In 1992 the comedian directed his first movie, about an abrasive, 73-year-old washed-up comic. Now, thirty years later, Crystal has turned the film into a musical – and the 74-year-old finally gets to act his age.
When the film “Mr. Saturday Night” hit the big screen in 1992, it seemed to have everything: There was Billy Crystal as the abrasive stand-up comedian Buddy Young, Jr., and a top-notch cast as his long-suffering family. It was Crystal’s first shot at directing, and he played Buddy from a young star to a washed-up has-been. For Crystal, the film was a personal victory. But a hit, it was not. Correspondent Tracy Smith asked, “We talked about ‘Mr. Saturday Night,’ and I asked you, was ‘Mr. Saturday Night’ a hiccup or a career killer? And you said, ‘Oh, I thought it was a career killer.'” “I did, yeah,” Crystal replied. “And this was, I thought, for me, my best work. And the fact that it didn’t perform as well at the box office as we wanted was, like, uh-oh, it’s the first time you get punched in the face, basically.” And what made it sting even more, Crystal said, was that it came on the heels of some pretty huge career milestones, like 1989’s “When Harry Met Sally,” and 1991’s “City Slickers,” which was a whole new level of box office success. But even though the Buddy Young Jr. story didn’t shine as brightly, Crystal never gave up on it: “So, you get up, you put it back together again, you go, ‘All right, what’s next?'” “So, let me ask you, though, if it’s like getting punched in the face, why revisit it? What is it about this guy?” “Because I thought there was something else to be said with him,” he replied. “There was more to do with him. And what we learned from the film that didn’t work as well as it could. we found works in the show.” The show is “Mr. Saturday Night” – the musical. It’s a lot more than a re-work of the movie, because as any Broadway fan knows, you can sometimes say a lot more with a song. Another difference is Crystal himself, who turned 74 last month. When he played Buddy on film, he was only 43, and needed hours of makeup to play a 73-year-old.
