Saturday Night Live

Ha, love this:

We see Eddie from 100 yards away. Rock says, "There he is. Like Ali in Zaire." Eddie, Bomaye.

the teenage whiney still has a serious soft spot for final-season Farley where he was just screaming in front of Janeane Garafalo in every sketch.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/bill-cosby-scandal/bill-cosby-i-applaud-eddie-murphy-refusing-play-me-snl40-n308861

"I never said no filth flarn filth! I don't know what you're talking about! I'm offended that you called! Fuck you!"

take part in a lame bill cosby joke or have it reported you didn't and get a thank you from bill cosby. that's some serious "damned if you do, damned if you don't"

it probly would've been the last time EM did a TV sketch ever, so opting out entirely defensible

read the whole Macdonald thing, and my not-high opinion of him dove further.

MacDonald or Murphy?

Norm

(u know, the guy who called Michael Jackson a "homosexual child molester" on WU once)

EM staying away from SNL for 20 years bcz David Spade called him "a falling star" is multileveled hilarity.

I just noticed this in the 25th season wiki entry. Anyone know if this contract is still used?

In July 1999, when executive producer Lorne Michaels held auditions for the season, NBC introduced a new contract for first-year cast members, replacing the five- or six-year deals they had used in the past.[1] The terms were established by NBC executives Scott Sassa and Garth Ancier. According to Peter Bogdanovich, the new contract came with the following terms:[1]

NBC can take a Saturday Night Live cast member off the show any time after his or her second year on the program and put him or her in an NBC sitcom.
A cast member has the option of saying no to the first two shows proposed by NBC, but must accept the third deal.
NBC dictates the length of the sitcom contract, which can run as long as six years.
SNL Films, co-owned by Paramount Pictures, NBC and Lorne Michaels, has a three-movie option that would pay the star a set $75,000 for the first film, $150,000 for the second and $300,000 for the third, rates that used to be negotiable.
NBC has the option of paying those same amount to force a cast member to say no to a film deal offered to them by another studio.

The starting salary remained $5,000 per episode.[1]

A cast member has the option of saying no to the first two shows proposed by NBC, but must accept the third deal.

This is some Lady or the Tiger doomladen shit

Norm's the funniest standup comic alive and it's not even close

i saw him perform in LA 18 months ago and he wasn't the funniest on the bill

(certainly funnier than he was on SNL, but that's a low bar)

stand-up isn't really Norm's strong suit, I would agree that he's the funniest guy alive who does standup though

I'd totally forgotten until I saw his name in the credits recently that, while he was on SNL, he was also writing for Roseanne during that show's heyday.

so Norm's strong suit is talk-show guest or tweeter, then?

Don't forget 'roaster'.

a talented, nice — talk show guest.

"Sports Show" was pretty great

Sports Show was good. His Safe Auto insurance commercials are/were dumb.

Morbs please: Norm's "homosexual child molester" joke was a spokesman for MJ explaining the separation from Lisa Marie Presley on account of their moving in different directions: "She's more of a stay-at-home mom, and he's a homosexual child molester."

Nothing about the joke suggests a link between homosexuality and child molestation. It's funny because LMP is not a man or a child.

But if you find a comic unlikeable it doesn't matter. I laugh just watching NM chew gum.

I was never a huge Norm fan, but he was probably the funniest guest I've ever seen on The Daily Show. It couldn't have been more than a week after the Crocodile Hunter guy died, and Norm riffed on him for maybe five solid minutes ("He was 44 years old; that's a ripe old age for a crocodile hunter!") I swear Stewart was weeping with laughter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qODmxg_dUuI

I was a big Norm fan before he got the SNL gig. Strangly people I talk to irl all seem to think his WU was the show's nadir, or perhaps a notch above Colin Quinn.

That's because his Weekend Update was terrible and only slightly better than Colin Quinn. I never saw Rocket so I can't compare to his tenure but I liked every other WU anchor I've seen more, including Brad Hall and Kevin Nealon.

i love norm. every time he speaks i laugh. and his burt reynolds is hilarious too.

Prefer norm WU to Quinn and nealon for having a strong comic persona but compared to a lot of others his WU was pretty monotonous. Part of why he's so good at mocking letterman and Reynolds' indifferent reliance in shtick is cuz he relates

Colin Quinn is one of the worst comedians I've ever seen, not because he has no jokes but because he seems to be physically incapable of delivering them.

^^^^

his ability to have a career at all baffles me

yeah for me it's

quinn: "jesus can you get the fucking out joke out you incompetent..."
nealon: "hey dude got any jokes for me?"
mcdonald: "yeah that was a good joke the first dozen times you told it...ok stop looking at me, dude, and tell the next one...c'mon"

did Jane Curtin make the anniv? She sniffs quite a lot about SNL, i guess cuz two tripe sitcoms made her rich.

she did WU with poehler and fey

talked about showing her boobs

CQ is pretty funny on Twitter though

Norm's 'Me Doing Standup' is my favorite comedy album. I don't remember his WU very well. I'm looking forward to any Norm bits in the Miller and Shales book.

Norm on WU is the thing I most looked forward to during that era of SNL. Granted, there wasn't much else to look forward to during that era of SNL.

I like Colin Quinn. On Weekend Update and in general.

Jane Curtin got a lot of time doing WU w/ Tina and Amy and a much reposted joke Fox News.

The thing I like about Norm is the perpetual glint in his eye, like he knows he's going to far and is willing to be not funny just for the sake of that knowledge. Like his infamous roast performance, or this, which actually is funny:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F6dXcW-_Fc

Harry Shearer had some fun anti-SNL and Lorne stuff on yesterday's WTF episode.

lol at Shearer's bit about Lorne's "I've never hired a Jewish male before"

I completely forgot that Norm HOSTED in 1999?!

Like riding high on the non-existent success of Dirty Work and the Norm Show?

Shearer provided a pretty good explanation of why no one has their lines memorized---Lorne waiting til the last minute to decide which sketches will run

xp yeah i remember he mentioned in the monologue about being fired the year before, but now suddenly being "good enough" to host the show and how weird it was

Speaking of getting fired, everyone's been focusing on Eddie but it's kind of a big deal that Sandler came back for the anniversary, too. Hadn't he pretty much washed his hands of that place?

Sandler always kept ties to the show by employing his castmates

Murphy never did this