DIE ACTOR DIE

Yesterday I made a snarky post about SNL posthumously “realizing” that George Carlin was indeed a great comedian and rebroadcasting his first and only appearance as Host.

Thing is, it wasn’t his only appearance, he appeared again in 1984 w/ Frankie Goes to Hollywood as musical guest. (Thanks to Todd at Dead-Frog for setting me straight.)

But then I began to wonder why Carlin only hosted twice. A man of his talent and stature could have hosted numerous times, after all, he was the host of the very first episode!

So why didn’t he?

I had read in LIVE FROM NEW YORK that Lorne wasn’t “high on” Carlin’s act at the time.  I am not saying Lorne didn’t like or respect him, but maybe as Producer he realized Carlin wasn’t the right fit with his new show; a show that was still learning to walk. I don’t know, it’s pure speculation on my part. (Interesting side note: when Carlin appeared the second time, Dick Ebersol, not Lorne Michaels was the Producer.)

Of course, it also might have been Carlin’s choice. I did a bit of research, and after pages and pages of websites promoting NBC rebroadcasting SNL’s premiere episode featuring Carlin this Saturday night, I came across an interview with Carlin and The A.V. Club. In it I found this little tid-bit:

AVC: Do you remember why you didn’t appear in any sketches in that first episode, and just did stand-up?

GC: Yeah, somebody told me I was going to be in an Alexander The Great sketch, but I think I bowed out of that in rehearsal week. And I know it was because of the cocaine. One of the effects it had on my personality-my moods, my behaviors-was that it inhibited me a lot. It kind of took possibilities out of my world, and made the focus of things very narrow. So I had no confidence in being able to play sketches.

You know, there’s a thing about cocaine-when I was doing it secretly, it didn’t make me very sociable. I forget how others were, but it made me very inner-directed. So being in a sketch and rehearsing and the “hail fellow well met” camaraderie and all that stuff, I couldn’t fake that or force that. It was painful. So I told [SNL producer] Lorne [Michaels] that I didn’t think I was any good at sketches and that I didn’t want to do any, but I’d do a few more short monologues to fill in that time, so there’d be more of me on the show.

AVC: That’s curious, because you should’ve been a perfect fit on Saturday Night Live, unlike a lot of your other early TV work, where you were an odd fit. Like The Tony Orlando & Dawn Rainbow Hour, where you were a semi-regular a year after your SNL hosting gig.

GC: Oh, sure. But I’ll tell you the attraction there. You can’t be the fastest gun in town forever. There comes a time when you’re not the golden boy, and you have to go off somewhere and figure yourself out. I did six albums [in the early '70s], and the first four were gold-selling, and the last two were not. I wanted to stay in front of the public in my monologue persona-”in one,” as they called it in old-time show business-but I knew the dangers of variety shows were that they want you in the opening number and the closing number and the ensemble, and they want to see you with the other guests in a sketch or some shit. And I knew how bad I was at that, and how much I hated that, because before 1970, I was in that world and actually did that on a number of big variety shows, because I thought it was part of the price I had to pay.

But by 1976, I knew I didn’t have to do that, so I told the Tony Orlando people that I just wanted to do my monologues. I didn’t even have to be there on show night. I forget how it worked. I think I taped two or three monologues at a time after the main show was over, or during the break… I don’t remember. But I was not in the bunny costume, and I was not in the crusades number. [Laughs.] It was just me, standing up. And that gave me two things: a prime-time presence in my chosen persona, and I didn’t dilute myself with all that other variety show stuff.

OK, not so little.

Still, it seems to me, Carlin knew his place. SNL wasn’t for him. You have to respect that.