I hate being backed into a corner.
One of the reasons I wanted to do “Week of Gatsby” was so I could link to the classic Andy Kaufman routine from “Saturday Night Live”. I didn’t think that would be the problem it turned into.
That clip is not available, in any form, on the Internet, as far as I can tell. NBC Universal, as the copyright holders, seems to aggressively go after anyone who posts SNL clips on YouTube (as is their right, of course).
That clip is also not available, as far as I can determine, in Hulu’s library of SNL clips.
You can watch the entire episode with Kaufman (season 3, episode 13, with Art Garfunkel and Stephen Bishop) on Hulu – if you pay $8 a month for Hulu Plus (or sign up for a free trial). Otherwise, you’re out of luck. I say: to heck with that.
The text of Kaufman’s routine is available from the SNL Transcripts site, but reading the text of a Kaufman routine is like dancing about architecture.
This, however, might make the effort worthwhile: from a Cornell website, the “New Student Reading Project”, some notes on Gatsby. Chapter 7, “Performing Gatsby“, is rather interesting, especially for the comments by some of Kaufman’s contemporaries on his routine.
David Brenner: “And, you know, people would boo the crying. They were New Yorkers.”
(Also: a young Sam Waterson? This I’ve got to see. Was the man ever “young”?)
Young Sam Waterston?
In spite of OJ being in it, rent Capricorn One.
gfa
“rent Capricorn One”?
Hell, I paid money to see it in the original theatrical release.
(Okay, actually, I was 12 at the time, so it would be more correct to say “somebody else paid money for me to see it in the original theatrical release”.)
But that was long enough ago that I don’t remember the “Peter Willis” character. I remember O.J., and I remember James Brolin (especially at the end of the movie) but Waterston is just a total blank spot in my mind.
Maybe I should rent it…
(Also interesting: there were two novelizations. Ron Goulart did the one that was published in the US, while Ken “Pillars of the Earth” Follett wrote the UK one under a pseudonym. I’d actually like to lay my hands on a copy of the UK one if it isn’t obscenely priced.)
I remember Capricorn One (it’s even possible we say it together.)
The Waterston character was the one who kept telling himself jokes as a he climbed the mesa, only to find the helicopter waiting for him at the top.
This scene.