SNL Season 1 on 12/5/06 (and season sets in general) (1 Viewer)

[Charles Miller]

Got mine from DVDEmpire with free shipping:

Saturday Night Live: The Complete First Season:
DVD-Video
PRE-RELEASE: Ships when stock arrives
Scheduled for Release on 12-5-2006
Qty: 1 Price: $48.99

 

[ScottR]

I hope they include the bumpers or musical interludes before commercials. I don't remember what they were the first season, but the ones in the 1980's with the band were fun.

 

[Jeff#]

Well, there wasn't much music coming out of commercial in the 70s (or now for that matter) and the bumpers were very short. The music going into commercial in the early years usually accompanied the camera at the studio audience and zoomed up to one member, placing a silly comment at the bottom under the screen of that unsuspecting person -- usually causing him or her to laugh or at least smile on national TV.

Yes, the second half of the 1985 through early 1995 band numbers with guitarist G.E. Smith and the band were excellent. G.E. was actually the first husband of Gilda Radner. They were divorced years earlier, and she then married and made some rather average movies with Gene Wilder. I can't understand how Lorne Michaels could fire Smith for taking up too much air time when the man was on the show for 10 years!

I sure hope DVD Empire's $48 price means that those of us who ordered from DVD Express for $46.42 got the right item. I still say we did, but we'll find out in a couple of days either way.

 

[David Rain]

I didn't even realize that the original screentests still existed (or that they were even filmed). That will be great if it does turn up on the set. I'm not sure what else they could put on there although I'd like to see bonus features where former cast members give their impressions of specific skits or characters.

FYI: Richard Pryor was supposed to be the first host but supposedly NBC was nervous about his naughty mouth. So of course they chose the wholesome George Carlin.

Jean Doumanian (a former producer for Woody Allen) really did not have enough experience to run such a huge show which is one reason the 80-81 season was troubled. I don't think that she was necessarily the one who decided to give Eddie more screen time. I think she was pressured consistently by other cast members to let him perform more. Perhaps if Eddie hadn't started to break out the show might not have had enough potential to be revamped and renewed.

 

[Jeff#]

Eddie Murphy alone didn't save SNL, but so did Jean's more prominent cast member Joe Piscopo. Dick Ebersol realized that obviously, and let's face it....Joe's post SNL career has been sporadic, and in addition to raising his family, that's why he's a talk show host in politics these days. Piscopo, however, was a talented comedian whose 4 years on Saturday Night Live led to a post-SNL HBO comedy special, in which Eddie Murphy was one of his guest stars. Yet only Eddie scored in feature films (no matter how lame they've been in more recent years).

But on SNL, writers David Sheffield and Barry Blaustein had Piscopo appearing in one great bit with Murphy after another once Ebersol took over. That included regular sketches including "Solomon & Pudge" (Joe and Eddie as 2 old men looking back on their lives), "Blair and Deon" (gay hairdressers), Joe playing Frank Sinatra, David Letterman (to Eddie's Gumby), Tom Snyder (a role that Dan Aykroyd played equally well before him), as Ralph Kramden (to Eddie's Ed Norton) in a parody of "The Honeymooners", as Geraldo Rivera (on 20 / 20), and Joe in fake commercials as Crazy Eddie (his prices are INSANE!).

These are proof positive of a stellar era of American comedy on the Studio 8H stages at 30 Rockefeller Center. Piscopo was to SNL in the first half of the 1980s what Aykroyd was to the same show in the 70s, Phil Hartman was from 1986 up to 1994, and Darrell Hammond was (and still is) since 1995: The Man of a Thousand Voices!

 

[TonyD]

jeff you said a lot of interesting and informative things in that post but had to ruin it whuen you said hammond, man of a thousand voices.

my opinion, he stinks.

his arnie is the worst i have heard from someone who is supposed to do this for a living.

parnell is the one who should have stayed and hammond i'm surprised is still there as he has barely been in the show the last 2 seasons.

 

[MatthewA]

Now that they can get this out unexpurgated:

What's other variety shows' excuses?

 

[TravisR]

They're nowhere near as popular as SNL so they won't sell as many copies.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Well, this is just amazing. I can't believe it. I'm there.

 

[Dave Mack]

WOW! Awesome news! Back when the cast members actually memorized their skits and didn't just read off of cue cards for the whole show! Sweet! Hope they do release all the seasons. 1978, Kate bush sitting on a piano with Paul Schaffer playing... can't wait.

 

[Mark Y]

For what it's worth...

The first five seasons of SNL were syndicated in the early 1980s, while the Murphy/Piscopo cast was doing new shows. Supposedly, there are 106 shows done in the first five seasons. I remember seeing a list of syndicated shows in Broadcasting magazine in the 1980s, listing 102 (this may have referred to the 30-minute "Best Of Saturday Night" version).

Between 1981 and 1983, WGN-Channel 9 in Chicago ran a one-hour version of SNL (always listed and promoted as "Saturday Night") and those shows were basically the shows as originally aired, but cut down to a one-hour format (that is, there was always a cold opening, Update, musical guest, original titles, original closing, not like the 30-minute version where bits and pieces would be strung together in a random order and freeze-frame at the end of a segment). They would superimpose the show's original air date over the beginning of the "Weekend Update" segment. (Presumably, this was to provide some context for material that was largely timely and topical.) In the few instances where the "Weekend Update" segment was among the material cut from an episode, they would instead superimpose the original airdate right at the beginning of the "cold opening" skit. I remember one funny thing about the Steve Martin-hosted show, which was the season premiere of the 1979-1980 season. When that show originally aired, the words "This is NOT a repeat!" were superimposed at the very beginning (coming off a summer of reruns). And almost every time it's been repeated since then (including the one-hour cutdowns on WGN) it still said "This is NOT a repeat!" If someone who hadn't been watching in 1979 saw that, it probably was very confusing. (I think that is the only time they did that, to my knowledge.) (Ironically, a couple of minutes later, it would have been obvious anyway that the show was "NOT a repeat," because when the cast was announced, Aykroyd and Belushi were gone.)

The Louise Lasser episode was included in the WGN package. (Maybe cutting the show down to one hour made it possible to edit out the really bad stuff and made it palatable to Lorne Michaels.) The Milton Berle episode was not...in fact I don't remember ever seeing it (though it's likely I did see the original live telecast) but I know E! did air a one-hour version some time in the last few years (maybe only once). The "Mardi Gras" episode also was not included, but NBC did repeat it in (I believe) 1981. I audio taped it that night (this was pre-VCR for me). I have never seen it again since then.

The one-hour cutdowns only aired in Chicago for a couple years. For a time, we had WWOR from New Jersey on our cable, and around 1987, WWOR aired these same one-hour versions again. But most of the time, the version of the show that showed up was the 30-minute "Best Of" version.

In the one-hour versions, sometimes the audio would be redubbed on the show opening, either to eliminate references to NBC (for the first couple of seasons, the show's title was "NBC's Saturday Night," and in the syndicated versions, this would be changed to just "Saturday Night"), or to eliminate the names of any performers mentioned in the opening whose segments were edited from the syndicated version of that episode. In the original version of the premiere episode hosted by George Carlin (10/11/1975), Don Pardo slipped up and said "The Not FOR READY Prime Time Players." In the redubbed syndicated version, this goof was corrected (Pardo did all the redubbed annoucements). (I'm referring to syndicated one-hour versions created in 1981. When Warner Bros. released a bunch of shows on VHS a few years later---some complete, some not---they went back to the original tapes and if someone's segment was cut out, they'd do their own edit to the opening to take the name out---as I recall.) Supposedly, this won't be an issue for these DVDs. (Yay!) I remember the redubbing of the show openings really being obvious...recorded applause would fade up just as Chevy Chase said "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" and it ran throughout the redubbed theme. The applause almost drowned out the theme song on one of the very early shows, I think the Rob Reiner one. They used only three recordings of the opening theme song for the redubs, one for the first couple of seasons, another for seasons 3-4 (also used on the Richard Pryor and maybe a couple other early shows---this is hard to describe, but this is a very commonly heard recording of the theme, used during the 1979-1980 season when NBC did its own prime time "Best Of Saturday Night Live") and another quite distinctive theme was used for the final season (1979-1980), redubbed onto the syndicated versions of almost all of those shows...that recording was also used on the 30-minute syndicated "Best Of Saturday Night" cut-downs...hope that makes sense.

 

[Gord Lacey]

Contracts could be different for every show, and the SNL contract may have made it easier to license the music. I know (from speaking to someone at Broadway Video) that they paid a lot of money to license the music. If this thing doesn't meet their expectations then this could be the first and only season set for the show.

Gord

 

[Mark Y]

Almost right...

Chevy Chase (1975-1976, part of 1976-1977)

Jane Curtin (1976-1977) (She did indeed fill in for Chase when he missed a few of the first shows of the second season...I didn't know or remember that she also had done that once in the first season. Interesting.

Jane Curtin/Dan Aykroyd (1977-1978) (This is where the "Point/Counterpoints" started; they continued in the next season, with Aykroyd returning as "Update Station Manager." As the "Update Station Manager," Aykroyd was a lot more serious, deadpan and wooden, like a high-falootin' "authority figure.") (Aykroyd and Curtin were co-anchoring "Update" by the time of Chase's guest-host appearance in 1978.)

Jane Curtin/Bill Murray (1978-1979, 1979-1980)

 

[Casey C.]

Earlier in this thread someone brought up "Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell," a prime-time ABC variety show that lasted 12 weeks in the fall of 1975 and was the reason Lorne Michaels was forced to title his show "NBC's Saturday Night" during Season 1.

A couple of other pieces of trivia:

Cosell's comedy troupe -- including Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray and Christopher Guest -- was called the "Prime Time Players" -- that's why the NBC group jokingly called themselves the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players."

Michaels' offer of $3000 to the Beatles (late in Season 1) was a spoof of many outlandish offers to reunite the Beatles during the 1970s -- including one by Cosell, who even had the gall to turn down an offer by John Lennon (an acquaintance of Cosell's in NYC) to appear on his show unless John brought Paul, George and Ringo with him. (The famous bit where Harrison called Michaels "chintzy" for giving him only a quarter-share of the money wasn't until Season 2, though.)

I will definitely be buying this set!

 

[GuruAskew]

His Connery is equally bad. He's the proof that if you can get your foot in the door at SNL you can make it on standard impressions. His Schwarzeneggar and Connery impressions are literally no better than the average person's yet he has been on SNL longer than anyone ever.

I'm always amazed when people compare him to Phil Hartman. What an insult to Hartman.

 

[MarkHastings]

I agree that Hammond is pretty bad. I think the only impression I really liked was his Phil Donahue. Other than that, all of his impressions have that same voice.

And yes, his Arnold and Connery impressions are no better than what anyone else can do.

 

[coryE]

Number one reason for everyone interested in getting more seasons to pick this one up.

I don't watch SNL anymore but I'll definetly pick this set up for sure.

If sales aren't really good for this then companies won't make the effort in the future.

Looking forward to watching some classic SNL, UNCUT.

Cheers

Cory

 

[AnthonyC]

Gord, would you be able to ask your source at Broadway Video if this set sells well, do they plan to release the series in order or will they be skipping around and getting later, popular seasons (i.e. 86-87, 95-96) out there so that it doesn't take forever to release those?

 

[PaulP]

Strange that they paid a lot of money to license the music. I thought live performances were different from plain music rights?

 

[Ravi K]

Not having been alive back then, this is great. I can't wait to see these episodes.