Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/101992/1019520.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 13KB | 245 lines

                                                                                PROFILE, Page 66


Having struggled from warm-up act to headliner, Billy Crystal
evokes the demons of comedy in a new movie, giving the perfect
Oscar host a shot at his own Oscar

By MARGARET CARLSON/LOS ANGELES


    Ask Billy Crystal how he got started, and he will say in
the living room, where as the youngest and shortest of three
boys, he was also the loudest. "After dinner, we would perform
for 20 or so relatives impressions of Aunt Rose with the
sagging upper arms and Uncle Max with the pants the size of New
Jersey." He learned show-biz patter, pulling his chair alongside
the old Magnavox TV and pretending to be the next guest on the
Jack Paar show, peeking down Jayne Mansfield's dress and
rolling his eyes, flacking his latest gig. "You know, Jack, I'm
really looking forward to eighth grade. A lot of interesting
transfers, some hot new teachers -- it's going to be a good
year."

    He graduated to stand-up after listening to comedy albums
his father would bring home from his job at Commodore Music, a
record label and store in Manhattan. For visits to Grandma's
house on Thanksgiving, Mom packed a suitcase with costumes: the
three Crystal Boys would do Ernie Kovacs' Nairobi Trio and take
turns as Mel Brooks' 2,000-Year-Old Man.

    His wonder years in Long Beach, on Long Island, N.Y. --
the loud relatives, the overtanned mah-jongg ladies at the
swimming pool, the horseradish and stuffed cabbage, the
vacations in the Catskills -- are at the heart of his new movie,
Mr. Saturday Night, which he wrote, directed, produced and
starred in, quite an achievement for someone who didn't know
what a key grip was seven years ago. Crystal set out to portray
someone who embodied the idols of his youth -- Milton Berle,
Jack E. Leonard, Alan King -- yet exuded the fear of failure
that makes some comics do themselves in, onstage and personally,
instead of waiting for life to do it to them.

    Crystal says he is not Buddy, although he makes him so
instantly recognizable in his Nipsey Russell loungewear and
pinkie ring, in his scathing put-downs and maudlin
sentimentality, that the character seems to come from the inside
out. Crystal says he only wanted to show "the terrorist inside
each of us, who can ruin things at any moment." But like many
people for whom affection comes easily, Crystal may have felt
driven to test his positives. "It was easy to like Harry [in
When Harry Met Sally . . .] and Mitch [the mid-life ad guy in
City Slickers], but not Buddy. I wanted to elicit the complex
affection for someone who does rotten things but who is not a
rotten man."

    It may only have been possible for Crystal to portray this
wrinkled, self-absorbed baby with a cigar once he was safely
beyond such a fate himself. At 44, he is now at the top not only
professionally -- considered in the same breath with Steve
Martin and Robin Williams -- but personally as well, uncommonly
secure in a business where ego tremors routinely register 9.8
on the Richter scale. He has lived in the same house in Pacific
Palisades, Calif., for 12 years, been married to the same woman
for 22. He has scarcely missed a volleyball game of either
daughter: Jennifer, 19, who is now studying acting in London;
and Lindsay, 15. An exciting Saturday is when his good friends,
director Rob Reiner and his wife, come over, or when he goes to
root for Los Angeles' basketball underdogs, the Clippers. "For
a star," says Reiner, who directed him in Harry, ``he's the most
normal man in America."

    Crystal attributes his contentment to Janice Goldfinger,
the hometown girl he married in 1970. "I fell in love with the
right person, a person I knew and who knew me. I still want to
make her laugh." He was a full-time father before it was
fashionable, changing diapers during the day and playing clubs
at night, while Janice worked as assistant to the dean of
theater at Nassau Community College on Long Island. "I loved
those years of being Mr. Mom. One of the saddest days in my life
was when Jennifer said, `Dad, I can wash my own hair.' "

    His hunger for family comes in part because when he was
15, his father dropped dead after bowling a 200 game on lane
13. "All the fun went out of the house then," says Crystal's
brother Rich, a producer at Hearst television. "My mother adored
my father, and she could barely manage." From then on, part of
what propelled Crystal was the desire to make his mother happy
again. He became the school comedian, memorizing Bill Cosby's
routines and performing them so well at assemblies that when
classmates heard the actual recordings they joked that Cosby was
stealing Crystal's material. The three brothers, including Joel,
the oldest, who teaches at the high school they all attended,
did the old routines at a surprise 75th birthday party for
their mother back in their Long Beach living room.

    For years after that, it looked as if Crystal, like Buddy,
might never break into the big time. He started out in a group
called 3's Company, which appeared in between folk singers doing
whaling songs at coffeehouses and never attracted much of a
following. In 1974 he earned so little and had such high
expenses that the IRS came calling. The auditor found the $2,200
in travel receipts in order but asked Janice why in the world
he kept at it for only $4,000 a year. "It's in his blood," she
sighed.

    A rare shot at instant stardom -- an appearance on the
season premiere of Saturday Night Live in 1975 -- misfired when
producer Lorne Michaels cut his spot from six minutes to one and
Crystal pulled out. "It was awful," says Crystal. "Gilda
[Radner] walked me to the elevator. I was crying all the way
home on the Long Island Railroad, the tears running down the
makeup." While friends Chevy Chase and John Belushi went on to
become household names, he had to settle for a spot on ABC's
wacky series Soap, playing television's first prime-time
homosexual. Then came the ill-conceived Billy Crystal Comedy
Hour in 1982, which NBC promoted as a male version of the Carol
Burnett show. "We were up against The Love Boat and first-run
movies without much network backing," Crystal remembers. "I
learned in the trade press that the show was canceled after only
two episodes." He scraped himself up off the floor and went back
on the road. He appeared in a few successful HBO specials, was
a guest host on Saturday Night Live. He became a headliner
instead of a warm-up act, sought after for his character turns
rather than his one-liners.

    Finally in 1985, he was invited to be a regular on SNL. It
was the turning point of his career. His Fernando character set a
new indoor speed record for trajectory from late-night sketch to
universally understood wisecrack. Today people still beg him to
flash the insincere smile of the fading, macho heartthrob of the
'50s and intone, "You know, dahlings, it is better to look good
than to feel good." By Monday morning, from junior high
cafeterias to white-shoe law firms, "Excuuuse me" had been
replaced by "You look maaahvelous." He also struck gold with
Willie, the nerdy messenger with a knack for misfortune, who
wails in a high voice, "I hate when that happens," and with
Ricky, the hapless Vietnam vet who never escapes the
neighborhood, for whom everything is "unbelieeevable."

    "That season," Crystal says, "lifted an anvil off my
heart. It made other things possible." Like working his way up
the emcee ladder from the Grammys to the Oscars. The Oscars
were thrilling for the kid who once sat glued to the
black-and-white set with the family, shrieking, "There's Loretta
Young! Look, over there, Alan Ladd's getting out of that limo!"
His mother Helen remembers Billy grasping his toothbrush like
a mike, "thanking all the little people who made this possible."
In the morning, she would put notes under the cereal bowl --
"Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird" -- for the Oscars
awarded after he fell asleep.

    It is Crystal's ability to think funny that makes him the
perfect Oscar host. After Jack Palance was named Best Supporting
Actor for City Slickers and broke into a he-man display of
one-handed push-ups, Crystal kept a tally through the evening
of Palance's imaginary aerobic progress ("Jack has just
bungee-jumped off the HOLLYWOOD sign"). Following a huge
production number from the movie Hook with dozens of children
suspended from the ceiling, Crystal remarked, "You know, Palance
is the father of all those kids." Reacting to the biggest glitch
-- when 1920s director Hal Roach, instead of just taking a bow,
stood at his seat with no microphone and gave a long, inaudible
speech for his Honorary Award for lifetime achievement --
Crystal gracefully joked, "The reason we couldn't hear Mr. Roach
is that he is used to working in silent movies."

    For a hugely successful comedian, Crystal is singularly
without attitude -- not as angry as Richard Pryor, nor as
frantic as Robin Williams, nor as political as Jay Leno, not
alienated or crude or macho. His humor bursts the bubble of ego
without destroying anyone's dignity. He doesn't seem to have an
enemy in the business, which partly accounts for the success of
Comic Relief, his annual TV show with Whoopi Goldberg and
Williams, which raises millions of dollars for the homeless.

    He proved that his comedy was universal in Midnight Train
to Moscow, the first TV comedy special of the glasnost era, a
one-hour pastiche of sketches taped live at Moscow's Pushkin
theater and interspersed with his search for his Russian
ancestors (he finds and dances with his Aunt Sheila.) He wins
over the audience, even getting them to stand and sit in an
approximation of the human wave that could pass muster on a bad
night at Shea Stadium. He mimes a debate between Gorbachev and
Yeltsin, offers a tribute to Charlie Chaplin set to Tchaikovsky
and, in general, plays on the small-world theme. "I was raised
thinking you were the enemy," he tells the Russian audience.
"You were raised thinking I was the enemy. We were both wrong.
[Pause.] It's the French."

    For someone so preoccupied with aging and loneliness,
Crystal doesn't have to worry about either. Offstage, he cuts
a youthful figure in his uniform of jeans and T-shirts, with his
impish face and wiry, still athletic build (in high school he
won two letters in baseball and one each in basketball and
soccer). With the success of his movies, particularly the
box-office smashes Harry and City Slickers, he may never have
to go back on the road, which he found unbearably lonely.
"There's a scene in Mr. Saturday Night where Buddy is having
dinner with his wife in the hotel bathroom, the toilet seat
covered with white linen and crystal, while the baby sleeps in
the next room. That's Janice and me." When the girls got older
and Janice couldn't go along, he would drive all night to get
back home. "Doing stand-up, you live for 8:05 p.m. The rest of
the day is waiting. Some of my worst moments were being alone
in the room and the phone at home is busy."

    Playing Buddy Young put him face-to-face, literally, with
his older self, at least for the 53 days he was in old-age
makeup. The transformation was so complete that for Janice, who
was with him on location for much of the shooting -- including
the five hours each day getting into the makeup and the two
hours getting out -- Buddy Young became as familiar as Billy.
After he had finished another 20-hour day of filming at the boat
pond in Manhattan's Central Park, Janice came up behind him and
protectively took one arm in hers and slipped the other around
his shoulder. They looked for all the world like an old couple
walking off into the sunset.

    That's what Crystal wants now. "I'm on indefinite
vacation," he swears. He putters in his garden tending the
zucchini. He says he never used humor the way Buddy did, as a
straight-arm to keep people away, but he admits he once had a
craving, now banished, for "that extra hug you can only get from
strangers." Not needing hugs and wanting to be known more for
his movies than his stand-up skills have so far kept Crystal
from agreeing to be the host of the Academy Awards for the
fourth year in a row. "I love being Captain of Show Business for
one night a year, but it is hard to keep doing it better," he
says. Gilbert Cates, producer of the Oscars show, says Crystal
is "brilliant at it, an absolute joy to work with, and a
trouper. He did the show last year with the flu and a fever of
102." If Crystal does it, he makes Oscar history -- the only
host eligible to win awards as Best Actor, Director, Writer and
Producer. But if he doesn't win, there's always next year. He's
considering City Slickers II.