The ‘Saturday Night Live’ writer Bill Murray hated with a passion: “I was gonna hurt him”
In the mid-1980s, Bill Murray decided to end a self-imposed Hollywood exile when he finally read a script he liked – or, at the very least, one he didn’t despise.
The script was Scrooged, a black comedy that followed the spiritual awakening of a cynical TV executive visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve. Murray liked the idea of doing a modern-day updating of Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol, and signed up for the lead role. Unfortunately, the film would turn out to be “misery” for the star, although maybe he should have seen that coming. After all, the screenplay was co-written by Michael O’Donoghue, a writer Murray knew from his Saturday Night Live days, and someone whose guts he hated most of the time.
O’Donoghue, a man whose style of humour was so scabrous and dark that people were often scared that he would bring SNL crashing down in flames, was part of Lorne Michaels’ pioneering sketch comedy show from day one. In fact, even though he was primarily employed as a writer, he sometimes appeared on-screen and actually starred in the very first sketch ever shown on SNL. He even said the first words ever heard on the show when he played a bizarre psychiatrist in the knowingly off-the-wall ‘Wolverines’ sketch with John Belushi.
During his tenure on SNL, O’Donoghue’s co-workers recognised him as a fearless comedic voice. He was someone who was never less than 100% himself. However, because his personal brand of comedy was obsessed with death, destruction, and pushing the boundaries of good taste, things often got a lot stickier than some of the middle-of-the-road comedians.
Case and point, he created a sketch called ‘Least Loved Bedtime Tales’ where he played a character called Mr Mike who reads stories to children. Innocent enough? No.
These horrifying tales happened to feature beloved fairy tale characters being skinned and eaten alive, though, and had titles like ‘The Little Train that Had a Heart Attack and Died.’ Eventually, Michaels scrapped any further sketches featuring O’Donoghue’s button-pushing creation, quipping, “I’m not sure America is ready yet for Mr Mike.”
O’Donoghue’s darkness might have been palatable if it had stayed in his sketches. However, in an SNL environment already filled to the brim with ‘difficult’ personalities, he often seemed hellbent on being the worst of them all. He had a mean streak a mile wide, and this led to clashes with his fellow writers and the show’s stars, including Murray, a man who gave O’Donoghue a run for his money in terms of being an awkward bastard to deal with. They fought constantly in the initial stages of their collaboration on the show, before a begrudging respect built. According to Murray, though, that could only happen after he threatened O’Donoghue with a knuckle sandwich.
Indeed, after the writer passed away in 1994 from a cerebral hemorrhage at only 54, Murray led the tributes at a party celebrating his take-no-prisoners life. Surrounded by X-rays of his brain plastered all over the walls as ghoulish party decorations, Murray gave a pitch-black remembrance speech that O’Donoghue would have loved, despite the fact that both men made each other miserable at times on SNL and Scrooged.
“I got along with Michael O’Donoghue,” Murray said to an audience of peers waiting with bated breath, “only after he realised that he should be physically afraid of me. Until that time, he was not fair. He was unkind. He was mean. And I finally let him know that I was gonna hurt him.” Then, with the kind of grin that makes people wonder just how seriously his words should be taken, he added, “He was kind to me when he knew I was gonna fuckin’ hit him.”
Murray concluded his tribute by pointing to the one thing that bonded him with O’Donoghue, even when they were at each other’s throats. “The thing about Michael that was interesting was that he taught you how to hate,” he noted with complete sincerity. “He hated the horrible things in life, and the horrible people in life. He hated them so good.”
