Saturday Night Live-Season 5...Any News? (1 Viewer)

[texboil]

I've always been curious about the first Ebersol show too, which I've never seen a sniff of. As far as I know, the host was Chevy Chase, and the cast was a one-show only mixture of Doumanian's cast who hadn't yet been fired (and of course Piscopo and Murphy) and some people that Ebersol had time to hire. (I believe a month past between Doumanian's last show and Ebersol's first.)

This may be off-topic, but I just read SNL writer Tom Davis's memoir and I was strongly hoping that he was going to touch on this period. Franken and Davis were scheduled to host Ebersol's second show but it was cancelled due to a writer's strike. Davis even has a ticket for the never-aired show on the cover. Anyway, Davis writes about a lot of less-interesting stuff in the book but never mentions his and Franken's very-brief history with the Ebersol years.

The best book about SNL is still Hill and Weingrad's, which came out in 1985 or 1986. Sure wish they'd do a sequel.

 

[GuruAskew]

I'm guessing we'll get it around the Holidays.

I'd be willing to bet that the season 3 didn't sell as well as the others due to the Spring release as opposed to the other 3 Holiday releases. A similar thing happened with "Seinfeld", they tried the Spring release once and after that all the releases came out during the holiday season like the first releases.

If they insist on doing it this way I wish they'd at least give us two releases at once to offset the horribly slow release pattern. I've said it before: yearly releases are a bad idea on a show with 30+ seasons. I understand holding releases for the holiday season but releasing 2 or even 3 simultaneously would be a way they could have their cake and eat it too.

 

[Ethan Riley]

Guys, seriously. You are never going to see the Doumanian year on dvd. First of all, Lorne Michaels would never waste his time and energy trying to get it onto dvd. It's got zero stars, zero quality and Lorne had nothing to do with it. The current dvd series is Lorne's baby. You won't see Doumanian's 1/2 season nor will you see much of Dick Ebersol's seasons. You probably won't see Lorne's first year back, which was one of the worst years in the series' history.

What you will see is season five, and probably a year later they'll re-commence, starting around 1986 when the show got back to the business of comedy. Despite the relative merits of the non-Lorne years, they were not his work and he's not going to spend energy getting them onto dvd in their entirety. You will have about a six-year gap in your collections and you're going to have to live with that.

 

[DeWilson]

It may be "Lorne's baby" , but if NBC/Universal WANTS the episodes released,
they'll get released.

 

[Alex cosmo]

Does it feel like they'll do season 5 and then maybe a Best of 80s, Best of 90s and that's it? Then maybe the rest will be on some on demand service later on...

 

[GuruAskew]

Actually I believe Lorne Michaels and Broadway Video (his production company) do have approval over the entire run of the series, even the non-Michaels stuff. I could be wrong but as far as I know it's very similar to like a LucasFilm situation where Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros. etc. have rights to release the content but what is release and if/when it is even released in the first place is Lucas's call.

Universal may have the rights to release the non-Michaels stuff but there's a good chance that they are only able to release that after Michaels gives the go-ahead.

Speaking of my theory re: holiday releases, I could see them quietly issuing Doumanian and Ebersol seasons and saving the more-marketable seasons for the Holidays. There is a demand for them (not a huge one) and on top of that you have the inevitable confusion of skipped seasons.

Furthermore, people tuned into SNL back then expecting to see something comparable to what they'd seen before and there may be some money in similar DVD purchases.

 

[Ethan Riley]

Let's put it this way: Lorne Michaels owns Broadway Video; he also is in charge of the content of any SNL-related product. Always has been. NBC/Universal controls the distribution of his products, but doesn't control the actual content. My theory about the SNL season sets is that the first five years is considered its own little series. Future releases will probably start in 1986, have a more modest trade dress, and be numbered according to year, not "Volume 11, Volume 12," or whatever. This is probably the only way to get away with it. They'll never be able to sell SNL: Season 31 or whatever in that same boxed trade dress...people would have gotten so sick of SNL dvds by then!

I think it only fair that they make the boxes more modest and number them by year. Many people are only fans of a certain era of SNL anyway. I like 75-80 and then not again until about 1991. That's just me. Everybody else has their favorite casts or seasons. They shouldn't have to buy "Volume 17" or whatever to get their favorite Adam Sandler sketches, and therefore feel like they're missing something.

 

[David Rain]

It still comes down to business. The early 80's Murphy/ Piscopo years were popular and very well-remembered. Everyone involved with these releases would be utterly foolish if they didn't give the royal treatment to these years.

Some of you, for whatever reason, don't seem to like this era or have never seen it and have no idea how good it was. You're pushing your own agenda by saying certain seasons or era could "never be released". In fact, what you're wanting is for them to skip over the seasons that you have no interest in so they can get to your personal favorites.

You're making wild assumptions about entire chunks of the show's history not being released and yet you have nothing to back this up with. To say that only Lorne's years are important or that they are the only ones that are worthy is just plain stupid. Lorne has produced MANY bad eps of SNL. He is not made of gold as so many of you seem to think.

 

[Andrew Radke]

AMEN! I personally don't think they'll skip that era. Lorne may have not been involved but for all rights and purposes, it was still SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. You also can't ignore the fact that this era had many, many memorable moments that fans and collectors of the show will want to relive. Most of Eddie Murphy's work on the show is enough reason alone to warrant the release of these sets. Then there's the amazing musical performances from that era. Should they all be discarded for the sole reason that Lorne wasn't involved? I think not. On a retail standpoint, this era has a lot going for it. Aside from the name recognition and star power of Eddie Murphy which would surely drive sales, we have Julia Louis-Dreyfuss. Between 'Seinfeld' and 'Old Christine', flash her face on a cover and I'm sure some people would take interest.

You know, frankly I would love.....LOVE to own the Hartman / Carvey / Nealon / Lovitz era as quickly as possible. But NOT at the expense of losing a huge chunk of the show which was great in and of itself, even without Lorne's involvement. It should not be overlooked.

 

[Cheetah]

If you are implying that the royal treatment was given to the first four seasons then I strongly disagree with that comment. Not when between 12 to 15 minutes of material was cut from each season and artificial audience applause was inserted between many segments. The packaging is of secondary concern. If it was a choice between having all of the bumper photography intact and the packaging the sets have already been released in I wouldn't care if the discs were enclosed in plain transparent plastic bags to make these seasons truly complete.

 

[FrankNolan]

My worry is that they'll resolve the debate by either cancelling the series after Season 5, or skipping ahead fifteen years to the overrated late-Nineties era. After releasing the early years, it would be easy to sell '95-'00 as "SNL: The Next Generation", since it started up twenty years after the original cast. And of course, Will Ferrell is a huge star, and some members of that era's casts are still high-profile (Jimmy Fallon, Tracy Morgan, Molly Shannon). Then they could either lurch back to the Eighties or continue with the '00s until they get to the most recent season.

 

[AnthonyC]

I don't know if you're referring to me and my comment that the non-Lorne seasons are very, very unlikely to be released--I want every season, but the fact of the matter is that Lorne is the ringleader behind what gets released. So it's not just a matter of what we want released (I think the majority of fans would want every season, or would at least acknowledge that every season should be released even if they aren't interested in certain eras); Lorne simply isn't interested in releasing 6-10, so we probably won't be seeing those for a long while, if at all.

I have a sinking feeling that this current season will be the next one on tap after 5. It was a pretty big year for the show, with the Fey-as-Palin stuff, the bonus Weekend Update Thursday shows, and just in general with the election going on. Creating and/or finding extras would not be a problem; they might even have commentaries (which I think would be really interesting, and a shame that they didn't see fit to do even one or two for the first four seasons).

 

[Andrew Radke]

With all due respect, what proof do you have to back this up? He may not be in favor of these seasons, as he had no involvement with them. But I've not heard, nor seen any concrete evidence stating that he "is not interested in releasing" the aforementioned seasons. I think you're chalking that up to personal assumption.

 

[AnthonyC]

In fairness, I don't think there's been any official word on it, but Gord has said he's almost positive Lorne will be skipping over the seasons he's not involved in.

 

[Bryan^H]

Wouldn't that be odd? It would seem very strange to go from season 5 to say the complete season 12. If Universal does that, it will be both unpopular, and unjust. Lorne isn't happy with the seasons in question...well, you can't just make them disappear forever.

I'm starting to wonder if the fifth season will be the last complete season on dvd also.

 

[Dale MA]

I hope not! As a Brit I'm watching all of these episodes on DVD for the first time. I'd like the opportunity to buy each season of the show, so I can judge which are my favourite and least favourite seasons.

 

[BrianJau]

Over at the saturday-night-live.com message board, there are reports of people asking this question of Lorne and him saying the same thing. In fact, don't be surprised if they jump to an era later than the '86 season, either (although I don't think anything has been officially decided yet).

 

[Stephen Wight]

Ive heard,from a reliable source,that Lorne plans to skip the Doumanian/Ebersol seasons and next release either the Sandler or Ferrell seasons.If he does that,then I stop buying SNL DVDs.

 

[Powell&Pressburger]

I can't believe they would skip the Jan Hooks, Nora Dunn, Phil Hartman years those are golden!

 

[GuruAskew]

I don't think there's any credible sources indicating the fate of the non-Lorne years on DVD one way or the other and I wouldn't call message board postings by people who claim they asked Lorne as credible.

I do think, however, that the way that era of the show is treated in regards to reruns is pretty telling and I don't think it's unreasonable to speculate that Lorne Michaels may want to keep them off of DVD just like he clearly wants them out of the rerun packages.

But beyond that common-sense speculation I don't think there's any actual evidence.