Saturday Night Live Transcripts
Season 2: Episode 12
76l: Ruth Gordon / Chuck Berry
Tomorrow
Tom Snyder…..Dan Aykroyd
Dino De Laurentiis…..John Belushi
Tom Snyder: Hello, everybody, welcome to the “Tomorrow” show. Well, he did it. Peanut butter in the White House. What the heck we’ll be eating in four years from now, I don’t know. Anyway, tonight we’ll be eating bananas.. hey, bananas and peanut butter make good sandwiches, because our guest tonight is the producer of “King Kong” – Mr. Dino De Laurentiis.
Dino De Laurentiis: [ directly to camera ] Hey, everybody.. listen.. go see my “Kong”.. you gonna love it.
Tom Snyder: Mr. De Laurentiis, a few members of the Hollywood press have said that with all the money you spent on “King Kong”, you could have made twnety good movies instead. Some reporters have called you everything from a “toy commercial maker” to a ruthless “monkey pimp”. How, sir, do you answer these charges?
Dino De Laurentiis: Okay.. I want to tell you something.. when the Jaws die, nobody cry.. when my Kong die, everybody cry. Everybody love my Kong.. kids, women, intellectuals, all love my Kong.
Tom Snyder: Sir, let me ask you this: How much money did you spend on the ape model itself?
Dino De Laurentiis: Hey.. we don’t talk about money.. money I don’t care too much, I spend any kind of money to make my Kong the best Kong, it’s art.. okay, we talk about art. Like the face of the ape, the make-up people they bring me one face. I say no, it looks too much like “Planet of the Apes”.. the next face they bring me, it looks too much like a man. They bring me another face.. looks too much like the actor Brock Peters.
Tom Snyder: Mr. De Laurentiis, why make another “King Kong”? The first version, which I never saw.. [ laughs ] ..was apparently a wonderful piece of cinema.
Dino De Laurentiis: Don’t talk to me about the old Kong. I’m gonna tell you something about the old Kong. They’d call him in to start shooting at six inthe morning.. he’d come in drunk. He’d say, we shoot at eight o’clock tonight. What you gonna say to a star that big.. like Sinatra. Sinatra wants to shoot at eight, you shoot at eight… just like the old Kong. Night people.. the old Kong, he was a drunk.. party ape. I tell you something.. not many people know this, but the old Kong was going out with Jean Harlow at the time. No wonder he couldn’t get up in the morning. Party ape. He used to make long-distance phone calls all over the world and charge it to the movie. Not my kong.. he didn’t make no calls.. everybody else on the set making calls, charging it to the movie. You want to talk about money, you know how much I lost from long-distance phone calls? $500.
Tom Snyder: Sir, the advertising for your movie, the billboards and so on, depict King Kong crushing jet planes in his hands, but, sir, there is not one jet plane in the movie. In fact, at the end the ape battles three helicopters, no jet planes, and even then you used the shot of him swatting one of the ‘copters twice. Isn’t that kind of a hype?
Dino De Laurentiis: Hype? you want to talk about hype? Did you see “A Star Is Born”? You know who wanted to be Fay Wray in my movie? Barbra Streisand. Her producer, Jon Peters, I tell him hey, two monsters in a movie is enough. [ laughs ] He says to me his movie “A STar Is Born” is gonna make a lot more money than my Kong, you know what I say to him, I say, “Maybe so.. your monkey can sing.” [ laughs ] You like? They’re the only two jokes I ever told in my life.
Tom Snyder: Alright, sir. We’ve been talking with..
Dino De Laurentiis: [ interrupting ] Nobody cry when the Jaws die.. they put the tank in the mouth.. they shoot it – he explode – he blow up, nobody cry. When my Kong is on top of the World Trade Center..
Tom Snyder: Fighting helicopters, not jets.
Dino De Laurentiis: When he fall down, everybody cry! Intellectuals cry, little kids cry, women cry, everybody cry. But when Jaws die, nobody cry.
Tom Snyder: Thank you, sir.
Dino De Laurentiis: You gonna see “Kong II”, “Kong III”, “Kong IV”. I spent ten million dollars on the Kong itself. You think I’m not gonna use the Kong again? Gonna be “Hong Kong Kong”, martial arts movie, like Bruce Lee, “Kong Fu”. Okay, we gonna do a sitcom..
Tom Snyder: Good night, everybody.
[ fade out while Dino rambles on ]
Dino De Laurentiis: Norman Lear.. gonna produce it, “Kong, Kong, Who’s There?”…
[ dissolve to logo, and fade ]
