers. The explanation ended with him announcing, “Live from New
York, it’s the Eddie Murphy Show” to a rapturous reception from the
studio audience. Murphy’s total domination of SNL appeared to con-
firm that talent knew no boundaries.
Even after Murphy left the show in 1984, the public fascination
with his success remained. As P. J. Bebnarski commented in February
1985,
A very real part of the whole Eddie Murphy act is watching him
get rich. I find it exhilarating. A street-wise middle-class black
who lives in New Jersey in a home decorated by his mom becomes
a tycoon. It’s a fantasy, and Eddie Murphy’s fans want to be a part
of it.16
In the context of the previous SNL stars to move into cinema, it is sig-
nificant that Murphy’s early film roles essentially told variations of this
“fantasy,” thereby requiring Murphy to present his “street-wise,” self-
aware extra-fictional persona rather than one of his comic characters.
Moreover, because of the speed of his rise to stardom, he was being sold
at the same time, to at least some of the same audiences as his predeces-
sors, Murray, Chase, Belushi, and Aykroyd.
All of Murphy’s first five hits, 48 Hrs., Trading Places (1983), Beverly
Hills Cop (1984), The Golden Child (1986), and Beverly Hills Cop II (1987),
feature similar narrative goals and values, and a similar elision of the
line separating star persona and character as identified in the major hits
of The Not Ready for Primetime Players. In each, Murphy begins the
narrative outside a particular social order and proceeds through supe-
rior understanding and intelligence to succeed within and improve that
order. In 48 Hrs. he plays Reggie Hammond, an imprisoned criminal
who is released for forty-eight hours to help catch two murderers with
whom he was previously associated. Hammond agrees to assist as the
murderers in question are searching for a hidden five hundred thousand
dollars he had expected to collect on release from prison. By the end of
the film, Hammond has helped Nolte’s police detective slay their two
targets, provoked Nolte to reassess and apologize for his casual racism,
and secured the money.
In Trading Places, Murphy was teamed with Aykroyd as, respec-
tively, a homeless man and a stockbroker who are unknowingly forced
to switch roles by Aykroyd’s employers to satisfy a bet. When they
realize they have been tricked, the pair join forces to ruin their per-
secutors, in the process making themselves millions. While Aykroyd
received top-billing, Trading Places again shows the lack of defini-
tion around his star persona, as his character, Louis Winthorpe III,
begins the film a conceited bore who must learn to abandon his clas-
sist preconceptions. Murphy’s Billy Ray Valentine, remains largely
consistent throughout the narrative, and it is he who devises their
method of revenge.
48 Hrs opened moderately with $4.4 million (the twenty-fourth
highest opening of 1982), perhaps ref lecting SNL’s limited exposure
at the time, but found favor with audiences, finishing with $78.9 mil-
lion, the seventh highest gross of the year.17 Trading Places began with
$7.3 million, ultimately taking $90.4 million, the fourth biggest hit of
1983 and more than 50 percent more successful than Aykroyd’s biggest
hit with Belushi, The Blues Brothers (1980). Both films’ box office were
dwarfed by the $15.2 million opening weekend and $234.8 million
final gross of Beverly Hill Cop, Murphy’s first film as a solo star. In it,
Murphy plays Axel Foley, a Detroit police detective who journeys to
Beverly Hills to solve the murder of a friend. There, Foley clashes with
the “by-the-book” methods of the almost exclusively white Beverly
Hills police department, finally overcoming their restrictions to catch
the killer and smash a connected drug smuggling network.18 Like
Stripes and Ghostbusters, a big part of Beverly Hills Cop’s appeal comes
from watching the star triumph in a hostile environment. Fittingly,
in 1985 Murphy replaced Murray as cinema exhibitors’ second most
popular star.19
At this juncture, it is necessary to point out some differences between
Murphy and other SNL stars of the period. Just months before Beverly
Hills Cop, Ghostbusters achieved an almost identical gross ($5 million
less) with a PG rating and attractions for a family audience. Beverly Hills
Cop was rated R and featured graphic violence, nudity, and language,
indicating a good proportion of its gross came from different sources.
Moreover, in the course of his investigation, Foley gains access to a
number of locations by changing his identity, providing a space for
Murphy to display a range of comic characterizations. Currently (ca.
October 2009) the highest grossing domestic star in Hollywood history
(in unadjusted dollars), Murphy requires and deserves further analysis
of his appeal across boundaries of race and class and the appeal of his
comic talent as virtuoso spectacle than can be done justice here.20
Still, I maintain that a vital facet of Murphy’s appeal can be found in
the apparent desire among some American audiences to see the social
change of the previous two decades in a positive light. After Beverly Hills
Cop, Murphy’s next film was The Golden Child, released in America
in December 1986. At one point in the narrative it is complained of
Murphy’s character (a private detective named Chandler Jarrell), “he
believes in nothing,” an apparent truth that is countered, “but still he
does what is right.” This chimes with the message of Murray’s hits of
the period where, having challenged blind faith in the wisdom of tra-
ditional institutions, the self-aware comedian hero instinctively knows
what is best for society. However, the plot of The Golden Child took
Murphy away from the contemporary urban setting of his previous
three hits into a fantasy based on ancient Eastern mysticism. Removed
from his audiences’ experience, Murphy’s wisecracks lacked their cul-
tural power. The film was both initially less enticing than Beverly Hills
Cop, taking $11.5 million in its first three days, and much less popu-
lar in the long term, grossing $79.8 million (the eighth biggest hit of
1985).
Also like Murray, it must be noted that to achieve a tone of final
triumph Murphy’s films rely on contradictions, cheats, and omissions.
As Haggins and Ed Guerrero have argued, whether for black or white
audiences there are significant limitations placed on the narratives of
black ascendancy.21 Murphy may be shown as better than his white
counterparts in awareness, intelligence, humor, and attractiveness, but
he is kept separate from other black characters and at the end of the nar-
ratives is once again removed from the society he positively disrupts.
In 48 Hrs. Hammond, though wealthy, returns to prison at the end of
the film. In Trading Places, Valentine and Winthorpe use their money
to move to the Caribbean. Having made Beverly Hills a safer place,
Foley goes back to Detroit. As Guerrero states, “while Murphy gets the
upper hand, the ultimate result of such a challenge is integration and
acceptance on white terms.”22
Returning to 48 Hrs., Guerrero looks at some length at what he
considers, “by far the most analyzed and instructive scene,” where
Hammond borrows Nolte’s character’s police badge and “violently
crashes and interrogates the entire clientele of a ‘redneck’ country and
western bar.” In Guerrero’s view,
Murphy’s scene is deceptive; it seems to contradict the racial order

of the film [. . .] But the scene actually makes the argument that
if blacks were to attain institutional authority, and by implica-
tion social equality, they would behave as brutally to whites as
they have historically been treated by them. [. . .] the scene dem-
onstrates why blackness is to be feared and must be relentlessly
contained.23
This conclusion ignores divisions within white audiences. As Guerrero

says, the bar is overtly marked as rural and, festooned with Confederate
f lags, Southern: the stereotype of racist America. In contrast, as is now
well established, SNL sought to appeal to an urban, educated audience,
who almost certainly would not identify themselves with Hammond’s
victims. In this way, once again, Murphy’s persona enabled his white
fans to disassociate themselves from the problems of racism, placing the
blame instead on specific social subgroups.
Finally, as the 1980s progressed, Murphy’s younger age makes him
a potentially interesting comparison with the late-1980s shift in focus/
career downturn experienced by Murray, Chase, and Aykroyd. Indeed,
the very substantial success of Beverly Hills Cop II, released in May
1987 and using the same basic premise as its predecessor, offers some
evidence that a mass audience for such fare continued to exist should
Hollywood elect to cater for it.24 However, in 1988 Murphy seemed
to follow the precedent of his SNL predecessors as he starred in, and
was credited with writing the original story for Coming to America, a
romantic comedy about an African prince who visits the United States
to find his ideal wife.25 The film was the third biggest hit of the year,
making $128.2 million.
A number of issues make it extremely difficult to draw firm conclu-
sions from the shift Coming to America might appear to represent. First, as
Guerrero states, though progressive in terms of race, much of Murphy’s
work was openly denigrating to women and homosexuals, a tendency
that had increased in tandem with his level of control.26 Reviewing
Coming to America in Time, it was Richard Schickel’s view that the film
“seems to be more career move than movie. After the raucousness of
Beverly Hills Cop II and the raunchiness of Eddie Murphy Raw, the star
apparently wants to assert his claim on the currently vacant title of
America’s Sweetheart.”27
Second, the film did not rely solely on its romantic comedy premise.
As well as their major roles as the prince and his friend, Murphy and
Arsenio Hall also play a number of minor characters in different levels
of make-up, undercutting the reality of the story and, as all their roles
are revealed in the closing credits, giving audiences an incentive for a
repeat viewing to spot them all. For Vincent Canby, these segments—
and instances where Murphy’s earlier voice reemerged—were the film’s
only attractions: “Coming to America comes to life fitfully when it turns
rude and raw, or when Mr. Murphy and Mr. Hall are allowed to throw
themselves into the sort of sketch material that made Mr. Murphy a star
on television.”28
Third, although Murphy himself was only twenty-seven in 1988,
the extraordinarily young age at which he became a star meant that he
was, at least in terms of those in positions of creative power within the
industry, cut off from his age peers. For Coming to America, Murphy
selected John Landis to direct, a man intricately tied to the original
SNL stars through his work on Animal House (1978), The Blues Brothers,
Trading Places, The Three Amigos (1986), and others.29 The scriptwriters
of the film, Barry Blaustein and David Sheffield, had joined SNL at the
same time as Murphy and, while Sheffield’s age is not publically listed,
Blaustein was born in 1955.
Though Landis, Blaustein, and Sheffield are all white, in front of the
camera Coming to America represented a fourth complication through
focusing wholly on black characters. Unlike the narratives of interracial
bonding found in Murphy’s earlier hits, Coming to America is interested
almost exclusively in matters of black culture, whether in Africa or in
America. Privileging black experience in this way, the film can be seen
as ref lecting the concerns of its powerful star. In August 1989 Murphy
told Rolling Stone,
I think Coming to America is a political movie without shoving

a message down anyone’s throat. It’s a black love story in which
black people are seen being black people and it made $250 million
[worldwide]. And that’s a political statement without having to
run a Malcolm X quote at the ending.30
Over the next seven years, the issues raised by Coming to America
continued to be played out across a number of Murphy’s films, con-
fusing his star image and sending his career into a period of relative
decline. Some releases (Harlem Nights [1988], Boomerang [1992]) retained
Murphy’s focus on black experience, while others (Another 48 Hrs.
[1990], The Distinguished Gentleman [1993]) returned to the interracial
narratives from before. Starring, written, produced, and directed by
Murphy, Harlem Nights took his misogyny to new heights (one joke
involved Murphy’s character intentionally shooting off a prostitute’s
toe), but less than four years later Murphy would proudly announce to
the New York Times that Boomerang was “the first time that I’ve done a
movie where I think women get the upper hand.”31 In 1989, Murphy
also insisted to Rolling Stone that “the only reason to do a [Beverly Hills]
Cop III is to beat the bank, and Paramount ain’t gonna write me no
check as big as I want to do something like that. In fact, if I do a Cop
III you can safely say, ‘Ooooh, he must have got a lot of money.”32
In May 1994 Beverly Hills Cop III was released in U.S. theaters with
Murphy once again in the lead role. It made just $42.6 million, only
the thirty-fourth highest grossing film of the year. In 1995 a low was
reached with A Vampire in Brooklyn, Murphy’s first film not to finish in
the annual top fifty.
Throughout the 1980s, Murphy offered an image of black suc-
cess that appeared to resonate with both black and white audiences.
However, the conditions attached to this success were problematic, and
this became increasingly apparent after Coming to America. Murphy’s
attempts to further his representations of black life f luctuated between
celebrations and admonishments of black masculinity. At the same time,
such developments betrayed the limitations of the narratives of racial
integration that had made him a superstar. Murphy’s star would rise
again, but when it did it was on very different terms. In 1996 Murphy
remade Jerry Lewis’ The Nutty Professor (1963), allowing him to take
on a number of roles, foregrounding comic performance in a way only
previously seen in glimpses since his time on SNL.33
Billy Crystal and the Ageing of the Baby Boom
Away from Murphy’s rise to stardom, the success of other aspects of

SNL between 1981 and 1984 must be judged on much more modest
terms. Having been retained along with Murphy from the 1980 season,
Joe Piscopo enjoyed a comparable level of exposure on the show. Like
Bill Murray, Piscopo was called upon to play the bulk of authority
figures: fathers, politicians, and news anchors. However, as the New
York Post’s comparison to Belushi indicates, his demeanor was more
straightforwardly masculine, a trait very much evident in his most fre-
quently recurring role, an impersonation of Frank Sinatra. Piscopo was
able to convert his prominence on SNL into starring roles in Johnny
Dangerously (1984) and Wise Guys (1986). Both films gave him second
billing after other comic actors (Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito,
respectively), and cast him as mafia-connected criminals. Neither was
a hit at the box office.34
Behind Murphy and Piscopo, the rest of the SNL cast quietly evolved.
As had Michaels, Ebersol drew heavily from improvisational comedy
groups. With the exception of Broadway actress Christine Ebersole, his
first cast was taken entirely from the Chicago (Tim Kazurinsky, Mary
Gross, Brian Doyle-Murray) and Toronto (Robin Duke, Tony Rosato)
franchises of The Second City. Born between 1945 and 1954 they were
broadly contemporaries of the original cast and were schooled in the
same approach to humor and performance. Ebersole, Doyle-Murray,
and Rosato were dropped after one season, but Kazurinsky, Gross, and
Duke made sufficient impact to remain until at least May 1984. They
were joined in September 1982 by Brad Hall, Gary Kroeger, and Julia
Louis-Dreyfus, all members of a Chicago comedy group called The
Practical Theater Company, and in September 1983 by Jim Belushi,
John’s younger brother also trained at Second City. Born between
1957 and 1961, the Practical Theater trio represent SNL’s first con-
certed attempt to bring a younger element into the cast. Yet in the tone
and subject of the material they presented, there was little evidence of
change.35 At the end of 1983–84 season, with Murphy and Piscopo
departing, Ebersol elected not to continue down this route, instead
recruiting a new set of more established performers.
Billy Crystal was a stand-up comedian who had originally been
booked to appear on the first episode of SNL in October 1975, but
was bumped because of time restraints.36 He had spent the intervening
decade building a live following, as well as taking a supporting role on
ABC’s primetime soap-opera spoof Soap (1977–81) playing an openly
gay character. In January 1982 he was given his own late-prime-time
variety program on NBC titled The Billy Crystal Comedy Hour, which
was cancelled after five episodes. Reviewing the show Janet Maslin
commented,
Mr. Crystal’s show has a decidedly canned quality, which may

have something to do with its time slot: he is, after all, appearing
right after the Mandrell Sisters, on an evening [Saturday] when
television programming is at its least enterprising. In any case, Mr.
Crystal’s best bits show that he is capable of being much freer and
more inventive than he is here.37
The freedom necessary to realize his talents was presented to Crystal

when he hosted SNL in March and May 1984. In September he returned
as a cast member.
Maslin’s negative view of NBC’s Saturday programming just ninety
minutes before SNL’s timeslot shows that much of television still
remained relatively untouched by the innovations in late-night pro-
gramming over the last decade. However, SNL’s success had meant it
did not long remain the only show specifically targeting young, upscale
viewers. Among those to find a following was syndicated sketch pro-
gram Second City TV, created by the Second City comedy group (per-
haps tired of SNL taking its members). As a recorded thirty-minute
show, it ran from 1977 to 1980 before being purchased by NBC and
extended to sixty minutes to run after midnight on Friday nights.38
Martin Short was one of the stars of SCTV from 1982 to 1984 when
the show ended and he was persuaded to join SNL.
A similar emphasis on experience and preexisting audience aware-
ness can be seen in Ebersol’s other selections, Christopher Guest, Harry
Shearer, Pamela Stephenson, and Rich Hall. Guest had appeared on
the Lemmings album that had first brought together Belushi and Chase,
while Shearer had already starred on SNL during the 1979–80 season.
Both had starred in This is Spinal Tap (1984) in which Crystal also
appeared.39 Stephenson was a star of British sketch show Not the Nine
O’clock News (BBC, 1979–82), which had been screened in syndication
in America. Not the Nine O’clock News was also remade in America for
cable network HBO as Not Necessarily the News (1983–90) with Hall
amongst its cast.
As expensive acquisitions, Crystal, Short, and Guest received the
most time on air, a decision that was vindicated when SNL’s annual
viewing figures improved for the first time since 1978.40 In demo-
graphic terms, it is not clear who these figures represented. In 1984,
Short was thirty-four and Crystal and Guest were both thirty-seven.41
Interviewed about his time on the show, Crystal has said, “I think
maybe in a way we represented the age group that stayed with the show
from beginning to end. We were, let’s see, nine years later. The audience
that started with the show was now thirty-seven, thirty-eight also—so
we hit a big chord with those people.”42 Performing the monologue for
the host-less first episode of the season, Crystal began by announcing
“age is a tough one for me,” and went on to tell the audience that he
now fit into the thirty-six–fifty bracket on insurance forms and that his
daughter (in Junior High) wasn’t aware Paul McCartney was in a band
before Wings.
Yet this was to be Crystal’s only appearance not playing a charac-
ter for the duration of the season. While the basic format of the show
remained the same, it focused much more closely on self-contained char-
acters and sketches with little reference to the show itself. Cold openings
ceased depicting backstage events, and cast members only joined hosts
on stage for the monologue when playing a character (e.g., when Ringo
Starr hosted in December he was accompanied by Crystal in the guise
of Sammy Davis Jr.). For “Weekend Update,” Guest adopted a dead-
pan approach to reading the spoof stories and only Kroeger and Hall
appeared under their own names to present commentary. Interviewing
Crystal after the second episode, Wayne Robins noted, “The new
Saturday Night Live angles for well-crafted professionalism rather than
inspired (or insipid) amateurism.”43 A consequence of this policy was an
increase in prerecorded material; Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad estimate
that as much as 40 percent of the season was not live.44
Among the most frequently recurring characters, Crystal and Guest
made seven appearances as Frankie and Willie, friends who com-
plain about bizarre injuries, all self-inf licted out of boredom. Short
reprised his SCTV character Ed Grimley—a neurotic pop culture
obsessive—on eight occasions. The most significant in affirming SNL’s
continuing cultural impact was Crystal’s impersonation of long-retired
Argentinean actor Fernando Lamas. In some senses similar to Murray’s
various show business types, Crystal’s Fernando specialized in fawning,
superficial interviews, invariably assuring his guests they looked “mah-
velous.” Across twelve appearances, the character and his catchphrase
became popular to the extent that Crystal was able to release an album
of stand-up material and clips from his SNL work. Titled Mahvelous it
reached sixty-five on the Billboard chart in October 1985; an accom-
panying dance single, “You Look Marvelous,” reached fifty-eight on
the Billboard Hot 100.45 In July 1986, Crystal also released a slim (128-
page) autobiography titled Absolutely Mahvelous.46
Such exposure meant that Crystal, Short, and Guest’s tenure with
SNL lasted only a single season. Crystal and Short were quickly signed
for film projects.47 In both cases, however, the completed films owed
more to Hollywood’s previous experience with SNL stars, than their
own performances on the show. Short was teamed with Chevy Chase
and Steve Martin in The Three Amigos (1986), produced and cowritten
by Lorne Michaels and directed by John Landis. As mentioned in the
previous chapter, the western spoof was a box office disappointment.
Crystal was given second-billing after Gregory Hines in Running
Scared (1986), an interracial action comedy drawing heavily on the com-
bination of gritty violence and wise-cracking humor seen in 48 Hrs.
and Beverly Hills Cop. Hines and Crystal play Chicago police detec-
tives tracking a drug dealer. Like Murphy’s Axel Foley, they are dis-
tinguished from their colleagues through an amused self-awareness in
their work. The film opens with the pair staking out a criminal’s home,
temporarily abandoning their post to join a nearby basketball game,
Crystal providing his own commentary as he plays. In catching—and
killing—the dealer, the duo are shown repeatedly bending and break-
ing rules in the service of a greater good. For his role, Crystal reverted
to his quick-talking stand-up persona barely seen on SNL.48 As with
Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop, his talent for characters and imperson-
ations are incorporated as his character consciously seeks to entertain
or deceive others within the fiction.
A parallel storyline involves Crystal’s relationship with his ex-wife
(played by Darlanne Fluegel) who, as the film begins, is about to marry
a dentist. We learn that the original marriage collapsed because she
couldn’t deal with Crystal’s light-hearted approach to dangerous work
(“You can’t be a kid your whole life”). Yet by the film’s conclusion
they are reunited, with Fluegel accepting fun is more important than
security. Where Running Scared differs from other similar narratives
featuring SNL stars is in finding Hines and Crystal already secure in
positions of authority, nearer the end of their careers than the begin-
ning. Less than a third of the way into the narrative, they vacation in
Florida, an experience they enjoy to the extent of considering quitting
their jobs and moving there to open a bar. Narrative tension therefore
stems not from whether their unorthodox methods of policing will
succeed, but whether they will continue. That they eventually do elect
to remain detectives manages to convey the same values as Beverly
Hills Cop and Ghostbusters while acknowledging the stars’ advancing
years.49
On Release, Running Scared found limited success, taking $38.5 mil-
lion after a $5.2 million opening, the twenty-seventh biggest hit of
1986. Representing approximately 10.4 million ticket sales, this was
still a larger audience than that which regularly saw Crystal on SNL.
However, the film’s conclusion that it was possible to be a kid your
whole life clashed with Crystal’s own views expressed in his opening
SNL monologue. In his next three films, Throw Momma from the Train
(1988), When Harry Met Sally . . . (1989), and City Slickers (1991) Crystal
repeatedly selected roles that explicitly dealt with ageing and related
changes in social roles and expectations. With each release, he moved
further from valorization of continuing youth found in Running Scared,
and with each his box office success increased.
Throw Momma from the Train again gave Crystal second billing (this
time after Danny DeVito) and again primarily relied on his stand-up
persona.50 In the film, Crystal plays Larry Donner, a creative writing
teacher who finds himself unable to write after his wife leaves him and,
he claims, steals his unpublished novel. Larry’s unhappiness is noted by
one of his students, Owen (DeVito), who is himself struggling to escape
the inf luence of his tyrannical, elderly mother. Misunderstanding
advice from Larry about his coursework, Owen gets the idea (inspired
by Strangers on a Train [1951]) that each of them would benefit from
murdering the other’s tormentor. Though no killing ensues, a farcical
chain of events is initiated whereby Larry is accused of his wife’s mur-
der while coming under increasing pressure to off Owen’s mother.
Much of Throw Momma concentrates on slapstick interplay between
cynical, exasperated Larry and lonely, childlike Owen. But equally
there is a drive to examine Larry’s mental state and priorities. In the
opening scene, he is shown alone at his typewriter, desperately trying
to talk himself into creativity. The scene functions as a showcase for
Crystal’s verbal skills, as in his stand-up routines, he is able to isolate
and articulate his problems without being able to overcome them.51
Indeed, this need to analyze and dissect is at the root of his inertia.
However, the film elects to find the solution to Larry’s problems in the
specific situation with his ex-wife. No attempt is made to evaluate his
wider outlook. Larry has begun a new relationship with a colleague
(Beth, played by Kim Greist), who appears to find him perfect except
for his preoccupation with his ex-wife and the book she stole. When
his adventures with Owen provide the inspiration for a new novel, the
path is cleared for the film to conclude as another narrative of baby
boom success; the novel is a bestseller and Larry, Beth, and Owen are
last seen holidaying on a beach, reminiscent of the conclusion to Trading
Places. Sold as a dark (PG-13 rated) farce, Throw Momma opened with
$7.3 million, finally grossing $57.9 million (1987’s thirteenth highest
grossing film).
In When Harry Met Sally, Crystal plays Harry, and for the first time
received top billing. We are told Harry works as a political consultant,
but as the film’s title suggests, its concerns have moved entirely from
the professional to the personal.52 The film begins at the University
of Chicago in 1977, with Harry and Sally (played by Meg Ryan) first
meeting as graduating students car sharing to New York. With no evi-
dence to the contrary, both seem to be of usual graduating age, a situ-
ation confirmed in Sally’s case when, in a section of the film set ten
years later, she announces she is thirty-one. For Ryan, born in 1961,
this meant playing a character who, when the narrative reaches 1989, is
five years her senior. Assuming Harry is supposed to be of similar vin-
tage, Crystal plays a character around eight years younger than himself.
In this way, through the combination of its stars and characters, When
Harry Met Sally can be seen as representing almost the full age spectrum
of the baby boom.
In the film’s depiction of the twelve-year period, it is the characters
rather than their surroundings that bear the brunt of change. In 1977,
both Harry and Sally display comically exaggerated certainty in their
approaches to life; he is unyielding in his view that sex and death define
existence; she assumes life will progress along rails of optimistic neat-
ness. Over the years both are bludgeoned by disappointments, divorces,
and deception into revising their goals toward seeking emotionally
supportive companionship, something they finally achieve with each
other. Arguing that the film is a conscious disavowal of the “liberation-
alist” prioritizing of sex and self of the previous decade, Frank Krutnik
says of the protagonists, “They may be too ‘smart’ to believe naively in
the hoary old illusion of romantic love, but they nonetheless come to
embrace it with conviction.”53
Interspersed throughout the various scenes from the couple’s
extended courtship, the film includes a number of direct-to-camera
interviews with elderly couples talking about the complications that
preceded their own successful unions. At the end of the film, Harry
and Sally are also interviewed, and they describe their story in a similar
manner. As a result, the film suggests parallels between the experiences
and priorities of the baby boom and those of earlier generations. At the
same time, their earlier, youthful pretensions of difference and sophis-
tication have been made to appear unrealistic and naïve. Yet again,
throughout the film Crystal’s stand-up persona is used to comment
directly upon proceedings, as Harry consistently tries to analyze and
deconstruct situations.54 All the while his eloquence and perception
make him exceptional and amusing, his actions reveal him to be typi-
cal. When Harry Met Sally’s promotion and release pattern ref lected the
general disenchantment with youth, opting for an opening in just 41
theaters on July 14 and increasing in stages to 1,144 theaters on August
11, a strategy that relied on positive word-of-mouth over initial hype.
The result was a final gross of $92.8 million, the eleventh biggest hit
of 1989.
Crystal’s status as a voice of encroaching stability and responsibil-
ity was cemented by City Slickers. From the outset, the film explicitly
announces itself as concerned with the anxieties of middle-age. The
narrative is initiated by Crystal’s character Mitch reaching his thirty-
ninth birthday (still four years less than Crystal’s actual age) and pan-
icking that his life has failed. Mitch has a devoted wife, two pleasant
children, a large apartment, and an apparently well-paid job in adver-
tising. His anxieties stem from concerns about the value of his job,
magnified by a sense of feeling trapped through having to support his
family. Crystal has said about City Slickers, for which he devised the
concept and coproduced, “This film is mine [. . .] not just the jokes but
the sentiment and feeling, stuff that I’m still going through. There’s
more of me in City Slickers than anything I’ve ever done.”55 Indeed,
in the opening scenes Mitch repeats some of the observations Crystal
made in his SNL monologue seven years earlier.
The solution to Mitch’s problems takes the form of a cattle drive
adventure holiday presented as a birthday gift by his two similarly con-
founded friends (played by Bruno Kirby and Daniel Stern). Away from
their usual routines, the three men debate their situations between
planned and unplanned incidents out on the range. Mitch displays
Crystal’s usual propensity for wisecracks and impressions, a trait he
apologetically acknowledges noting, “I’m joking. I do it with every-
body. It’s just my way.” A major development occurs when he befriends
the drive’s tough, elderly trail boss, Curly ( Jack Palance). Amused by
Mitch’s worries, Curly assures him that the secret of happiness can be
found in “just one thing,” an understanding of what you personally
most care about. Repeatedly wishing his wife and children were pres-
ent to see his cowboy antics, Mitch realizes his “one thing” is his fam-
ily, and the film ends with him returning home content, with a new
sense of perspective.
As in When Harry Met Sally, City Slickers finds its resolution in rees-
tablishing continuity with the past. Curly’s wisdom is timeless, reach-
ing across whatever social changes may have taken place between his
and Mitch’s generations. In the world of City Slickers any such changes
are apparently minimal, a situation evident in Mitch’s position as his
family’s sole breadwinner. Other than a neatly resolved divorce plotline
involving Stern’s character, the film’s one nod to contemporary speci-
ficity involves its only black characters, father and son dentists taking
part on the drive. Responding to Mitch’s surprise that they share a
profession, the son snaps, “yes, we’re black and we’re dentists, let’s not
make an issue out of it,” to which his father interjects, “they’re not
making an issue out of it. You are.” Here, race is again portrayed as
a nonissue for right-thinking baby boomers. A new development is
that this achievement is being undone by the impetuousness of youth.
Played by twenty-two-year-old Phill Lewis, the son is City Slickers’
only character who could be considered within SNL’s original target
demographic of eighteen–thirty-five. As his introduction, this scene
portrays him as angry and ill-informed.
Unlike When Harry Met Sally two years earlier, City Slickers was
given an immediate wide release in 1,992 theaters. In its June opening
weekend it took $13 million, finishing with $124 million, the fifth big-
gest hit of 1991.56 While there are certainly elements of the film, such
as slapstick scenes of the “city folk” learning to be cowboys, that have
general appeal, these are consistently framed by aspects of character and
narrative that privilege the experiences of people old enough to have
established careers and families. The film’s trailer, for instance, begins
with Mitch asking, “Did you ever reach a point in your life where you
say to yourself this the best I’m ever going to look, the best I’m ever
going to feel, the best I’m ever going to do, and it ain’t that great?”
For Janet Maslin there was a simple explanation for such an approach,
concluding that the film “will earn its place in the annals of wake-up-
and-smell-the-roses cinema as this genre becomes increasingly popular
among film makers of baby-boom age.”57
Continuity and Change on Saturday Night Live, 1985–90
Crystal’s turn away from the youth market was also evident elsewhere
in Hollywood in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In addition to SNL
cast members, the same pattern is apparent in the careers of several
of their contemporaries including Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Robin
Williams, Rick Moranis, John Candy, and Steve Guttenberg. All had
hits in the late 1980s/early 1990s with films about family life and/or
aimed at families based upon personas established in the late 1970s/
early 1980s to appeal to youth. Examples include Three Men and a Baby
(1987), Trains, Planes and Automobiles (1988), Big (1988), Parenthood
(1988), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), Uncle Buck (1989), Father of the
Bride (1991), Hook (1991), and Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). At the same time,
many of the same names were involved in a new cycle of romantic
comedies that has been discussed by Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik
among others.58 Beginning in 1987 with Moonstruck and Roxanne,
these were films that, according to Neale, strived for “a persistent
evocation and endorsement of the signs and values of ‘old-fashioned’
romance.”59 Significantly, with the exception of Julia Roberts, they
focused on the romantic entanglements of baby boom stars, all by 1987
in their late twenties at the very least; examples include Martin (born
1945), Goldie Hawn (1945), Cher (1946), Crystal (1948), Richard Gere
(1949), Kirstie Alley (1951), Hanks (1956), Andie MacDowell (1958),
and Ryan (1961).
These trends were ref lected in the demographics of Hollywood’s
audience from the mid-1980s. Robert C. Allen has highlighted the
following statistics:
Between 1980 and 1990, the percentage of the total US popula-

tion under the age of eighteen fell from 28 per cent to 25 per-
cent, while the percentage between the ages of thirty-five and
sixty-four rose from 31 per cent to 34 per cent [. . .] In 1983, tickets
sold to 13–25-year-olds represented 55 per cent of all admissions.
By 1992, teenagers and young adults constituted only 38 per cent
of the US movie audiences [. . . Between 1981 and 1992], the pro-
portion of the movie audience made up by boomers in their forties
rose from 6 per cent to 16 per cent.
Allen adds, “In 1993, Disney executive Joe Roth complained that
Hollywood could not rely upon its young audience any more. Young
people, he claimed, had lost the ‘tribal rite’ of going to the movies
every week.”60 Allen’s figures show that the shift in film attendance
toward the baby boom was much greater than the shift in America’s
population. This suggests that Hollywood productions were becoming
more appealing to older audiences at the expense of enticing the young,
a reversal of the priorities seen in Animal House and Ghostbusters.
The film industry’s apparent willingness to stick with baby boomer
and, as indicated by the Joe Roth quote, its uncertainty regarding the
preferences of young viewers returns us to the ongoing questions of
SNL’s identity and audience. After the single-season success of Crystal,
Short, and Guest, their departure again created something of a vacuum.
The response was a third wholesale change in the show’s cast and pro-
duction team. None of the 1984–85 cast returned for the eleventh sea-
son, and after a five-year absence Lorne Michaels was brought back as
producer. The new cast he assembled represented a curious mélange of
previous approaches. In the eighteen-year-old Anthony Michael Hall,
the twenty-year-old Robert Downey, Jr. and the twenty-three-year-old
Joan Cusack, there were personalities for young audiences to relate to, all
three having made appearances in “brat pack” youth-orientated films.
Indeed Hall, the first indisputably Generation X cast member (born
in 1968) on SNL, had the distinction of playing Chevy Chase’s son in
National Lampoon’s Vacation (1982). Yet equally, the cast also included the
thirty-six-year-old Randy Quaid, who played Chase’s brother-in-law
in the same film and, together with Danitra Vance (thirty-one), Dennis
Miller (thirty-two), and Nora Dunn (thirty-three) signaled Michaels’
desire to retain his baby boom peers. Only Jon Lovitz (twenty-eight) and
Terry Sweeney (twenty-six) fell between these two groups. The mix of
recognizable film actors (Quaid, Hall, Downey, Jr., Cusack) and low-
profile stage comedians and improvisers (the others) also contributed to
an uncertain tone.
Just as in 1980–81, the 1985–86 season proved unable to follow a critical
and popular success. The annual rating average dropped to 6.7, the low-
est since SNL’s inaugural year. Interviewed in the New York Post in June
1986, Michaels “cited several reasons why the cast he hand picked didn’t
click: the disparity in ages created a generation gap; there were too many
new faces and not enough of the group were ‘seasoned’ performers.”61 In
traditional SNL fashion, the new cast’s failure was addressed in the sea-
son’s final episode (May 24, 1986). During the monologue, a backstage
narrative was introduced involving the career insecurities of cohost Billy
Martin, recently fired manager of the New York Yankees. Throughout
the episode, Martin is shown to become increasingly drunk and unruly,
ending with him ruining a sketch and Michaels appearing on camera
to fire him again. Distraught, Martin then sets about setting fire to the
studio. Michaels catches him but instead of calling security elects to lead
only Jon Lovitz from the building, pausing to ensure three of the show’s
writers are caught in the blaze. With f lames licking the edges of the
frame, the rest of the cast are shown panicking and screaming while on
the screen captions are superimposed: “Who will survive?” “Who will
perish?” “Tune in October 11th.” As the credits roll, every member of
the cast and production team, including Michaels, has a question mark
after their name.
As it turned out, the cuts that were made occurred largely in front of
camera. Of 1985’s nine new faces, just three, Lovitz, Miller, and Dunn,
were retained for the 1986–87 season. Michaels’ singling out of Lovitz
in the cliff-hanger finale can be explained through the performer’s
immediate impact with two characters based upon a f lamboyant, man-
nered deviousness. As The Master Thespian, he appeared in six sketches
fooling all around him with his acting brilliance. As Tommy Flanagan,
the pathological liar, he featured in eleven of the season’s eighteen epi-
sodes, unable to resist spinning ever-more fantastic untruths. Though
far from Lovitz’ s only contributions to the season, the consistent theme
and performance style of these two popular roles suggested an underly-
ing comic persona. Similarly, Miller had also managed to build a con-
sistent image, being almost entirely confined to the “Weekend Update”
news desk. He treated the long-standing section as a personal soap-box,
stretching its original remit as lampoon of the news to fit his rock star
affectations, giggles, and obscure, recurring references.
However, as an indication of the seasons to follow, Dunn was more
in line with Michaels’ thinking. With both characters and impressions
she displayed a diverse range of accents, mannerisms, and personalities.
Her most prominent character for the 1985–86 season (making eleven
appearances) was a condescending, unrelentingly shallow model-turned-
talk-show host called Pat Stevens, but this was balanced by dozens of
supporting roles in a variety of guises. Most of Michaels’ 1986 recruits
offered versatility at the expense of unified personas. They also indicated
a preference for reliable, experienced (although not famous) performers
over any attempt to predict the latest trends in youth culture. Aged thirty-
eight, Phil Hartman was the oldest and most seasoned, having been asso-
ciated with The Groundlings improvisation group since 1975. Joining
him were Dana Carvey (thirty-one), Jan Hooks (twenty-nine), Kevin
Nealon (thirty-three), and Victoria Jackson (twenty-seven). Of these,
only Jackson brought or developed a single, consistent comic image, her
high-pitched voice and shock of blonde hair often used to portray absent-
minded girlishness. The others hid themselves behind a deluge of new
characters and impersonations (Hooks, for instance, boasted, “I am a
formless mold of clay [. . .] My strength is I have no identity of my own”),
a drive led by Hartman and Carvey who both quickly assumed star sta-
tus, in camera time if not in immediate recognizability.62
The priorities of the new season were already evident in the first epi-
sode, broadcast on October 11. In the ten segments featuring cast mem-
bers, five new characters were introduced who would appear on at least
two further occasions. Carvey debuted “The Church Lady,” an elderly
Christian television presenter who routinely accuses her guests of being
inf luenced by Satan, and Derek Stevens a rock star who arrives at his
record company without new material and proceeds to make up songs
on the spot. Hartman played Bill Franklin, a smooth game show host,
and in the same sketch Hooks appeared as f lustered contestant Marge
Keister. Nealon debuted Mr. Subliminal, a man who gets everything
he wants by muttering suggestions to people without their knowledge.
In addition, Lovitz returned as Tommy Flanagan, and Victoria Jackson
was introduced on “Weekend Update,” complaining about baby facili-
ties in Icelandic hotels instead of reporting on President Reagan’s visit
to Reykjavik.
More than at any other point in the show’s history, the emphasis was
placed on writing and performance over the writers and performers.
Being less tied to particular personalities allowed greater diversity in
material and its delivery. Perhaps ref lecting this openness, ratings for
the 1986–87 season jumped to an average of 7.3. Despite beating the
figures achieved two years earlier by Crystal, Short, and Guest, there
were no defections to Hollywood; the entire team remained intact
for the next three seasons, each time delivering an average rating of
7.0 or better. From 1986 until 1990, SNL was consistently popular,
managing to ref lect and inf luence American culture through its char-
acters and impersonations. The New York Times reported that Dana
Carvey’s impersonation of President Bush was “so true to life that it
63
has become popular with White House officials.” For Rolling Stone,
Carvey’s repeated Church Lady line “Isn’t that special” became “the
catch phrase of the year” in 1987.64
In this period it was Lovitz and Jackson, the two cast members with
the most clearly defined personas, who first attempted to convert their
prominence on the show into film stardom. Jackson was given second
billing after Lea Thomson in Casual Sex? (1988), a comedy about two
friends on holiday looking for romance. It made $12.2 million at the
box office, only the seventy-ninth highest grossing release of the year.
Though other film roles followed (for instance, playing “Weird Al”
Yankovich’s girlfriend in UHF [1989]), none were as prominent and
Jackson remained an SNL cast member until May 1992.
Again demonstrating the film industry’s firmly established approach
to male cast members, Lovitz was given a major supporting role as
Dan Aykroyd’s conniving younger brother in My Step-Mother is an
Alien (1989). Although the film failed, Lovitz left SNL in May 1990
and carved out a career playing similar supporting roles; in 1994 he
was cast as Billy Crystal’s conniving younger brother in City Slickers
II: the Legend of Curly’s Gold. In 1990 Carvey starred in Opportunity
Knocks as a con man who winds up running a major company. At
the time, Carvey complained, “Most of the scripts I was getting had
this cocky, 80’s-comedian persona—macho one-liners—and that’s
not me.”65 Using deception as his primary characteristic, Opportunity
Knocks worked hard to turn Carvey’s chameleonic nature into a sell-
ing point. Still, publicity was sufficiently unsure of his star-power to
bill him as “Saturday Night Live’s Dana Carvey.” The ploy did not pay
off, and Opportunity Knocks performed worse than Casual Sex?, taking
$11.4 million.66 Like Jackson, Carvey returned to SNL, staying as a cast
member until February 1993.
The cast Michaels recruited in the summer of 1986 finally estab-
lished the durability of the SNL format and the SNL brand. In October
1990, Variety was moved to comment, “The spirit of topical, raun-
chy, impudent humor lives on as Saturday Night Live launches its 16th
season.”67 Though the review went on to discuss individual sketches,
the cast were only mentioned together in list form. In marked contrast
to SNL’s origins, neither the identity of the performers nor their audi-
ence was of concern to the reviewer. In this way, Michaels was able
to fashion a show designed to cross rather than exploit a generational
divide.68 He was rewarded with consistently high viewing figures and
an unprecedented period of stability as key cast members remained
committed to the show for longer periods. Whereas none of The Not
Ready for Primetime Players stayed for more than five seasons, this was
the minimum for the 1986 cast, with Kevin Nealon eventually staying
for a (then) record nine years.
As well as the changing dynamics within SNL, the show’s relation-
ship with television as a medium had also altered. Whereas once SNL
had strained to be seen as anything other than television as usual, it was
now a comfortable and seemingly permanent fixture in NBC’s sched-
ule. As the film misadventures of Jackson, Lovitz, and Carvey demon-
strate, in form and content, SNL and television had become entirely
suited to one another. Indeed, with this in mind, SNL’s position at
the dawn of the 1990s was neatly summed up by a Newsweek article
commemorating its fifteenth anniversary. For the article’s authors, the
secret of the show’s continuing existence was simple: “Strong comic
actors of a certain age. No movie stars, no kids.”69
Across the 1980s, SNL faced many of the same dilemmas that had
begun to plague its original white, male stars from the middle of the
decade. The show had built its reputation on innovation and pushing
boundaries, but its innovations were now familiar and the generation-
ally motivated desire for greater freedom of content had apparently been
satisfied. The full extent of SNL’s retreat from the prominent casts of
old was made clear when one considers that when the show did finally
produce a new star, he wasn’t real. The next chapter begins by addressing
SNL character Wayne Campbell, created by Mike Myers. Campbell and
his subsequent spin-off film Wayne’s World (1992) were arguably as inf lu-
ential in terms of the direction of SNL and the careers of its cast mem-
bers as Animal House had been almost fifteen years earlier. Like Animal
House, Wayne’s World began with a low budget and modest expectations,
becoming a major hit considered by mainstream media as emblematic
of the current state of American youth. Unlike Animal House, however,
Wayne’s World did not provide an immediate blueprint for Hollywood
success for other SNL stars, or even Myers, to follow. Instead, the com-
plexities of the relationship between Wayne, Myers, and their audience
contributed to a period of creative uncertainty that again almost saw the
show cancelled. But it also laid the groundwork for SNL’s most consis-
tently popular graduate since Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler.
CH A P T E R SI X
“I Still Know How to Party”: Mike Myers,

Adam Sandler, and Generational Change
on Saturday Night Live
In 1992, the cast of Saturday Night Live were named “Entertainers of

the Year” by Entertainment Weekly. Justifying the magazine’s decision,
Mark Harris wrote,
Next fall, the children born the night John Belushi uttered
Saturday Night Live’s very first laugh line in 1975 (“I would like
to feed your fingertips to the wolverines”) will be old enough
to vote. We bring this up not to make anyone feel old (although
it sure does the trick, doesn’t it?). Rather, to offer incontrovert-
ible proof that Saturday Night Live can no longer be called the
voice of its generation without raising the question, which gen-
eration? The proudly hip baby boomers who grew up with the
show’s original cast members and who, like them, are now enter-
ing a wry and bemused middle age? Or the MTV-reared teen-
agers for whom Gilda Radner’s Roseanne Roseannadanna and
Chevy Chase’s stumblebum President Ford now seem as antique
as Watergate and Vietnam? The answer-and the key to the show’s
robust endurance-is both.1
Compared to the cries of intergenerational incompatibility that greeted,

and indeed initially warranted, the creation of SNL, the manner in
which the show began to incorporate the generation that followed the
baby boom appeared anticlimactic in its well-ordered ease. With the
core of his 1986 cast remaining with SNL for unprecedented lengths of
time, Lorne Michaels was able to gradually introduce new and younger
performers, essentially formalizing a system whereby prospects were
tried first as featured players before being allowed to join the cast
proper.
However, claims regarding SNL’s robustness proved greatly exag-
gerated. After the high of the 1992–93 season, as the onscreen balance
of SNL shifted from baby boom to baby bust, weaknesses were revealed
in Michaels’ conception of what the next generation might be, and in
the selection of performers he had recruited as its embodiment. Rather
than continue his policy of hiring versatility, Michaels had reverted
to personality stars including Chris Farley, David Spade, and Adam
Sandler. Left to carry the show between 1993 and 1995, these perform-
ers were unable to sustain the wide appeal of their immediate predeces-
sors, resulting, in SNL’s twentieth season, in its lowest annual ratings
since its first year.
This chapter considers the implications of SNL moving beyond the
baby boom, both in terms of the show’s creative team and its con-
tinuing need to reach young viewers. By 1990 the baby boom were
rapidly leaving the “the choicest slice of life” for advertisers, eighteen–
thirty-five, described by Les Brown in chapter one. And while boom-
ers remained more enticing consumers than their parents at the same
age, youth could not be ignored. Yet as its name indicates, there was
much less certainty regarding what Generation X might be, or even if
the concept of generations had the same relevance it had twenty years
earlier. To explore these issues, I initially concentrate on SNL’s first
high-profile, successful attempt to portray post–baby boom character-
istics. Mike Myers’ teenage character Wayne Campbell caught the pub-
lic imagination to the extent that a feature film starring him became
the eighth most successful film of 1992.
The rest of the chapter then shows how this success can be seen
as impacting on SNL for the next five seasons. Beginning with the
1990–91 season there was a trend for hiring young, male performers
whose audience appeal was closer to that of Wayne than his creator
Myers. Throughout, I focus on the contribution of Sandler, described
by Owen Gleiberman in 1995 as “the quintessential cast member of the
current, you-can’t-believe-how-awful-it-is Saturday Night Live.”2 The
chapter finishes by looking at Sandler’s early attempts at capitalizing
on his SNL notoriety with the release of a comedy album, They’re All
Gonna Laugh at You (1993), and a film, Billy Madison (1995).
Myers, Sandler, & Generational Change on SNL 141
Mike Myers and “Wayne’s World”
Early in 1989, Michaels bolstered his settled cast with two new “fea-
tured” players, Mike Myers (first show January 21) and Ben Stiller
(March 25). Born in 1963 and 1965, and aged twenty-five and twenty-
three, respectively, when they first appeared, they offered fresh and
younger faces in a group that, excepting the twenty-nine-year-old
Victoria Jackson, were now all well past thirty. Their addition did
not alter the show’s general approach. Stiller lasted only a handful of
episodes, gone before the end of the season. Myers slotted in seam-
lessly, contributing as a writer and performer to the ongoing business of
producing varied sketches and characters. Quickly, his recurring roles
included Dieter, an avant-garde German film critic, Stuart Rankin, a
fervent Scottish patriot, and Wayne Campbell, a teenager running his
own public-access television show (“Wayne’s World”) from his parents’
basement. This last creation Myers later described as “the suburban,
adolescent North American heavy metal experience as I knew it in the
mid-70s growing up.”3
The first “Wayne’s World” was broadcast as the final segment of the
February 18, 1989, episode. It begins with a still television station iden-
tity for “Cable 10, Aurora, Illinois Community Access Channel” and a
disclaimer insisting the station has no responsibility for programs’ con-
tent. Then, with the “Wayne’s World” logo f lashing garishly in front of
them, Myers as Wayne and Dana Carvey as Wayne’s friend Garth sing
and play their theme song: “It’s Wayne’s World, it’s Wayne’s World,
party time, it’s Wayne’s World, excellent.” Lasting six minutes, their
broadcast is an extremely amateurish approximation of a late-night talk
show, all taking place in a wood-paneled basement complete with mis-
matching furniture and open staircase, down which guests descend.
On this occasion, their line-up includes interviews with the owner of
the local convenience store “Beev” (who happens to be Garth’s dad and
is played by Phil Hartman) and Stacy, a local girl played by Jan Hooks,
as well as a phone call from a viewer (Lovitz) “grossed out” by his girl-
friend vomiting on him.
Apart from stilted attempts at continuity, Wayne and Garth observe
none of television’s formalities. Dressed in T-shirts and jeans, they talk
with each other and their guests as if no camera is present. Their speech
is littered with shared phrases and slang used without consideration
for whether viewers understand. Among too many examples to list,
“excellent” and “bogus” replace good and bad, “party on” is a form of
greeting, and “take a pill” means calm down. Although not used in the
first installment, a frequent trick in later episodes involved Wayne or
Garth expressing the opposite of their true opinion before enthusiasti-
cally adding, “not!” Camerawork on “Wayne’s World” was as shaky as
the presenting style, with faltering zooms and constant, small, twitch-
ing movements as the unseen operator tried to keep their subjects in
frame.
Though the presence of Hartman, Hooks, and Carvey demarked
“Wayne’s World” as just another part of SNL, the production values
and Channel 10 bumper served to isolate it as a semiautonomous cre-
ation. This was the view taken in a full-page feature on the sketch pub-
lished in November 1989 by Rolling Stone after four installments had
aired. It noted, “Wayne is not a recognizable Saturday Night Live face.
One might imagine producer Lorne Michaels has simply surrendered a
few minutes of the show every so often to this goofy kid.” Discounting
the sketches’ parodic excesses, and that even Myers was clearly substan-
tially older than his character, it was the magazine’s view that “Wayne
stands out from other television teens [. . .] Wayne and his pals are closer
to real teenagers—they are loud and stupid.”4 Evidence that Wayne’s
appeal extended beyond his catchphrases, the article discussed his per-
sonality traits as separate from his creator’s. It also pointed out that the
segment had rapidly been promoted from closing the show to being
SNL’s first sketch of the new season.
Between September 1989 and May 1991, ten “Wayne’s World”
sketches were broadcast on SNL. These gradually expanded Wayne’s
social universe using other cast members, hosts, and musical guests
without leaving the confines of the basement. In the summer of 1991,
Michaels was sufficiently confident of the sketch’s popularity to pro-
duce a film adaptation for Paramount based on a script by Myers and
two SNL writers, Bonny and Terry Turner. Following The Blues
Brothers (1980), this made the project only the second film to be directly
adapted from SNL characters. Michaels himself drew attention to this
situation: “The success of Wayne’s World would mean that Saturday
Night Live is in touch with the moviegoing audience again, the same
way it was in the 1970s.”5
At a basic level, the narrative selected to introduce Wayne and Garth
to the big screen followed the same pattern as Animal House and its
progeny. At the outset, “Wayne’s World” is an ongoing concern and
popular amongst Illinois teens, who recognize its presenters wher-
ever they go. This popularity is seized upon by ambitious executive
Benjamin Kane (Rob Lowe), who sets about buying the rights to the
show and sanitizing it for commercial television. At the same time,
Kane becomes interested in a beautiful and talented rock star called
Cassandra (Tia Carrere) with whom Wayne has started a relationship.
The stage is then set for the usual battle between a stif ling authority
figure and unruly, fun-loving youth.
Such a description fails to capture the tone of Wayne’s World. Initially
introduced in the middle of a broadcast, as soon as Wayne and Garth
wrap up and ascend the basement stairs, they are able to turn directly
to the camera and address the cinema audience in much the same way
they have just talked to viewers of their show. Straightaway, Wayne fills
us in on his background and aspirations:
I’ve had plenty of Joe-jobs, nothing I’d really call a career. Let
me put it this way: I have an extensive collection of name tags
and hair nets. Ok, I still live with my parents, which I admit is
both bogus and sad, but at least I’ve got an amazing cable access
show and I still know how to party. But what I’d really love is
to do “Wayne’s World” for a living. It might happen. Yeah, and
Monkeys might f ly out of my butt.
Wayne perceives no problem with society at large, apparently happy to

hope the current social order will reward his efforts. Indeed, so mod-
est are his goals that they can hardly be expected to support a feature,
nor are they asked to. Instead, the bulk of Wayne’s World is devoted to
the spectacle of Wayne and Garth bringing the same untrammeled,
unschooled creative exuberance to being film characters as they do to
producing television. Aware they are subjects of a story, the duo’s antics
regularly involve pointing out plot contrivances (Wayne to camera:
“You know, for a security guard, he had an awful lot of information,
don’t you think?”) and even interfering with the narrative. This occurs
most blatantly at the conclusion, when Wayne and Garth take back
production of their show from Kane and use it to showcase Cassandra
and her band for an important record executive.
Just managing to pull the various strands of their plan together in
time, they are rewarded by the executive arriving in the basement.
However, rather than offering the expected contract, he tells Cassandra
he isn’t interested. Cassandra leaves with Kane and a sudden fire burns
Wayne’s house to the ground. At this point, Wayne and Garth are
superimposed over a shot of Cassandra and Kane holidaying together.
Wayne announces, “As if we’d end the movie like that,” and Garth
suggests, “let’s do the Scooby Doo ending.” The film is then reset to
the beginning of the concluding sequence and events allowed to play
out again, only this time Kane is “unmasked” as “Old Man Withers,
the guy who runs the haunted amusement park.” Withers, who was
introduced brief ly at the beginning of the film but played no part in
the narrative, complains, “I would have got away with it to, if it wasn’t
for you snooping kids.”
Clearly enjoying themselves, Wayne and Garth next try the “mega
happy ending” where Cassandra gets her contract, she and Wayne
kiss, and Kane, newly granted camera awareness, informs the cinema
audience he has learned the errors of his ways. As Kane concludes his
contrite speech, Wayne and Garth step forward, telling the cinema
audience they’ve been “fished in” by such melodramatics. Together
with Kane and the rest of assembled characters they cheer and dance
until the end credits appear. Concluding in this way, the film effec-
tively disregards the validity of all preceding events, leaving only the
two central characters unchallenged.
More than any previous SNL-related film project, Wayne’s World
directly acknowledges and incorporates its presentational origins,
smudging to the point of illegibility the line between the fictional world
and the process of its creation, a ringing endorsement of Seidman’s
comedian tradition. Yet equally, there is considerable play in the posi-
tions assigned to Myers as comedian and Wayne as his character. Many
of the powers traditionally associated with the comedian—the ability
to comment upon the fiction, to consciously perform—are used by
Wayne. As a result the ability to achieve such feats are associated with
Wayne rather than with Myers. Publicity for the film reinforced this
conclusion, with neither Myers nor Carvey’s names used on posters or
in trailers.
Released on February 14, 1992, Wayne’s World did exactly as
Michaels had hoped, achieving an $18.1 million opening weekend and
finishing with $121.7 million at the domestic box office. Coverage of
the film centered on the main characters’ language and the unexpect-
edly imaginative manner in which the sketch was adapted for cinema.
Variety’s review covered both of these bases, beginning, “Wayne’s World
weakly transfers the popular Saturday Night Live TV sketch to the big
screen . . . NOT!”6 On March 8, a New York Times article reported that a
book based on the characters had become a best seller, and offered read-
ers a “primer” into the “certain expertise” required to enter Wayne’s
world.
The speed with which Wayne’s speech could be learned and repeated
even by nonfans did not bode well for the longevity of the character,
regardless of his other attractions. Elsewhere in the same edition of the
Times, William Safire noted the widespread use of “not” as a demarca-
tion of sarcasm and traced it back to the promotion of the film. He sus-
pected the term was “likely to be with us through the summer, when
it will disappear into Hula-Hoop land.” 7 The first evidence that people
were tiring of Wayne came with the film’s video release in August,
which Paramount priced to sell straight to consumers at $24.99 (in con-
trast to the still more usual practice of first selling more expensive cop-
ies to rental stores). Instead, the film immediately set a new record for
rentals in a single week (as rental stores were able to afford more cop-
ies), but sales were sluggish. By October, according to Video Business,
retailers were “divided in their assessment of the sell-though viability
of Wayne’s World, which Target stores discounted to $9.99 as a result of
slow sales.”8 People, it seemed, were interested to discover what the fuss
was about, but did not see the title as a long-term investment.
Though the opening weekend success of Wayne’s World inspired
immediate talk of a sequel, Myers first starred in the essentially self-
explanatory So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993).9 Originally intended as
“a satire on paranoia” the film was rewritten by Myers to incorporate
dual roles for himself as the hero and the hero’s Scottish father, the lat-
ter clearly based on his Stuart Rankin SNL character.10 For the hero,
Myers indicated a desire to ref lect contemporary trends, telling Conan
O’Brien in Interview magazine, “I play a beat poet doing this poetry
thing in coffeehouses all around San Francisco. There’s a real move-
ment towards coffee and poetry.”11 Unlike Wayne, neither of Myers’
characters is able to break the film’s fourth wall. His protagonist does,
though, share a number of Wayne’s mannerisms, thereby, through pro-
cess of comparison, offering the first indication of Myers’ ongoing film
persona.12 Unfortunately, few were interested enough to find out what
this persona might be; Axe Murderer was released in July to a $3.5 mil-
lion opening weekend, taking $11.6 million in total, barely making
the top one hundred for the year. Wayne’s World 2 quickly followed in
December. Though critics were largely still impressed, it took less than
half the total of the first installment, $48.7 million.13 Myers did not
appear in another film until May 1997.
While by Myers’ own admission, Wayne was hardly an up-to-the-
second ref lection of contemporary youth, the portrayal rang sufficiently
true to attract a large fan base. The hyperbolic, exaggerated elements
of the character, most evident in his language, created an instantly rec-
ognizable, saleable brand. Yet this same immediacy also limited his
shelf-life. With so little focus on Myers, the demise of Wayne left the
comedian without a defined persona. When Myers did finally reappear
as Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), the film was only a
minor success in theaters, gradually finding a wider audience on video
and television.14
Stars Return to Saturday Night Live, 1990–95
Back on SNL, in addition to a small jump in ratings, Wayne’s World had

two major effects. First, the show again attracted Hollywood’s atten-
tion, with a new, albeit brief, emphasis on sketch characters. A dem-
onstration that SNL was still firmly attached to its baby boom roots,
the project Michaels chose to follow Wayne’s World was a film adaption
of the Coneheads sketches from the late 1970s. Though neither was a
box office draw in 1993, Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin were brought
back to play the suburban alien couple. Given a wide release in 1,978
cinemas in July 1993, Coneheads was not a success, taking $21.3 million,
the seventy-third highest grossing film of the year. Two further films,
It’s Pat (1994) and Stuart Saves His Family (1995), were also developed
from more recent SNL sketches. Both were notorious failures, each
taking less than $1 million at the box office.
The second and more lasting effect was on the casting and material
used on SNL. A combination of the lure of more lucrative employ-
ment and the show’s intense schedule and unsociable hours meant that
in the past cast members had, at most, lasted five years. At the end
of the 1989–90 season, Dunn and Lovitz continued this pattern and
quit. Instead of just finding replacements for the two outgoing per-
formers, producer Lorne Michaels chose to anticipate the departure
of his remaining stars and recruit a raft of new talent. In 1980, 1984,
and 1985, SNL had come close to cancellation as viewers struggled to
accept new casts without familiar faces to anchor them. By introducing
seven new featured players in 1990 while the bulk of the current suc-
cessful cast remained, Michaels took the opportunity to sneak rather
than force the next generation into the public consciousness.
As a plan, it had much to recommend it, were it not for the signifi-
cant challenges to continuity presented by the new performers Michaels
selected. The seven new performers who received a “featuring” credit in
the 1990–91 season were Farley, Sandler, Spade, Tim Meadows, Chris
Rock, Rob Schneider, and Julia Sweeney. Meadows, Sweeney, and, to
an extent, Schneider can be seen as continuing the approach favored by
the likes of Carvey and Hartman, offering a wide range of characters
and impersonations. Farley, Rock, Sandler, and Spade, on the other
hand, each based their performance around a single comic persona.
Rock, Sandler, and Spade were recruited from the stand-up comedy
circuit. Their acts were largely based around jokes and observational
monologues, directly addressing the audience as performed versions of
themselves.15 Farley, taken from the traditional SNL proving ground of
Second City in Chicago, attacked roles with a distinctive high-energy
style, making his considerable size the inevitable focus of whichever
sketches he appeared in. Aged between twenty-four and twenty-six,
Farley, Rock, Sandler, and Spade were closer both in appearance and
attitude to the youthful exuberance captured by “Wayne’s World.”
In their first two seasons, Sandler, Spade, and Rock (Farley’s size
made him more useful) were largely restricted to playing teen or sup-
porting parts in sketches. In part, this can be explained by the reluc-
tance of the previous cast to move on. Miller and Hooks left at the end
of the 1990–91 season, but Jackson remained until May 1992, Carvey
until February 1993, Hartman until May 1994, and Myers until January
1995. With more famous and experienced performers ahead of them,
there was little opportunity or pressure for the new cast to attempt
roles outside their perceived strengths. The situation was balanced by
increased license for them to appear on camera as “themselves.” Both
within “Weekend Update” and elsewhere in the show, Sandler, Rock,
Spade, and Farley were able to perform material that drew on personal-
ity and biographical traits independent of their status as SNL employees
and that, at most, was only tenuously associated with current affairs.
Therefore, when they did appear as other characters, they carried an
established extra-fictional persona into sketches with them.
In the case of Sandler, the specific persona that was firmly in place
by the start of his final season was that of a cheerful, occasionally bash-
ful, family-orientated, Jewish juvenile (or emotionally underdeveloped
adult) aff licted by sudden bouts of intense, frustrated rage. Following a
series of minor one-or-no-line parts in sketches, Sandler began appear-
ing on “Weekend Update” in a role clearly adapted from his stand-up
routines, offering reports and advice based around family events. By
the beginning of the 1991–92 season, his appearances for Halloween
(episode dated October 26) and Thanksgiving (November 23) pro-
voked enthusiastic responses from the studio audience.
In the former, Sandler proceeded as if his primary audience was of
trick-or-treating age. Speaking direct to camera, he appeals for kids
to not “go bugging your parents for these new, overpriced costumes,”
offering instead a series of recession-friendly low-cost alternatives.
These include Sandler putting one arm inside his shirt as “Crazy One-
Armed Man” and holding a spoon in front of his face and calling himself
“Crazy Spoon-Head.” With each new “disguise,” he acts out the trick-
or-treating process, announcing the character in a manic voice before
demanding to be given candy. Throughout the monologue Sandler
sports a constant, apparently genuine grin, as if he can’t fully believe
he is presenting this nonsense on national television. The tone is of
innocent, infectious fun (at the end “Weekend Update” anchor Nealon
joins in, momentarily becoming “Cup-Head”), gently lampooning
children’s television in a manner that could be shown to children.
Sandler’s Thanksgiving presentation began in a similar, albeit
seemingly more personal, vein. Once again introduced as “Weekend
Update’s Adam Sandler,” Sandler announces that, for the first time, he
won’t be able to get home for Thanksgiving. In order that he won’t be
missed, he says he will act out his role in the dinner conversation now,
so his father can tape it and play it back during the meal. Producing
a plate of food from under the desk, Sandler starts to eat while talk-
ing into the camera, complimenting his mother on the quality of the
turkey. However, when he declines more food, the mood becomes
darker. He exclaims, “Oh, yeah, I’m deliberately trying to hurt Mom,
right! Oh, there he goes again! Dad, that was ten years ago! I said I was
sorry!” The monologue continues with Sandler becoming increasingly
upset, first weeping, then throwing his food on the f loor and yelling:
Well, come on over here, old man! You want some of this? Bring
it on! I’d love it! Right! Yeah! You’d BETTER sit down! The
tables are turning, man! I ain’t afraid of you no more! You guys
just don’t understand! NO, NO, NO, NO! Stop treating me like
a two-year-old!
At this point, Nealon intervenes, saying to the camera, “Uh, Mr.

Sandler, maybe you should press Stop on the VCR. Have a happy
Thanksgiving.” Sandler stays on camera just long enough for him to
tearfully scream, “I’m Queer!”
The combination of these two sketches provides insight into the
manner in which Sandler’s persona developed as his time on SNL
progressed. As with many of his appearances, the theme in both is of
childhood and adolescent experience. His apparent inability to keep
a straight face while discussing his Halloween costumes would also
become a common sight. The one exception to this irrepressible good
humor is in sketches such as the Thanksgiving encounter that require
him to express anger. On these occasions Sandler’s appeal changes
from his usual self-conscious delivery to a visceral, almost intimidating
experience, allowing the viewer to witness raw emotion. Therefore,
Sandler embodies both the studied indifference and rampant aggression
commonly associated with negative portrayals of youth.
Although the intensity and immediacy of Sandler’s rage is not inher-
ently comic, it would be a mistake to suggest that its cause is equally
sincere. The premise of the Thanksgiving sketch is the exaggerated
dysfunction of Sandler’s supposed family relations, played out in an
embarrassingly public setting. Concluding it with his assertion of queer-
ness, he mocks rather than empathizes with teenage identity issues. For
Sandler this is a stereotypical reaction, and a source of humor for those
secure in their sexuality. The ease with which he is able to summon
anger, together with the implicit dismissal of its source, actually serves
to reinforce his status of masculine heterosexuality.
The same tendencies are apparent in the songs Sandler began perform-
ing on SNL in the 1992–93 season. Again derived from his stand-up
experience, these featured him playing acoustic or electric guitar sing-
ing about such familiar subjects as Mothers’ Day, Thanksgiving, and
school. Most remained within “Weekend Update,” yet their popularity
was such that, by the end of 1993, Sandler’s festive song was chosen
to open the last episode before Christmas. Regardless of their specific
subject, the songs largely revolved around two concepts: the inanity of
the lyrics and rhyming scheme and/or the detailing of Sandler’s psy-
chotic or abnormal behavior, often relating to his sexual preferences.
The songs were also where Sandler referred to his Jewishness while
on SNL. His 1993 Christmas song began, “Oh mama made it perfectly
clear Santa don’t like bad boys. Especially Jewish ones.” The following
year he used a “Weekend Update” appearance to sing “The Chanukah
Song,” essentially a list of celebrities “who are Jewish, just like you and
me.” Although the songs can be taken as Sandler announcing pride in
his status as a Jew, their concerns are distinctly secular. Sandler ascribes
no responsibilities or characteristics to being a member of a particular
religion, discussing them instead in terms of the advantages and disad-
vantages they offer. Being Jewish may prevent a visit from Santa, but, as
he sings in “The Chanukah Song,” “Instead of one day of presents we
get eight crazy nights.” The effect is to emphasize Sandler’s persona as
“a regular guy”; at Christmas he does not deny his religion, but at the
same time it does not define him. His priority is to have a good time.
From the beginning of the 1993–94 season, with only Hartman and
Myers remaining as more senior performers, the prominence of the
1990 recruits noticeably increased. Crucially, the content of the show
altered and narrowed to suit the new stars. Time and again, the sub-
ject of sketches became male immaturity. In the episode broadcast on
October 1, 1994, Sandler played both a boy at a high school dance who
wants to fondle his date, and, with Farley, a beer-drinking lout at an
adult sex education class. Both sketches appear to be at the expense of
the male characters, yet the tone of the humor is clearly intended for
the same audience group as that being ridiculed. The punch line at the
end of each is that Sandler’s (and Farley’s) characters become involved
in a forced homosexual encounter. While one of the pair’s first on-
screen appearances together was in a spoof commercial for “Schmitt’s
Gay Beer” where they played gay teenagers delighted to find their pool
filled with near-naked male models, increasingly the standard position
was to find male homosexuality something to be comically feared.
With the male cast frequently playing socially inept or moronic char-
acters, the female cast and hosts were often confined to humorless roles
as unobtainable objects of desire or lust. The one consistent excep-
tion to this division of labor in Sandler/Farley sketches was when they
themselves played female roles. On these occasions, the female charac-
ters were often petty and vacuous. Most prominent were the series of
“Gap Girls” sketches featuring Sandler, Farley, Spade, and Schneider.
The quartet played grotesque stereotypes of teenage girls working in
a Gap clothes store, obsessed with appearance, sex, status, and gos-
sip. A frequent topic was the girls’ willingness to do anything to win
favor with popular boys. In one, a “jock” character played by host Alec
Baldwin threatens to leave Sandler’s character, Lucy, after she accuses
him (rightfully) of being unfaithful. Immediately, Sandler pleads, “No,
Todd, I’m the whore, I’m the whore. You’re so good and I’m so bad.”
Though presented as stupid, Baldwin as Todd is superior to the female
characters. Like many sketches of the period, there is a sense of celebra-
tion and pride in male preoccupation with sex and “low” humor to the
exclusion of women. The enthusiasm with which the Gap Girls rush
to demean themselves suggests a cruelty absent from similar sketches
addressing the male point of view.
A vital factor in sketches was the close group dynamic evident between
the male cast at this time, enhanced by the live nature of SNL. Even
when a sketch did not feature the likes of Sandler and Farley portray-
ing such a relationship, their frequent out-of-character laughter and the
playfully competitive tone of their performances clearly intimated that
it existed back stage. Regardless of his ability to entertain the audience
either in the studio or at home, Farley, with his volume, bluster, and
enthusiasm, was undeniably able to distract his co-performers, some-
times leaving them on the brink of hysterics. In the first of a series
of sketches featuring a Sandler character called the Herlihy Boy, a shy
man-child who makes pleading requests to the viewer to let him help
them with increasingly personal chores, the sketch repeatedly cuts to
Farley wearing an ill-fitting cardigan to argue on the Herlihy Boy’s
behalf. Each time, Farley becomes more fevered in his support. This
appears to catch Sandler by surprise, as when the camera returns to him
he struggles to maintain sufficient composure to speak his lines. The
focus of the sketch becomes the battle between Farley attempting to
make Sandler laugh, and Sandler trying desperately to reach the conclu-
sion. The studio audience’s reaction to Sandler’s plight is significantly
more enthusiastic than their response to the sketch’s scripted lines.
Fittingly, the final sketch in which Sandler and Farley appeared
as cast members featured them, along with Meadows and more
recent cast additions Norm MacDonald and Jay Mohr, all playing
moronic versions of themselves daring one another to jump into a
zoo’s polar bear enclosure. As each leaps down to confront the unseen
bear, the remaining onlookers are drenched with splashes of their
friends’ blood. With every death, the reason for the next person to
descend becomes more idiotically contrived (Farley: “I’m goin’ into
the polar bear cage and get myself some wallets so I can get some beer
money!”), and with every splash the performers look more amused to
be on television being covered in fake human remains (see figure 6.1).
The effect was to undermine SNL’s newly won aura of professional-
ism.16 In laughing and breaking character, the performers identified
themselves with the viewer, creating a club-like atmosphere where
wit and quality of material was secondary to an inclusive sense of
machismo-fueled fun.
Not that everyone felt included. At the peak of “Wayne’s World’s”
popularity in 1992–93, SNL’s season average Nielsen rating reached a
high of 7.7, the show’s best since 1981.17 The 1994–95 season managed
only a 6.3 average, the lowest since SNL’s first year. At the same time,
reviews became increasingly negative. James Wolcott complained,
“Now each SNL member seems to have been issued a single shtick,
which he or she beats to death.”18 John J. O’Connor felt that “Like
some aging life of the party who can no longer depend on nips and
tucks to maintain the illusion of youth, Saturday Night Live is discover-
ing the futility of makeovers.”19 In March 1995, New York magazine
ran a cover feature titled “Comedy Isn’t Funny” that sought to discover
“how the show that transformed TV became a grim joke.”20
Figure 6.1 Chris Farley, Norm MacDonald, and Adam Sandler get covered in Tim Meadows’
blood on Saturday Night Live.
Even those connected with SNL began to express doubts. Soon after
his final appearance, Hartman gave an interview stating, “The show’s in
a slump and there’s no use pretending it’s not.”21 Janeane Garofalo was
added to the cast for the 1994–95 season. Formerly a cast member of the
short-lived but critically acclaimed The Ben Stiller Show (Fox, 1992–93)
and a star of the Stiller-directed film Reality Bites (1994), it was New
York’s view that Garofalo “added two qualities in short supply at SNL:
She’s hip and she’s female.”22 Yet she quit the show after six months, later
explaining, “That season seemed to be the year of fag-bashing and using
the words ‘bitch’ and ‘whore’ in a sketch.”23 Crucially, NBC’s West
Coast president Don Ohlmeyer did not consider the standard of SNL to
be acceptable, telling Michaels, “The show has to get better.”24
To an extent, SNL’s popularity has always depended on its ability to
attract young viewers through the presentation of material that excluded
those with more conservative, “older” sensibilities. In the mid-1990s,
objections were based not on age but on maturity. The critical con-
sensus was that, far from being new and challenging, the show instead
stemmed from the negative connotations of youth. To find it funny
suggested a lack of awareness and sophistication. Originally, SNL was
attractive to advertisers because it appealed to those closest to the zeit-
geist. In 1995, it was perceived in the wider media to appeal only to
those too stupid to know better, a significantly less enticing group with
which to associate your product. At the end of the season, Michaels
was forced to make significant changes, including releasing Farley and
Sandler, the two cast members whose personas were most closely linked
to the current emphasis of the show, from their contracts.
Adam Sandler away from Saturday Night Live
Although they ultimately proved incompatible with SNL, the clear

extra-fictional personas Farley and Sandler established on the show in
front of a still sizeable audience made them natural candidates for expan-
sion into other media. In September 1993, Sandler released a comedy
album titled They’re All Gonna Laugh at You that clearly targeted fans
of his most divisive television work. Though Sandler continued to tour
as a stand-up comedian, They’re All Gonna Laugh at You is primarily
a studio album, replicating the character-based sketch format of the
television show. Featuring eighteen skits and five comic songs, it uses
offensive language and makes extended references to sex and violence
that would not be possible on network television.
Many of the skits have a high school setting and find their humor at
the expense of unpopular pupils or school authority figures. The album
begins with Sandler playing an assistant principal announcing over the
school Tannoy that he will be in charge in the principal’s absence.
He goes on to list a series of changes he will be making to school
procedure, each involving both male and female pupils joining him
in increasingly graphic sexual acts. Several skits proceed in the same
manner, establishing a taboo subject, and then attempting to extend
it beyond expectation. In the case of a skit titled “Toll Booth Willie,”
a toll booth operator played by Sandler is repeatedly insulted by pass-
ing drivers. Each time his response features more and more swearing,
culminating in: “You fucking bitch, fuck you, you forgot to pay the
fucking toll you dirty whore. I’ll fucking drop you with a boot to the
fucking skull, you cum-guzzling queen.”
Given the album’s title, it seems reasonable to ask at whom “they’re”
going to laugh and who exactly “they” might be. Other than singing
two songs recorded at live performances, Sandler barely appears on
They’re All Gonna Laugh at You using his SNL persona. In most skits he
uses a range of exaggerated comic accents and voices that mark a defi-
nite distinction between the performer and his characters. By adopting
a comic voice, Sandler announces that he finds the character funny,
therefore the listener is laughing with rather than at the performer.
The object of derision becomes the characters Sandler plays, and these
include a fat child who wheezes so loudly that the fire brigade assume
he is an alarm, and a female cheerleader who fails to enthuse a crowd.
There is an element of bullying to the humor, only partially dispelled
by the cartoonishness of the victims: the acceptable make jokes at the
expense of the unacceptable. By laughing, the listeners demonstrate to
themselves that they can be accepted.
Both in its packaging and content, They’re All Gonna Laugh at You
was careful to maintain continuity with the clique-like tone that was
beginning to emerge on SNL. The album prominently features Rob
Schneider, David Spade, and Tim Meadows, as well as SNL writers Tim
Herlihy, Robert Smigel, and Conan O’Brien. On the track-by-track
breakdown on the album sleeve, everyone is credited only by their first
names, suggesting a close association between the participants and, by
extension, the listener/reader. The back of the album features a photo-
graph of Sandler, Schneider, and Spade messing around in the recording
studio. Despite the absence of Farley and Rock, the impression is that the
album is an uncensored extension of SNL; that Sandler would choose to
emphasize the collaborative aspects of his first solo venture indicates how
important the group dynamic was to his persona.
Further links were drawn with SNL through two of the album’s
songs. Both recorded live during a performance by Sandler at Redondo
Beach in California, “The Thanksgiving Song” had already appeared
on SNL and “Lunchlady Land” was performed on the show in January
the following year with Farley playing the Lunchlady. On release, the
album proved a moderate initial success, slowly building to a peak posi-
tion of 129 on the Billboard chart on August 20, 1994. Though it has
continued to sell well (to date more than two million copies), there is
no reason to suggest They’re All Gonna Laugh at You found favor outside
its core market of teenage males.25 This conclusion is supported by such
comments as, “Mom made me return it because of the warning label,”
left by users of Amazon.com.26 Indeed, one user’s comment, “I found
this CD extremely funny but only when I listened with friends. I never
laughed at it when listening on my own,” indicates how narrow the
appeal of the album may be.27 So much of the material is invested in
attempting to shock the listener with taboo language and subjects that
the only way to replicate that immediate reaction on subsequent listens
is in witnessing the reactions of others.
At the same time, Sandler’s SNL connections began to present oppor-
tunities for film work. In addition to reintroducing SNL to Hollywood,
the success of Wayne’s World in 1992 had reignited Hollywood’s interest
in the possibilities of cheap, comedian-centered comedies that traded
on “dumb” jokes often based around bodily functions and physical
humor. Paul C. Bonila identifies the film spin-off as the first of a sec-
ond wave of movies, after the demise of Animal Comedy, with young
(at least mentally) protagonists “gleefully experiencing the inane.”28
While Bonila makes no attempt to track the development of the cycle
he terms “Hollywood Lowbrow,” it is noticeable that until the release
of American Pie (1999), these films depended on established television
comedians.29 Pauly Shore was able to transfer his cult status on MTV’s
Totally Pauly (1989–94) into a number of limited cinema successes.30
Most spectacularly, Jim Carrey moved from the Fox network’s In Living
Color (1990–94) to make the sixth, ninth, and sixteenth highest gross-
ing films of 1994, Dumb and Dumber, The Mask, and Ace Ventura: Pet
Detective. For Sandler, minor unbilled roles in Shakes the Clown (1992)
and Coneheads (1993) were followed by substantial supporting roles in
Airheads (1994) and Mixed Nuts (1994). However, although all of these
drew on his SNL persona, Sandler was not the films’ focus and box
office takings were negligible.31
The first film to fully exploit Sandler as its star attraction, then, was
Billy Madison (1995), released on February 10, just three months from
the end of his final SNL season. Written by Sandler with Tim Herlihy,
it follows the story of Billy Madison (Sandler), the spoilt twenty-seven-
year-old son of a hotel tycoon. Thanks to his father’s indulgence,
Billy was able to coast through his education and exists in a perpet-
ual state of exaggerated adolescence. But when his father (played by
Daren McGavin) threatens to hand control of the family business to an
obnoxious young executive (Eric, played by Bradley Whitford), Billy
vows to prove his maturity by successfully passing all twelve grades of
school in twenty-four weeks.
By making Sandler’s character wealthy but free from responsibility,
the film recreates the tone he helped establish on SNL, offering the
spectacle of someone with a culturally reviled sense of humor being
provided with unrestricted license to indulge their tastes.32 On SNL
Sandler offered two layers of performance: his simplistic, extreme
characters, and the amused, faintly embarrassed everyman(boy) behind
them. In Madison there are attempts to incorporate both layers without
clearly signaling the relationship between them. Moreover, in keeping
with this “having cake and eating it” approach to performance, the
film also attempts to embrace aspects of both the group-based social
challenge narrative and the more personal social integration narrative
that, as we have seen in earlier chapters, have at different times served
other SNL cast members.
Initially, the character exists closer to the objects of derision pre-
sented on They’re All Gonna Laugh at You, than the more laid back per-
sona of SNL who would sing about such subjects. The loose conception
of Billy as someone unfettered by social restraints on behavior allows
Sandler to present a range of performance styles without breaking from
the confines of the fiction. At various times, Billy sings songs, dances,
and adopts accents reminiscent of Sandler’s SNL and album work, but
rather than disrupting the narrative, they are accepted or dismissed by
the characters around him as the whims of an imbecile.33 On a num-
ber of occasions, these instances of overt performance occur without
an onscreen audience. As he waits for the school bus, for example,
Billy sings about his situation just as Sandler might on SNL (“Back
to school, back to school, to prove to dad that I’m not a fool”). While
Billy/Sandler does not address the camera, the frequency and narrative
redundancy of these scenes suggest an implicit awareness of an off-
screen audience requiring entertainment.
The assumption in Madison is that Billy must progress from his antiso-
cial state of juvenility, using the experience of the school system to change
from a disruptive to productive member of society. In addition, a roman-
tic subplot is introduced involving Billy’s third grade teacher Veronica
Vaughn (played by Bridgette Wilson), suggesting that Billy must learn
not only to exist within society as it stands, but also to contribute to its
development through the establishment of a stable, mature relationship.
At the end of the film, he appears to have achieved the goals indicated at
the outset: he wins control of the company, graduates from high school,
and has begun a relationship with Veronica. Furthermore, he announces
his intention to give the company to a trusted, better qualified employee,
and devote his attentions to becoming a teacher.
However, the manner in which the goals are achieved, and the film’s
presentation of them, leave significant doubts regarding the extent of
Billy’s change, and both his and the film’s sincerity. On SNL and with
They’re All Gonna Laugh at You, Sandler’s persona was dependent on
his continued preference for immature humor in the face of sustained
criticism from those in the social and cultural mainstream. For his first
film character to capitulate completely to such pressures would actively
contradict the ethos on which his pre-film popularity was based.
Therefore, aspects of the film’s characterizations and narrative focus,
together with a moment when Sandler explicitly steps outside the fic-
tion, serve to undermine the seemingly conformist conclusion. Like
Sandler’s treatment of the variety format on SNL, these deviations are
insufficient to be considered a rejection of the comedian comedy tradi-
tion. They signal only a conscious lack of commitment.
A large contributing factor to this sense of the film purposefully fail-
ing to construct a convincing narrative is the uncertainty regarding the
level of control and awareness Billy has over his actions. On occasion,
he appears to be genuinely unable to grasp simple concepts (failing to
see the problem in spelling “rock” R.O.K.), while at other points his
stupidity is an act, performed to provide amusement. With no firm
conception of the extent of Billy’s social dysfunction at the outset, the
film struggles to convey how far Billy must progress, or even in which
direction. It is not explicit whether he lacks the knowledge and under-
standing to complete school, and therefore must acquire it, or whether
he simply needs to shed an attitude that masks his real ability.
Equally, there is considerable movement surrounding Billy’s level of
comic awareness. When an old man says “poop,” Billy responds, “He
called the shit ‘poop’ . . . This is the best night of my life.” Here Sandler
the performer makes his character the punch line. During his more
lucid moments, however, the film creates absurd situations designed
to be amusing both for the audience and for Billy/Sandler, thereby
incorporating Sandler’s SNL tendency to laugh at his own perfor-
mance and the performances of those around him into the fictional
world. Primarily, these involve an elderly, overweight maid (played by
Theresa Merritt) who repeatedly makes sexual advances toward him.
The joke presented for both the viewer and Sandler/Billy is that an
older woman has said something inappropriate and surprising. There is
no distinction between Billy finding what the maid has said funny and
Sandler finding the actress’ performance funny. In these instances, the
character of Billy is based not on Sandler’s SNL sketch characters but,
in a manner similar to the biggest hits of his SNL predecessors such as
Murray, Murphy, and Crystal, on the extra-fictional persona of Adam
Sandler the performer, always clearly visible behind his performances.
Further strengthening the link with SNL, an extended, unbilled cameo
appearance by Chris Farley is used in a similar fashion. As the school
bus driver, Farley makes a series of claims about his sexual experi-
ence with Veronica, claims that Billy is quickly able to disprove. Later,
Farley performs a striptease for Billy that both performers/characters
appear to find amusing. Again, Billy/Sandler is in control, joining the
viewer in laughing at or with his crazy friend.
Such a lack of consistency confuses what is at stake in the film’s nar-
rative. During his more aware moments, Billy cannot be considered
an outsider. Instead he is a figurehead for an alternate social order that
includes the cinema audience. As a result, Madison’s resolution avoids
suggesting that Billy’s final acceptance into the society represented by
Veronica and his father has been achieved by the abandonment of his
earlier values. This is accomplished by a shift in the requirements Billy
must fulfill to join that society.
Roughly two-thirds into Madison’s running time, with Billy only
two grades away from completing his challenge, a sequence of events
results in ownership of the company being decided by an “academic
decathlon” between Billy and his rival, Eric. Although Billy is shown
preparing for the competition by revising and practicing, his actual
performance shows little improvement from the film’s opening scenes.
Of the events shown, Eric beats him fairly in math, music, and athletics.
Billy wins by cheating in science and drama; only in home economics
does Billy genuinely show himself to be better than Eric. During the
final debating contest, Billy is only able to triumph by selecting “busi-
ness ethics” as the topic of discussion for the unscrupulous Eric. Unable
to understand the concept, Eric suddenly brandishes a gun, demanding
to be named the victor. With his opponent now publicly disgraced,
Billy wins by default.
Madison’s conclusion is a compromise: mature status attained through
immature means. Billy is able to become a teacher without being
forced to renounce his love of tastelessness, the very impulse that the
film’s producers hoped would draw Sandler’s fans to the cinema. Key
to maintaining this balance is the switch away from Billy passing school
grades to the battle with Eric. It must be assumed that to pass the
later grades, Billy would be required to show a developing maturity.
Instead of presenting Sandler’s fans with the unwelcome sight of the
star diligently learning complex math and history, the film substitutes
in the decathlon as a more suitable showcase for Sandler’s mischievous
charms. Although Billy is shown graduating at the end of the film, his
final efforts are kept off screen.
The film’s commitment to presenting the juvenile male’s point of
view is evident in its romantic subplot. Like the female cast members
and hosts in the Sandler SNL sketches described earlier, as Veronica,
Bridgette Wilson is not a comic character in her own right, instead
being used as an object of desire driving Billy forward, at first as he
attempts to overcome her disapproval, and later to maintain her growing
interest. She is a teenaged boy’s fantasy of a school teacher: attractive,
dressing in short skirts, and harboring a secret penchant for immature
humor. Certainly, there is no suggestion that Veronica has any sort of
life outside her association with Billy.
In the film’s climactic scene, Billy and Veronica embrace and kiss.
However, Billy is shown moving his hands down her back to feel her
bottom. Far from being caught up in the romance of the moment, he
turns to grin at two onlooking friends who give him “thumbs up” ges-
tures. The same two friends are present in the film’s opening sequence,
a further indication of how little Billy has progressed. Clearly, the most
important relationship at the film’s supposed romantic climax is Billy’s
homosocial bond with these friends.
Finally, Madison signals its insincerity regarding Billy/Sandler’s
commitment to the narrative through a musical sequence where Billy,
having finally realized his purpose in life, bursts into operatic song,
complete with orchestral accompaniment and backing vocals from
several supporting characters. Although all the performers, including
Sandler, remain in character, they sing directly into the camera, sug-
gesting awareness of the cinema audience. At the end of the sequence,
Billy/Sandler nods emphatically toward the camera, conveying his sat-
isfaction at this lavish rupture in his film’s otherwise hermetic universe.
Intentionally abrupt and incongruous, the sequence uses Sandler’s
“Operaman” performance style from SNL to pleasurably remind the
audience of the artificiality of what they are viewing.
Undercutting the narrative in this way, the temptation is to compare
Madison with Wayne’s World. But for all its disruptive self-reference,
Myers’ film at least gave viewers the stable characters of Wayne and
Garth to cling to. Lacking any kind of consistent approach, Madison was
primarily reviewed on the quality of individual jokes and scenes, most
of which were found wanting. In the Los Angles Times, for instance, it
was Peter Rainer’s view that “Director Tamra Davis and screenwriters
Sandler and Tim Herlihy scatter the bad jokes like fertilizer. Nothing
sprouts.”34 Released in 1,887 theaters, Madison took $6.6 million in its
opening weekend, ultimately grossing $26.6 million, only the sixty-
seventh highest grossing film of the year. Yet, in relation to SNL’s lim-
ited audience at the time of Sandler’s departure, the 5.9 million people
who paid to see him (based on an average ticket price of $4.35) in his
first starring role can be seen as an acceptable return.35
Despite Michaels’ best intentions, Wayne’s World did not directly
result in SNL reconnecting with film audiences to anything like the
extent achieved by The Not Ready for Primetime Players. At once
overtly performed characters and representative of post–baby boom
youth, Wayne and Garth proved impossible to sustain or replicate.
Further sketch character-based films that indicated a strong continuity
with SNL’s baby boom origins failed at the box office. At the same time,
efforts to find performers who embodied the version of Generation X
displayed in Wayne’s World damaged the breadth of SNL’s appeal. By
concentrating on sexual and juvenile humor from a male point of view,
SNL became reviled by the same sections of the media that had cham-
pioned the show in the 1970s and cheered its revivals in the 1980s, cre-
ating a loyal following amongst young viewers who sought to identify
themselves with an aggressive anti-intellectualism. As the cast mem-
ber most frequently cited as the cause of SNL’s “slide” into low-brow,
Sandler was best positioned to exploit the enthusiasm of those who
considered such accusations to be recommendations.
For SNL, Michaels’ new route turned out to be a cul-de-sac. For
the 1995–96 season he was forced into exactly the kind of wholesale
recasting he had spent the last five years trying to avoid. Only three
cast members from the previous season (Meadows, MacDonald, and
Spade) returned. Across eleven new recruits there was a roughly even
split between younger baby boomers (the oldest, Darrell Hammond,
was born in 1955) and older members of Generation X (the young-
est, featured player Chris Kattan, was born in 1970).36 Throughout,
as will be discussed in more detail in the final conclusion, there was a
renewed commitment to versatile performance and varied material that
had saved the show in 1986.
For Sandler, however, Billy Madison was less a dead end than a launch-
ing pad. Beginning with his second film, Happy Gilmore (1996), he was
able to refine, reorder, and build on Madison’s chaotic blend of attrac-
tions to become, by the end of the decade, one of Hollywood’s biggest
and most consistent comic stars. This wholly unexpected development
is the subject of the next and final chapter.
CH A P T E R SE V E N
“A Colorful, Emotional, Working Class

Hero”? The Development of Adam Sandler’s
Fictional and Extra-fictional Personas
Since 1994, films starring Adam Sandler have made over $1.7 billion
at the domestic box office.1 Sandler’s ongoing popularity is commonly
attributed to the “juvenile” sense of humor found in much of his
work. According to Sandler’s 2006 artist biography on Rolling Stone’s
website:
Millions of frat boys and junior high school kids are going to
laugh like mad whenever Adam Sandler burps. The Saturday Night
Live alumnus has experienced crossover success in the ‘90s with
his comedy albums and film work, thereby proving that any wise-
acre Brooklyn kid who sings peculiar songs about Thanksgiving
on late-night TV can become a huge star.2
The condescending and dismissive tone of a publication that could be

argued as sharing Sandler’s supposed demographic of frat boys if not
junior high school kids is indicative of the manner in which the come-
dian’s success is discussed in much of the popular media. Even among
Sandler’s supporters, the tendency is to emphasize the specificity of his
appeal. Asked to comment on the unexpected popularity of Sandler’s
1998 film The Waterboy, which finished as the fifth biggest hit of its
year, Lorne Michaels remarked, “If you don’t get Sandler’s humor, [. . .]
then I take it you are not a 12-year-old boy.”3
Yet attributing Sandler’s career solely to “a bunch of dumb boys” is
insufficient to explain either the extent or the longevity of his success.
According to polls conducted during the opening weekends of three
of Sandler’s recent hits, only 35 percent of Anger Management’s (2003)
audience was under twenty-five, 57 percent of 50 First Dates’ (2004)
audience was female, and the audience for Click (2006) was almost
evenly split both in terms of gender (51 percent female) and age (50
percent under twenty-five).4 In addition, with Sandler turning forty in
2006, there are serious questions regarding how he continues to appeal
to his original “frat boy” audience.
This chapter is concerned with the evolution of Sandler’s fictional
and extra-fictional personas from his second film, Happy Gilmore
(1996), to the present. I argue that, like SNL stars from the baby boom,
Sandler has most consistently found success using the self-aware per-
former persona he developed on the show. However, instead of being
deployed in narratives depicting triumph over a particular social order,
Sandler’s films require the comedian to mature and integrate into soci-
ety, coupled with an often violent defense of his right to retain certain
values that place him firmly on the “low” (or popular) side of ongoing
social divisions along lines of class and taste. Though they repeatedly
confront intolerant or corrupt authority figures, Sandler’s characters
eschew assuming positions of power to pursue more limited, personal
goals. In this way, the films conform to the prevailing generational
trends of Generation X toward diversity and pragmatism highlighted
in the introduction. Sandler’s status as generational representative is
compromised, however, as the group defining values he represents are
not tied to the experiences of a birth-year-defined cohort.
Happy Gilmore and Adam Sandler’s Career Path
There is much in the early scenes of Happy Gilmore to suggest a contin-

uation of the approach that created Billy Madison (1995). Like Madison,
Gilmore features Sandler as the title character, a man who has yet to
reach society’s expected standards of maturity. During the opening
titles a voiceover by Sandler as Happy fills us in on his life so far, aided
by scratched, faded, home movie footage. Happy was raised by his ice-
hockey obsessed father, until his father was killed by a wayward puck
while watching a game. Thereafter cared for by his grandmother, he
reached adulthood with a violent temper and a burning ambition to play
ice-hockey, despite lacking any talent for skating. We are shown him
“working” at a number of menial jobs, including road worker, secu-
rity guard, and gas station attendant. In each case, he places whatever
Sandler’s Fictional & Extra-fictional Personas 163
equipment is to hand (be it a traffic cone, truncheon, or petrol hose)
between his legs and performs comically exaggerated sexual thrusts for
the diegetic home movie camera. Each time he appears more delighted
by the hilarity of his performance than the last.
Following this introduction, the film’s next two scenes position
Happy as a dysfunctional outsider. He fails (again) at the local hockey
team tryouts and beats up a coach who laughs at his efforts. On return-
ing to his apartment he finds his girlfriend in the process of moving
out, on the grounds that “you’re going nowhere Happy, and you’re
taking me with you.” As she descends in the lift, Happy rushes to the
intercom to speak to her as she leaves. His persuasive tactics involve
alternating between romantic baby talk and angry threats, culminating
in a mannered rendition of the 1978 rock ballad “Kiss You All Over”
by Exile. The scene ends with the revelation that his girlfriend has
gone, his words heard only by an elderly Chinese woman who was
walking past. A cut to the next morning shows Happy and the Chinese
woman have slept together.
Yet having established Happy in terms of rejection and sexual open-
ness familiar from Madison, there are clear signs that Gilmore is attempt-
ing to sell its lead character to a wider audience. The film’s plot involves
Happy’s quest to raise $270,000 that his grandmother owes in back
taxes in order to save her house from repossession. By chance he dis-
covers that his one notable hockey skill, his aggressive power, enables
him to hit golf balls over four hundred yards. Though he considers golf
to be “sissy crap,” he resolves to use his ability to win prize money. The
result is a culture clash between Happy’s passion and cheerful informal-
ity, and the privileged restraint of the golfing world.
Unlike Billy in Madison, Sandler’s portrayal of Happy is a consistent
characterization.5 Despite his initial failures, Happy is well-meaning,
honest, and down-to-earth. When he joins the pro-tour and enters the
exclusive club-house his approach is friendly and guileless, announc-
ing to the room at large, “Hey, anyone tapped a keg yet? I’ll pump!”
The uncomfortable reaction from the assembled golfers indicates that
Happy is indeed an outsider from this particular social order. With
its golf setting and SNL star, Gilmore would therefore seem an ideal
candidate to inherit Caddyshack’s “the snobs against the slobs” tagline
from sixteen years earlier.6 However, Sandler’s film shows itself to be
more interested in mutually beneficial compromise than winner takes
all competition.
Just over a third of the way into the narrative, Happy is about to tee-
off. In preparation, a course steward holds up a sign for the watching
crowd to be silent. Yet for Happy this suggests a lack of enthusiasm, and
he insists the onlookers clap and cheer to put him in the correct frame
of mind to drive the ball. Witnessing the positive reaction to Happy’s
inclusive attitude, a publicist for the tour (played by Julie Bowen, who
later becomes Happy’s love interest) states, “Golf had been waiting for
a player like this: a colorful, emotional, working-class hero.” There is
nothing in the presentation of this moment to indicate it is intended in
any way other than sincerely. As the film progresses, there are several
comic scenes of the golfing establishment struggling to adapt when
Happy attracts the kind of support generally associated with football or
hockey: loud, boisterous, and overwhelmingly working class. But once
golfing officials become aware of the new audience Happy is introduc-
ing to the sport (without, apparently, scaring away traditional fans) he
is openly embraced. The final third of the film is then dedicated to a
duel between Happy and the one golfer unable to accept him, con-
ceited championship favorite Shooter McGavin (played by Christopher
McDonald) who buys Grandmother Gilmore’s home in an attempt to
blackmail Happy off the tour.
Gilmore differs from Madison by suggesting that the challenge Sandler’s
character faces, accepting adult responsibility, is normal. Whereas
Madison defined Sandler by his association with the socially undesir-
able, Gilmore defines him against the social elite. In Madison, the shear
idiocy of Billy’s actions rendered his narrative journey intentionally
absurd. In Gilmore, Happy must learn to forgo his unrealistic childhood
ambition to attain the more reasonable, mature goals of a valued career
and stable family life. Complementing this storyline, Sandler’s perfor-
mance is solidly based around his self-conscious, “one-of-the-guys”
persona from SNL. For the most part, the audience is invited to laugh
with Happy, such as when he is threatened by McGavin, who says, “I
eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast,” to which Happy responds,
“You eat shit for breakfast?”
The one aspect of Sandler’s performance that is overtly comic is
Happy’s temper. Throughout the film, whenever Happy is made fun
of or frustrated, he reacts with disproportionate, violent rage. Like his
displays of temper on SNL, Sandler’s anger appears essentially realis-
tic; it is made humorous by the context. For instance, while practic-
ing his putting at a crazy golf course, Happy is unable to master a
clown-themed hole. After his umpteenth attempt, he screams, “You’re
going to die, clown,” and smashes the decoration apart with his putter.
Sandler’s violence has real weight and intensity, but becomes comic in
relation to its provocation and the utter lack of consequence.
In terms of comedian comedy, the film’s treatment of Happy’s anger
is also a compromise. Part of Happy’s journey involves him learning to
control his anger in order to succeed at golf (by not being thrown off the
tour and improving his putting). However, as the publicist’s statement
suggests, his emotionality, of which his violent temper is the primary
symptom, is key to his success, both for attracting crowds and for his
long game. At the film’s conclusion, Happy wins back his grandmoth-
er’s house by remaining calm to sink a putt, yet Shooter is then shown
being attacked and beaten by the crowd of spectators. In addition to its
humorous, spectacular value, violence is used by the film as indicative
of straightforwardness and emotional honesty, a position affirmed by
the physical comeuppance afforded to the dishonest Shooter. As the
main component of Sandler’s comic performance, Happy’s anger does
initially contribute to creating an outsider status, but it is also central to
his eventual acceptance.
With a release pattern almost identical to Madison (mid-February in
around two thousand theaters), Gilmore proved significantly more entic-
ing to audiences, opening with $8.5 million on its way to $38.8 mil-
lion, a figure equivalent to 8.8 million tickets sold.7 The performance is
impressive not only because of the additional 2.9 million attendees, but
also because the lower percentage of the total gross taken during the
opening weekend (21.9 percent compared to Madison’s 25.9) suggests a
more positive reaction from those who saw it initially, resulting in good
word-of-mouth. Beyond this success, Gilmore’s narrative structure and
conception of Sandler’s character and performance have proved essen-
tial to his subsequent career.
The lessons learnt in Gilmore first reappeared in The Wedding Singer
(1998). Solely credited to Tim Herlihy, the script positions Sandler as
a beloved small-town wedding singer (named Robbie Hart) who, as a
result of the death of his parents as a child, is desperate to get married
and start a family of his own. More so than either Madison’s Billy or
Gilmore’s Happy, Robbie Hart is a functional member of society, his
progress to full maturity hindered only by his obsession with matri-
mony preventing him recognizing that his current fiancé doesn’t love
him. When she abandons him on their wedding day, Hart is left in
crisis, angry and unable to perform in his job, until he finds true love
with a waitress, played by Drew Barrymore.
Between Hart’s profession and his jilted rage, The Wedding Singer finds
plenty of space to showcase Sandler’s performer persona. It builds on
Gilmore by featuring a much greater emphasis on romance and a larger
role for Sandler’s love interest. Barrymore’s character, Julia, is given
her own subplot involving her own inappropriate fiancé.8 In addition,
the film is set in an exaggerated version of 1985, allowing numer-
ous jokes at the expense of the era’s fashions and entertainment. With
an increased female presence and cultural references most familiar to
those who were in their teens and early twenties in the mid-1980s, The
Wedding Singer includes attractions for those outside Sandler’s previous
young, male audience. The film’s advertising emphasized its roman-
tic and nostalgic appeal, granting Barrymore star billing alongside
Sandler and using the tagline “He’s gonna party like it’s 1985.” Again
released on the second weekend of February, and taking full advantage
of Valentine’s Day, The Wedding Singer took $18.9 million in its first
three days, ending up with $80.2 million (equivalent to 17.1 million
tickets), the twenty-fifth highest grossing film of 1998.9 Commenting
on the opening weekend, New Line’s president of domestic distribu-
tion Al Shapiro noted the film had played to a wider than anticipated
demographic, not just young males, but also “older viewers.”10
Released nine months later on November 6, 1998, The Waterboy
appeared both a step backward and another massive stride forward.
With a script again credited to Sandler and Herlihy, it features Sandler
as Bobby Boucher, a shy, stammering thirty-one-year-old who lives
with his overbearing mother (played by Kathy Bates) in the swamps of
Louisiana. Years of pent-up rage make Boucher astonishingly effective
as an football tackler, a skill that allows him to go to college, find a girl-
friend (played by Fairuza Balk), and settle some old scores. In this way,
the film combines the violent sporting context of Gilmore with a lead
character whose social ability is initially below even that of Madison’s.
Yet the film stunned many in the industry when it took $39.1 million
in its opening weekend, finally totaling $161.5 million (34.4 million
tickets), the fifth biggest hit of the year.11
Whereas The Wedding Singer doubled Sandler’s audience by broad-
ening his appeal, The Waterboy drew his original demographic with
new intensity. Of the audiences polled during the opening weekend
69 percent were under twenty-five and Variety reported that interest
from young males was unusually high.12 Still, the film has more in
common with the coherent tone and message of Gilmore than the hap-
hazard approach of Madison. As Boucher, Sandler’s performance evokes
two of his earlier comic characters, taking his demeanor, including a
fixed inane grin, from an SNL creation named Canteen Boy and his
accent from a character on his second album, What the Hell Happened
to Me?, known as the Excited Southerner. But at no point does Sandler
allow his performance to slip, limiting Boucher to a handful of comic
traits, the most prominent of which, anger and awkward juvenility, are
exaggerated variations of Sandler’s performer persona. Furthermore,
Boucher exists in an equally exaggerated universe where the characters
played by Bates, Balk, and Henry Winkler as Boucher’s cowardly coach
are no less extreme. In this heightened comic world, Boucher follows
the same path to maturity and acceptance as Happy. As a minor char-
acter informs him, “You’re an inspiration to all of us who weren’t born
handsome, and charming and cool.”13
Since 1998, Sandler, as star, producer, and sometimes credited screen-
writer, has made a series of films that seek to incorporate the attrac-
tions of both The Wedding Singer and The Waterboy. Acknowledging
the strong continuities with his early releases, in 1999 he named his
production company Happy Madison. When the films use a varia-
tion of Sandler’s performer persona as the basis for his character, they
have been consistently popular at the domestic box office. Big Daddy
(1999), Mr. Deeds (2002), Anger Management, 50 First Dates, The Longest
Yard (2005), Click, and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007) all
feature Sandler playing characters that share traits with the backstage
image he cultivated on SNL. Each received a PG-13 rating and was
released in more than thirty-two hundred theaters. Each took between
$34 million and $48 million in its opening weekend and finished with
a domestic gross between $120 million and $164 million. All except
Chuck and Larry (which was twenty-third) were among the top twenty
highest grossing films of their years.
In contrast, when Sandler has altered the Happy Madison formula,
or worked with filmmakers outside his regular pool of collaborators,
the resulting films have not achieved the same level of popular success.
In Little Nicky (2000) and You Don’t Mess with the Zohan (2008) Sandler
plays distinct, overtly comic characters. Little Nicky broadly follows the
template of Madison and The Waterboy with Sandler as a socially inept
adult still dependant on a parent, but with the added factor that his
father, played by Harvey Keitel, is the devil. Also like those films, its
content is closely tied to his SNL and album work. Nicky resembles a
rock critic character Sandler played on SNL named Gil Graham who is
savagely beaten at every concert he attends. Nicky is similarly victim-
ized by his older demon brothers (Rhys Ifans and Tommy Lister) but
has to leave their home in hell and follow them to earth to stop them
from overthrowing their father.
As in The Waterboy, Sandler never deviates from Nicky’s rasping vocal
delivery and cowering posture. Though Nicky can magically change
his appearance, this is achieved with CGI and additional actors rather
than Sandler’s performance. Unlike Bobby Boucher’s signature comic
quirks, the fantastic elements of Nicky and his world have little basis
in Sandler’s previous work. Worse, Nicky’s primary earthly trait is a
love of heavy metal music, allying him with different cultural tastes to
the star’s usual reference points, sports, and soft rock. On release, Little
Nicky’s total gross was just $39 million, less than the opening weekend
of Sandler’s biggest hits.
In Zohan, Sandler plays Zohan, Israel’s top counterterrorist. However,
he secretly yearns to be a hair stylist, and early in the film fakes his own
death and escapes to New York to pursue his dream. From there, the
film juxtaposes what it sees as the outdated fashions and sexualized
culture of Israel with the atmosphere of repression and distrust in New
York for outlandish comic effect. At the same time, Zohan struggles
to make peace between the city’s expatriate Jewish and Palestinian
communities. While the film opened much like Sandler’s other recent
releases, making $38.5 million in its first three days, by the second
weekend takings had dropped by an unusually high 57 percent, leading
box office analyst Gitesh Pandya to conclude that Zohan “could be suf-
fering from terrible word-of-mouth.”14 Its final gross was $100 million
at the domestic box office, Sandler’s lowest total since Little Nicky.
Also in 2008, Sandler appeared in Bedtime Stories, his first wide-
release comedy to receive a PG rating. Financed by Disney and promi-
nently using the Disney logo in its advertising, the film features Sandler
as Skeeter, a hotel janitor who entertains his niece and nephew by
telling stories. These stories are based on Skeeter’s experiences at work,
transposed into medieval, Wild West, and outer space environments.
Each is presented on screen as Skeeter tells it, allowing Sandler to dis-
play a greater range of comic performance than in any of his films
since Madison without compromising his SNL persona. However, per-
haps because of the prominent family focus, Sandler’s fans did not turn
out in their usual numbers. Bedtime Stories began with a $27.5 million
opening weekend and finished with a $110 million domestic gross.
On four occasions, Sandler has starred in films that have used
aspects of his SNL persona in more dramatic contexts. Punch-Drunk
Love (2002), Spanglish (2004), Reign Over Me (2007), and Funny People
(2009) all present the star as characters recognizable from his Happy
Madison comedies, but recontextualized to serve the purposes of their
writer-directors P.T Anderson, James L. Brooks, Mike Binder, and
Judd Apatow, respectively. Notably, although Sandler’s company was
involved in the production of Reign Over Me and Funny People, the
Happy Madison brand was replaced in the films’ credits by a subsidiary
named Mr. Madison 23. All four films were financial disappointments,
finding neither Sandler’s fan base, nor fans of the other filmmakers
involved.15
To date, therefore, all of Sandler’s hits have come from within the
group of comedies that can be considered Happy Madison productions:
the films that have been released under the Happy Madison banner, plus
their predecessors The Waterboy, Big Daddy, and The Wedding Singer as
well as Gilmore and Madison themselves. Each of these is the product of
the same core production team, and from release to release there is evi-
dence of repetition and experimentation in carefully building Sandler’s
audience. Happy Madison films based on Sandler’s extra-fictional SNL
persona have proved consistently popular, and have successfully diver-
sified his appeal across lines of gender and age. While The Waterboy
appeared to show audience desire for Sandler playing a distinct comic
character, subsequent attempts to present the star in this way did not
find fans’ approval. Not surprisingly, they form only a small percent-
age of Sandler’s filmography.16 In the next section, then, I concentrate
on the repeated and changing attractions of Sandler’s Happy Madison
hits, in particular the presentation of Sandler’s star persona and its place
within the films’ narratives.
Star Persona and Narrative in Sandler’s Hit Films
Since The Waterboy, Sandler’s hits to date have relied on his “regu-
lar guy” extra-fictional persona from SNL. In The Wedding Singer, the
film begins, appropriately, with Robbie Hart singing at a wedding.
Performing a cover of Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Right Round,”
Hart is shown to be extremely good at his job, effortlessly marshalling
the collected throng of children and grandparents around the dance
f loor and obviously enjoying himself in the process. In addition to his
professional prowess, the sequence also demonstrates his social skills,
as he chats with guests and colleagues, and quickly strikes up a bond
with a waitress (Barrymore) on a platonic basis, as they are each about
to get married.
Similar set-ups are present in the introductory scenes of Big Daddy,
Mr. Deeds, Anger Management, 50 First Dates, The Longest Yard, Click,
and Chuck and Larry. In each, the Sandler character is shown to be
popular, attractive to women, and possessing the skills necessary to
succeed at his chosen profession. Within these parameters, each charac-
ter presents a shifting emphasis between the principal, not necessarily
complimentary, elements of Sandler’s persona: frustrated anger, bash-
ful self-consciousness, friendly guilelessness, and bloke-ish ribaldry. Mr.
Deeds, for instance, a remake of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), plays
up Sandler’s self-conscious and guileless aspects. As Longfellow Deeds,
a small-town pizzeria owner and amateur poet who inherits a forty-
billion-dollar media empire, Sandler is well-meaning and romantic;
like Happy in the aforementioned clubhouse scene in Gilmore, he often
fails to notice others’ reservations about his general enthusiasm, and
becomes tongue-tied when courting Winona Ryder’s character, an
undercover reporter named Babe Bennett whom Deeds believes to be
a small-town nurse. Yet violence and antisocial male bonding are also
incorporated, as Deeds’ straightforward value system dictates he physi-
cally assault anyone he considers to have done wrong and he enjoys a
drunken night on the town with tennis player John McEnroe (making
a cameo appearance as “himself ”).
In Chuck and Larry on the other hand, Sandler is more self-aware and
sexually confident. He plays Chuck Levine, a womanizing Brooklyn
fireman. When he and his best friend, widower and father of two
Larry Valentine (Kevin James), narrowly escape death at work, Chuck
reluctantly agrees to pose as Larry’s husband to protect his friend’s life
insurance. Chuck begins the film continually joking about other fire
fighters’ personal and sexual inadequacies and chasing (and being chased
by) attractive women. In the opening scene it is revealed he has cheated
on his current girlfriend with her identical twin sister and soon after
is caught having group sex with five Hooters waitresses.17 Matters are
complicated, however, when the city of New York accuse Chuck and
Larry of insurance fraud, requiring the pair to “prove” their homosex-
uality. Jessica Biel plays a lawyer named Alex McDonough assigned to
defend them and Chuck promptly falls in love with her, but can’t reveal
his true feelings without risking jail and the security of Larry’s chil-
dren. In love, Chuck’s confidence deserts him, and previously unseen
earnestness is revealed as he becomes emotionally involved in the plight
of Larry’s family and New York’s gay community.
Arguably, Big Daddy, Sandler’s biggest financial success after The
Waterboy, is the film that most successfully, and evenly, displays the
different sides of his persona. It also features the clearest expression of
the challenge consistently presented to Sandler’s characters in his hit
films. Early in the narrative (which involves Sandler’s character Sonny
Koufax illegally adopting a five-year-old child), in a scene again famil-
iar from Gilmore, Koufax is told by his departing girlfriend, “You refuse
to move on to the next stage of your life.” In different ways, each of
Sandler’s hits is concerned with the transition from adolescence to life’s
“next stage”: responsible adulthood. And while the internal and exter-
nal obstacles to achieving this goal vary, there is virtually unanimous
agreement about the form the next stage should take. By the end of
all but the prison-set The Longest Yard, Sandler’s character has learned
to value a committed, monogamous relationship and the pleasures of
family life. An important, but distinctly secondary concern is that he
support his family with a socially valued, fulfilling career.
Up to and including Anger Management, the films present their narra-
tives in terms of Sandler’s characters belatedly preparing to move on to
the next stage of their lives. In The Wedding Singer, the death of Hart’s
parents when he was young has left him overly keen to marry and
start a family of his own, therefore failing to build a solid relationship
and stalling his career as a song writer. Koufax in Big Daddy chooses
to shirk a promising law career and continue his university lifestyle in
rebellion against his father’s authority. Deeds in Mr. Deeds has also been
affected by the death of his parents, and refuses to enter into a relation-
ship unless it meets his romanticized picture of their marriage. In Anger
Management Sandler’s character Dave Buznik is shown as a child being
humiliated by a bully, an event the film suggests has damaged his con-
fidence as an adult and eventually leads to him taking advice from an
unconventional therapist, played by Jack Nicholson.
Beginning with 50 First Dates, ref lecting Sandler’s increasing age,
the focus changes from learning to accept adulthood to realizing that
the version of adulthood being pursued is f lawed. Sandler’s Henry
Roth in 50 First Dates is devoted to renovating a boat that he plans to
use to conduct research in the Arctic. Scared that a relationship would
prevent him from leaving, he restricts himself to brief encounters with
holidaymakers. He is forced to reconsider his priorities when he falls in
love with Lucy Whitmore (Drew Barrymore) after a chance encounter
in a coffee shop. Unfortunately, a car accident has left Lucy with a brain
defect that resets her memory every night to the morning prior to the
crash. To maintain a relationship, Henry must engineer a romantic first
encounter each day. Similarly, in Chuck and Larry, Chuck wholeheart-
edly prioritizes sex over romance until he meets Alex.
In The Longest Yard, a remake of the 1974 Burt Reynolds vehicle of
the same title, Sandler plays Paul Crewe, a disgraced NFL quarterback
who finds redemption by helping a team of convicts to defeat their
brutal guards in a football game. The film also features Chris Rock,
costarring with his former SNL cast mate for the first time, as Crewe’s
friend and advisor on prison matters. With an almost totally male cast,
it is noticeable that The Longest Yard has a much higher proportion of
black characters than Sandler’s other films. Much is made of Crewe
proving himself to sceptical black prisoners. It is not much of a stretch
to see the film as Sandler’s attempt to reach out to black audiences.18
Perhaps most interesting in terms of the question of generational pri-
orities that runs throughout this book is the opening situation presented
in Click. As a result of his own working-class upbringing, Sandler’s
character Michael Newman believes that his first duty is to provide
for his family financially. Accused by wife Donna (Kate Beckinsale) of
neglecting her, their two children, and his parents (played by Henry
Winkler and Julie Kavner), Newman angrily replies that he has been
“working my ass off so my family can have a better life than I ever
dreamed of having when I was a kid.” This conception of the adult
male’s role as absent income provider, which Click and Newman finally
reject, matches what Daniel Yankelovich argues was the dominant social
trend prior to the appearance of the New Values in the late 1960s.
Newman is informed by his boss (played by David Hasselhoff ), that
advancement in the company is dependant on him winning contracts,
a task that consumes his evenings and weekends. In desperation, he
acquires a magical remote that allows him to control all aspects of his
life (e.g., skipping bouts of illness). But rather than helping, the device
creates only heartache. To meet deadlines, he uses the remote to avoid
family obligations. Over time, this leads to divorce from Donna and
estrangement from his children, as well as to missing his father’s final
years. Given a Capraesque second chance (it was all a dream!), Newman
doesn’t seek promotion, assumedly consigning himself to career stag-
nation but making time for his family. Instead of the baby boom turn
toward the self, Click sees Newman’s happiness as inseparable from fam-
ily life, not only with his partner and children, but also his parents.
Following Gilmore’s template the various problems faced by Sandler’s
characters (apart from those in The Waterboy) are presented as unexcep-
tional. Within this context, Sandler’s opportunities to overtly perform
are strictly limited. For the most part, acts of ostensive performance are
framed within an explicit performing setting, or as entirely appropri-
ate attempts to entertain the characters around him. In The Wedding
Singer and Mr. Deeds, the occupations of Sandler’s characters as singer
and poet, allow him to deliver SNL-like lyrics within the fictional
world. Interestingly, although the quality of Sandler’s song writing has
not improved, within the fiction his lyrics are well received. On SNL,
Sandler’s self-awareness meant that his songs were popular precisely
because of their amateurishness. To explain such a relationship would
not be possible in the films’ narratives, and to have the fictional audi-
ences react negatively would complicate Sandler’s narrative resolutions
(e.g., prohibiting, or at least confusing, Robbie’s imminent career as a
songwriter at the end of The Wedding Singer). Instead, Sandler’s char-
acters maintain their creator’s genuine popularity at the expense of a
realistic reaction to his art.
Elsewhere in the films, any instances of narratively excessive comic
performance by Sandler are accompanied by unambiguous indications
from his fictional characters that they are fully aware of the humorous
implications of their actions. In Mr. Deeds, Deeds instigates a sing-a-
long of “Space Oddity” with an exaggerated impersonation of David
Bowie, grinning and laughing as he does so. In Anger Management,
Buznik is coerced into a faltering rendition of “I Feel Pretty” by Jack
Nicholson’s therapist, but only after Buznik’s protracted insistence that
he will be embarrassed.
The one consistent exception remains Sandler’s performance of
anger. Whether physical or verbal, each of these films contains moments
where Sandler explodes in rage with a speed and intensity that is often
inappropriate for the situation at hand. In Big Daddy, for instance, when
Koufax discovers he is too late to order a McDonald’s breakfast he
screams, “Ah, horse shit,” at the employee and smashes another cus-
tomer’s food onto the f loor. As a signature “routine” of Sandler’s since
SNL, these displays are clear instances of comedian comedy. While they
have obvious antisocial potential, Sandler’s tantrums tend to provide
the resolution to a situation, rather than instigate another. Though he
essentially assaults two people, Koufax is not arrested or even thrown
out. After the food has been knocked to the f loor, the next shot in the
film shows him outside the restaurant holding a burger. Sandler’s anger
is the result of his social predicaments, not their cause. His outbursts
act as wish fulfillment. The implication is that Sandler’s frustration is
genuine and the fictional worlds give him license to release that frustra-
tion without consequence.
That Sandler’s anger is viewed as a positive attribute is confirmed by
Anger Management. At the start of the film, as Buznik, Sandler is unable
to confront those who undervalue or insult him, a particular problem
because he has sworn not to propose to his girlfriend (Marisa Tomei)
until his boss offers him a position commensurate to the work he does
for the company (allowing a resolution that values both work and per-
sonal life denied by Click). As the film progresses, Buznik learns to
unleash his aggression, a process that culminates with him confronting
his boss by smashing up his office with a golf club. Incredibly, the violent
approach is seen by the film as the correct one, winning him the pro-
motion he has long deserved.
This advocating of direct, honest confrontation is an essential part
of the other important narrative strand to Sandler’s films. Because as
much as the Happy Madison films require their star to grow up, they
also present a defense of a particular image of masculine adulthood.
In Gilmore, this image is explicitly defined as working class, but as the
backgrounds of Sandler’s characters have moved up and down the eco-
nomic and social spectrums it can perhaps better be described across his
work as a celebration of a kind of all-American averageness, centered
on family and friends and defined in opposition to elitism, be it cul-
tural, intellectual, physical, or financial.
His characters’ passions are populist in the extreme: designed to
be enjoyed in stadiums or produced and consumed in vast quantities.
Baseball, basketball, football, wrestling, and ice hockey are constant
points of reference, as are purveyors of unfashionable late 1970s and
1980s rock such as the aforementioned Exile. In Mr. Deeds, Deeds
aspires to be a poet, but his highest hope for his work is that it be used
in Hallmark greeting cards. A chance encounter at a Manhattan res-
taurant leads to him reading a poem to a group of diners including a
singer at the Metropolitan Opera, a board member of the Guggenheim
museum, and a writer for the New Yorker. When they sneer at his
efforts, Deeds counters, “maybe my poems aren’t that great, but I know
some people who like them.” Their continued laughter results in Deeds
using his fists, and the scene ends with the opera singer sprawled on his
back announcing, “I think I shat myself.”
Several of Sandler’s characters are closely associated with junk or fast
food. In each case, preference for this kind of food plays an important
role in establishing the character’s social position. In Gilmore, Happy is
able to raise much of the money he needs by becoming a spokesper-
son for his favorite sandwich chain, Subway. In Big Daddy, prior to his
outburst in the McDonald’s restaurant, Koufax offers his young charge
a lengthy treatise on the history and virtues of the McBreakfast. On
route to claim his multibillion dollar fortune, Deeds insist the private
helicopter land at a Wendy’s restaurant. Back on board as the pilots and
executives tuck into burgers, Deeds exclaims, “I’m so happy I got the
Big Bacon Classic.”
Unlike Sandler’s juvenile qualities, his tastes are not compromised by
the onset of romance. In Big Daddy, the clearest sign that Koufax has
found someone with whom he can enjoy a lasting relationship (unlike
his departing girlfriend at the film’s opening) is that the woman in
question, a lawyer named Layla (played by Joey Lauren Adams), shares
his love of rock band Styx. Having access to billions of dollars, Deeds
could choose any location he wishes to propose to Winona Ryder’s
character, Babe Bennett. He elects to hire out Madison Square Garden,
home of the New York Knicks. Without any prior significance to the
pair’s relationship, such a setting could be considered profoundly unro-
mantic, even selfish, for its complete disregard for Bennett’s tastes. Yet
the film and Bennett choose to see the location from Deeds’ point of
view: the Knicks’ stadium is the most special place he can think of. As
a romantic gesture it is inept, but sincere. Throughout the film, Deeds
embodies this sense of doing one’s best with intellectually and cultur-
ally limited resources. Gilmore, The Waterboy, and Anger Management
also set their big romantic scene in sports arenas, for hockey, football,
and baseball, respectively.
Though Madison and The Waterboy end by emphasizing the importance
of a college education, in only four of Sandler’s films is his character col-
lege educated, and each works to qualify that supposed privilege. In
Anger Management, Buznik’s insecurity is bolstered because his girlfriend
Linda studied at Brown, an Ivy League institution, while he only went
to Trenton Community College. In Big Daddy, Koufax avoids capital-
izing on his law degree, preferring life as a toll booth operator. When he
finally capitulates and takes the bar exam to support his new family, the
film again turns to American chain-restaurant culture to show he hasn’t
otherwise changed, staging the closing scene at a Hooters restaurant (with
Layla and their baby present). Similarly, in Click, Newman unsuccess-
fully attempts to impress some Japanese clients with designs that ref lect
Japanese culture. Instead he wins their business by getting them drunk
at a TGI Friday’s sports bar. Only in 50 First Dates is Sandler’s character
seen to unambiguously benefit from higher education, as Roth is com-
mitted to the scientific research of the breeding pattern of walruses. But
when Roth explains his plans to Lucy’s father, a fisherman, he responds,
“Sounds kind of fruity to me.” Roth doesn’t disagree.
Pursuing traditional family life and what can be considered blue-
collar tastes and values, it could be argued that in some respects Sandler
evokes a return to the populist conservative imagery associated with
Reaganism and the new right. However, as Duncan Webster states, for
the new right, “white suburban family life” was considered a reaction
“to the successes of the women’s movement, and challenging the Equal
Rights Amendment, gay rights and abortion.”19 Yet Sandler’s films are
often explicitly, if problematically, in favor of equal rights in terms of
race, gender, and sexuality.
Writing about representations of homosexuality in Sandler’s films
prior to Big Daddy, it is Robin Wood’s view that “no one will wish to
claim (I hope) that [they] are unambiguously gay-positive.”20 As the
first instance of a stereotype he sees recurring in the star’s work, Wood
describes the school principal character in Madison: “middle-aged,
grotesquely fat, thoroughly unattractive, and gay: apparently a totally
negative exemplar of gayness.”21 Yet Wood goes on to note that, having
been the brunt of several jokes, the principal is included in the film’s
final celebrations. Wood is significantly more positive about Big Daddy,
which “makes Sandler’s commitment to the acceptance of gays quite
explicit.”22 His discussion centers on two formerly straight university
friends of Koufax who have become a gay couple. Both now lawyers,
they are presented as the most successful, reasonable, and content char-
acters in the film.
Since Big Daddy, the treatment of gay characters in Sandler’s films
and by Sandler’s characters has f luctuated between the two tenden-
cies identified by Wood, culminating in Chuck and Larry, which uses
homosexual intolerance as the basis for its narrative. Chuck and Larry
features numerous jokes and scenes that are homophobic in nature,
particularly toward effeminate male characters, before concluding that
people shouldn’t be discriminated against on grounds of sexuality. As
Chuck, Sandler even sincerely equates homosexuality with Jewishness,
lecturing a crowded courtroom, “For the record, the word ‘Faggot,’
that’s a bad word. Don’t use it. I used to say it more than anybody, but
I was ignorant. It’s hurtful. It’s like ‘kike’ for me.”
Perhaps the neatest example of Happy Madison’s approach comes
not in Chuck and Larry but The Longest Yard. Shortly after arriving in
prison on drink-driving charges, Sandler’s Crewe is taken to meet the
warden, the film’s villain (played by James Cromwell), who outlines
his future political ambitions: “[People] see the way I run this prison,
think maybe I should run this state.” Crewe responds, “Only with
less sodomy, right?” To which the warden replies, “hopefully none.”
Crewe’s joke relies on stereotypical fears of prison and gay sex that
underpin much of the film’s humor. Yet in comparison to the warden’s
apparent desire to prevent all such intercourse, Crewe’s remark appears
almost liberal. Whereas the warden is intolerant, Crewe is accepting if
personally unconvinced of the attractions of alternative lifestyles. Later
scenes have him bemused, uncomfortable but appreciative of enthusi-
astic cheerleading support from the prison’s transvestite community.
As well as defending the rights of others to do as they wish, Sandler
defends his own right to find their behavior amusing.
The idea that Sandler’s point of view is in need of defending at first
seems unlikely; by definition a populist stance should not be short of
support. However, as with his time on SNL, Sandler has found highly
visible and consistent opposition from the majority of the nation’s crit-
ics. In Sandler’s own, understated opinion, “I have received not too
much critical success.”23 Rarely has a major star attracted such con-
sistent and impassioned critical ire. In 2002, Roger Ebert proudly
announced, “He knows and I know that I have never given him a
good review.”24 In 1998, Richard Corliss wrote an article for Time
attempting to elucidate for those “hobbled by age or taste,” the reasons
for Sandler’s popularity.25 The article was titled “Sandler Happens,”
none too subtly equating Sandler with shit. Corliss is so unable to find
merit in Sandler’s work that he resorts to the conclusion that there must
be something wrong with the people who pay to see him. To enjoy
Sandler you must be either too young or too stupid to know better.
Given the number of Americans such a judgment must include, it is
worth taking a closer look at the nature of critics’ objections. With its
physical assault on New York’s cultural elite, Mr. Deeds is perhaps the
film that most clearly articulates its star’s position. Indeed, the scene
was read by Peter Travers in Rolling Stone “as if Sandler has found a
way to answer his critics.”26 Certainly, the film did not reverse critical
opinion to Sandler’s work. Out of the 152 print and internet reviews of
Mr. Deeds surveyed by website Rotten Tomatoes, just 33 (or 22 percent)
were deemed to be positive in tone, the lowest score of any of his films
except for Chuck and Larry.27 The criticisms of Mr. Deeds are many and
varied, but fall into four broad categories: outrage that the filmmak-
ers have attempted to remake an if not classic, then fondly remem-
bered original; the general lack of imagination in the film’s comic and
romantic situations; an overall incompetence surrounding the film’s
production; and, related to the previous three, an unforgivable absence
of sincerity on the part of Sandler and his collaborators.
While second-rate remakes and poor quality writing are hardly
unusual complaints in relation to contemporary Hollywood, it is in
the latter two categories that the critics’ remarks become explicitly
personal to Sandler. More galling than a lack of quality is a lack of
effort. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan found, “It’s a
film that isn’t there, 91 minutes of celluloid without a movie.”28 His
view was shared by Jim Chastain in the Norman Transcript: “Unless your
definition for ‘movie’ or ‘film’ is broad enough to encompass ninety
minutes of dumb guys playing with a video camera, this is really not
a movie at all.”29 In the Hollywood Reporter, Kirk Honeycutt also took
issue with Mr. Deeds’ technical standards: “Scenes are raggedly staged,
sometimes without enough coverage for editor Jeff Gourson to piece
them together coherently. Lighting is often overly bright and camera
placements f lat and uninteresting.”30 For several critics the formulaic
narrative and indifferent staging were indicative of disingenuity by
Sandler toward the viewer. According to Roger Ebert, “Like so many
Sandler characters, he seems fundamentally insincere, to be aiming
for the laugh even at serious moments.”31 Marjorie Baumgarten con-
curred, “The 2002 Mr. Deeds is a product of smarmy insincerity and
overall audience distrust.”32 In the Village Voice, Michael Atkinson went
furthest of all, concluding, “There’s not an Eskimo Pie’s chance in hell
that Sandler and his team believe a single crumb of this; the pandering
is so naked you can count the hairs on its ass.”33
But then, might it not just be the case that, as Koufax in Big Daddy
says in defense of Styx, “Most critics are cynical assholes”? The criti-
cisms center on suspicions that the film’s plot is so clichéd and predict-
able that it cannot be intended to be taken seriously, while other aspects
of the production fail to compensate. However, by offering reworkings
of an established formula that provides viewers with regular moments
of comedy, sentimentality, and romance, Sandler’s films are the cin-
ematic equivalent of the emotive, corny music and processed, conve-
nient fast food beloved by his characters. As undemanding, predictable
entertainment they are absolutely meant to be taken sincerely.
The same can be said of suggestions that Sandler’s performance is
insincere. As part of a negative review in Entertainment Weekly, Owen
Gleiberman opined:
Adam Sandler still shows up for a movie like Mr. Deeds looking as
if he just rolled out of his trailer, wearing the T-shirt he happened
to grab, barely even bothering to shave or go to makeup. Let other
actors fuss over their wardrobes or worry about whether they’ve
gained a few pounds: Sandler is Sandler, the people’s noble-slob
comedian!34
Clearly these remarks are intended sarcastically, but they succeed in

defining the appeal of both Sandler and his character, Longfellow
Deeds. Both have been f lung into worlds of privilege and money,
yet remain, endearingly for some, infuriatingly for others, resolutely
unchanged. Notably, in the reviews of critics who did enjoy the film,
there is no mention of falseness. In the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, William
Arnold concluded, “Still, if your expectations are very low, there are
some decent laughs and the film makes for a guilty pleasure—thanks
largely to Sandler’s willingness to play the laid-back straight man this
time and surround himself with strong actors.”35 In the Miami Herald,
Connie Ogle felt that “Sandler’s latest movie, is surprisingly sweet and,
dare we say it, old-fashioned, with an engaging sense of humor.”36 For
them, it is enough that the film has delivered what it promised: humor
and a pleasantness of tone. Arnold’s view of Sandler as “a laid-back
straight man” is markedly different from the “smarmy insincerity”
detected by Baumgarten and others.
In both narrative and the way in which that narrative is presented,
Sandler’s films stand in opposition to those who wish to view cinema as
art. Like his albums and stint on SNL, they are designed to be enjoyed
by those who share the films’ perspective. On the Internet Movie Database,
for instance, user Dare Wreckjohn posted about Mr. Deeds:
Some people were commenting that the movie was so bad that
they could not finish it. Well, they all should go watch The Piano
[1993] or some other boring drama movie. This movie was funny
as hell to me. Although it seemed that Adam Sandler himself was
not the funniest part of the movie, everything made it into a very
good, funny movie [. . .] I was surprised by the fact it had a good
romantic touch to it.37
Crucially, in stark contrast to the 78 percent negative reaction by crit-

ics, 90 percent of attendees polled during Mr. Deeds’ opening weekend
had a favorable reaction to the film.38 Just as Deeds defends his poetry,
Sandler could just as easily say about his films that maybe they aren’t
that great, but he knows some people who like them.
Extra-Fictional Sandler
Behind the success of Sandler’s Happy Madison films, then, is an

assumed parity between the star and his characters that gives the films
a sense of authenticity for their target audiences. However, there are
several details of Adam Sandler’s biography that could be seen as com-
plicating, or even contradicting, his ability to be accepted in the role
of an average American hero. Though born in Brooklyn, he enjoyed
a comfortable, Jewish, middle-class upbringing in New Hampshire.
He graduated from New York University with a bachelor’s degree in
fine arts having studied drama.39 And, not least, from this initially
privileged position, he has gone on to become a millionaire many
times over.
Yet, since his earliest television appearances, Sandler has presented an
extra-fictional persona that, if not denying these details, would appear
to indicate they have had little or no effect. From SNL onward, he has
consistently dressed and behaved in a manner that marks him as unex-
ceptional. His standard attire, worn even to premieres, is loose-fitting
jeans and a t-shirt with work boots or trainers, often accompanied with
a baseball cap. When making appearances, whether at a public event,
on television, or via his website, Sandler engages with his audience
through reference to popular concerns and interests such as sports, fam-
ily, and friendships and routinely ridicules his own status as a celebrity.40
This image is maintained through a careful combination of restricting
media access while giving the impression of complete openness. Since
his rise to prominence, he has avoided any in-depth interviews, pre-
ferring to publicize his work through brief “Q&As” with magazines
and websites, equally superficial press junkets, and appearances on chat
shows such as The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS, 1993–) and
Late Night with Conan O’Brien (NBC, 1993–) and at national sporting
events. The locations of Sandler’s publicity appearances are as impor-
tant as their content, shunning high-brow or “quality” media where
his work has received a predominantly negative reception in favor of
outlets that share his target audience. As a result, he is able to tailor
his material and delivery to those who might be expected to enjoy his
work. Such a policy further allies Sandler with the low-brow or popu-
lar. By ignoring his critics, he sends the message that his films are not
intended for them.41
For different audiences, Sandler’s commitment to averageness is
open to interpretation. On the one hand, his avowed preference for
“normal” goals and entertainments, despite his wealth and education,
can be seen as validating the lives of those who, through necessity or
choice, strive for the same. As a very public success, Sandler strips his
preoccupations of connotations of failure or ignorance. Yet at the same
time, because a number of his goals do traditionally have negative
connotations, he is also able to present his lifestyle as rebellion against
his upbringing, a stance that aligns him with teen audiences regard-
less of class or social situation. For example, at the 2005 Teen Choice
Awards, Sandler appeared on stage to collect an award for “Choice
Comedian” wearing a t-shirt and shorts and talking into a mobile
phone. Arriving at the microphone he interrupted his conversation
to tell the assembled young audience, “My mother keeps saying she
doesn’t like the way I dress for these shows.” He then incited them
to yell, “Leave Adam alone” at the mobile. In this instance, Sandler
is clearly, consciously playing to a specific audience, but in a way that
seems neither forced, nor contradictory to his appearances on adult-
orientated shows.
Because so much of Sandler’s extra-fictional persona relies on his
apparent genuineness and identification with his fans, I would sug-
gest that his limited, superficial public appearances are successful
only because of the seeming continuity in his private life and career.
Since his rise to prominence on SNL, Sandler has largely avoided
media attention regarding his personal life. Notably, the one occasion
that Sandler’s private affairs were deemed of interest to The National
Enquirer, the scandal related not to a romantic tryst, but the importance
of his friends. Under the title “Adam Sandler’s Secret Life,” the articled
announced, “When Jackie [Titone] moved into Adam’s Bel-Air home
earlier this year, she had no idea that Adam’s buddies—director Frank
Coraci, producer Jack Giarraputo, writer Tim Herlihy, and actor Allen
Covert—came along with the furniture.”42
Yet such a situation is far from secret. As I have argued, an important
part of Sandler’s success on SNL was his close relationship with fellow
cast members such as Chris Farley and David Spade. Since he left the
show, this sense of camaraderie has been maintained in three ways.
First there is the complex, and public, association he continues with his
SNL costars via a series of continuing professional collaborations. This
effectively began when Rob Schneider and Spade appeared on Sandler’s
debut album. Since then, various combinations of Schneider, Farley,
Kevin Nealon, Chris Rock, Norm MacDonald, Dana Carvey, and Jon
Lovitz have appeared in each of Sandler’s Happy Madison films, rang-
ing from single line or single scene cameos to major supporting roles.
To date, Schneider has made appearances in ten of Sandler’s films with
varying degree of narrative importance.
In addition, Sandler has used Happy Madison to produce films star-
ring members of this group. The first of these, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
(1999), starring Schneider, proved a modest success, taking $65 million
and set a precedent for similar mid-budget projects for Schneider (The
Animal [2001], The Hot Chick [2002], Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
[2005], The Benchwarmers [2006]), David Spade ( Joe Dirt [2001], Dickie
Roberts: Former Child Star [2003], The Benchwarmers), and Dana Carvey
(The Master of Disguise [2002]). In the cases of Schneider’s The Animal,
The Hot Chick, and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, Sandler can be seen
making cameo appearances of his own.
By continuing to reference their shared past in this way Sandler and
his SNL cast mates preserve the feeling of inclusively for their fans. The
assumption is that Schneider or Nealon are present through friendship,
not monetary reward. Scenes or jokes in which they appear do not rely
on audience recognition, instead providing an extra level of humor for
those who have followed Sandler’s career. As time passes, the associa-
tion is no longer dependent directly on SNL. When Schneider makes
his brief appearances in Little Nicky and Mr. Deeds, for example, the
explicit references are to The Waterboy and Big Daddy, films seen by
many millions more than ever watched him on SNL.
Second, much the same effect is achieved through the casting of non-
SNL celebrities and actors in Sandler’s films. From Madison onward,
Sandler has littered his films with an idiosyncratic range of stars includ-
ing Jack Nicholson, Kathy Bates, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, Sean
Astin, Heather Graham, Harvey Keitel, Carl Weathers, and Henry
Winkler in f lamboyant comic roles, and a similarly diverse collec-
tion of celebrities (Ozzy Osbourne, Bob Barker, Rudolph Giuliani,
Winkler again) and sports stars ( John McEnroe, Lawrence Taylor, Dan
Marino, Roger Clemens) playing comic variations on themselves. This
ploy serves to recreate one of the key pleasures associated with SNL;
like the guest host position on the show, a role in an Adam Sandler
film provides celebrities an opportunity to display a lighter side to their
persona, while lending the film both an air of “anything could happen”
surprise and an inferred legitimacy amongst that celebrity’s fan base.
Also, the repeat appearances of certain stars and interview state-
ments regarding their experiences on set reenforces the perception that
Sandler’s films are an extension of his “real” personality. For example,
Sandler and Steve Buscemi first appeared together playing brothers in
support of Brendan Fraser in Airheads (1994). Buscemi has since had
brief, unbilled cameos roles in Madison, The Wedding Singer, Big Daddy,
and Mr. Deeds, each time playing a drunk or “crazy” character. Again,
the assumption is that he continues to appear through friendship with
Sandler. The brevity and throwaway nature of his appearances suggest
an in-joke between the two stars, in which regular viewers of Sandler’s
films are invited to participate. A similar tone is evident when stars
discuss their appearances in Sandler’s films. About her unbilled role
in Anger Management, Heather Graham said, “It was just fun. I played
a psycho girl and Adam was just really charming. He’s got this great
group of guys around him that make you feel like you’re one of the
guys. They gave me a cigar and [I] went fishing, and they’re the most
supportive people.”43
The consistent presence of Sandler’s “great group of guys” constitutes
the third prominent display of extra-fictional friendship that underpins
his image. Through the establishment of his Happy Madison produc-
tion company, Sandler has been able to repeatedly employ a core group
of performers and production staff made up of friends from his time at
university and early days of performing. As The National Enquirer states,
these include university friends Tim Herlihy (who has written or cow-
ritten seven of Sandler’s films) and Jack Giarraputo (who has produced
all of Sandler’s films from Gilmore onward), actor Allen Covert, and
director Frank Coraci. Not mentioned by the Enquirer but also frequent
collaborators are actors Peter Dante and Jonathan Loughran, composer
Teddy Castellucci, and directors Steven Brill, Peter Segal, and Dennis
Dougan. In each case, these friends have had either no career away
from Sandler’s patronage, or their association with the star has opened
doors for further work.44
Beyond fans perhaps noting the recurring faces of Covert, Dante,
or Loughran, or spotting a familiar name in a film’s credits, Sandler’s
commitment to his friends becomes more significant because of the
website adamsandler.com. Augmenting the glimpses he affords tradi-
tional media, Sandler can be considered pioneering amongst A-list film
stars for his commitment to communicating directly with his fan base
via the Internet. Started in its present form in 1999, the site offers news,
trailers, and behind-the-scenes photographs about past, present, and
future Happy Madison projects. It also houses a large gallery of pictures
detailing the workings of the Happy Madison production company
and over one hundred short video clips of Sandler and his friends and
coworkers talking to his fans. The messages range from updates about
his current project (“It’s been a long day at work, we’re editing Anger
Management, I think it’s going to be pretty funny”) to short, preplanned
sketches such as Sandler pretending to be unaware the camera is film-
ing him discussing his staff ’s Christmas bonuses (“He always comes in
early, give him a million and a half.”)
The site is significant because, unlike television interviews where
Sandler might consider tailoring his performance to a wider, poten-
tially less receptive audience, a person would only visit adamsandler.
com if they have an interest in Adam Sandler. Like his albums, the site
remains a place where Sandler can communicate and maintain his orig-
inal audience: under twenty-five-year-old males. Taken together, the
pictures and videos create an image of controlled chaos. Surrounded by
friends, Sandler is seen to be working hard and having fun. It is quickly
apparent that the focus of the site is Sandler’s relationships with the like
of Covert and Dante, his dogs (Meatball, Matzoball, and Babu, who
have their own section of the site), and his parents. Perhaps for reasons
of privacy, or in deference to the level of life experience of his younger,
more Internet savvy fans, Sandler’s marriage is rarely mentioned.
Evidence of the latter can be seen in a message posted immediately fol-
lowing the birth of Sandler’s first child on May 7, 2006: “Sandler had
a kid!! Kid is healthy!! Wife is healthy!! He’s still a moron, and that’s
all that counts!!”45 As well as the obvious excitement, the message also
moves to reassure fans that Sandler hasn’t changed, as if the webmaster
was concerned that physical evidence of Sandler’s social maturity could
prove alienating.
Finally, back within Sandler’s films, the presentation and per-
formance styles of SNL cast members, other celebrities, and friends
such as Covert, Dante, and Loughran are markedly different to those
favored by Sandler himself. In contrast to the primarily low-key per-
formances given by Sandler and the films’ female leads, costars, and
those making guest appearances are frequently required to do man-
nered, overtly comic turns. Of Schneider’s ten appearances, in Big
Daddy, 50 First Dates, Chuck and Larry, Zohan, and Bedtime Stories, he
adopts a thick, comic foreign accent and makeup to become the butt of
numerous taunts and practical jokes. In Mr. Deeds, he appears for just
one shot, dressed in the same clothes and sporting the same accent as
in Big Daddy, to express surprise when a hurled cat lands on his bicycle.
In Waterboy, Little Nicky, and Longest Yard, he turns up in crowd scenes,
looking dirty and unshaven, to yell variations of the line “You can
do it,” at dramatic points in the films’ stories. When John McEnroe
appears in Mr. Deeds, special effects are employed to allow him to
jump, in a single, effortless bound, over a moving car. This seemingly
superhuman ability is left entirely unexplained. The most high-profile
appearance by another star in a Happy Madison comedy remains that
of Jack Nicholson in Anger Management. Nicholson approaches his role
as Buznik’s therapist Buddy Rydell as an opportunity to play a carica-
ture of his own star persona, ranting or purring through any scene in
which he appears.
All of these instances can be argued as undermining the fictional
worlds and narratives other aspects of the films have sought to main-
tain. However, in a reversal of Philip Drake’s discussion of Jim Carrey’s
performance style in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1993), Sandler’s charac-
ters’ reactions to these ostensive performative acts provide an alternative
context in which they can be understood. Drake argues that, during
scenes of Carrey’s wild mugging, supporting characters “react to him
in astonishment, as if they are committed to conventions of classical
realism. The film thus establishes a dual register of verisimilitude.”46
Continuing from Billy’s reactions to Chris Farley’s bus driver in
Madison, Sandler’s characters’ response to the zany people they encoun-
ter is similarly classically realist astonishment or, more usually, amuse-
ment. Once again, the line between a former SNL performer and their
character is blurred, as one could just as easily imagine Sandler laugh-
ing at or being intimidated by Nicholson on set as Buznik laughing at
or being intimidated by Rydell. Just as the antics of numerous familiar
faces compromise the fictional integrity of their own roles, they rein-
force the authenticity of Sandler’s; surrounded by a swirling mass of
hyperactive friends and celebrities, he appears resolutely and unusually
unexceptional.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Sandler’s success is how little
has been added to the formula underpinning his films since his first
star vehicle, Madison. Instead, beginning with Happy Gilmore, he has
refined and clarified his fictional persona and characters in a man-
ner that invites comparison with his carefully managed extra-fictional
persona. By seeking to minimize the distance between Sandler and his
characters, his films encourage audiences to enjoy and invest in their
narratives while simultaneously recognizing and taking equal enjoy-
ment from the way in which the narratives are constructed and pre-
sented. It is this dual register that has allowed Sandler to continue to
reach young fans while accounting for the aging of himself and his
original audience. Increasingly, the narratives of Happy Madison pro-
ductions foreground the pleasures of family and responsibility. To com-
pensate, the films use casting and performance as evidence of Sandler’s
clique-like working practices to show the ongoing importance of male
friendship, and with it, the ongoing importance of SNL to Sandler’s
career.
Where once Sandler’s persona was explicitly defined in terms of
immaturity and juvenility, it has come to represent a particular concep-
tion of limited but well-intentioned adult masculinity. Acknowledging
and embracing (if not always wholeheartedly) the rise of diversity in
American society, Sandler’s films argue for a place in that society for
those who wish to pursue traditional goals. What aspects of behav-
ior that could be considered childish or juvenile that are allowed to
remain at the end of the films’ narratives support this view of Sandler
as emblematic of an approach to life that places individual tastes ahead
of consensus opinion. By recognizing that his goals are not necessarily
shared by society as a whole, Sandler sets himself apart from his baby
boom predecessors. Yet this difference from the previous generation
is not presented in terms of conf lict familiar from the greatest hits of
The Not Ready for Primetime Players. Notably, in 50 First Dates and
Chuck and Larry, Dan Aykroyd is cast in supporting roles as authority
figures (a psychiatrist and a fire chief respectively) who help Sandler’s
characters to achieve their goals. It’s still a baby boom world; Sandler
is just living in it.
Conclusion
During the summer and autumn of 2006, Lorne Michaels once again
faced questions about Saturday Night Live’s continued survival. In July,
he announced that budget cuts at NBC were forcing him to shrink the
size of his cast.1 When the show returned in September for its thirty-
second year, five of the previous season’s sixteen cast members had
gone and none were replaced. In the decade since Michaels bowed to
similar pressure to let go Chris Farley and Adam Sandler, SNL’s annual
ratings had continued a pattern of slow decline. Whereas the success
of Wayne’s World (1992) had helped achieve an average rating of 7.7 for
the 1992–93 season, by the 2005–2006 season the yearly average had
fallen to 4.1.2 Unlike in the mid-1990s, the decline was attributed less
to the quality of SNL than to a widespread drop in network audienc-
es.3 As the vice president of NBC Tom Bierbaum told the Village Voice,
“[SNL] has kind of kept pace with the general trends in television [. . .]
Unfortunately, it’s kind of a downward trend.”4
In this difficult environment, Michaels was reluctant to speculate
about what his show’s long history might mean for its present and
future prospects: “People refer to [SNL] as an institution or part of the
landscape—that’s not the way I view it. I think every week you go up
there to reinvent it.”5 Yet elsewhere in NBC’s schedule that year was
ample evidence that SNL had indeed become an institution. In autumn
2006 the network debuted two new shows set behind the scenes of
fictional late-night, live comedy-variety television programs, thinly
disguised versions of SNL. One, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, took
a primarily dramatic approach. Created by Aaron Sorkin and adopt-
ing a tone reminiscent of his previous White House-set hit The West
Wing (NBC, 1999–2006), it used the high-pressure, deadline-fixated
atmosphere of live broadcasting to examine the politics and priorities
of contemporary television. The other, 30 Rock, used similar concerns
as the basis for situation comedy. Unlike Studio 60, whose producers
Michaels refused access to observe SNL’s production, 30 Rock could
boast first-hand experience in its writing, having been created by and
starring Tina Fey, SNL’s first female head writer from 1999 to 2006,
and cast member from 2000 to 2006. Perhaps explaining his rejection
of Studio 60, Michaels also served as 30 Rock’s producer.
That a network would invest many millions of dollars in the pro-
duction and promotion of a pair of programs based on SNL more than
thirty years after it first appeared is testament to the continuing impact
of the show on American culture.6 Though now more than ever it is
seen by a small minority of the American public, in form and content
its inf luence remains wholly disproportionate to its viewing figures.
The ages of writers and performers on SNL have now spanned across
the baby boom and Generation X. Its viewers stretch even further;
from the mid-to-late 1990s, the generation after X, now commonly
referred to as the Millennial Generation, started to factor as a poten-
tial audience.7 As I have argued in the preceding chapters, the show’s
fortunes have been closely tied to the ways in which it has responded
to and incorporated each new generation’s outlook and values. In con-
cluding, I want to deal with this success by dividing it into two periods:
1975–84 and 1985–the present.
There is no doubt that SNL’s greatest acclaim and most widespread
inf luence came in the period between 1975 and 1984. An essential
part of this impact was the nature of the extra-fictional personas cul-
tivated by the show. As much as it prized skilled comic performance,
SNL and its cast offered a particular point of view presented as at odds
with network television’s established order. On television, SNL’s real
impact came from its first five years. The Not Ready for Primetime
Players presented comedy that extended what was allowable for net-
work broadcasting. Previously taboo subjects, language, and opinions
were regularly aired. SNL indicated that whatever gap in tastes and
values had developed between the networks and baby boomers could
and would be overcome. Yet in terms of immediate inf luence, the
show’s innovations were restricted to the margins of the schedule.
Much of the content and tone SNL introduced has since become
acceptable primetime viewing, but the process has been gradual.
In contrast, when some of The Not Ready for Primetime Players
attempted to transfer their popularity into cinema no such delay was
evident. In seeking to capture the nature of their appeal, Hollywood
quickly developed new approaches to incorporate comedians’ perso-
nas into narrative film.
Conclusion 189
Assessing Hollywood’s use of comedian stars during the studio era,
it is Frank Krutnik’s view that between the late 1930s and early 1960s a
“standardized framework” existed where the likes of Bob Hope, Danny
Kaye, Red Skelton, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis “provided a famil-
iar and predictable combination of fiction-making and entertainment
spectacle/comic performance.”8 The framework involved the come-
dian being “dropped into the centre of a ready-made fictional world,
and the fictional identity he assumes is torn between the demands of
conforming (as a character) and the need to deviate (as performer).”9
Industrially, culturally, and socially, this conception of comedian stars
was a product of its time. As the 1960s progressed, the popularity of
the classical comedians waned and they were not immediately replaced.
As we have seen, by the early 1970s mainstream Hollywood had little
recent experience of turning established comic performers from other
media into consistently successful film attractions.
By the early 1980s, this situation had altered radically, and as chapters
two and three have shown, performers from SNL were instrumental
in provoking the turnaround. On NBC, SNL offered the spectacle of
a small group of individuals with baby boom values challenging and
changing television form and content. Viewers were invited to witness
both the process and the results of the group’s endeavors. While sympa-
thetic portrayals of New Values were already common in Hollywood,
SNL’s triumphant tone was not. The success of The Not Ready for
Primetime Players over traditional network thinking from 1975 would
be reenacted at college, summer camp, the army, in business, or in any
number of other arenas to the delight of large cinema audiences until
the late 1980s. Here, deviation became the goal for both character and
performer, with the stars’ performing abilities now a tool to advance
rather than impede the narrative.
As has been argued for previous cycles of comedian comedy,
Hollywood’s adoption of this particular model for showcasing comedian
stars was the product of “a complex series of historical determinants.”10
In chapter two, I showed that the production of National Lampoon’s
Animal House (1978), the surprise success of which was instrumental
in studios taking chances on a new generation of television and stage
performers, came about through negotiation between and contribu-
tions from numerous parties within the film industry and elsewhere.
Stage, print, and broadcast traditions met Hollywood conventions in an
atmosphere of relative creative freedom made possible by the (equally
relative) low cost and low expectations attributed to proceedings. After
Animal House hit big, an unending process of refinement, trial, and error
began as the industry sought to discover exactly what had drawn audi-
ences in such numbers and whether those numbers could be repeated
or improved. As a clear example of Rick Altman’s Producer’s Game,
I hope my analysis of this process in subsequent chapters demonstrates
some of the possibilities Altman’s concept has for furthering our under-
standing of film history.11
The apex of SNL’s inf luence came in 1984 when Ghostbusters and
Beverly Hills Cop were the most successful films of the year. That these
two films should f lourish in the year of Reagan’s landslide reelection, an
event Rhonda Hammer and Douglas Kellner consider “perhaps the high
point of Reaganite conservatism,” demonstrates the problems of draw-
ing links between presidential politics and Hollywood.12 As seen in the
introduction, Reagan’s conservative social values were not shared by the
majority of Hollywood’s creative elite, or by the majority of its target
audiences. In chapter three, I argued that Ghostbusters’ narrative and use
of Bill Murray’s extra-fictional persona were continuations of SNL and
Animal House, both of which sought to celebrate the new freedoms won
by the baby boom. Featuring male, middle-class, and white protago-
nists and primarily aimed at male, middle-class, and white audiences, the
manner in which this celebration appears in Ghostbusters is problematic.
The film assumes a level of gender and racial equality has been reached
that is undermined both by events in the narrative and by the film’s use
of black and female performers. By congratulating the generation for
achievements that remain far from complete, the film has the potential to
imply no further effort is necessary. Likewise, Beverly Hills Cop is clearly
more racially progressive than Ghostbusters, but still in a context designed
for white male consumption. These failings must not be confused with
the intention to undo the social change of the 1960s and 1970s; instead,
they arise from imagining more change than actually occurred.
Such a conclusion also raises broad questions regarding the Reaganite
leanings found elsewhere in Hollywood and network television at this
time. For instance, there is the extent to which the approach intro-
duced by Animal House was useful for showcasing stars not associated
with SNL. In basing their characters on their extra-fictional personas,
SNL cast members presented a unified image quite different to the ten-
sion between performer and role associated with most comedian stars.
Arguably, this single image was easier to replicate in a fictional nar-
rative context by other actors. Here, the three names most frequently
cited are Tom Hanks, Michael Keaton, and Steve Guttenberg.13 Each
had early success [with Bachelor Party (1984), Night Shift (1982), and Police
Academy (1984)] in films looking to build on the style and pleasures of
Conclusion 191
Animal House and Stripes (1981). Each went on to star in at least one
film [Big (1988) for Hanks, Batman (1989) for Keaton, Three Men and
a Baby (1987) for Guttenberg] that has been held-up as emblematic of
Hollywood trends in the 1980s.14 This is not to say SNL should be
held responsible for these releases, but it indicates the importance of
baby boom values in establishing these stars’ fictional personas. Further
research is needed to discover how their later work acknowledged,
exploited, or undermined such values.
Equally, the experiences of SNL stars and their imitators continued
the long-standing trend for “male-centeredness” in comedian comedy.15
Female stars were very much part of the success of The Not Ready
for Primetime Players on television, yet in the move to film, instances
of white male bias on SNL became total male domination. As brief ly
described at the end of chapter two, this came about through a com-
bination of institutional preconceptions, individual temperaments, and
audience favor. Just as other aspects of the Hollywood comedian comedy
tradition have proved historically specific, it must be assumed the same
is true of the tradition’s gender imbalances. More work needs to be done
on the possibilities and problems for female-centered comedian film
comedy since the 1970s. In this respect, the success of Nine to Five (1980)
would make an interesting point of departure.16 Like Animal House, its
narrative pits a group of outsiders against an institution. Here, the group
involves female workers (played by Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, and Lily
Tomlin) attempting to overthrow sexist office culture represented by
their boss (played by Dabney Coleman). Two of the three female stars,
Parton and Tomlin, had already achieved fame through presentational
performance, as a singer and stand-up comedian, respectively. Nine
to Five was the second biggest hit of its year, grossing $103.3 million,
but did not result in the appearance of similar hits as followed Animal
House. It would be instructive to ascertain the roles of Hollywood’s
(overwhelmingly male) production elite, of the stars themselves, and of
cinema audiences in contributing to this state of affairs.17
From the debut of SNL in 1975 to the appearance of Ghostbusters
and Beverly Hills Cop in 1984, there was a consistency of approach in
the relationship between stars’ fictional and extra-fictional personas
and the material they presented. This relationship spoke to the specific
moment of the baby boom assuming control in American culture and
society. Created for exactly this purpose, it would have been entirely
understandable if after the moment passed, SNL and its casts had qui-
etly slipped from view. Certainly, neither has since made waves as great
as in those first ten years; but the very fact that the show has continued
to play an important role in both film and television for more than
another two decades is almost as remarkable.
In film, the first instances of this resilience were the modestly suc-
cessful attempts by Murray and Murphy to adapt their star personas
to ref lect their changing social position and interests. As the come-
dian stars aged and came to represent the establishment (and here they
were joined by another SNL cast member, Billy Crystal), their work
displayed an increasing interest in family and community. As a result,
the narratives of their films reverted to the demand for conformity
Krutnik finds in the classical period. However, only in the case of
Crystal can a strong argument be made for his films seeking a return to
social values prior to the changes of the 1960s and 1970s. Particularly
in the late 1980s and early 1990s films starring Murray and Murphy
there is a recognition that the change depicted in their earlier work was
not complete.
Back on television, the arrival of Crystal, Martin Short, Christopher
Guest, and others on SNL in 1984 marked the beginning of a turn on
the show away from its original focus on the process and personnel
behind its own creation. Like the concurrent adaptation of its early
stars, this turn can be explained by the consolidation of baby boomers
as the dominant force in society. Its original selling point as a product
by and for the baby boom was now the norm. By 1990, though Variety
could claim that SNL’s “spirit of topical, raunchy, impudent humor
lives on,” the show no longer intimated that its humor came from a
perspective distinct from the social mainstream.18 Significantly, in tak-
ing such an approach, SNL also lost its connection with Hollywood
audiences.
During the 1990s, attempts were made to reestablish a specific,
youth-oriented voice on the show, a process detailed in chapter six. First
with Mike Myers’ character Wayne Campbell and then through the
recruitment of young stars including Adam Sandler and Chris Farley,
this voice was defined in contrast to SNL’s burgeoning reputation for
presenting professional humor from an educated, liberal perspective.
In effect, then, the new stars were also positioning themselves in con-
trast to the baby boom, reigniting debates around generational change.
While this voice ultimately proved too limiting for network television,
it again produced clear, well-defined extra-fictional star personas that
proved useful for film.
Made primarily for post-baby boom audiences, the films of Mike
Myers and Adam Sandler offer a mix of continuity and change when
compared to their baby boom orientated predecessors. In terms of
Conclusion 193
continuity, Myers’ first three films, Wayne’s World (1992), So I Married an
Axe Murderer (1993), and Wayne’s World 2 (1993), and Sandler’s numer-
ous hits since Happy Gilmore (1996) proceed from the assumption that
their comedian protagonists represent the views and priorities of their
audience. Far from being exotic outsiders, the likes of Wayne, Happy,
and Big Daddy’s (1999) Sonny Koufax have everyday aspirations, even
if the obstacles the narratives contrive to hinder their progress can be
unlikely in the extreme. It is in the nature of their aspirations that these
characters, and these comedians, begin to diverge from the previous
generation.
From Animal House to Groundhog Day, there is an assumption that
what is best for the comedian is best for everybody; the fictional world
is remade in the stars’ image. As I noted in chapter four, this approach
reached its peak in Spies Like Us (1985), the film that provoked Janet
Maslin to lament SNL’s inf luence on film comedy. The final scene
where Chase and Aykroyd use Trivial Pursuit to end the cold war
advances the theory that good-humored f lippancy will save us all.19
In contrast, SNL’s 1990s stars have been altogether less ambitious and
more accepting of difference. The aforementioned Myers and Sandler
films rarely stray beyond domestic or personal concerns. Their pro-
tagonists strive for a place in the world, not to rule it. This assumption
of the need for diversity fits Leonard Steinhorn’s argument, quoted in
the introduction, that Generation X has seen the entrenchment and
embellishment of baby boom values; instead of one alternative point of
view, there are many.20
As with my analysis of SNL’s first decade, my conclusions regarding
SNL and its casts since 1984 contribute to wider debates surrounding
trends in comedy and stardom. SNL was not alone in turning to young,
“dumb” white male underachievement in the early 1990s. Melanie
Nash has shown that MTV’s Beavis and Butt-head (1993–97) has also
been read as an attempt to portray contemporary youth experience,
where in reality it ref lects and privileges only a small social subgroup.21
At the same time, increasing acknowledgment of diversity has affected
the route to stardom taken by nonwhite comedian stars. To date, Eddie
Murphy remains SNL’s only nonwhite cast member to attain main-
stream stardom as a result of his exposure on the show. Though Chris
Rock was among Lorne Michaels’ 1990 additions, he struggled for
exposure in an overpopulated cast and left SNL in 1993. Rock’s later
fame was primarily due to a succession of HBO specials showcasing
his stand-up routines.22 Rock’s experiences are replicated elsewhere
on network and cable television, where there has been little success in
combining black and white perspectives within comedy programs.23 In
recent years, stars including Will Smith, Damon and Marlon Wayans,
and Martin Lawrence have established Hollywood careers after appear-
ing in shows featuring largely or entirely black casts.24
Finally, developments on SNL after 1995, and the cinema exploits of
subsequent casts, have largely followed the pattern of the first twenty
years. Since the departure of Sandler and Farley, SNL has returned to
foregrounding individual sketches and varied comic performance in a
manner similar to the late 1980s. As with previous instances of whole-
sale cast turnover, the 1995–96 season saw a drop in the show’s popu-
larity with audiences (though not critics). Over the next two seasons
ratings recovered, albeit never rising back above the average achieved
in 1994–95. In line with the experiences of the late 1980s cast, attempts
by Hollywood to exploit this perceived revival of fortunes concentrated
on adapting sketch characters into full-length narratives. Produced by
Michaels for Paramount, A Night at the Roxbury (1998), Superstar (1998),
and The Ladies Man (2000) were based on recurring characters played
by Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell, Molly Shannon, and Tim Meadows,
respectively. However, none was sufficiently popular to finish in the
top fifty films of their years.
In 2003 Ferrell became the first SNL cast member to achieve main-
stream film stardom using a primarily ostensive performance style.
Though he was responsible for a number of recurring impersonations
on the show, including President George W. Bush, in many of his roles
Ferrell combined a blundering physicality with a penchant for incon-
gruous, seemingly improvised exclamations and tirades. These common
traits were essential to Ferrell’s star-making characters in Old School and
Elf (both 2003). In the R rated Old School, he is the most unruly of
three friends in their thirties who set about recreating their university
fraternity lifestyle. It grossed $75.6 million, the thirty-ninth biggest hit
of the year. In the PG rated Elf, he plays a human raised by Santa’s elves
who returns to New York to find his real family. Taking full advantage
of the Christmas season, it grossed $173.4 million, 2003’s seventh most
successful release. Like Murray’s groundskeeper in Caddyshack, Ferrell’s
popular characters are clearly marked as performative acts, to the extent
that several of his films [notably Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgundy
(2004) and Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), which
Ferrell cowrote], include outtakes during their closing credits demon-
strating the improvisational process used during filming.
Also in 2003, Kenan Thompson (born on May 10, 1978) became
the first SNL cast member to be younger than the show. Still, SNL
Conclusion 195
has yet to recruit the Millennial Generation into its cast. A glimpse of
what may lie ahead can be seen in the success of Andy Samberg as a
cast member since 2005. Also born in 1978, Samberg has contributed a
number of prerecorded sketches labeled “SNL Digital Shorts” designed
for viewing online after their original broadcast. A number of these,
in particular songs titled “Lazy Sunday” and “Dick in a Box,” have
become “viral” internet hits, viewed tens of millions of times.25 In
2007, Michaels produced a feature film starring Samberg titled Hot Rod
but it was not met with the same enthusiasm, taking $13.9 million dur-
ing its theatrical release. At present, the future direction of Samberg’s
career, and the significance of such high-profile prerecorded content
on SNL remains unclear.
Apart from Samberg, SNL’s most recent intervention into multime-
dia star-making has again come with cast members defining themselves
through difference to the show’s origins, though in terms of gender
rather than taste, race, or generation. As already noted, in 1999 Tina
Fey became SNL’s first female head writer. In 2000 she joined the
cast as a featured player, coanchoring “Weekend Update” with Jimmy
Fallon. In 2004, Fallon was replaced by Amy Poehler, meaning that
for the first time since Jane Curtin in SNL’s second season, this long-
standing center-piece of the show was delivered entirely from a female
point of view. Unlike Curtin, no character quirks were introduced
that might compromise the pair’s ownership of SNL’s most direct and
consistent comic platform.
At the end of the 2005–2006 season, Fey left SNL to make 30
Rock, which follows the adventures of Liz Lemon, the head writer of
a late-night, live comedy-variety program called “The Girly Show.”
As Lemon, Fey stays close in look and manner to her SNL “Weekend
Update” appearances. Many of the problems Lemon faces and much of
the humor in 30 Rock derive from the contradictions and limitations of
producing topical comedy for a major corporation. In the first episode,
Lemon is informed that her modestly successful show “for women and
by women” must incorporate the services of unstable black male come-
dian film star Tracy Jordan (played by former SNL cast member Tracy
Morgan) in order to boost male demographics. As a result “The Girly
Show” is renamed “TGS with Tracy Jordan.” Early in the second sea-
son, Lemon is thrilled to meet one of her childhood idols, Rosemary
Howard (played by Carrie Fisher), a pioneering, boundary-pushing
television comedy writer in the 1960s. Howard convinces Lemon to
stand up to network executive Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) over con-
tent on her show. Lemon tells Donaghy, “I got into this business to
be like Rosemary, to make people think.” No, Donaghy corrects her,
“You got into this business because you’re funny and you’re weird and
you’re socially retarded, and you also got into it because it pays well.”
In these ways, 30 Rock satirizes the legacy of SNL just as SNL continues
to satirize the rest of television.
While it won the 2008 Emmy awards for best actress (Fey), best
actor (Baldwin), and outstanding comedy series, the first two seasons
of 30 Rock were not ratings successes.26 However, it maintained Fey’s
SNL persona and in April 2008, she was re-teamed with Amy Poehler
as stars of Baby Mama, a PG-13 rated comedy about a single business
woman (Fey) who resorts to employing a surrogate (Poehler) when she
is unable to become pregnant. Interestingly, Fey’s character’s tribulations
in Baby Mama are as much the product of generational as reproductive
issues. As well as Poehler, she must deal with the spiritual whims of her
boss, played as an archetype of baby boomer self-involvement by Steve
Martin. Baby Mama grossed $60.3 million at the domestic box office,
the fifty-first highest grossing film of 2008, by some distance the most
financially successful film starring female SNL cast members.
On August 29, 2008, the fortunes of Fey, 30 Rock, and SNL were
unexpectedly affected by Senator John McCain’s selection of Alaskan
governor Sarah Palin as his running mate in his bid to become presi-
dent of the United States. Palin and Fey have a marked physical resem-
blance, to the extent that Fey, not known during her time on SNL for
impersonations, was persuaded to return to the show to play the vice
presidential candidate. As Palin, Fey was a huge success. In the weeks
leading up to the 2008 American presidential elections, SNL’s ratings
rose by 76 percent compared to the previous year.27 Asked by Variety to
comment on the show’s surge in popularity, ABC’s executive vice pres-
ident Jeff Bader commented, “They caught lightning in a bottle [. . .] If
it weren’t for Sarah Palin, I don’t think things would have worked out
the way they did.”28 In traditional SNL fashion, it wasn’t long before the
show turned away from politics to focus on its star and her position in
the television industry. For the episode broadcast on October 18, 2008,
the real Palin appeared on SNL, shown standing with Lorne Michaels
watching Fey as Palin mock a recent press conference. Turning to
Michaels, Palin asks, “Why couldn’t we have done the 30 Rock sketch
that I wrote?” “Honestly,” Michaels replies, “not enough people know
that show.” On November 7, 2008, Variety reported, “Network TV’s
hottest entertainment franchise at the moment is 33 years old. And not
even in primetime.”29 They shouldn’t sound so surprised. It’s happened
several times before.
NOT E S
Introduction
1. Janet Maslin, “Spies Like Us,” The New York Times (December 6, 1985), C14.
2. Belushi died from a drug overdose in March 1982.
3. Clearly what constitutes a “hit” is a rather elastic concept. Here, I refer to films that were
among the top twenty highest grossing theatrical releases of their year at the U.S. box
office. Unless otherwise stated, all box office information in this introduction is taken from
www.boxofficemojo.com [accessed August 20, 2008].
4. Frank Krutnik, “Introduction,” in Frank Krutnik, ed., Hollywood Comedians: The Film
Reader (London: Routledge, 2003), 169.
5. Tom Shales, “Zingers on Saturday Night,” Washington Post (November 8, 1975), A19.
6. For trends in film, see Peter Krämer, The New Hollywood: From Bonnie and Clyde to Star
Wars (London: Wallf lower, 2005); and David A. Cook, Lost Illusions: American Cinema in
the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). For
trends in television, see Josh Ozersky, Archie Bunker’s America: TV in an Era of Change 1968–
1975 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003); and Aniko Bodroghkozy,
Groove Tube: Sixties Television and Youth Rebellion (Durham: Duke University Press,
2001).
7. Stephen Prince, “Introduction: Movies and the 1980s,” in Stephen Prince, ed., American
Cinema of the 1980s: Themes and Variations (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 1.
8. Erik Barnouw, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1990), 513.
9. Jane Feuer, Seeing through the Eighties: Television and Reaganism (London: BFI, 1995), 13.
10. Prince, “Introduction: Movies and the 1980s,” 1.
11. Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 379.
12. Michael Schudson, “Ronald Reagan Misremembered,” in David Middleton and Derek
Edwards, eds, Collective Remembering (London: Sage, 1990), 117.
13. Paul C. Light, Baby Boomers (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988), 234.
14. Stephen Powers, David J. Rothman, and Stanley Rothman, Hollywood’s America: Social and
Political Themes in Motion Pictures (Boulder: Westview, 1996), 3.
15. Krämer, The New Hollywood, 4. See also, “Big Pictures: Studying Contemporary Hollywood
Through its Greatest Hits,” in Jacqueline Furby and Karen Randell, eds, Screen Methods:
Comparative Readings in Film Studies (London: Wallf lower, 2005), 124–132. For an addi-
tional argument for the need to understand the output of the film and television industries
through a combination of historicised industrial, social, and cultural factors, see David
Hesmondhalgh, The Cultural Industries (London: Sage, 2002).
198 Notes
16. Nielsen ratings use viewer diaries and television meters in a random sample of American
homes to represent the viewing habits of the nation as a whole. Ratings are expressed as a
percentage of households with televisions that tune into a specific program. In 1975, when
SNL began, there were 68.5 million television households, meaning each rating point
equalled 685,000 viewers. In 1985, there were 84.9 million households. In 1995, there were
92.1 million, and in 2005, there were 109.6 million. Figures from the Television Bureau
of Advertising website, www.tvb.org. For a history and a discussion of the strengths and
weaknesses of the Nielsen system, see Hugh Malcolm Beville Jr., Audience Ratings: Radio,
Television, Cable (Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988).
17. Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: BFI, 1999), 44.
18. Ibid., 38.
19. Robert C. Allen and Douglas Gomery, Film History: Theory and Practice (New York: McGraw
Hill, 1985), 165.
20. Ibid., 166.
21. Janet Wasko discusses filmmaker power in terms of industry “clout.” See Janet Wasko,
“Financing and Production: Creating the Hollywood Film Commodity,” in Paul
McDonald and Janet Wasko, eds, The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry (London:
Blackwell, 2007), 60.
22. For a further example of this approach, see Alan Lovell and Gianluca Sergi, Making Films in
Contemporary Hollywood (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005).
23. Daniel Yankelovich, The New Morality: A Profile of American Youth in the 1970s (New York:
McGraw Hill, 1974); William Strauss and Neil Howe, Generations: The History of America’s
Future 1584 to 2069 (New York: William Morrow, 1991).
24. For more on the use of reviews as part of assessing films’ historical reception, see Janet
Staiger, Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1992), 79–97.
25. See John Ellis, Visible Fictions (London: Routledge, 1992), 91–108; Richard Dyer, Stars
(London: BFI, 1979).
26. P. David Marshall, Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 79–118.
27. Graeme Turner, Understanding Celebrity (London: Sage, 2004), 15. As Brett Mills has shown
with reference to television situation comedy, such conclusions underplay the complexities
of television performance. Mills states, “The performance style of sitcom is one [. . .] which
actively displays the relationship between the audience and the performer, presenting the
actor as a skilled performer demonstrating their skills in moments of comic business.” As an
example, Mills refers to John Cleese’s physical comedy in Fawlty Towers (BBC1, 1975–79)
that complements his work in Monty Python’s Flying Circus (BBC1, 1969–74). Clearly, this
has significant implications for television’s ability to create stars, such as Cleese, that have
yet to be directly explored. Brett Mills, Television Sitcom (London: BFI, 2005), 85–87.
28. Steve Seidman, Comedian Comedy: A Tradition in Hollywood Film (Ann Arbor: UMI Research
Press, 1981), 3.
29. Ibid., 78.
30. Ibid., 145.
31. Peter Krämer, “Derailing the Honeymoon Express: Comicality and Narrative Closure in
Buster Keaton’s The Blacksmith,” The Velvet Light Trap (no. 23, Spring 1989), 101–116; Frank
Krutnik, “A Spanner in the Works? Genre, Narrative and the Hollywood Comedian,” in
Kristine Brunovska Karnick and Henry Jenkins, eds, Classical Hollywood Comedy (London:
Routledge, 1995), 17–38; Henry Jenkins, What Made Pistachio Nuts? Early Sound Comedy and
the Vaudeville Aesthetic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
32. Jenkins, What Made Pistachio Nuts?, 284.
33. Norman B. Ryder, “The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change,” American
Sociological Review (vol. 30 no. 6, December 1965), 845.
Notes 199
34. Ibid., 844.
35. Ibid., 845.
36. Philip Drake, “Low Blows? Theorising Performance in Post-Classical Comedian Comedy,” in
Frank Krutnik, ed., Hollywood Comedians: The Film Reader (London: Routledge, 2003), 190.
37. Philip Drake, “Jim Carrey: The Cultural Politics of Dumbing Down,” in Andy Willis, ed.,
Film Stars: Hollywood and Beyond (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 73.
38. Drake, “Low Blows,” 196.
39. June Edmunds and Bryan S. Turner, Generations, Culture and Society (London: Open
University Press, 2002), 1.
40. This work is generally credited as originating with Karl Mannheim’s 1928 essay “On
the Problem of Generations,” reprinted in Bryan S. Turner, ed., Collected Works of Karl
Mannheim, Vol. 5 (London: Routledge, 1997), 276–320.
41. Edmunds and Turner, Generations, Culture and Society, 7.
42. J. Walker Smith and Ann Clurman, Rocking the Ages: The Yankelovich Report on Generational
Marketing (New York: Harper Business, 1997), 8.
43. Krämer, The New Hollywood, 38–66.
44. Ibid., 59.
45. Landon R. Jones, Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation (New York:
Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1980), 91.
46. Ibid., 35.
47. Ibid., 29.
48. Light, Baby Boomers, 112.
49. Ibid.
50. Jones, Great Expectations, 45.
54. David Marc, e.g., argues that sitcoms of the 1950s and 1960s offered “a vision of peaceful,
prosperous suburban life centred on the stable nuclear family.” David Marc, Demographic
Vistas (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 15.
56. Ibid., 131.
57. Yankelovich, The New Morality, 5.
58. Ibid., 24.
60. Yankelovich, The New Morality, 6.
61. Ibid., 21.
62. Ibid., 10.
63. Krämer reports that by 1983, cinema attendance by women, the lesser educated, and those over
thirty was proportionally higher than it had been in 1972. Krämer, The New Hollywood, 101.
64. For a summary of economic conditions and successive presidents’ failed attempts to combat
them, see Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and
Politics (New York: Da Capo, 2002), 129–143.
65. Geoffrey T. Holtz, Welcome to the Jungle; The Why Behind Generation X (New York: St.
Martin’s Griffin, 1995), 26.
66. For more on the introduction and spread of cable, see Megan Mullen, The Rise of Cable
Programming in the United States: Revolution or Evolution? (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2003).
68. Leonard Steinhorn, The Greater Generation: In Defence of the Baby Boom Legacy (New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 2006), 28.
200 Notes
70. Light, Jones, and Smith and Clurman all use these dates.
71. Strauss and Howe, Generations, 301.
73. According to Yankelovich, 81 percent of college youth and 75 percent of noncollege youth
“feel they have good opportunities for the future” (The New Morality, 84).
74. William Strauss and Neil Howe, Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation (New York:
Vintage Books, 2000), 73.
75. Steinhorn, The Greater Generation, 35.
76. Smith and Clurman, Rocking the Ages, 90.
77. Strauss and Howe, Generations, 330.
78. Ibid., 328.
79. Holtz, Welcome to the Jungle, 52.
80. Smith and Clurman, Rocking the Ages, 100.
81. Holtz, Welcome to the Jungle, 16.
One “I’m Chevy Chase and You, You’re Merely

a Statistic”: Self-reference and Stardom on
Saturday Night Live
1. As explained later in this chapter, until March 1977 SNL was titled NBC’s Saturday Night
because another program running on the ABC network was already using the title Saturday
Night Live. When that program was cancelled, NBC were able to acquire its title. To avoid
confusion I consistently use SNL or Saturday Night Live except in direct quotes.
2. Fob, “Saturday Night,” Variety (October 15, 1975), 48.
3. John J. O’Connor, “TV: Simon and Garfunkel Reunion on NBC’s Saturday Night,” New
York Times (October 20, 1975), 65.
4. Tom Shales, “Zingers on Saturday Night,” Washington Post (November 8, 1975), A19.
5. John J. O’Connor, “Sprightly Mix Brightens NBC’s Saturday Night,” New York Times
(November 30, 1975), 177.
6. Cleveland Amory, “Review,” TV Guide ( January 3, 1976), 2.
7. George Kaufman, “The Flakiest Night of the Week,” Time (February 2, 1976), http://www.
time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,945531,00.html [accessed October 20, 2007].
8. David Marc, Demographic Vistas (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984),
149–158; Scott R. Olson, “Meta Television: Popular Postmodernism,” Critical Studies in
Mass Communication (September 1987), 284–300; Michael Dunne, Metapop: Self-referentiality
in Contemporary American Popular Culture ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992),
20–36; Josh Ozersky, Archie Bunker’s America: TV in an Era of Change 1968–1975 (Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), 138–146.
9. If anything, the most common approach has been to undermine the importance of the cast.
For instance, with the exceptions of John Belushi and Bill Murray, Ozersky claims the cast
were “ciphers, disappearing completely into their roles and carrying little with them from
one to the next.” Ozersky, Archie Bunker’s America, 140.
10. Todd Gitlin, Inside Primetime (New York: Pantheon Book, 1983), 208. See also, Erik
Barnouw, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1990); Aniko Bodroghkozy, Groove Tube: Sixties Television and Youth Rebellion
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 201–204.
11. Les Brown, “TV’s Old Math for New Myth,” Variety (December 31, 1969), 21.
12. See Bodroghkozy, Groove Tube, 123–163; Tony Hendra, Going Too Far: The Rise and Demise
of Sick, Gross, Black, Sophomoric, Weirdo, Pinko, Anarchist, Underground, Anti-Establishment
Notes 201
Humor (New York: Doubleday, 1987), 202–226; S.A. Carr, “On the Edge of Tastelessness:
CBS, The Smothers Brothers and the Battle for Control,” Cinema Journal (vol. XXXI, no.
4, Summer 1992), 3–24.
13. E. F. Albee, quoted in Henry Jenkins, What Made Pistachio Nuts? Early Sound Comedy and the
Vaudeville Aesthetic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 63.
14. Ozersky, Archie Bunker’s America, 34.
15. All primetime rankings in this chapter have been taken from Alex McNeil, Total Television
(New York: Penguin, 1997).
16. Hendra, Going Too Far, 211.
17. Jack Gould, “CBS to Drop Smothers Hour,” New York Times (April 5, 1969), 1.
18. Bodroghkozy, Goove Tube, 150.
19. Ibid., 149.
20. Marc, Demographic Vistas, 21–27.
21. Gitlin, Inside Primetime, 203.
22. Bodroghkozy, Groove Tube, 230.
23. Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad, Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live
(New York: Beech Tree Books, 1986), 31.
24. Bill Carter, The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, and the Battle for the Night (New York: Hyperion,
1994), 17.
25. Robert Metz reports that in 1977, Carson wanted to tell a joke about the different standards
of censorship experienced by The Tonight Show and SNL that included the words “bitch, ass
and horny,” only to be told he actually could not say these words, regularly used on SNL,
on air. Robert Metz, The Tonight Show (New York: Playboy Press, 1980), 271.
26. Hill and Weingrad, Saturday Night, 31.
27. For the first three shows, a seventh performer, George Coe, was included and credited in
the cast to play older characters.
28. Additional accounts of the creation and development of the National Lampoon can be found
in Josh Karp, A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed
Comedy Forever (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2006); Matty Simmons, If You Don’t Buy
This Book We’ll Kill This Dog: Life, Laughs, Love and Death at National Lampoon (New York:
Barricade Books,1994); Dennis Perrin, Mr Mike: The Life and Work of Michael O’Donoghue
(New York: Avon Books, 1998). Each is sympathetic to a different member of the maga-
zine’s production team (Hendra was an editor for the Lampoon and later produced Lemmings).
Donna McCrohan’s The Second City: A Backstage History of Comedy’s Hottest Troupe (New
York: Perigee Books, 1987) offers a detailed account of the approach to humor and perfor-
mance offered by The Compass and Second City.
29. Hendra, Going Too Far, 378.
30. The perceived “authenticity” of live performance compared to prerecorded presentations
has been discussed and criticized by Philip Auslander as “a reductive binary opposition.” In
harking back to television’s live origins, the version of “liveness” offered by SNL was, and
remains, heavily “mediatized”; events are presented from the perspectives of several differ-
ent cameras, resulting in a home viewer experience very different from that of the studio
audience. Moreover, performers on SNL regularly switch back and forth between address-
ing the two audiences, confusing which is the “true” experience. Still, this hybrid form was
sufficient to single out the show from most other programs at the time. Philip Auslander,
Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (London: Routledge, 2008).
32. Carter, The Late Shift, 16.
33. Dunne, Metapop, 20–29.
34. For a history of the origins American broadcast comedy, including analysis of the works of
Benny, Burns, and others, see Arthur Frank Wertheim, Radio Comedy (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1979).
202 Notes
35. For more on the appeals of Monty Python’s Flying Circus for American audiences, see Jeffrey S. Miller,
Something Completely Different: British TV and American Culture (London: University of Minnesota
Press, 2000), 111–140. For an account of the problems Monty Python’s humor caused for the ABC
network, see Hendrik Hertzberg, “Naughty Bits,” The New Yorker (March 29, 1976), 69–87.
36. Lorne Michaels, quoted in John Blumenthal and Lindsay Maracotta, “Playboy Interview:
NBC’s Saturday Night,” Playboy (May 1977), 76.
37. Ozersky, Archie Bunker’s America, 108. Silverman’s Time cover appeared on the September 5,
1977, issue.
38. Marc, Demographic Vistas, 151.
39. Ibid., 154. Between January 15, 1977, and February 24, 1979, the Conehead family (played
by Aykroyd, Curtin, and Newman) appeared in eleven sketches.
40. Silverman’s reign at NBC is detailed in Sally Bedell, Up the Tube: Prime-time TV in the
Silverman Years (New York: The Viking Press, 1981).
41. Robert Pekurny, “The Production Process and Environment of NBC’s Saturday Night
Live,” Journal of Broadcasting (vol. 24, no.1, Winter 1980), 96.
42. Michael Shain, “NBC Censors Give Up On SNL,” New York Post (October 26, 1979), 53.
43. Ozersky, Archie Bunker’s America, 139.
44. Marc Eliot, American Television: The Official Art of the Artificial (New York: Doubleday,
1981), 31. In separating satire from parody, I follow Dan Harries’ distinction that satire
“seems to be driven by the wish to change (or correct) such social configurations and moti-
vated by specific aims that are either persuasive or punitive in nature. [. . .] Such aims [. . .]
are not essential for parodic activity.” Dan Harris, Film Parody (London: BFI, 2000), 31.
45. Reiner was currently starring as Meathead in All in the Family, arguably the most prominent
exponent of New Values in American culture. While, as already noted, the portrayal was
not always entirely sympathetic, for him to appear as host without the balancing presence
of Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker was another statement of SNL’s intent.
46. Not entirely random, Lasser’s breakdown was a reference to the fate of her titular character
in Norman Lear’s syndicated, late-night soap opera parody Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
(1976–77). In one episode, Mary also broke down on live television.
47. William Paul, Laughing Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror and Comedy (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1994), 156.
48. For example, New York magazine introduced its feature on Chase by asserting, “You may
not have heard of him, but network executives are calling Chevy the first real potential
successor to Carson.” Jeff Greenfield, “He’s Chevy Chase and You’re Not, And He’s TV’s
Hot New Comedy Star,” New York (December 22, 1975), 33.
50. Blumenthal and Maracotta, “Playboy Interview,” 63.
51. Mitchell Glazer, “The Most Dangerous Man on TV: Saturday Night’s John Belushi,”
Crawdaddy ( June 1977), 41.
52. Episode broadcast January 10, 1976.
53. Gilda Radner, quoted in Diane Rosen, “Gilda!” TV Guide ( July 28, 1978), 26. Like
Belushi’s drug references, the connection between Radner and food takes on new, ret-
rospective meaning in light of claims she suffered from bulimia while part of SNL. Tom
Shales and James Andrew Miller, Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night
Live (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2002), 149.
55. The success of the Curtin’s Snyder would take Aykroyd’s character further still from its
original satiric intent when the mother and son pairing was repeated at the end of the fourth
season (May 12, 1979) in a domestic setting.
56. An indication of the success of this practice can be found in one audience member’s response
to similar tactics in Late Night with David Letterman: “I remember with Saturday Night Live
they’d show someone in the audience and put up something funny related to that person.
They’d actually go right into the audience and bring the people right into the show. You
Notes 203
weren’t someone watching the show; you were an integral part of the show.” Richard J.
Schaefer and Robert K. Avery, “Audience Conceptualizations of Late Night with David
Letterman,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media (vol. 37, no. 3, Summer 1993), 253.
58. Joyce Wadler, “Satire in High Places,” New York Post (April 3, 1976), 20.
Two “I’ll Write You a Note Saying You’re Too Well
to Attend”: National Lampoon’s Animal
House Takes Saturday Night Live
to Hollywood
1. Murf., “Foul Play,” Variety ( July 12, 1978), 18.

2. Unless otherwise stated, all box office information in this chapter is taken from www.
boxofficemojo.com [accessed April 16, 2008].
3. Anon., National Lampoon’s Animal House Production Notes, 1 (Billy Rose Theater Collection,
New York Public Library).
4. For example, in his entry in the University of California Press’ History of the American Cinema
dealing with the 1970s, David A. Cook’s only extended discussion of comedy as genre is in
relation to parody. David A. Cook, Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and
Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 180–182 and 205–209. This is despite,
as Peter Krämer notes, comedy remaining audiences’ favorite type of film throughout the period.
Peter Krämer, The New Hollywood: From Bonnie and Clyde to Star Wars (London: Wallflower
Press, 2005), 62. A notable exception is Frank Krutnik’s article on the demise of romantic
comedy after 1965. Frank Krutnik, “The Faint Aroma of Performing Seals: The ‘Nervous’
Romance and the Comedy of the Sexes,” Velvet Light Trap (no. 26, Fall 1990), 57–72.
5. Brooks and Simon wrote for Your Show of Shows (NBC, 1950–54) and Caesar’s Hour (NBC,
1954–57), Allen for Caesar’s Hour.
6. For an overview of debates surrounding film authorship and the development of auteur the-
ory, see Pam Cook and Mieke Bernink, eds, The Cinema Book: Second Edition (London: BFI,
1999), 235–314. For an illustration of studios’ “ready acceptance of American auteur cinema
in the 1970s” as an approach to production and marketing, see Justin Wyatt, “Economic
Constraints/Economic Opportunities: Robert Altman as Auteur,” Velvet Light Trap (no. 38,
Autumn 1996), 51–67.
7. Jacob Smith, “Showing Off: Laughter and Excessive Disclosure in Burt Reynolds’ Star
Image,” in Film Criticism (vol. 30, Fall 2005), 25.
8. Ibid., 30.
9. Ibid., 22.
10. While M*A*S*H is set during the Korean War, it was widely advertised and reviewed in
the context of Vietnam. See Cook, Lost Illusions, 89.
11. Bambi Haggins, Laughing Mad: The Black Comic Persona in Post-soul America (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 2007), 51.
12. For more on the conventions of the car chase in 1970s cinema, see Tico Romao, “Guns and
Gas: Investigating the 1970s Car Chase Film,” in Yvonne Tasker, ed., Action and Adventure
Cinema (London: Routledge, 2004), 130–151.
13. A second result was the introduction of Dudley Moore to American film audiences. Moore
has a supporting role in the film as a sexually adventurous orchestra conductor who Hawn’s
character asks for help.
14. Tony Hendra, Going Too Far: The Rise and Demise of Sick, Gross, Black, Sophomoric, Weirdo,
Pinko, Anarchist, Underground, Anti-Establishment Humor (New York: Doubleday, 1987), 378.
204 Notes
15. Ibid., 394; Josh Karp, A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon
Changed Comedy Forever (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2006), 278.
16. Judith Belushi-Pisano and Tanner Colby, Belushi: A Biography (New York: Ruggedland
Books, 2005), 132.
17. Mel Gussow, “Stage: A New Lampoon; Audiences Hurrying to Be Insulted,” New York
Times (March 3, 1975), 34.
18. In particular, the then recent death of JFK, to whom the yearbook is dedicated, hangs over
much of the content. Douglas Kenney and P. J. O’Rourke, eds, National Lampoon 1964 High
School Yearbook (New York: National Lampoon, 1974).
19. Hendra, Going Too Far, 395; Karp, A Futile and Stupid Gesture, 278.
20. One of Miller’s stories involved a fraternity initiation ceremony where pledges had to com-
pete to see who could vomit the most spectacularly. Characters included Pinto and Otter,
both names used in Animal House. Chris Miller, “The Night of the Seven Fires,” National
Lampoon (October 1974), 68–104.
21. Hendra, Going Too Far, 393–398. The strip, titled “Frat House Frolics!” appeared in the
February 1974 issue of the National Lampoon (pp. 37–40). As in the film, the event takes
place at a fraternity party with the pledge’s dilemma represented by an angel and demon
perched on his shoulders. Unlike the film, where the pledge decides against raping his date
and takes her home, the original comic strip is much darker, and purposefully offensive in
tone. In this version, the pledge rapes the unconscious woman and therefore wins a cash
prize (“the pig pot”) for having sex with the ugliest girl at the party.
22. Ramis, quoted in Belushi-Pisano and Colby, Belushi, 133. At an appearance at the Sci-Fi
London film festival on May 4, 2007, John Landis agreed that Chase, Aykroyd, and Belushi
were approached, but not Murray, instead recalling that Ramis had unsuccessfully lobbied
for a major role. This is supported by Karp’s account of the production, in which he claims
Ramis originally intended to play Boon. Karp, A Futile and Stupid Gesture, 289.
23. Ramis, quoted in Belushi-Pisano and Colby, Belushi, 133.
24. John Landis, “Dialogue on Film,” American Film (May 1982), 22.
25. Karp, A Futile and Stupid Gesture, 289.
26. Thom Mount in “The Yearbook: An Animal House Reunion” on National Lampoon’s Animal
House (DVD, Universal Home Entertainment, 2002).
27. Landis, quoted in Belushi-Pisano and Colby, Belushi, 133.
28. Landis, “Dialogue on Film,” 65.
29. Steve Seidman, Comedian Comedy: A Tradition in Hollywood Film (Ann Arbor: UMI Research
Press, 1981), 64.
30. Ibid., 64–71.
Columbia University Press, 1994), 123–125.
32. P. J. O’Rourke, quoted in Anon., “The Lampoon goes Hollywood,” Time (August 14, 1978),
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,946997,00.html [accessed June 8, 2007].
33. Chris Miller, quoted in Animal House Production Notes, 3.
34. Elmer Bernstein, “The Yearbook: An Animal House Reunion.”
35. Immediately preceding Bluto’s peeping tom scene, Marmalard and Mandy’s date is a fur-
ther demonstration of Marmalard’s separation from the Deltas. Rather than seeking physi-
cal pleasure by responding to Mandy’s strenuous sexual advances, he is preoccupied by
thoughts of how he can defeat his adversaries.
36. David Denby, “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” New York ( July 31, 1978), 65.
37. Otter, for example, drives around in red convertible sports car.
38. William Paul writes perceptively about the “deceptive” nature of this scene, as it at first
mocks the Deltas for their attitudes about race, then asks the viewers to side with them as
they escape from the angry black customers: “By this point in the scene we have moved
from social satire on race relations to a nightmarish image of white femininity threatened
Notes 205
by engulfing black sexuality that can find parallels all the way back to the sexual and racial
hysteria of D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915).” Paul, Laughing Screaming, 128–136.
39. Andrew Sarris, “Film Review: National Lampoon’s Animal House,” Village Voice ( July 31,
1978), 40; Rex Reed, “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” New York Daily News ( July 28,
1978), 3; Frank Rich, “School Days,” Time (August 14, 1978), 87; David Ansen, “Gross
Out,” Newsweek (August 7, 1978), 86.
40. Murf., “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” Variety ( June 28, 1978), 20; Richard Corliss,
“National Lampoon’s Animal House,” New Times ( July 24, 1978), 75.
41. Paul, Laughing Screaming, 86.
42. Ibid., 123.
43. Ibid., 91.
44. Anon., “Animal House is a Fraternity Laugh Riot,” New York Post ( July 28, 1978), 27.
45. A.D. Murphy, “Once Bleak, October Part of B.O. Peak,” Variety (November 8, 1978), 3.
46. Nielsen ratings provided on request from NBC.
47. The average ticket price in 1978 from www.boxofficemojo.com [accessed April 20, 2008].
49. Marvel Team Up (October 1978).
50. Bob Woodward, Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi (London: Faber and
Faber, 1985), 151.
51. Glenn Erickson and Mary Ellen Trainor, The Making of 1941 (New York: Ballantine Books,
1980), 10.
52. Robert Zemeckis, quoted in Chris Hodenfield, “1941: Bombs Away!” Rolling Stone ( January
24, 1980), 37.
53. Though as Joseph McBride notes, “1941 was not the box-office disaster its reputation
might suggest. With a worldwide gross of $90 million, it actually turned a profit.” Joseph
McBride, Steven Spielberg: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 309.
54. The producers evidently hoped to benefit from SNL’s popularity as Morris was also cast in
a one-scene cameo.
55. A Briefcase Full of Blues reached the top position in January 1979. The film was in production
before the release of 1941.
56. See Hill and Weingrad, Saturday Night, 229–249; Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller,
Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 2002), 143–147.
57. Hill and Weingrad, Saturday Night, 353–356.
58. This is not to say all followed Animal House’s approach. For example, Martin’s breakthrough
in The Jerk (1979) much more closely follows Seidman’s tradition. Yet Martin’s association
with SNL was crucial to building his appeal. In his memoir, Martin recalls that following
his first appearance on SNL, his live audience doubled. Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A
Comic’s Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007), 171.
Three “But the Kids Love Us”: The Development of

Bill Murray’s Star Persona from Saturday
Night Live to Ghostbusters
Columbia University Press, 1994), 160.
2. Ibid., 158.
3. John Leland, Hip: The History (New York: Harper Collins, 2004), 6.
206 Notes
4. Interestingly, in this respect Murray closely resembles the trend for ironic detachment in
1970s America identified by Christopher Lasch. Lasch sees workers taking refuge “in jokes,
mockery, and cynicism” from jobs consisting of “little more than meaningless motions.”
However, for Murray disengagement is not an escape, but an attack. Lasch argues that ironic
detachment “dulls pain but also cripples the will to change social conditions.” Murray
instead represents the possibility that such an approach to life can be successful. Christopher
Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (New York: Norton, 1991), 94–96.
5. Leland, Hip, 6.
6. Murray used both for his original, unsuccessful SNL audition, calling the former “The
Honker” at the time. Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad, Saturday Night: A Backstage History of
Saturday Night Live (New York: Beech Tree Books, 1986), 71.
7. Mel Gussow, “Stage: A New Lampoon; Audiences Hurrying to Be Insulted,” New York
Times (March 3, 1975), 34.
8. David Felton, “Bill Murray: Maniac for All Seasons,” Rolling Stone (April 20, 1978), 13.
9. Jack Kroll, “Animal House’s Kid Brother,” Newsweek ( July 9, 1979), 68.
10. Bad News Bears was the seventh biggest hit of 1976, taking $32.2 million at the domestic
box office. Unless otherwise stated, all box office information in this chapter is taken from
www.boxofficemojo.com [accessed November 5, 2008].
11. Vincent Canby, “Screen: Bill Murray in Meatballs,” New York Times ( July 3, 1979), C10.
12. Poll., “Meatballs,” Variety ( June 27, 1979), 18; Frank Rich, “Animal Bunk,” Time ( July 16,
1979), 60.
13. Vincent Canby, “Caddyshack, Animal House Spinoff,” New York Times ( July 25, 1980), C8.
14. Cowriter and producer Kenney fought against Caddyshack’s more cartoonish elements,
including the gopher, imposed by producer Jon Peters. Josh Karp, A Futile and Stupid
Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever (Chicago: Chicago
Review Press, 2006), 347.
15. In a “Making of ” documentary for Stripes (DVD, Columbia Tri-star Home Entertainment,
2007) Reitman and Goldberg explain Stripes was originally pitched to Paramount as a
vehicle for Cheech and Chong.
16. Pauline Kael, “Stripes Review,” New Yorker ( July 13, 1981), 82.
17. Significantly, according to Reitman in the “Making of ” documentary, Stripes was pro-
duced with the full assistance of the U.S. army. As Diane Negra has argued, Stripes works
hard to “graft together patriotic rhetoric and discourses of personal idiosyncrasy.” Diane
Negra, “1981: Movies Looking Back to the Future,” in Stephen Prince, ed., American Films
of the 1980s: Themes and Variations (New York: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 54.
18. Eileen S. Quigley, ed., International Motion Picture Almanac 2008 (Groton: Quigley Publishing
Company, 2008), 19.
19. Bob Woodward and Judith Belushi-Pisano and Tanner Colby describe serious problems
between the two stars and their director, John Alvidson, who had won an Oscar for Rocky
(1976) but had never previously made a comedy. The situation was worsened by Belushi’s drug
use and the decision to cast the pair against type, with Aykroyd playing the film’s anarchic
character and Belushi playing a quiet suburbanite. Bob Woodward, Wired: The Short Life and
Fast Times of John Belushi (London: Faber and Faber, 1985), 200–268; Judith Belushi-Pisano
and Tanner Colby, Belushi: A Biography (New York: Ruggedland Books, 2005), 231–244.
20. Development of the script is discussed by Reitman and Ramis on their commentary track
for Ghostbusters (DVD, Columbia Tristar Home Entertainment, 1999).
21. Peter Krämer, “Would You Take Your Child to See this Film? The Cultural and Social
Work of the Family Adventure Movie,” in Steve Neale and Murray Smith, eds, Contemporary
Hollywood Cinema (London: Routledge, 1998), 295.
22. Ibid.
23. On the development of Zeddemore’s character, Don Shay states that his original function was
to act as a skeptical “on-screen voice of the viewing public.” In light of Leland’s discussion of
Notes 207
hipness at the beginning of the chapter, it is worth quoting Harold Ramis at length: “As writ-
ers, we’d never done a black character. Nor had we ever written women very well. The writer’s
guild sends out letters about this regularly—‘let’s see more women and more minorities.’ So
when we wrote Winston, I think we had our own little reverse backlash going. We bent over
backwards to make Winston’s character good—and in doing so, we made him so good that he
was the best character in the movie. [. . .] At the same time, everyone was saying Bill’s character
was a little weak. So, little by little, we started shifting Winston’s attitude to Bill’s character.”
Therefore Murray’s persona was seen as compatible with what Ramis and Aykroyd considered a
black point of view, to an extent that was detrimental to the film’s major black character. Harold
Ramis, quoted in Don Shay, ed., Making Ghostbusters (New York: Zoetrope, 1985), 54.
24. Evidence that neither Murray’s cynicism nor its validity are in question at this stage in the
narrative, it is Venkman’s observation that the mayor has the chance to save “millions of
registered voters” that wins the team their freedom.
25. David Ansen, “Ghostbusters,” Newsweek ( June 11, 1984), 80; Richard Schickel, “Exercise for
Exorcists,” Time ( June 11, 1984), 83.
26. Joseph Gelmis, “Ghostbusters Review,” Newsday ( June 8, 1984), Section 2, 3.
27. David Denby, “Ghostbusters,” New York ( June 11, 1984), 66.
28. Stephen M. Silverman, “Ghostbusters is Plum Logo,” New York Post ( July 31, 1984), 23.
29. Sheila Benson, “Ghostbusters Review,” Los Angeles Times ( June 8, 1984), Calendar 1.
30. Rex Reed, “Hilarity and Horror,” New York Post ( June 8, 1984), 17.
31. Denby, “Ghostbusters,” 66.
32. Released on December 5, Beverly Hills Cop made most of its money in 1985. Ghostbusters was
re-released in 990 theaters on August 23, 1985, and took a further $9.4 million not included
in its original gross. If this figure is added, then Ghostbusters was 1984’s most successful film.
33. In 1984, exhibitors considered Murray to be the industry’s second biggest star (after Clint
Eastwood) and Aykroyd to be the ninth. Quigley, International Motion Picture Almanac 2008, 19.
34. Based on an average ticket price of $3.36 taken from www.boxofficemojo.com [accessed
May 23, 2008].
35. Certainly the most comprehensive damning of the film and its “Reaganite” leanings comes
from Andrew Britton, who, in considering Ghostbusters to be “the definitive Reaganite
text,” equates the film’s ghosts with “Soviet invasion” and notes that “the supreme figure of
Evil in Ghostbusters is an androgynous goddess associated with pre-Christian ‘Third World’
religious cults, and at the film’s climax she is subjected to a kind of nuclear gang-rape by the
three heroes.” Andrew Britton, “Blissing Out: The Politics of Reaganite Entertainment,”
Movie (no. 30–31, Winter 1986), 17–18.
36. Ansen, “Ghostbusters,” 80.
Four “I Don’t Even Like Myself”: The Revision

and Retreat of Saturday Night Live Stars
after Ghostbusters
1. William Goldman, Which Lie Did I Tell? More Adventures in the Screen Trade (London:
Bloomsbury, 2000), 14.
2. Ibid.
3. Unless otherwise stated, all box office figures in this chapter are taken from www.boxof-
ficemojo.com [accessed December 6, 2008].
4. Domestic takings of $63,000 and $10,054,150, respectively.
5. John Hughes, “Vacation ‘58,” National Lampoon (September 1979), 51.
6. Cover, People (September 12, 1983), 1.
208 Notes
7. Daws., “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” Variety (December 6, 1989), 32.
Company, 2008), 19.
9. The Three Amigos’ final gross was $39.2 million, the twenty-fifth highest gross of 1986.
10. Vincent Canby, “Fletch Goes South,” New York Times (March 17, 1989), C17.
11. Bril., “Nothing But Trouble,” Variety (February 25, 1991), 50. In 1995 Chase received top billing
in Disney’s Man of the House, the forty-first highest grossing film of the year. However, mar-
keting was focused on the Disney brand and Chase’s young costar Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
12. Dragnet took $57.4 million, the fourteenth biggest hit of 1987; The Great Outdoors made
$41.5 million, the twenty-fifth highest grossing film of 1988.
13. In a voiceover, Friday introduces Streebeck: “He had an extensive list of merit citations
which was tainted by his total disregard for departmental procedure.” In a closing voi-
ceover, he observes Streebeck “still exhibits a total disregard for departmental procedure.”
14. Aljean Harmetz, “Hollywood Recycling Old TV Hits as Films,” New York Times (February
21, 1987), http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE5D61F3DF932A15751
C0A961948260 [accessed February 23, 2008].
15. Joseph McBride, “Driving Miss Daisy,” Variety (December 13, 1989), 28.
16. It won best picture, best actress, best make-up, and best adapted screenplay.
17. In Roger Ebert’s review, for example, Aykroyd’s name is only mentioned in passing,
while paragraphs are devoted to Tandy and Freeman. Roger Ebert, “Driving Miss Daisy,”
Chicago Sun-Times ( January 12, 1990), http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/
article?AID=/19900112/REVIEWS/1120301/1023 [accessed February 23, 2008]. Aykroyd
later recounted that, without a background in drama, he had had to actively pursue the role.
Dan Aykroyd, quoted in David Sheff, “The Playboy Interview: Dan Aykroyd,” Playboy
(August 1993), 41.
18. Chevy Chase, quoted in Rena Fruchter, I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not (London: Virgin
Book, 2008), 140.
19. Bill Murray, quoted in Robert Kerwin, “Straight Man,” Us (November 5, 1984), 15.
20. Pat S Broeske, “Murray the Mouth,” Stills (December 1984), 31.
21. Roger Ebert, “The Razor’s Edge,” Chicago Sun-Times (October 19, 1984), http://rogere-
bert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19840101/REVIEWS/401010374/1023
[accessed February 28, 2008].
22. Art Linson, quoted in Timothy White, “The Rumpled Anarchy of Bill Murray,” New York
Times (November 20, 1988), http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE2DC15
3CF933A15752C1A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1 [accessed March 3, 2008].
23. Dawn Steel, quoted in Patrick Goldstein, “Return of the Money-Making Slime,” Rolling
Stone ( June 1, 1989), 54.
24. Bill Murray, quoted in White, “The Rumpled Anarchy of Bill Murray.”
25. Ian Spelling, “Bill Murray Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts!” Starlog (March 1989), 29.
26. Harold Ramis, quoted in Goldstein, “Return of the Money-Making Slime,” 56.
27. Ivan Reitman, quoted in Peter Travers, “Reheated Hits,” Rolling Stone ( June 15, 1989), 74.
28. In his biography of Scrooged’s cowriter Michael O’Donogue, Dennis Perrin reports that
Murray’s histrionics were largely improved by the star, to O’Donogue’s disgust. Dennis Perrin,
Mr. Mike: The Life and Work of Michael O’Donogue (New York: Avon Books, 1998), 408.
29. Pauline Kael, “Scrooged,” New Yorker (December 5, 1988), 114.
30. Janet Maslin, “Under the Tree, The Laughs are Scarce,” New York Times (December 11,
1988), http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEFDC1E31F932A25751C1
A96E948260&sec=&spon=&&scp=1&sq=Under%20the%20Tree,%20The%20Laughs%20
are%20Scarce&st=cse [accessed March 3, 2008].
31. David Denby, “Scrooged,” New York (December 5, 1988), 178.
32. Based on annual average ticket prices taken from www.boxofficemojo.com [accessed March
3, 2008].
Notes 209
33. For instance, in their summer preview, Premiere listed Ghostbusters II as the top film of the
season, adding “If [Columbia’s marketing team] can’t make this a hit, they should hang up
their cleats.” Scott Immergut, “The Premiere Top 20,” Premiere ( June 1989), 66.
34. Brit., “Ghostbusters II,” Variety ( June 21, 1989), 24.
35. This may ref lect the success, from September 1986, of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon, which
ran on ABC until January 1991.
36. David Ansen, “Ghostbusters II,” Newsweek ( June 26, 1989), 68.
37. Nicholas Nicastro, “Quick Change,” New York Observer ( July 30, 1990), 48.
38. David Denby, “Shrink Rap,” New York (May 27, 1991), 62.
39. Approximately 15.1 million tickets, based on an average ticket price of $4.21; taken from
www.boxofficemojo.com [accessed March 16, 2008].
40. James Naremore terms the layering, and revealing, of different levels of performance within
a single character “expressive incoherence” and notes that “any film becomes a good show-
case for professional acting skill if it provides moments when the characters are clearly
shown to be wearing masks.” James Naremore, Acting in the Cinema (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1990), 76.
41. Josh Ozersky, Archie Bunker’s America: TV in an Era of Change 1968–1975 (Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), 93–97.
42. Pauline Kael, quoted in Ryan Gilbey, Groundhog Day (London: BFI, 2004), 53.
43. Kristin Thompson, Storytelling in the New Hollywood (London: Harvard University Press,
1999), 142.
44. According to Ramis’ commentary for the film, the line was improvised by Murray.
Groundhog Day (DVD, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2002).
45. Roger Ebert, “The Great Movies: Groundhog Day,” Chicago Sun-Times ( January
30, 2005), http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050130/
REVIEWS08/501300301/1023 [accessed March 10, 2008].
46. As Jude Davies notes, to achieve this triumph, like Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day carefully
avoids issues of class and race. Jude Davies, “Gender, Ethnicity and Cultural Crisis in Falling
Down and Groundhog Day,” Screen (vol. 36, no. 3, Summer 1995), 228.
47. Gilbey, Groundhog Day, 10. In June 2000, the American Film Institute released a list of
America’s one hundred best comedies that placed Groundhog Day at thirty-four.
48. Sconce describes “new smart cinema” as a cycle of films in the 1990s and 2000s that offer
“dark comedy and disturbing drama born of ironic distance; all that is not positive and
‘dumb.’ ” Significantly, he notes that many of the key figures behind these films “were
born as late boomer or within Gen[eration] X proper.” Therefore, Murray is allowing his
baby boom persona to be used in service of “critiquing ‘bourgeois’ taste and culture” from
the subsequent generation’s perspective. Jeffrey Sconce, “Irony, Nihilism and the New
American ‘Smart’ Film,” Screen (vol. 43, no. 4, Winter 2002), 349–369.
Five “Age Is a Tough One for Me”: Selling

Saturday Night Live in the 1980s
1. Jack Loftus, “NBC’s Day-Night Profits: The $$ from the Shows,” Variety (May 14, 1980), 88.
2. This pattern corresponds with the popular view of the show in this decade, ref lected in the
title of the Lorne Michaels-produced documentary, SNL in the ‘80s: Lost and Found (2005).
3. Michael Shain, “First Peek at New SNL,” New York Post (November 14, 1980), 93.
4. Kay Gardella, “SNL Fun Potpourri Comes Up Tasteless,” New York Daily News (November
20, 1980), 113.
5. John J. O’Connor, “TV: The New Saturday Night,” New York Times (November 18, 1980), C24.
210 Notes
7. Sally Bedell, “The Debacle of the Year: What Went Wrong with SNL? Everything,” TV
Guide (April 11, 1981), 7.
8. Again following the original Players, Murphy’s most frequent characters were evenly split
between ref lections on popular culture and lampoons of social types. Three of Murphy’s
recurring roles involved updated variations of children’s television characters. As Mr. Robinson
he created a slum version of the long-running educational program Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood
(PBS, 1970–2001), earnestly telling kids how to swear and rip off their landlord. The 1950s
clay-mation character Gumby became an elderly and crotchety entertainment veteran com-
plete with the catchphrase, “I’m Gumby, Damn it.” The third, Buckwheat, is discussed here.
Among Murphy’s original characters were Dion, an outlandishly camp hairdresser, Raheem
Abdul Mohammed, a Black Power film critic, and Tyrone Green, a prison poet.
10. James Wolcott, “ ‘I Rise in Fame,’ Cried the Pheonix,” Village Voice (November 18, 1981), 75.
11. Bambi L. Haggins, “Laughing Mad: The Black Comedian’s Place in American Comedy of
the Post Civil Rights Era,” in Frank Krutnik, ed., Hollywood Comedians: The Film Reader
(London: Routledge, 2003), 174.
12. Gene Lyons reported that a 1982 Eddie Murphy stand-up audience was “a young group,
mostly under 30 and roughly balanced between black, white and other.” Gene Lyons,
“Laughing with Eddie,” Newsweek ( January 3, 1983), 47.
13. One aspect of the Eddie Murphy and SNL story that was curiously underreported is that
between 1981 and 1984 viewing figures continued to fall, albeit at a much slower rate than
in the previous season. The 1981–82 season averaged a 7.4 rating, the 1982–83 season aver-
aged 7.0, and the 1983–84 season averaged 6.9.
14. Lyons, “Laughing with Eddie,” 46.
16. P.J. Bebnarski, “He Who Laughs Last . . .” Chicago Sun Times (February 17, 1985), 24.
ficemojo.com [accessed May 17, 2008].
18. Significantly, Murphy does not act completely alone; he enlists the help of two bumbling
but well-meaning white officers played by John Ashton and Judge Reinhold. Reinhold had
previously played a member of Murray’s platoon in Stripes (1981).
Company, 2008), 19.
20. Including his voice-acting roles in Mulan (1998), Shrek (2001), Shrek 2 (2004), and Shrek
the Third (2007), films in which Murphy has starred have collectively grossed $3.48 bil-
lion at the domestic box office. Harrison Ford has the second highest career total with
$3.41 billion. Figures taken from www.boxofficemojo.com. Aspects of Murphy’s career
are also addressed in Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 130–136; Bambi Haggins, Laughing Mad:
The Black Comic Persona in Post-soul America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,
2007); Hannah Hamad, “ ‘The Position of Annoying Talking Animal Has Already Been
Taken!’: The Unspeakability of Race in the Re-articulated Star Persona of Eddie Murphy,”
in Tamar Jeffers McDonald and Elizabeth Wells, eds, The Limits of Representation: Realities
and Remediations (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007), 45–62.
21. Guerrero, Framing Blackness, 130–136; Haggins, “Laughing Mad: The Black Comedian’s
Place [. . .],” 179.
22. Guerrero, Framing Blackness, 132.
23. Ibid., 133.
24. Beverly Hills Cop II took $153.7 million at the domestic box office, the third biggest hit
of 1987. As a result, that year Murphy was voted the industry’s top money-making star by
Notes 211
exhibitors, the first black star to achieve this position since Sidney Poitier in 1968. Quigley,
International Motion Picture Almanac 2008, 19.
25. It must be noted that although Murphy received credit for Coming to America’s story, a
subsequent court case found the film to have originated from an idea by columnist Art
Buchwald. For details, see Pierce O’Donnell and Dennis McDougal, Fatal Subtraction: How
Hollywood Really Does Business (New York: Doubleday, 1992).
26. “In concert Murphy took aim at ‘faggot-assed faggots,’ and worried that women who kissed
gay males would ‘come home with AIDS on their lips.’ ” Anon, “Eddie Murphy to Gays:
Kiss My Ass,” New York Native (April 23, 1984), 49.
27. Richard Schickel, “The Taming of Eddie Murphy,” Time ( July 4, 1988), http://www.time.
com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,967842,00.html [accessed May 10, 2008].
28. Vincent Canby, “African Prince in Queens,” New York Times ( June 29, 1988), C20.
29. For details of the relationship between Murphy and Landis on Coming to America, see
O’Donnell and McDougal, Fatal Subtraction, 134–135 and 178–179.
30. Eddie Murphy, quoted in Bill Zehme, “The Rolling Stone Interview: Eddie Murphy,”
Rolling Stone (August 24, 1989), 58.
31. Eddie Murphy, quoted in Maureen Dowd, “He’s Never Been Happier; Or More Glum,”
New York Times ( June 28, 1992), http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0C
E4DF133AF93BA15755C0A964958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=4 [accessed May 12,
2008].
32. Eddie Murphy, quoted in Zehme, “The Rolling Stone Interview,” 58.
33. Since The Nutty Professor, Murphy’s biggest hits have been family comedies such as Dr.
Doolittle (1998) where, according to Haggins, “the context of the narrative does not engage
black culture or identity in any direct or significant manner.” Haggins, Laughing Mad, 103.
For further discussion of family and race in Murphy’s work since 1995, see Hamad, “The
Position of Annoying Talking Animal,” 45–62.
34. Johnny Dangerously took $17.2 million, the sixtieth highest grossing film of 1984; Wise Guys
took $8.5 million, the seventy-ninth highest grossing film of 1986.
35. Hill and Weingrad report that the trio arrived intending to make alterations, but were
thwarted: “They were thrilled to be joining what they though would be a band of outlaws,
but disillusionment soon set in. ‘The show had become the Establishment by the time we
arrived,’ says Brad Hall. ‘It was an institution, a giant ship this is difficult to turn without
leaning on the rudder for many miles.’ ” Hill and Weingrad, Saturday Night, 461.
36. The circumstances of Crystal’s nonappearance in 1975 are detailed in Tom Shales and James
Andrew Miller, Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (Boston:
Little, Brown and Company, 2002), 45–49.
37. Janet Maslin, “TV Weekend; Topical Comedy and Wall St. Crash,” New York Times
(February 5, 1982), http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F07E6DE163BF
936A35751C0A964948260&scp=1&sq=TV%20Weekend;%20Topical%20Comedy%20
and%20Wall%20St.%20Crash&st=cse [accessed May 15, 2008].
38. Cast members included John Candy and Rick Moranis, both of whom were featured in
films starring SNL cast members before progressing to film stardom of their own. Also
involved were Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy amongst others.
39. In 1984 This is Spinal Tap grossed $4.5 million.
40. From an average 6.9 rating in 1983–84 to a 7.1 rating in 1984–85.
41. Among the other new cast members, Shearer was forty-one, Stephenson thirty-five, and
Hall thirty. Among the returning cast Louis-Dreyfus was twenty-three, Gross thirty-one,
Kroeger twenty-seven, and Belushi thirty.
42. Crystal, quoted in Shales and Miller, Live From New York, 277.
43. Wayne Robins, “Saturday Night’s New Face,” Newsday (October 21, 1984), Section 2, 3.
45. Chart information taken from www.billboard.com [accessed May 17, 2008].
212 Notes
46. Billy Crystal with Dick Schaap, Absolutely Mahvelous (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons,
1986).
47. According to one report at the time: “These guys have so many feature film projects com-
ing their way as a result of their outstanding performances last season that it would be
physically and economically impossible for them to assume regular SNL slots again.” Jerry
Krupnick, “NBC Revives Talks with Lorne Michaels While Future of SNL Remains on
Hold,” The Star Ledger ( July 30, 1985), 43.
48. Production notes for the film highlighted the similarities between the character and Crystal
while acknowledging this was a change for the star: “Billy Crystal may surprise some
among his legion of fans with his role in Running Scared. ‘It feels good to be playing myself,’
ref lects Crystal.” Anon., Running Scared Production Notes, 18 (taken from Billy Crystal micro
jacket at British Film Institute library).
49. Hines was forty in 1986.
50. Though he is listed only as a star in the film’s credits, in interviews supporting its release,
Crystal described how he “developed the project,” liking the script and taking it to DeVito who
eventually also directed. Phillip Bergson, “Clear as Crystal,” What’s On (June 22, 1988), 63.
51. Crystal has pinpointed the beginning of his success to when he began discussing “what was
happening inside me.” Quoted in Robins, “Saturday Night’s New Face,” 3.
52. This emphasis was noted in Variety’s review: “Harry and Sally are supposed to be a political
consultant and a journalist, but it’s hard to tell from the evidence presented.” Mac., “When
Harry Met Sally,” Variety ( July 12, 1989), 24.
53. Frank Krutnik, “Love Lies: Romantic Fabrication in Contemporary Romantic Comedy,”
in Celestino Deleyto, ed., Terms of Endearment: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1980s and
1990s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 28.
54. Alan Lovell and Giancarlo Sergi point out that both the film’s director Rob Reiner and
writer Nora Ephron consider Crystal one of the film’s authors for the number of lines he
contributed to the script. Alan Lovell and Giancarlo Sergi, Making Films in Contemporary
Hollywood (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005), 106.
55. Neil Blincow, “Billy the Kid Crystal Cashes in on His Own Mid-life Crisis,” Sunday
Express (September 22, 1991), 15.
56. As a result, Crystal was voted Hollywood’s seventh most popular star in 1991 by theater
exhibitors. Quigley, International Motion Picture Almanac 2008, 19.
57. Janet Maslin, “3 Men at Dude Ranch In Comedy of Good Will,” New York Times ( June 7,
1991), C12.
58. Steve Neale, “The Big Romance or Something Wild?: Romantic Comedy Today,”
Screen (vol. 33, no.3, Autumn 1992), 284–299; Frank Krutnik, “Conforming Passions?
Contemporary Romantic Comedy” in Steve Neale, ed., Genre and Contemporary Hollywood
(London: BFI, 2002), 130–147.
59. Neale, “The Big Romance or Something Wild?,” 295.
60. Robert C. Allen, “Home Alone Together: Hollywood and the ‘Family Film,’ ” in Melvyn
Stokes and Richard Maltby, eds, Identifying Hollywood’s Audiences: Cultural Identity and the
Movies (London: BFI, 1999), 117.
61. Marianne Goldstein, “Michaels Returns as Dr. for Sickly Saturday Night,” New York Post
( June 19, 1986), 93.
62. Norman Atkins, “The Wild Bunch,” Rolling Stone (November 20, 1986), 46.
63. Maureen Dowd, “Washington Talk,” New York Times (March 9, 1990), http://query.
nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE2DC1038F93AA35750C0A966958260&scp=
6&sq=dana+carvey&st=nyt [accessed June 7, 2008].
64. Norman Atkins, “America’s Second-Funniest Church Lady,” Rolling Stone (October 22,
1987), 29.
65. Dana Carvey, quoted in Glenn Collins, “TV’s Man of Many Voices Tries the Big Screen,”
New York Times (March 27, 1990), http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0
Notes 213
CE1DA1431F934A15750C0A966958260&scp=2&sq=dana+carvey&st=nyt [accessed May
25, 2008].
66. In Variety’s view, the film attempted but failed to present Carvey as an appealing, coherent
character: “Fortunately, the conventional screenplay and direction are frequently inter-
rupted by Carvey’s winsome schticking. Later, however, Carvey is expected to be a roman-
tic lead, and the audience is expected to believe it. Filmmakers err on both counts.” Binn,
“Opportunity Knocks,” Variety (March 30, 1990), 22.
67. Bier., “Saturday Night Live,” Daily Variety (October 1, 1990), 9.
68. There is evidence that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, SNL’s audience did appeal to
members of the baby boom and Generation X. Variety reported that between September
and January 1976, the show on average attracted 4.8 million eighteen–thirty-four-year-
olds from 5.6 million households. Between September and January 1991, the number of
eighteen–thirty-four-year-olds had dropped by 21 percent, but the number of twenty-
five–fifty-four-year-olds rose 27 percent to 5.7 million. Stuart Miller, “ABC Spies Baby
Boomers in Saturday Night Haystack,” Variety (February 25, 1991), 62.
69. Bill Barol and Jennifer Foot, “Saturday Night Lives,” Newsweek (September 25, 1989), 40.
Six “I Still Know How to Party”: Mike Myers,

Adam Sandler, and Generational Change
on Saturday Night Live
1. Mark Harris, “The Cast of Saturday Night Live,” Entertainment Weekly (December 25, 1992), 18.
2. Owen Gleiberman, “Billy Madison,” Entertainment Weekly (February 24, 1995), http://www.
ew.com/ew/article/0,,296200,00.html [accessed September 17, 2008].
3. “Interview with Mike Myers,” Wayne’s World (DVD, Paramount Home Entertainment,
2005).
4. Bill Flanagan, “The Basement Tapes,” Rolling Stone (November 16, 1989), 45.
5. Ibid.
6. Lawrence Cohn, “Wayne’s World,” Variety (February 17, 1992), 69.
7. William Safire, “On Language; Not!” New York Times (March 8, 1992), Magazine, 20.
8. Anon., “Year in Review 1992,” Video Business (December 18, 1992), 50.
9. Interviews with Myers and Michaels on Wayne’s World 2 (DVD, Paramount Home
Entertainment, 2005).
10. Kim Masters, “Ganging up on Mike,” Vanity Fair (October 2000), 258.
11. Conan O’Brien, “Mike Myers: A Bee-autiful Success Story,” Interview (August 1993), 109.
12. Perhaps nervous of Myers losing this ability, and of his fame outside his breakout role, the
film’s trailer largely consists of Myers on set delivering a speech to camera that begins, “Hi,
my name is Mike Myers. Perhaps you recognise me from my recent motion picture, Wayne’s
World.”
13. Betraying the limited mileage of the franchise, Variety was forced to repeat its joke: “The
latest chapter in the saga of Aurora, Ill, twosome Wayne and Garth is a puerile, misguided
and loathsome effort . . . Not!” Leonard Klady, “Wayne’s World 2,” Variety (December 20,
1993), 31.
14. In Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Myers again played two roles, British secret
agent Austin Powers and Powers’ nemesis Dr. Evil. A spoof of 1960s spy films and “swing-
ing” attitudes of the period, like Wayne’s World it mocked narrative conventions (one char-
acter is named Basil Exposition) without drawing attention to Myers as creator and star.
In terms of Myers’ star persona, similarities with his earlier work included the inclusion of
prominent catchphrases, numerous unmotivated pop culture references, and moments of
214 Notes
repeated physical performance (for instance both Austin and Wayne cavort in their under-
wear). In cinemas Austin Powers made $53.9 million, the thirty-sixth highest grossing film
of 1997. However, its popularity grew exponentially on video, becoming the top-selling
title of 1998 (Bernard Weinraub, “Austin Sequel is Behaving Very Well at the Box Office,”
New York Times ( June 14, 1999), C17). When a sequel, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged
Me, was released in 1999, it took more in its opening weekend ($54.9 million) than the
original had managed in its entire theatrical run, eventually grossing $206 million, the
fourth biggest hit of the year. Away from the Austin Powers franchise, Myers has yet to
demonstrate that his name alone can attract a mass audience.
15. Chris Rock even reports mentioning to Michaels that “I didn’t do any voices, anything
particular that would help me on SNL—and Lorne said, ‘The reason I hired you guys was
original thought.’ ” Chris Rock quoted in Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller, Live from
New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (Boston: Little, Brown and Company,
2002), 363.
16. A second, assumedly less intentional, lack of professionalism is evident throughout the
sketch as the participants—in particular Sandler and McDonald—are clearly reading their
lines from off-screen cue cards. Though cue cards had long been an essential tool for coping
with short rehearsal times, it was rare to see them used this obviously.
18. James Wolcott, “Amateur House,” New Yorker (December 13, 1993), 126.
19. John J. O’Connor, “After Two Decades, How Much Longer?” New York Times (October 20,
1994), C6.
20. Chris Smith, “Comedy Isn’t Funny,” New York (March 13, 1995), 31.
21. Phil Hartman, quoted in Duane Dudek, “SNL Alum Phil Hartman Says Show’s in a
Slump,” Milwaukee Sentinel ( January 28, 1995), 23.
22. Smith, “Comedy Isn’t Funny,” 32. Cowritten, produced, and directed by Ben Stiller, The
Ben Stiller Show originated on MTV shortly after Stiller’s abortive stint on SNL in 1990.
In September 1992, it moved to the Fox network as a half-hour prerecorded sketch show
consisting mainly of parodies of film and television. Though it was cancelled after twelve
episodes with low ratings, it went on to win an Emmy award for Outstanding Writing in
a Variety Series. Reality Bites is consistently cited as “emblematic” of Generation X experi-
ence. See Jonathon I. Oake, “Reality Bites and Generation X as Spectator,” The Velvet Light
Trap (no. 53, Spring 2004), 83.
23. Janeane Garofalo, quoted in Shales and Miller, Live from New York, 389.
24. Don Ohlmeyer, quoted in Shales and Miller, Live from New York, 424.
25. According to the Recording Industry Association of America website, They’re All Gonna
Laugh at You received a gold award (500,000 sales) in May 1995, a platinum award (1,000,000
sales) in March 1996, and a double platinum award (2,000,000 sales) in January 2004. www.
riia.com [Accessed August 20, 2008].
26. Robert Metz, “I’m Not Laughing at Adam Sandler, I’m Laughing with Him,” Amazon.
com (posted August 28, 1999), http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B000002MMG/
ref=cm_cr_pr_link_5?%5Fencoding=UTF8&pageNumber=5 [accessed August 20,
2008].
27. Joffe, “Extremely Funny but Loses it’s Fun after a Week” Amazon.com (posted May 23,
1999), http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B000002MMG/ref=cm_cr_pr_link_6?
%5Fencoding=UTF8&pageNumber=6 [accessed August 20, 2008].
28. Paul C. Bonila, “Is There More to Hollywood Lowbrow Than Meets the Eye?” Quarterly
Review of Film and Video (Number 22, 2005), 17.
29. In this regard, Hollywood Lowbrow is again similar to Animal Comedy, which also ini-
tially relied on comedian stars until the release of Porky’s (1982). David Greven’s analysis
of the cycle of teen comedies that followed the success of American Pie shows how Animal
Comedy and Hollywood Lowbrow differ. In Greven’s view, “contemporary teen comedies
Notes 215
have come to represent an infantile stage in American manhood.” Therefore, the films are
about the personal development of their protagonists, not wider change in American soci-
ety. David Greven, “Dude, Where’s My Gender? Contemporary Teen Comedies and New
Forms of American Masculinity,” Cineaste (Summer 2002), 21.
30. Enico Man was the thirty-eighth biggest hit of 1992, Son in Law was the forty-fourth biggest
hit of 1993, and In the Army Now was the forty-ninth biggest hit of 1994.
31. Much the same can be said of Farley’s early film career: cameos in Wayne’s World, Coneheads,
Wayne’s World 2, and Airheads were followed by his first starring role with David Spade in
Tommy Boy (1995).
32. It is worth noting that Tommy Boy, released only a month after Madison, placed Farley in
same situation. In it, Farley plays the indulged son of the owner of a chain of auto parts
stores. When his father dies, Farley must demonstrate his abilities as a salesman to save the
family business. Spade is cast as a cynical employee assigned to assist him.
33. Here, the film’s approach to performance fits with Philip Drake’s analysis of Ace Ventura:
Pet Detective, which I discuss at the end of chapter seven. Philip Drake, “Low Blows?
Theorising Performance in Post-Classical Comedian Comedy,” in Frank Krutnik, ed.,
Hollywood Comedians: The Film Reader (London: Routledge, 2003).
34. Peter Rainer, “Movie Review: Billy Madison,” Los Angles Times (February 11, 1995), http://
www.calendarlive.com/movies/reviews/cl-movie960406–274,0,1161070.story [accessed
April 14, 2006].
35. Annual average ticket prices taken from www.boxofficemojo.com [accessed April 14,
2006].
36. I include Molly Shannon as a new recruit, although she was added as a featured player in
February 1995 at the time of Garofalo’s departure.
Seven “A Colorful, Emotional, Working Class

Hero”? The Development of Adam Sandler’s
Fictional and Extra-fictional Personas
ficemojo.com [accessed July 19, 2008].
2. Anon., “Adam Sandler,” rollingstone.com, http://www.rollingstone.com/artist/bio/_/
id/3895/adamsandler?pageid=rs.Artistcage&pageregion=artistHeader [accessed January
17, 2006].
3. Richard Corliss, “Sandler Happens,” Time (November 23, 1998), http://www.time.com/
time/magazine/article/0,9171,989633,00.html [accessed January 25, 2006].
4. Anger Management details: Brian Fuson, “Sony’s Anger in Control with $42.2 Million
Debut,” Hollywood Reporter (April 15, 2003), 82; 50 First Dates details: Brian Fuson, “Sony
Gets Lucky on its First Dates,” Hollywood Reporter (February 17, 2004), 74; Click details:
Brandon Gray, “Sandler Controls Box Office Again,” boxofficemojo.com ( June 26, 2006),
http://boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2100&p=.htm [accessed January 17, 2006].
5. The change was noted in Variety: “[Sandler] and co-writer Tim Herlihy make a passing
effort at giving the audience someone to root for here, something almost entirely lacking in
Billy.” Brian Lowry, “Happy Gilmore,” Variety (February 19, 1996), 48.
6. In a 1994 interview with Sandler, Chris Willman noted, “Caddyshack seems to be regarded
by Sandler as the touchstone of all contemporary filmic comic art.” Chris Willam, “Just
Call Him Bankable Boy,” Los Angeles Times ( July 10, 1994), Section 2, 3.
7. Based on an annual average ticket price of $4.35 taken from www.boxofficemojo.com
[accessed August 20, 2008].
216 Notes
8. It must be noted that although Barrymore has her own romantic plotline, she appears to
have no professional or personal aspirations beyond getting married. One of the obstacles
placed between Hart and Julia is that he doesn’t provide financial security, an issue the film
sees as a solely male concern. The assumption that family financial support is a male duty
reappears in 50 First Dates (2005) and Click (2006). Big Daddy (1999), Mr Deeds (2002), and
Chuck and Larry (2007) all give their central female character well-defined career ambi-
tions, although the first two of these conclude with the female characters sacrificing their
jobs to be with Sandler.
9. Based on an annual average ticket price of $4.69 taken from www.boxofficemojo.com
[accessed August 20, 2008].
10. Al Shapiro, quoted in Brian Fuson, “Box Office,” Hollywood Reporter (February 17, 1998), 85.
11. Buena Vista Pictures Distribution president Phil Barlow: “It’s extraordinary when very high
expectations are not only exceeded but blown away,” Brian Fuson, “Waterboy Quenches
B.O.,” The Hollywood Reporter (November 9, 1998), 17.
12. “On Nov. 9, industry analysts, playing Monday morning quarterback, said that unlike past
Adam Sandler comedies, his latest outing with its football backdrop was attracting a family
audience. [David] Cook [chairman of Walt Disney Motion Picture Group] said that sim-
ply hadn’t been the case and one market researcher claimed that the tracking and interest
among young males was higher than for any film he’d ever seen.” Leonard Klady, “Waterboy
Makes Waves in Showbiz,” Variety (November 16, 1998), 9.
13. The Waterboy has a curious relationship with Forrest Gump (1994). Many aspects of the
film, from the initial premise of a southern, mother-smothered simpleton winning respect
through football, to specific images such as the protagonist riding a lawn-mower, are dis-
tinctly familiar from Gump. However, this never descends to direct parody and was rarely
part of discussion of The Waterboy upon its release.
14. Gitesh Pandya, “Weekend Box Office ( June 13–15 2008),” boxofficeguru.com ( June 16,
2008), http://www.boxofficeguru.com/061608.htm [accessed June 16, 2008].
15. Domestically, Punch-Drunk Love took $17.8 million whereas Anderson’s previous film
Magnolia (1999) made $22.5 million; Spanglish took $42.7 million whereas Brooks’ previous
film As Good As It Gets (1997) made $148.5 million; Reign Over Me took $19.7 million,
which was Binder’s highest gross to date; Funny People took $51.9 million whereas Apatow’s
previous film Knocked Up (2008) made $148.8 million.
16. In future, this conclusion may be complicated by the rising international takings of Sandler’s
comedies. Though Zohan and Bedtime Stories performed below expectations in the United
States, they each doubled their takings in foreign markets.
17. The comic excess of Chuck’s sexual escapades would appear to be the film’s way of reassur-
ing viewers that, while he must pretend to be gay, Sandler’s character’s sexuality is never in
question.
18. Given the lack of female presence in much of the film, it seems significant that Courtney
Cox appears unbilled in a small role in The Longest Yard’s opening scenes as Crewe’s girl-
friend and sole financial support. These scenes were given disproportionate emphasis in the
film’s trailers, perhaps implying that Cox, known for romantic comedy after ten years on
the sitcom Friends (NBC, 1993–2003), would be a more central figure in the narrative.
19. Duncan Webster, Looka Yonder! The Imaginary America of Populist Culture (London:
Routledge, 1988), 12.
20. Robin Wood, ‘ “I Just Went Gay, All of a Sudden’: Gays and ‘90s Comedy,” in Greg
Rickman, ed., The Film Comedy Reader (New York: Limelight Editions, 2004), 414.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., 417.
23. Sandler quoted in Andy Seiler, “Adam Sandler Slips into Familiar Form in Mr. Deeds,”
USA Today ( June 29, 2002), http://www.usatoday.com/life/2002/2002–06-28-sandler.
htm [accessed August 25, 2008].
Notes 217
24. Roger Ebert, “Love at First Sight,” Chicago Sun-Times (October 13, 2002), http://roger-
ebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20021013/PEOPLE/99010305/1023
[accessed January 14, 2008].
25. Corliss, “Sandler Happens.”
26. Peter Travers, “Mr. Deeds,” Rolling Stone ( July 25, 2002), 76.
27. http://uk.rottentomatoes.com/m/mr_deeds/ [accessed January 14, 2008]. Chuck and Larry
managed only 13 percent positive reviews. http://uk.rottentomatoes.com/m/i_now_pro-
nounce_you_chuck_and_larry/ [accessed January 14, 2008].
28. Kenneth Turan, “Mr. Deeds,” Los Angeles Times ( June 28, 2002), http://www.calendar-
live.com/movies/reviews/cl-movie000044994jun28,0,2898495.story [accessed January 14,
2008].
29. Jim Chastain, “Mr. Deeds: A Not So Quick Trip to Movie Hell,” Norman Transcript ( June
28, 2002), http://uk.rottentomatoes.com/m/mr_deeds/articles/733796/mr_deeds_is_
not_really_a_film_as_much_as_it_is_a_loose_collection_of_not_so_funny_gags_scat-
tered_moments_of_lazy_humor [accessed January 14, 2008].
30. Kirk Honeycutt, “Mr. Deeds,” Hollywood Reporter ( June 25, 2002), http://www.hollywoo-
dreporter.com/apps/reviews/mr_deeds [accessed January 14, 2008].
31. Roger Ebert, “Mr. Deeds,” Chicago Sun Times ( June 28, 2002), http://rogerebert.sun-
times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20020628/REVIEWS/206280306/1023 [accessed
January 15, 2008].
32. Marjorie Baumgarten, “Mr. Deeds,” The Austin Chronicle ( June 28, 2002), http://www.
austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Calendar/Film?Film=oid%3a142180 [accessed January 15,
2008].
33. Michael Atkinson, “The Way We Laughed,” Village Voice ( July 2, 2002), http://www.vil-
lagevoice.com/2002–07-02/film/the-way-we-laughed/1 [accessed January 15, 2008].
34. Owen Gleiberman, “Mr. Deeds,” Entertainment Weekly ( June 19, 2002), http://www.
ew.com/ew/article/0,,264135~1~0~mrdeeds,00.html [accessed January 15, 2008].
35. William Arnold, “Mr. Deeds is a Guilty Pleasure without Any of the Riches of Capra’s Film,”
Seattle Post-Intelligencer ( June 28, 2002), http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/movies/76374_
deeds28q.shtml [accessed January 14, 2008].
36. Connie Ogle, “Mr. Deeds,” Miami Herald ( June 28, 2002), http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-
search/we/June%2028,%202002 [accessed January 15, 2008].
37. Dare Wreckjohn, “One of the Funniest Movies of the Year,” IMBD (posted December 23,
2002), http://www.imdb.com/user/ur1804764/comments [accessed January 14, 2008].
38. Fuson, “Sony’s Deeds goes to Town with $37.2 Million Opening,” Hollywood Reporter ( July
2, 2002), 50.
39. Biographical details from Bill Crawford, Adam Sandler: America’s Comedian (New York: St.
Martin’s Griffin, 2000), 1–32.
40. Of course, downplaying celebrity is hardly unique to Sandler, although I would argue that
the extent of his denials are unusual. Todd Gitlin observes, “New-style stars f launt and cel-
ebrate stardom by mocking it, camping it up, or underplaying it (in public!) . . . The star now
stands apart from the glamour, and comments (often ironically) on it.” Todd Gitlin, quoted
in Joshua Gamson, Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1994), 52.
41. The glaring exceptions to the otherwise unified front Sandler presents are his four “prestige”
productions, Punch-Drunk Love, Spanglish, Reign Over Me, and Funny People. Whether these
films were made out of a genuine artistic desire by Sandler to try something new, or an attempt
to introduce the star to different audiences, their potentially negative impact on his established
fan base is limited by the fact that, as I mention in the first section, Sandler’s characters in these
films are broadly consistent with his other work. Like Bill Murray’s performances in Tootsie
(1982) and The Razor’s Edge (1984), I would argue that the relative ease with which this transi-
tion can be made is evidence of the representational nature of Sandler’s comic roles.
218 Notes
42. Marc Cetner, “Adam Sandler’s Secret Life,” The National Enquirer ( July 27, 1999), 10.
43. Heather Graham, quoted in Rebecca Murray and Fred Topel, “Heather Graham Talks
About The Guru,” about.com (March 3,2003), http://movies.about.com/library/weekly/
aatheguruinta.htm [accessed March 30, 2006].
44. The most advanced example of this is Happy Madison production Grandma’s Boy (2006),
which starred and was cowritten by Covert. The film appears to be an attempt to establish
the Happy Madison brand and personnel independent of SNL stars. However, it was not a
box office success, taking just six million dollars, the 176th highest gross for the year.
45. http://adamsandler.com/index.php?section=news&newspage=5 [accessed September 5,
2008].
46. Philip Drake, “Low Blows? Theorising Performance in Post-Classical Comedian Comedy,” in
Frank Krutnik, ed., Hollywood Comedians: The Film Reader (London: Routledge, 2003), 192.
Conclusion
1. Josef Adalian and Michael Schneider, “Peacock Promises to Rock the Boat,” Variety ( July
23, 2006), http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117947280.html?categoryid=1009&cs=1&
query=%22SNL%22 [accessed October 9, 2008].
3. Clearly, as well as increased competition, the fall in network ratings in recent years is par-
tially the result of technological innovations such as the website www.youtube.com allow-
ing programs to be seen independent from their original broadcast. Such developments
are outside the scope of the present study; however, a brief discussion of SNL’s attempts to
embrace and combat Internet viewing can be found in Ethan Thompson, “Convergence
Comedy: Andy Samberg Vs. SNL,” Flow TV (vol. 8, no. 2, June 26, 2008), http://f lowtv.
org/?p=1462 [accessed September 10, 2008].
4. Rachel Sklar, “That 70s Show,” Village Voice (October 24, 2006), http://www.villagevoice.
com/2006–10-24/nyc-life/that-70s-show/1 [accessed September 10, 2008].
5. Ibid.
6. In the case of Studio 60, costs were unusually high. Prior to the show’s premiere, Variety
reported that “NBC is shelling out nearly $2 million an hour for [the show], with Warner
Bros. TV deficiting almost a million more—making Studio 60 one of the most expensive
first year hours in TV history. In order to grab the show from CBS, who also wanted it,
[NBC] agreed to a deal with a lot of restrictions—and very little financial upside unless
Studio 60 scores [high ratings].” Josef Adalian and Michael Schneider, “Fall’s Big Five
Gambles,” Variety (September 10, 2006), http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117949736.
html?categoryid=14&cs=1 [accessed September 10, 2008].
7. For more on the Millennial Generation, see William Strauss and Neil Howe, Millennials
Rising: The Next Great Generation (New York: Vintage Books, 2000).
8. Frank Krutnik, “A Spanner in the Works? Genre, Narrative and the Hollywood Comedian,”
in Kristine Brunovska Karnick and Henry Jenkins, eds, Classical Hollywood Comedy (London:
Routledge, 1995), 21.
9. Ibid., 27.
10. Henry Jenkins, What Made Pistachio Nuts? Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 283.
11. Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: BFI, 1999), 38.
12. Rhonda Hammer and Douglas Kellner, “1984: Movies and Battles over Reaganite
Conservatism,” in Stephen Prince, ed., American Cinema of the 1980s: Themes and Variations
(Oxford: Berg, 2007), 107.
13. See, for example, Jack Barth, “Kinks of Comedy,” Film Comment (vol. 20, no. 3, June 1984), 45.
Notes 219
14. For Big, see Steve Neale, “The Big Romance or Something Wild?: Romantic Comedy
Today,” Screen (vol. 33, no. 3, Autumn 1992), 298–299; For Batman, see Stephen Prince, A
New Pot of Gold: Hollywood Under the Electronic Rainbow, 1980–1989 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2000); For Three Men and a Baby, see Nicole Matthews, Comic Politics:
Gender in Hollywood Comedy After the New Right (Manchester: University of Manchester
Press, 2000), 114–115.
15. Steve Neale, Genre and Hollywood (London: Routledge, 2000), 69.
16. As, indeed, would the aspects of the comedian comedy tradition in Barbra Streisand’s early
films mentioned in chapter two.
17. As part of their survey of Hollywood’s creative elite, Stephen Powers, David J. Rothman,
and Stanley Rothman found their sample to be 98.9 percent male. Stephen Powers, David
J. Rothman, and Stanley Rothman, Hollywood’s America: Social and Political Themes in Motion
Pictures (Boulder: Westview, 1996), 53. The position of female comedians within the enter-
tainment industries is further complicated by a number of major successes on primetime
television. Since Lucille Balls’ twenty-year residency at or near the top of network ratings
between 1951 and 1971, a number of female comedian-centered sitcoms have been ratings
hits. The most notable of these is Roseanne (ABC, 1988–97), which showcased “unruly
woman” Roseanne Barr and was among the top five highest rated network programs from
1988 to 1994. See Kathleen Rowe, The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995).
18. Bier., “Saturday Night Live,” Variety (October 1, 1990), 9.
19. In addition, it is worth pointing out that earlier in Spies Like Us a shot of Ronald Reagan’s
presidential portrait is quickly followed by Chase’s character watching Reagan act foolishly
in the 1952 musical She’s Working Her Way Through College, and the film’s plot (cowritten by
Aykroyd) is based on the premise that the U.S. military is covertly perpetuating the Cold
War to secure funding. These are not the hallmarks of a Reaganite ideology.
20. Leonard Steinhorn, The Greater Generation: In Defence of the Baby Boom Legacy (New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 2006), 28.
21. Melanie Nash, “Beavis is just Confused: Ideologies, Intertexts, Audiences,” The Velvet Light
Trap (no. 43, Spring 1999), 4–22. Nash is critical of analysis of the program in Steven Best
and Douglas Kellner, “Beavis and Butt-head: No Future for Postmodern Youth,” in Jonathan
S. Epstein, ed., Youth Culture: Identity in a Postmodern World (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998),
75–99.
22. Bambi Haggins, Laughing Mad: The Black Comic Persona in Post-soul America (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 2007), 7778.
23. A major and perhaps ironic exception is the case of Jim Carrey on In Living Color (Fox,
1990–94). In Living Color was a thirty-minute, primetime variety show that mimicked the
structure of SNL with a largely black cast. Carrey was the only white cast member, but
became the breakout star, inverting SNL’s experience with Murphy ten years earlier.
24. An increasingly substantial body of work is devoted to what Bambi Haggins describes as
the “conditional success and mitigated failure” of comically addressing black experience
for consumption by a multiracial audience. Haggins, Laughing Mad, 208. See also Kristal
Brent Zook, Color By Fox: The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999); Norma Schulman, “Laughing Across the Color Barrier: In
Living Color,” Journal of Popular Film and Television (vol. 20, no. 1, Spring 1992), 2–8; Herman
Gray, Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2004).
25. See Thompson, “Convergence Comedy.”
26. In its first season, 30 Rock ranked 102nd out of 142 primetime programs based on annual
average viewing figures. Anon., “2006–07 Primetime Wrap,” Hollywood Reporter (May 25,
2007), http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/television/features/e3if bf
dd1bcb53266ad8d9a71cad261604f ?pn=2 [accessed October 15, 2008].
220 Notes
27. Rick Kissell, “Sarah Palin Boosts SNL ratings,” Variety (October 19, 2008), http://www.
variety.com/article/VR1117994302.html [accessed October 28, 2008].
28. Jeff Bader, quoted in Michael Schneider, “Networks Search for SNL Style Variety,” Variety (November
7, 2008), http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117995474.html?categoryid=1019&cs=1 [accessed
November 8, 2008].
29. Ibid.
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Yacowar, Maurice, The Comic Art of Mel Brooks (London: W.H. Allen, 1982)
Yankelovich, Daniel, The New Morality: A Profile of American Youth in the 1970s (New York,
McGraw Hill, 1974)
———, New Rules: Searching for Self-fulfilment in a World Turned Upside Down (New York: Bantam
Book, 1981)
Zook, Kristal Brent, Color By Fox: The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1999)
I N DE X
ABC, 21, 26, 27, 29, 126 Film, relationship to, 2, 8, 11, 13, 43, 44,
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, 9, 155, 184 71, 89, 95, 113, 133–134, 190
Airheads, 155,182 Film representations, 47, 54–55, 78–79,
Allen, Janis, 70 130–131, 133–134, 162, 172,
Allen, Karen, 100 185–186, 190, 196
Allen, Woody, 42, 43 Identity, 11–15
All in the Family, 23–24, 29 Size, 8, 11
American Graffiti, 43, 46–47, 48, 52, 57 Social change, 7, 13–14, 61
American Pie, 155 Television, relationship to, 2, 8, 11, 12,
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, 194 14, 21, 23, 44, 188
Anderson, P.T., 168 Upbringing, 11–13, 15
Anger Management, 162, 167, 169, 171, see also Conservatism; Liberalism; New
173, 175, 182, 183, 184 Values; Saturday Night Live
Animal Comedy, 57, 96, 155 Baby Mama, 196
Animal,The, 181 Bachelor Party, 57, 96, 190
Annie Hall, 43 Bad News Bears, 71
Another 48 Hrs., 124 Baldwin, Alec, 150, 195, 196
Apatow, Judd, 168 Barefoot in the Park, 42
Arnez, Desi, 29, 38 Barker, Bob, 182
Astin, Sean, 182 Barrymore, Drew, 165–166,171
Austin Powers: International Man of Bates, Kathy, 166, 167, 182
Mystery, 146 Batman, 191
Aykroyd, Dan, 115, 116, 120 Beatts, Anne, 26
Film career, 1, 47, 59–61, 63, 68, 82–84, Beavis and Butt-head, 193
88, 92, 94, 95–97, 120–121, 123, Bedtime Stories, 168, 184
137, 146, 186, 193 Belushi, Jim, 126
Saturday Night Live, 26, 33, 36–37, 60, Belushi, John, 26,46, 60
67, 68, 116, 146 Film career, 1, 41, 47–53, 55, 58–59,
60, 61, 63–64, 68, 71, 115,
Baby boom 120, 121
Aging, 14, 86–87, 92, 112–113, 123, Saturday Night Live, 25, 27, 29, 32,
127, 130–132, 192 36–37, 58–59, 117, 139
228 Index
Belushi, John—Continued Charlie’s Angels, 29
Star Persona, 35–36, 48–52, 61, 116, 125 Chase, Chevy, 25, 46
Benchwarmers,The, 181 Film career, 1, 41, 45, 47, 58, 60, 61,
Ben Stiller Show, The, 152 76–77, 91–97, 115, 120, 123, 128,
Bernstein, Elmer, 53, 75 134, 193
Beverly Hills Cop, 1, 88, 120, 121, 122, Saturday Night Live, 26, 27, 28, 34–35,
128, 129, 190–191 39, 64–65, 117, 139
Beverly Hills Cop II, 120, 123 Star persona, 34–35, 39, 45, 64–65,
Beverly Hills Cop III, 124 93–97
Bierbaum, Tom, 187 Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie, 58
Big, 133, 191 City Slickers, 129, 131–132
Big Daddy, 167, 169, 170–171, 173, City Slickers II:The Legend of Curly’s Gold,
174–175, 176, 178, 182, 184, 193 137
Billy Madison, 140, 155–160, 162, Click, 162, 167, 169, 172, 173, 175
163–164, 165, 166, 167, 168, Comedian Comedy, 5–10, 49–53, 54, 61,
175, 182, 185 76–77, 95, 105, 112, 144, 155, 157,
Binder, Mike, 168 165, 188–189
Blaustein, Barry, 124 Coming to America, 123–124, 125
Blazing Saddles, 43, 44 Committee, The, 25
Blues Brothers,The, 60, 63, 82, 121, Compass, The, 25
124, 142 Coneheads, 146,155
Blum, Len, 70, 77 Conservatism, 2–3, 14, 24, 61, 89, 190
Boomerang, 124 Coraci, Frank, 181, 183
Briefcase Full of Blues, A, 60 Cosell, Howard, 26
Broken Flowers, 112 Couch Trip,The, 96
Brooks, James L., 168 Covert, Allen, 181, 183–184
Brooks, Mel, 42–43 Crystal, Billy, 126
Buscemi, Steve, 182 Film career, 1, 61, 113, 116, 128–133,
Butterflies Are Free, 44 137, 157, 192
Saturday Night Live, 126–128,
Cactus Flower, 44 134, 136
Caddyshack, 57, 60, 61, 63–65, 76–77, 78, Star persona, 126–133, 157
79, 163, 194 Curtin, Jane, 26, 34, 36–37, 38, 60, 68,
Caddyshack II, 95 69–70, 146, 195
Caesar, Sid, 42 Cusack, Joan, 134
Candy, John, 61, 95–96, 133
Carlin, George, 27–28, 38 Dangerfield, Rodney, 76–77
Carrey, Jim, 9, 155, 184 Dante, Peter, 183–184
Carson, Johnny, 24, 27, 35 David Susskind Show,The, 36–37, 65
Carter, Jimmy, 30 Davis, Tom, 26
Carvey, Dana, 136–137, 138, 141, 142, Delirious (1983), 118
144, 146, 147, 181 Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, 181
Casual Sex?, 137 Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, 181
CBS, 22–23 DeVito, Danny, 125, 129
Charles, Ray, 38 Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, 181
Index 229
Distinguished Gentleman,The, 124 Garofalo, Janeane, 152
Doctor Detroit, 82 Generations, 7–8, 10, 61
Dollars, 44 see also Baby boom; Generation X
Douglas, Kirk, 38 Generation X
Doumanian, Jean, 117 Baby boom, relationship to, 15–16, 193,
Downey, Jr., Robert, 134 196
Doyle-Murray, Brian, 46, 76, 125 Identity, 14–16
Dragnet, 95–96 Film, relationship to, 15, 17, 133
Dreyfuss, Richard, 104 Film representations, 132, 162, 172,
Driving Miss Daisy, 96 185–186, 196
Duke, Robin, 125, 126 Size, 8, 14–15, 133
Dumb and Dumber, 155 Television, relationship to, 15, 17
Dunn, Nora, 134, 135–136, 146 Get Smart, 43
Duvall, Shelley, 38 Ghostbusters, 1, 61, 63–65, 81, 82–89,
91–92, 93, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102,
Ebersol, Dick, 24, 117, 125, 127 103, 104, 107, 109, 113, 121, 129,
Ebersole, Christine, 125 134, 190–191
Eddie Murphy Raw, 118, 123 Ghostbusters II, 96, 99, 102–103, 104,
Elf, 194 105, 106
Empire Strikes Back,The, 83 Giarraputo, Jack, 181, 183
E.T.–The Extra Terrestrial, 82 Gilda Radner: Live from New York, 59–60
Everything You Always Wanted to Know Goldberg, Dan, 70, 77
About Sex, 43 Golden Child,The, 120, 121–122
Goldman, William, 91
Fallon, Jimmy, 195 Goodbye Girl,The, 42
Family Adventure, 83, 87, 103 Gottfried, Gilbert, 116
Farley, Chris, 9, 140, 146–147, 150–151, 153, Gould, Elliott, 36, 38
154, 157–158, 181, 185, 187, 192 Graduate,The, 10, 43
Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 57 Graham, Heather, 182
Father of the Bride (1991), 133 Great Outdoors,The, 95–96
Ferrell, Will, 1, 17, 194 Gremlins, 1, 83
Fey, Tina, 1, 17, 188, 195–196 Gross, Mary, 125
50 First Dates, 162, 167, 169, 171, 175, Groundhog Day, 92, 106–112
184, 186 Groundlings, The, 25, 136
Fisher, Carrie, 38, 195 Guest, Christopher, 25, 47, 127, 128, 134,
Fletch, 94 136, 192
Fletch Lives, 95 Guttenberg, Steve, 61, 133, 190
Ford, Gerald, 30, 34, 139
48 Hrs., 119–121, 122–123, 128 Hall, Anthony Michael, 134
Foul Play, 41, 45, 58 Hall, Arsenio, 123
Fox, 9, 152, 155 Hall, Brad, 126
Franken, Al, 26, 117 Hall, Rich, 127
Funny Farm, 95 Hamlet (2000), 112
Funny People, 168 Hammond, Darrell, 160
Fun with Dick and Jane (1977), 60 Hanks, Tom, 61, 95–96, 133, 190
230 Index
Happy Days, 29 Ladies Man,The, 194
Happy Gilmore, 160, 162–165, 166–167, Landis, John, 48, 49, 53, 59, 60, 71, 79, 94,
170, 172, 174, 175, 185, 193 124, 128
Happy Madison, 167, 168–169, 174, 179, Lasser, Louise, 32, 33
183–185 Late Night with David Letterman, 81
Harlem Nights, 124 Lemmings, 25, 127
Harrison, George, 37 Liberalism, 2–3, 10, 14, 22–23, 30, 123, 192
Hartman, Phil, 136, 141, 142, 146, 147, Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, 112
149, 152 Little Nicky, 167–168, 182, 184
Hawn, Goldie, 41, 44–45, 60, 95, 133 Little Rascals,The, 118–119
Henry, Buck, 35, 115, 118 Little Shop of Horrors (1986), 98, 101
Herlihy, Tim, 154, 155, 159, 165, 166, 181, Longest Yard,The (1974), 43
183 Longest Yard,The (2005), 167, 169,
High School Yearbook, 46 171–172, 176, 184
Hines, Gregory, 128 Loose Cannons, 96
Hoffman, Dustin, 82 Lost in Translation, 112
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, 133 Loughran, Jonathan, 183–184
Hook, 133 Louis-Dreyfus, Julia, 126
Hooks, Jan, 136, 141, 142, 147 Lovitz, Jon, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 141,
Hooper, 43 146, 181
Hot Chick,The, 181 Lowe, Rob, 142
Hot Rod, 195 Lucas, George, 1, 3, 46
How to Beat the High Co$t of Living, 60
Hudson, Ernie, 85 MacDonald, Norm, 151, 160, 181
Hughes, John, 93–94, 96 MacDowell, Andie, 106, 133
Mahvelous, 128
Ian, Janis, 27 Martin, Billy, 135
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, 1, 83 Martin, Steve, 38, 61, 94, 128, 133, 196
In Living Color, 9, 155 Mary Tyler Moore Show,The, 23
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, 167, M*A*S*H, 43, 44, 48, 57
169, 170, 171, 176, 177, 184, 186 Mask,The, 9, 155
It’s Pat, 146 Master of Disguise,The, 181
Matheson, Tim, 48, 59
Jackson,Victoria, 136, 137, 138, 147 McEnroe, John, 170, 182, 184
Joe Dirt, 181 Meadows, Tim, 146, 154, 194
Johnny Dangerously, 125 Meatballs, 57, 59, 61, 63–65, 70–76, 77,
78–79, 81, 82, 87, 88, 102
Kattan, Chris, 160,194 Memoirs of an Invisible Man, 91–92
Kazurinsky, Tim, 125 Michaels, Lorne, 25, 60, 94, 128, 146,
Keaton, Michael, 61, 94, 125, 190 161, 195
Kenney, Doug, 46–47, 60, 76 Saturday Night Live (1975–1980), 19,
Kentucky Fried Movie, 48 24–27, 28, 33, 37, 47, 68, 125
Klein, Robert, 67 Saturday Night Live (1985–1990),
Koch, Ed, 58–59 134–135 137, 140, 141, 142, 146,
Kroeger, Gary, 126, 127 153, 159–160, 187–188, 193, 196
Index 231
Miller, Chris, 46–47, 53 Success, 57–58, 63–65, 68, 82, 113
Miller, Dennis, 134, 135, 147 National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, 94,
Mixed Nuts, 155 96
Mohr, Jay, 151 National Lampoon’s Class Reunion, 92–93
Monty Python’s Flying Circus, 28 National Lampoon’s European Vacation, 94,
Moonstruck, 133 96
Moranis, Rick, 61, 133 National Lampoon Show,The, 25, 46, 68–69
Morgan, Tracy, 195 National Lampoon’s Movie Madness, 92–93
Morris, Garrett, 25, 35, 36–37, 59, 60–61, National Lampoon’s Vacation, 92–94, 134
68, 85, 118 NBC, 21, 23, 24, 27, 30, 126
Mr. Deeds, 167, 169, 172–173, 174, see also Network television; Saturday
177–179, 182, 184 Night Live
Mr. Mom, 94, 96 Nealon, Kevin, 136, 138, 148, 181–182
Murphy, Eddie Neighbors, 82
Film career, 1, 9, 61, 82, 95, 113, 116, Nessen, Ron, 38
119–125, 128, 138, 157 Network, 43
Saturday Night Live, 81, 113, 117–119, Network television, 21–24, 27, 29, 126
126, 193 see also ABC; CBS; Fox; NBC; Saturday
Star persona, 117–125, 157, 192 Night Live
Murray, Bill, 17, 26, 46 Newman, Laraine, 25, 34, 36–37, 38,
Film career, 1, 47, 59–61, 64–65, 70–89, 60–61, 68, 69–70
92, 95, 97–113, 115–116, 120, 121, New Smart Cinema, 112
122, 123, 157 New Values, 13, 30, 43, 54, 89, 172
Saturday Night Live, 34, 36–37, 65–70, Nichols, Mike, 60
72–74, 76, 78, 81, 98–99, 101, 105, Nicholson, Jack, 171, 173, 182, 184
125, 117 Night at the Roxbury, A, 194
Star persona, 64–70, 71–75, 78–82, Night Shift, 190
83–89, 98–113, 116, 157, 1941, 59, 63, 68, 82, 94
190, 192 Nine to Five, 191
Myers, Mike Nolte, Nick, 67, 119,120, 122
Film career, 1, 9, 138, 140, 142–146, Nothing But Trouble, 95, 96
192–193 Not Necessarily the News, 127
Saturday Night Live, 138, 140, 141–142, Not Ready for Primetime Players, The,
147, 149, 192 27, 31, 32–33, 38–39, 67–68,
My Stepmother is an Alien 96, 137 72–73, 113, 137, 186,
188–189
Nader, Ralph, 38 Film stardom, 42, 47, 59–60, 91–92,
National Lampoon,The, 25, 26, 45–46, 48, 112, 120, 160, 189, 191
49, 52, 55, 92–93 see also Aykroyd, Dan; Belushi,
National Lampoon Radio Hour, 25, 65 John; Chase, Chevy; Curtin, Jane;
National Lampoon’s Animal House, 17, 39, Morris, Garrett; Murray, Bill;
41–42, 45–61, 124, 134 Newman, Laraine; Radner, Gilda;
Influence, 57–59, 61, 70–72, 75–76, Saturday Night Live
77, 78, 79, 89, 94, 100, 138, 142, Not the Nine O’clock News, 127
189–191 Nutty Professor,The (1996), 125
232 Index
Oates, Warren, 77, 79 Reitman, Ivan, 46, 48, 59, 63–5, 70, 77,
O’Brien, Conan, 154 82–83, 91, 99
Odd Couple,The, 42 Return of the Jedi, 83
O’Donoghue, Michael, 26, 27, 68, 117 Return of the Pink Panther, 42
Oh Heavenly Dog, 60 Revenge of the Nerds, 57
Ohlmeyer, Don, 152 Revenge of the Pink Panther, 42
Old School, 194 Reynolds, Burt, 38, 42, 43
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 43 Rock, Chris, 146–147, 154, 171,
Opportunity Knocks, 137 181, 193
O’Rourke, P.J., 46, 52, 55 Rocket, Charles, 116
Owl and the Pussycat,The, 42 Rolling Stones, The, 38, 58
Rosato, Tony, 125
Palin, Michael, 67 Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, 23–24,
Palin, Sarah, 196 30, 44
Parenthood, 133 Roxanne, 133
Pink Panther,The, 42 Rubin, Danny, 106
Pink Panther Strikes Again,The, 42 Running Scared (1986), 128–129
Piscopo, Joe, 116, 117, 125, 126 Rushmore, 112
Plaza Suite, 42 Ryan, Meg, 130–131, 133
Poehler, Amy, 195, 196 Ryder, Winona, 170, 175
Police Academy, 57, 190
Poltergeist, 83 Samberg, Andy, 195
Porky’s, 57 Sandler, Adam
Practical Theater Company, The, 126 Comedy Albums, 153–155, 166
Preston, Billy, 27 Extra-fictional persona, 147–149,
Producers,The, 42, 43 155–159, 161, 164–169, 172–173,
Producer’s Game, The, 4–5, 190 177–186
Proposition, The, 26 Film career, 1, 9, 17, 138, 140, 155–160,
Pryor, Richard, 38, 44–45, 118 161–186, 192–193
Punch-Drunk Love, 168 Saturday Night Live, 17, 140, 146–153,
154, 160, 167, 172–173, 185, 187,
Quaid, Randy, 104, 134 192
Quick Change, 103–104, 105 Saturday Night Live
Audience, 24, 39, 58, 117, 119, 127,
Radner, Gilda, 25, 36, 37, 38, 46, 59–60, 134–135, 136, 139–140, 146,
67, 68, 139 151–153, 187–188, 196
Raiders of the Lost Ark, 83 Baby boom, representation, 2–3, 8, 14,
Ramis, Harold, 46–47, 48, 59, 60, 19–20, 25, 37, 38–39, 44, 125,
63–65, 70, 76, 77–80, 83, 84, 139–140, 146, 160, 188
99, 102, 106 Backstage material, 31–34, 35, 36,
Razor’s Edge,The, 97–99 37, 116
Reagan, Ronald, 3, 119, 136, 175, 190 Cast, 25–27, 33–34, 68, 115–117,
Reality Bites, 152 125–127, 134–138, 139–140,
Reign Over Me, 168 141, 146–147, 149, 151–152, 160,
Reiner, Rob, 24, 32 194–195
Index 233
Cast stardom, 5–6, 20–21, 35–36, Second City, 25, 26, 46, 48, 65, 125, 126,
38–39, 63–65, 68, 70, 76, 78, 81, 147
97, 112–113, 115–116, 119–120, Second City TV, 126–127, 128
128, 136, 140, 153–154, 156–157, Seems Like Old Times, 41, 45, 60
160, 161, 171, 181–182, Sellers, Peter, 42
194–195 Semi-Tough, 43
Creation, 24–27 Shakes the Clown, 155
Critical reception, 19–20, 30, 35, Shampoo, 43, 44–45
116–117, 127–128, 136–137, 140, Shannon, Molly, 194
142, 151–152, 160, 192 Shapiro, Al, 166
Film, influence on, 1–4, 17, 41–42, 43, Shearer, Harry, 68, 127
47–48, 57, 59, 61, 64–65, 72–74, Shore, Pauly, 155
82, 85, 88–89, 91–92, 95, 112–113, Short, Martin, 94, 127, 128, 134, 136, 192
120, 121, 128, 129, 137, 144–145, Silverman, Fred, 29
146, 155–159, 159–160, 161, 163, Silver Streak, 44
166, 172–173, 185, 188–191 Simmons, Matty, 46, 48
Format, 2, 25, 33, 117–118 Simon, Neil, 42, 45, 60
Generation X, representation, 8, 17, Simon, Paul, 31, 38
134, 139–140, 141–142, 152–153, Smigel, Robert, 154
160, 188, 192–193 Smokey and the Bandit, 43
Guest hosts, 28, 32, 33, 35, 37–38, 44, Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, 22–23,
67, 81, 98, 115, 119, 126, 127, 142, 26, 118
150, 182 Snyder, Tom, 36–37
Live broadcast, 26, 127, 150–151 Soap, 126
Millennial Generation, 188, 195 So I Married an Axe Murderer, 145, 193
NBC, position within, 24, 28, 29–30, Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour,The, 107
39, 72–73, 98, 115, 117, 146, 152, Sorkin, Aaron, 187–188
187–188, 189 Space Jam, 112
Network television, relationship to, 17, Spade, David, 140, 146–147, 150, 154,
19–20, 28–30, 107, 115–116, 118, 160, 181
138, 139–140, 187–188, 196 Spanglish, 168
New York location, 26, 58–59, 69, 88, Spielberg, Steven, 1, 3, 59
115 Spies Like Us, 1, 94, 95, 98, 193
“Weekend Update,” 34, 66, 116, 118, Spillman, Miskel, 37
119, 127, 135, 136, 147–148, 149, Starr, Ringo, 127
195 Star Wars, 82
White male bias, 60–61, 64–65, 68, 85, Steel, Dawn, 99
89, 116–119, 150, 158, 191, 193 Stephenson, Pamela, 127
Writing of, 25, 60, 116, 117, 124, 150 Stiller, Ben, 141, 152
Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell, Streisand, Barbra, 42
26–27 Stripes, 57, 61, 63–5, 77–81, 82, 84–87, 98,
Schlosser, Herb, 24 100, 103, 107, 109, 121
Schneider, Rob, 146, 150, 154, 181–182, Stuart Saves His Family, 146
184 Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, 187
Scrooged, 98, 99–102, 103, 105, 106, 109 Sugarland Express,The, 44–45
234 Index
Superman, 83 Vampire in Brooklyn, A, 125
Superstar, 194 Vance, Danitra, 134
Sunshine Boys,The, 42
Sutherland, Donald, 48 Waterboy,The, 161, 166–167, 169, 172,
Sweeney, Julia, 146 175, 182
Sweeney, Terry, 134 Wayne’s World, 138, 140, 142–145, 146,
155, 159, 160, 193
Take the Money and Run, 43 Wayne’s World 2, 145, 193
Talladega Nights:The Ballad of Ricky Weathers, Carl, 182
Bobby, 194 Weaver, Sigourney, 85
They’re All Gonna Laugh at You, 140, Wedding Singer,The, 165–166, 169, 171,
153–155, 156 172–173, 182, 184
30 Rock, 187–188, 195–196 What About Bob?, 103–105, 106, 111
This is Spinal Tap, 127 What’s Up, Doc?, 42
Thompson, Kenan, 194 What the Hell Happened to Me?, 166
Three Amigos,The, 94, 124, 128 When Harry Met Sally ..., 129, 130–131, 132
Three Men and a Baby, 133, 191 Where the Buffalo Roam, 60
Throw Momma from the Train, 129–130 Wholly Moses, 60
Titone, Jackie, 181 Wilder, Gene, 44
Tomlin, Lily, 20, 25, 38, 191 Williams, Robin, 61, 133
Tonight Show,The, 24, 26, 28 Wilson, Bridgette, 156, 157
Tootsie, 81–82 Winkler, Henry, 167, 172, 182
Trading Places, 82, 95, 120–121, 122, 124, Wise Guys, 125
130
Train, Planes and Automobiles, 133 You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, 167–168,
Turturro, John, 182 184
2000 Year-Old Man,The, 43 Young Frankenstein, 43
Your Show of Shows, 20
UHF, 137
Uncle Buck, 133 Zappa, Frank, 38
Up in Smoke, 57–58 Zemeckis, Robert, 59

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com - licensed to Taiwan eBook Consortium - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-03

From Chevy Chase to Tina Fey

List of Figures vii

1.1 Host Paul Simon with Not Ready for Primetime

Reviewing Spies Like Us, a big-budget spy comedy starring Dan

A funny thing, or rather a not very funny thing, happened to

[SNL] can boast the freshest satire on commercial TV, but it is

1. From box-office information, identify a successful film.

Altman’s Producer’s Game (which I would suggest can apply to tele-

As made clear at the beginning of this introduction, my interest in

Hollywood and Generational Change

They were raised with great expectations about their future,

On race, homosexuality, premarital sex, gender roles, the envi-

An increasing acceptance of diverse lifestyles points toward the contin-

“I’m Chevy Chase and You, You’re Merely a

A lot of them are in Vietnam, a lot of others studying at col-

The Smothers’ innovation [. . .] was in producing a show whose

In its first year, the show managed to achieve a delicate balance

Introducing the Not Ready for Primetime Players

As Chase’s appearance at the end of the opening sketch indicates, from

The satirical, political, religious and sexual elements of SNL’s pro-

Pushing sexual and expressive freedoms and challenging institutions,

“We know how you feel, we were once serious actresses.”

Gradually, the show came to acknowledge the importance of the Players

“I’ll Write You a Note Saying You’re Too

John Belushi and National Lampoon’s Animal House

As its title suggests, much of National Lampoon’s Animal House origi-

I changed Bluto fairly dramatically because John Belushi was

alone. He is merely the most animal of a whole fraternity of young

Immediate Inf luence of Animal House

In keeping with the film’s content, Animal House’s marketing placed

“But the Kids Love Us”: The Development of

Despite his prominence in the success of Animal House (1978), subse-

Bill Murray, Film Star

Meatballs was described in Newsweek as “Animal House’s kid brother.”9

Figure 3.1 Theatrical poster for Meatballs (1979).

Figure 3.2 Theatrical poster for Stripes (1981).

Ghostbusters and Family Adventure

While in many regards Ghostbusters was a clear continuation of the suc-

are intended, and manage, to appeal to all age groups, especially

Doing battle with inter-dimensional ghouls certainly fit the descrip-

“I Don’t Even Like Myself”: The Revision

In his second volume of Hollywood adventures, William Goldman

The Declining Popularity of Chevy Chase

Bill Murray’s Star Persona: The Razor’s

In some respects, Murray’s post-Ghostbusters career mirrored those of his

With Groundhog Day, Murray finally brought the corrective, inclusive

For Connors and Murray’s persona, this is an important event. Nothing

“Age Is a Tough One for Me”: Selling

Eddie Murphy, Race, and Superstardom

The 1980–81 season of SNL was inconvenienced by the departure of

Murphy’s scene is deceptive; it seems to contradict the racial order

This conclusion ignores divisions within white audiences. As Guerrero

I think Coming to America is a political movie without shoving

Billy Crystal and the Ageing of the Baby Boom

Away from Murphy’s rise to stardom, the success of other aspects of

Mr. Crystal’s show has a decidedly canned quality, which may

The freedom necessary to realize his talents was presented to Crystal

Continuity and Change on Saturday Night Live, 1985–90

Between 1980 and 1990, the percentage of the total US popula-

“I Still Know How to Party”: Mike Myers,

In 1992, the cast of Saturday Night Live were named “Entertainers of