When he first hit the ground running as a stand-up comic, I didn't find him particularly funny. The Howard Cosell/Muhammad Ali bit can only go so far.
But, way back when, he was a cast member for Saturday Night Live for one year. It was a season that might arguably be the very last time the show was consistently funny. I mean, look at the talent in that one single year. Crystal. Harry Shearer. Christopher Guest. Martin Short. Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Wow. Billy is hilarious that season with his dead-on impersonations of Sammy Davis Jr. and Fernando Lamas.
But then he goes into films. The City Slicker movies are awful. But, amazingly, Crystal delivers an almost Oscar-worthy performance in "When Harry Met Sally." Go figure.
From there, he heads into directing. Most of his work behind the camera is terrible. But, out of nowhere, he directs a terrific baseball movie about Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle called "61." To me, it's in the top five of films devoted to America's pastime. Go figure again.
For a while, Billy is the darling of Hollywood with his Academy Award hosting duties. But, for me, most of his work there is way too cute and pretentious. The warts show again and, after a while, he falls completely off everybody's radar screen faster than a Malaysian Airlines jet. Nobody cares. Again.
So, about a decade ago, when I heard that Crystal was doing a one-man show about his childhood on Broadway, I naturally said "meh." Given his track record of being very good or very bad, who wants to roll those dice again at $100 a ticket? I have friends who loved it. I trusted my own instincts more.
Well, apparently the show called "700 Sundays" won a Tony and was ultimately revived about a year or two ago. This time, HBO taped it for posterity. And allowed me to avoid the 2014 box office price of probably $150 for the free admission comfort of my own living room.
And I didn't say "meh." Much.
But I did say it a little bit. And, in typical Crystal fashion, "700 Sundays" was a microcosm of the way I feel about him overall. There were parts I loved. There were parts I hated.
The play, written solely by Crystal, is essentially his memoirs played out in front of a set that resembles his Long Beach, Long Island family home. The title itself represents an approximation of the number of Sundays he and his father shared together. Sadly, Papa Crystal dropped dead prematurely in a bowling alley when Billy was 15.
Naturally, this subject matter would be catnip for this kitty. Thinking of this blog, Crystal's play might mirror some of the memories you read here each and every Sunday. Of course, I think my recollections are funnier and more poignant but I am slightly biased. Nevertheless, Crystal introduces you to his whole family and there are lots of grandparents, aunts, and uncles to me. Indeed, there is an extended family of jazz musicians as Billy's dad also dabbled in that arena.
Of course, as America's self-proclaimed foremost baseball fan, you get the story about his first trip to Yankee Stadium which he has repeated ad nauseum over the last two decades. May 30, 1956. His walk down the tunnel which explodes into the bright green of the field. He tells of Mickey hitting a homerun to the top right field façade of the park and, yes, that happened on that day. But, then, Billy talks about a Mantle triple and the Mick slides into base right in front of Crystal's third base field box.
Um, no. Not according to Retro Sheet. There was no Mickey triple that day. Okay, not all viewers are going to do the fact checking that yours truly will do. But, the mis-information made the memory a little hollow and suspect for me. And I began to wonder about the authenticity of it all.
This particular passage also reminds me of a Crystal story that was once shared in this blog. About Billy's man-crush for Mickey Mantle and the opportunity he once had to play catch with him in the Yankee Stadium outfield. It was told to me first-hand by a person who witnessed it. It was a moment that Billy cherished the rest of his life. Unknown to him, the Mick didn't share the same fondness. Indeed, it was one the slugger's most anti-Semitic episodes. Billy doesn't know it, so it doesn't find its way into "700 Sundays."
But a lot of good stuff does. And that confounds me. I absolutely adored the storytelling. The family comes alive and Crystal is an expert at putting you in that house during the 1950s. At times, the play is hilarious and, at other intervals, sweet. Indeed, the extended portion of the second half is devoted to the passing of Dad and the sadness engulfs Crystal and the audience. I could feel the pain.
And then it punctuates this all with a joke, that is so stark and jarring that you don't recover for several minutes. Billy might be trying to represent the sudden twists and turns of life. But he doesn't have the acting chops to pull this off on stage. So, in the space of five minutes, you have him all. The expert Billy Crystal. And the inept Billy Crystal. I wish that he had run through the script just one more time to fill in these major dramatic potholes.
So, one more time, I'm impressed and confounded by Billy Crystal. As, in the past, he surprises me. Or maybe he shouldn't. When it comes to him, I should simply expect to love him or hate him. And, as in the case of "700 Sundays," those two extremes can happen in the same two hours.
Dinner last night: Grilled bratwurst, sauerkraut, and corn.
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