Staying Fit
Billy Crystal’s character Buddy Young Jr. — a fictitious, ambitious, flawed, hilarious stand-up comic from the dawn of television who leaps back into the spotlight in his 70s — has been through many incarnations, including Crystal’s 1992 movie Mr. Saturday Night and his 2022 play by that name, which earned five Tony Award nominations. And you can watch it where you sit right now: Mr. Saturday Night: A New Musical Comedy, a performance of the play filmed with 10 cameras, streams anytime on Broadway HD.
Crystal tells AARP how Buddy came to be, and how he feels in his 70s — marvelous!
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How old were you when you made your Broadway musical debut in Mr. Saturday Night?
Seventy-four — in front of my grandchildren. My [non-musical] Broadway debut was 700 Sundays back in 2004. But to sing, dance, doing eight shows a week was really thrilling. I love that challenge at any age, but especially now. When I did the movie I was 43. So to play Buddy, who’s 75, doesn’t seem so old now. In 1992 I had four or five hours of makeup every day that I played him. Now I don’t need the makeup — I just show up.
(Left to right) Billy Crystal as Buddy Young Jr. during a 'Saturday Night News' skit on "Saturday Night Live" on April 6, 1985; Crystal as the same character in the film, "Mr. Saturday Night," which was released in 1992.
RM Lewis Jr./NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images; Columbia/Courtesy Everett Collection
When did you first dream up the Buddy character?
1984, on an HBO special, A Comic’s Line. It was a 30-second cameo character. And then I brought him to Saturday Night Live. One night, the producer said, “Johnny Cash, June Cash and Waylon Jennings are in the audience tonight — what if I put them near the Weekend Update desk?” I did [Buddy] live and I was like Don Rickles, I just had funny interplay with them. I had no idea what I was going to say. Live! And it was really funny. And then I knew I had something.
Then in HBO’s 1986 special Don’t Get Me Started, Rob Reiner interviews me as Buddy Young. We were about to do The Princess Bride, and I showed it to the wonderful screenwriter William Goldman. He said, “Wow, this guy is Willy Loman with laughs. He’s funny, but there’s a sadness about him. You gotta do something else with him.”
So when we were shooting City Slickers, I started writing the movie Mr. Saturday Night. David Paymer was in City Slickers, and he was great for the character of Stan [Buddy’s long-suffering brother and manager]. And David got an Academy Award nomination in the Mr. Saturday Night movie. And Paymer should’ve gotten a Tony Award for the play.
What did you learn between the movie and the play versions?
Buddy wins in the end of the musical. He doesn’t really in the movie. And he patches things up with his daughter [Shoshana Bean from Wicked]. The show starts with a defeated soul looking into a mirror not liking what he’s seeing. It ends with a man who likes what he’s seeing. And that’s the journey. It’s never too late to find new things about yourself. Don’t just give in. Don’t throw in the towel. When he has that exchange with his brother, who says, “You coulda been nicer,” it hits home, and it starts Buddy on the road to redemption.
