What It Was Like to Write for Eddie Murphy on ‘Saturday Night Live’
When Eddie Murphy debuted on SNL in 1980, he instantly became the show’s biggest star — in large part because of the characters he created. And it definitely was characters, as in plural, as in many more than just one. In fact, they’ve transcended era, too, as they’ve remained some of the most well-known in SNL history, particularly Gumby, Buckwheat, Mr. Robinson and Murphy’s take on James Brown.
For the most part, Murphy crafted them with the help of the writing duo Barry W. Blaustein and David Sheffield, both of whom would later play a big part in Murphy’s film career, writing Coming to America, Nutty Professor and several other of his movies.
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I recently caught up with Blaustein about his time writing with Murphy on SNL, who, during our call, shared the financial advice James Brown gave Murphy, why Gumby’s creator loved Murphy’s twist on the clay icon and what it was like to encounter an angry Mr. Rogers.
“Eddie used to talk about Buckwheat in his stand-up act, and Eddie came up with ‘Buckwheat Sings,’ which was a big hit,” Blaustein says. “We didn’t like repeating characters so much, but we ended up repeating Buckwheat a lot, and there wasn’t enough to write for him.
“Around Christmas time, Eddie was shooting Trading Places, and he called me up and said, ‘We’ve got to kill Buckwheat.’ I said, ‘That’s a good idea. Let us think about it. Then the three of us and Bob Tischler wrote it. It turned into my favorite piece I did on the show.”
“We thought Velvet Jones was too cheap,” Blaustein explains. “It was so sexist. I had confidence that comedically it could work, but I don’t know if I wanted it to work. It stayed in our office in a drawer for a year. Then, we were in a situation where we needed a sketch in one camera to facilitate camera moves, so we brought out Velvet and it turned out to be really successful.”
Gumby
“Gumby was based on Eddie’s first manager (Robert D. Wachs) and Pat Cooper, an old comedian who would put down every performer in Las Vegas with unbridled bitterness,” says Blaustein. “As for how it became Gumby, we were sitting around the office, talking about childhood stuff. We were talking about Davey and Goliath, and we thought of doing something on that. Then we got talking about Gumby, and Eddie started riffing on Gumby being bitter. That’s how Gumby got started. Art Clokey, who invented Gumby, became a big fan of the sketch. He loved it because Gumby figures were being sold again. It revived Gumby.”
James Brown Celebrity Hot Tub Party
“David Sheffield and I had left the show and moved to Los Angeles, but we had a contract with Saturday Night Live where we could write stuff,” says Blaustein. “I had a hot tub in the backyard of this home I was renting, and I stepped in the hot tub and went, ‘Ow!’ I thought it sounded like James Brown, so I came up with ‘James Brown Celebrity Hot Tub Party’ as an idea for a bad TV show. Then Dave came over and we wrote it in about 20 minutes.
“We sent it into the show, but Eddie was unsure about it. He’s admitted that he didn’t think it was funny. He claims that we only thought it was funny because we were high. At the end of that sketch it says, ‘Coming up next is Dr. Joyce Brothers.’ She flew in from a honeymoon in Hawaii to be photographed in a hot tub with Eddie.
“James Brown himself liked the sketch. He liked any mention of himself. On some occasion later, he told Eddie that he should play him in a movie. He also told Eddie that he should hide his money. James Brown had hundreds of thousands of dollars buried in different forests and different parts of land that he owned. I’m pretty sure Eddie didn’t take the advice.”
Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood
“After we’d done ‘Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood’ a few times, Mr. Rogers came to the studio and said he didn’t like it,” Blaustein explains. “We said, ‘Can we just do one more where you appear and give him a restraining order?’ But he wouldn’t do it. He said it was bad for his image — bad for his brand. I saw a different side of Mr. Rogers. I just thought he was a man without a sense of humor.
“We never did it again because we could have been sued. It’s up in the air that he really could have sued for it. We were tired of doing it, too — it was the same joke and the same rhythms. Dave and I did get to revive it a couple of years ago, when Eddie hosted, though we were mostly just there to support Eddie.”
