to have saccharin because sugar would make me fat and I’d rather be thin and get cancer than have bulging thighs. It came back to haunt me.
But it was a charmed life—until Belushi died. In those five years nobody ever died and nobody ever got horribly sick. Belushi made me laugh like you couldn’t imagine. I adored him. He was the one who gave me my first job in New York. In 1974 he called me up in Toronto where I was doing Second City. He was working with “The National Lampoon Radio Hour” and National Lampoon magazine because he had done the show Lemmings for them in 1973 and it had been a huge success Off-Broadway and then on a national tour. The Lampoon people wanted him to do another show, and they were letting him direct it. He could choose the cast. He asked me to be “the girl” in a show that would include himself, Joe Flaherty, Harold Ramis and Brian Doyle-Murray.
In August of 1974, I took a train to New York City to work on the show. It was a very lonely, hard time for me because New York was so big and so weird and I was always wandering around looking for the sky like a country bumpkin. Belushi and his girlfriend, Judy Jacklin (later his wife), looked out for me and all the guys in the cast. They were like the mama and papa. They’d lived in the city the longest and knew the ropes.
Belushi was a mentor to me. We had worked together at Second City so he knew my work. But I think the reason he hired me was that I was a good audience. All the guys liked to have me around because I would laugh at them till I peed in my pants and tears rolled out of my eyes. We worked together for a couple of years creating The National Lampoon Show, writing “The National Lampoon Radio Hour” and even working on stuff for the magazine. Bill Murray joined the show and Richard Belzer; Dan Aykroyd was around and Christopher Guest and Paul Shaffer. But Belushi was the driving force. Force is the right word to use for Belushi. Everything he did was suicidal—the way he ate, the way he drank, even the way he walked and moved. He would throw himself up in the air and splash down on the ground. His characters were suicidal. He was the master of kamikaze comedy. When he died, it didn’t seem so strange. But I knew I didn’t want to be the second one to go.
It is so hard for us little human beings to accept this deal that we get. It’s really crazy, isn’t it? We get to live, then we have to die. What we put into every moment is all we have. You can drug yourself to death or you can smoke yourself to death or eat yourself to death, or you can do everything right and be healthy and then get hit by a car. Life is so great, such a neat thing, and yet all during it we have to face death, which can make you nuts and depressed. It’s such an act of optimism to get up every day and get through a day and enjoy it and laugh and do all that without thinking about death. What spirit human beings have! It is a pretty cheesy deal—all the pleasures of life, and then death. I think some people just can’t take the variables; they just can’t take the deal—that is why they drink themselves silly or hide away or become afraid of everything. Sometimes I feel like I couldn’t take the deal—it was just too much. Cancer brought life and death up close.
What made it all even worse was that I’m a comedienne who does Roseanne Roseannadanna and all this stupid stuff, and then gets the most unfunny thing in the world. It wasn’t as if I was a dramatic actress associated with great tragic roles. I kept thinking there must be a purpose to this somewhere. There had to be. How could Gilda Radner, whose name was synonymous with comedy, now become synonymous with cancer? What good is that going to do? How am I going to make cancer funny? How am I going to get people to laugh about it?
I just didn’t want to be in tragedy. I didn’t want to be tragic even for a moment, not to any nurse who came into my room, not to anyone I knew in the
But it was a charmed life—until Belushi died. In those five years nobody ever died and nobody ever got horribly sick. Belushi made me laugh like you couldn’t imagine. I adored him. He was the one who gave me my first job in New York. In 1974 he called me up in Toronto where I was doing Second City. He was working with “The National Lampoon Radio Hour” and National Lampoon magazine because he had done the show Lemmings for them in 1973 and it had been a huge success Off-Broadway and then on a national tour. The Lampoon people wanted him to do another show, and they were letting him direct it. He could choose the cast. He asked me to be “the girl” in a show that would include himself, Joe Flaherty, Harold Ramis and Brian Doyle-Murray.
In August of 1974, I took a train to New York City to work on the show. It was a very lonely, hard time for me because New York was so big and so weird and I was always wandering around looking for the sky like a country bumpkin. Belushi and his girlfriend, Judy Jacklin (later his wife), looked out for me and all the guys in the cast. They were like the mama and papa. They’d lived in the city the longest and knew the ropes.
Belushi was a mentor to me. We had worked together at Second City so he knew my work. But I think the reason he hired me was that I was a good audience. All the guys liked to have me around because I would laugh at them till I peed in my pants and tears rolled out of my eyes. We worked together for a couple of years creating The National Lampoon Show, writing “The National Lampoon Radio Hour” and even working on stuff for the magazine. Bill Murray joined the show and Richard Belzer; Dan Aykroyd was around and Christopher Guest and Paul Shaffer. But Belushi was the driving force. Force is the right word to use for Belushi. Everything he did was suicidal—the way he ate, the way he drank, even the way he walked and moved. He would throw himself up in the air and splash down on the ground. His characters were suicidal. He was the master of kamikaze comedy. When he died, it didn’t seem so strange. But I knew I didn’t want to be the second one to go.
It is so hard for us little human beings to accept this deal that we get. It’s really crazy, isn’t it? We get to live, then we have to die. What we put into every moment is all we have. You can drug yourself to death or you can smoke yourself to death or eat yourself to death, or you can do everything right and be healthy and then get hit by a car. Life is so great, such a neat thing, and yet all during it we have to face death, which can make you nuts and depressed. It’s such an act of optimism to get up every day and get through a day and enjoy it and laugh and do all that without thinking about death. What spirit human beings have! It is a pretty cheesy deal—all the pleasures of life, and then death. I think some people just can’t take the variables; they just can’t take the deal—that is why they drink themselves silly or hide away or become afraid of everything. Sometimes I feel like I couldn’t take the deal—it was just too much. Cancer brought life and death up close.
What made it all even worse was that I’m a comedienne who does Roseanne Roseannadanna and all this stupid stuff, and then gets the most unfunny thing in the world. It wasn’t as if I was a dramatic actress associated with great tragic roles. I kept thinking there must be a purpose to this somewhere. There had to be. How could Gilda Radner, whose name was synonymous with comedy, now become synonymous with cancer? What good is that going to do? How am I going to make cancer funny? How am I going to get people to laugh about it?
I just didn’t want to be in tragedy. I didn’t want to be tragic even for a moment, not to any nurse who came into my room, not to anyone I knew in the
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