He’s survived creative redirections and misdirections, side-stepped cast purges (a recent one) and the more civilized cast “departures.” The president who made him famous – and perhaps in some small measure he helped to make famous, too – has been out of office six years. Yet both remain indelibly linked: The real McCoy still seems only barely distinguishable from his comic Doppelganger.
Yes, Mister Darrell Hammond, this is your life.
Hammond gets his very own, very first “Saturday Night Live” special (11:30 tonight on NBC), practically on the eve of the Tuesday midterms. So one can reasonably ask: What’s taken so long?
For 11 seasons – some glorious, some unspeakable – he’s been the rock of “SNL,” and the One Sure Thing, with a few exceptions. (He still can’t figure out W, and enough already with Chris Matthews.) Besides Phil Hartman and Dana Carvey, there is pretty much no one who has performed the art of impression better than Hammond on “SNL,” and certainly no one for as long.
In one of those conference calls this week that NBC uses to promote shows and stars, Hammond got the inevitable questions about his future. The answers were inevitable, too: “Every year that has ever gone by I say, does it make sense to come back? And so far it has. That’s a discussion and thought process I’ll go through again and see what happens.”
Was he afraid he’d get washed out, too, in that recent cast demolition derby? (After all, his appearances have become fewer and he’s not getting any cheaper.)
“It’s network television, not the March of Dimes,” he said. “Someone could look at you based on some focus group and find you’re not a good fit.”
And, of course, he’d love a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential bid, for reasons that are obvious: “Yeah, basically I’d love to play Bill Clinton as much as I could …”
What to expect on tonight’s clip show? Let’s see – Clinton, Dick Cheney, Dr. Phil, Jesse Jackson, Sean Connery, Dan Rather and Al Gore are all reasonable guesses.
Meanwhile, Hammond’s got three movies in production, including “Netherbeast Incorporated” with Judd Nelson, Dave Foley and Robert Wagner, set for a 2007 release. But his future, he insists, will be stand-up: “I’m probably going to end up returning to stand-up. … That’ll be what happens to me in my professional life.”
That is, if he ever leaves “SNL.”
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