Word: snl
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...Again. The inspiration seemed to be less the anarchism of SNL than the more domesticated spirit of the comedy-variety shows of the 1950s, like Your Show of Shows and The Colgate Comedy Hour. The New Show courted chuckles of recognition rather than nervous titters or ribald guffaws. Even the graphics danced with domestic emblems of the '50s like toasters and kidney-shaped swimming pools...
...show's opening lineup featured three regulars: the deadpan, usually deadeye Buck Henry, the chameleon-like Dave Thomas, late of SCTV. and Valri Bromfield, a Canadian comedian whom Michaels originally wanted for SNL. There was a handful of mostly traditional sketches, long on premise and short on development. Guest Star Steve Martin (who can be funny just standing still) opened the show with some mincing mimickry of Michael Jackson's distinctive footwork. In one skit Jeff Goldblum (The Big Chill) played an earnest, geeky math teacher who yearned to belt out Tom Lehrer-like songs for the faculty...
...Michaels notes, SNL required several weeks of on-air fumbling before it crystallized. The new series also will need time to find its way, and it cannot go too far wrong with the writing and performing talent it already has. Comedy, Steve Martin once said, is not pretty. The New Show needs to muss itself up a bit. If it does, then there is reason to hope that in the weeks ahead it will become The New and Improved Show. - By Richard Stengel
Eddie Murphy is the first of skitcom's major mimics to span the gap. On SNL he presents a roster of hilariously varied characters. One minute he is Little Richard Simmons, finding just the right comic fusion-effeminate yet macho-of the rock-'n'-roll screamer and the Liberace of aerobics ("Good golly, Miss Molly, you look like a hog!"). The next he is Velvet Jones, a pomaded pimp, with teeth like sheathed knives, huckstering his how-to books for young ladies, I Wanna Be a Ho and Exercises of Love. Now he is Tyrone Green...
...handle on him," says Actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays a good-hearted hooker in Trading Places. "That would slow him down." Murphy has become best buddies with Joe Piscopo, 32 the adroit, rubber-faced comic actor who is the closest thing to Dan Aykroyd on the new SNL; next month Eddie will move into a new house a mile away from Piscopo in Alpine, NJ. Otherwise, his best friends are his oldest friends. One of them, Clinton Smith, is an assistant to Saturday Night Live Executive Producer Dick Ebersol Another, Derrick Lawrence, 28, has signed on with Eddie Murphy...