‘Saturday Night Live’: NBC Wanted to Cut Lines From This Classic Bill Murray Sketch
One of Bill Murray’s classic Saturday Night Live characters was a lounge singer who sang ridiculous lyrics to instrumental songs. His lyrics to the Star Wars theme went, “Star Wars, nothing but Star Wars…” For the show’s 40th Anniversary Special, Murray sang some new lyrics, and NBC tried to change them.
Former head writer Jim Downey was a guest on Dana Carvey and David Spade’s Fly on the Wall podcast on May 11. Downey explained why he was so passionate to expand the lounge singer sketch, and how he fought to keep the edgy lyrics intact.
Jim Downey wanted to expand Bill Murray’s ‘Jaws’ song
Before Star Wars, the biggest movie ever was Jaws. Jaws had a memorable theme song, so Murray sang lyrics to it on Saturday Night Live. 40 years later, Downey wanted more.
“That is the oldest piece I’ve ever been involved with from conception to actual production,” Downey said on Fly on the Wall. “That goes back to the fall, to like 1977, that Billy would sing a fragment. He would sing the fragment like, ‘Jaws, get away from me Jaws.’ Then I was always obsessed with getting that on the show. So when the 40th Anniversary thing came up, I said, ‘Look, I want to complete that song.’”
The new ‘Saturday Night Live’ lyrics to ‘Jaws’
John Williams was not consulted on this, but Downey convinced Murray to reprise his sketch. Paul Schaffer and recent SNL writer Emily Spivey contributed.
“I came up with the part about ‘And now, Jaws, you found someone new. Tell me, Jaws, am I not enough for you?’” Downey said. “So we added that and Paul Schaffer came up with the tagline, ‘You bastard, Jaws’ as the final thing. So I was so obsessed with getting that on, I’d never pushed something harder. Billy was sort of okay, whatever, if you think. We’d never done anything with it ever in all these years but every few years I’d bring it up and say it should appear somewhere.”
The line somebody at NBC tried to remove from ‘Saturday Night Live’
Just before taping the special, Downey happened to check the cue cards, and it’s a good thing he did.
I happened to wander through and check cue cards by habit. Someone had taken out ‘you bastard.’ Not because it’s dirty but because it’s offensive to people whose parents didn’t bother to get married. No one had run that by me and they also wouldn’t let him say ‘you goddamn Jaws’ because that supposedly is offensive to believing Christians. I just said, ‘You know what, I will take this on myself. It will be my responsibility.’ So I just changed it back and said if they have a problem with it they can sue me. No one’s going to complain. You will not get one call. And they did not get any calls.
Jim Downey, Fly on the Wall, 5/11/22
Downey had been in show business long enough to understand the process of covering your bases. It was a calculated risk and one that paid off for Downey, and fans.
“I know that that note was there for legal reasons or the equivalent to say, ‘No we told him, I gave him the note,’” Downey said. “In fact, something that funny, they’re not going to complain about it.”
