Charles Rocket Died, Charles Rocket Lives
'Moonlighting' guest stars
Charles Rocket said “fuck” on Saturday Night Live. Well, technically he said “fuckin’,” but the gist is the same. Most people, if they know anything about Charles Rocket, know this fact. He was the first person to say “fuck” on Saturday Night Live, a comedy show that, quite famously, airs live. It wasn’t a slip-up either, like when Jenny Slate said it during a sketch where the entire game of the scene was the characters all said “frickin’” over and over. That sketch was Icarus-level in its hubris. Rocket just said fuck at the end of the episode as a comedy punch to a (tedious) “Who Shot J.R.?” riff due to a Dallas cast member being the host.
Charles Rocket is still “the guy who said ‘fuck’ on SNL” perhaps by dint of getting there first. If the general public knows anything else about him, it’s that he committed suicide in 2005 at the age of 56. It was, even by the standards of suicide, not chill. The kind that leads to homicide investigation. I am not going into details, because this is not some lurid, true-crime Substack. The world is full of love for the sordid and the morbid, though, so when a famous (or semi-famous, in this case) person ends their own life, it cuts through the clutter. So, for many, Charles Rocket said “fuck” on Saturday Night Live and then you can smash cut to his untimely, morose demise. What interests me is what was in between. Okay, I also do think it’s notable and culturally significant he said “fuck” on SNL even if I don’t give a fuck about being saying fuck.
Charles Claverie was a RISD weirdo. The kind of guy who would rebrand himself as “Charles Rocket.” He went to school with David Byrne and plays accordion in an art-school band. Rocket has been on my mind because I’ve been watching Moonlighting this year. To that, you might say, “Then why aren’t you spending your time thinking about Cybil Shepherd and Bruce Willis?” I am, straw man! And also Allyce Beasley and Curtis Armstrong! Armstrong is from Detroit! I knew Charles Rocket as the SNL guy (by the way, he was the “Weekend Update” anchor when he was there), and I had seen him in things, but I had never internalized seeing him in things. That is, until Moonlighting.
Moonlighting is everything people say it is and more, for better or worse (mostly for the better) and I have been enjoying the hell out of it. At the start of the second season, we’re introduced to a smarmy huckster doing a bizarre (and entertaining to a real-life viewer as opposed to an in-universe viewer) song and dance to shill some product. He’s Richie Addison, brother of Willis’ David Addison. The performance, and the performer, is kinetic and gripping. Richie Addison is played by Rocket.
(Knowing he’s a RISD dude now, I see a lot of Byrne in this set piece.)
If you aren’t in the know, Willis’ David Addison is a fast-talking, quippy, snarky private eye one shade away from being a huckster himself. Much how Niles has to out-Frasier Frasier, Richie has to out-David David. Rocket manages to do that. Now, Richie makes occasional appearances, as opposed to being a regular, but the approach is the same.
When I started watching Moonlighting, I could see the MOVIE STAR in Bruce Willis. When I watch Rocket as Richie, I can see a TV star. He’s not able to lay on the charm like Willis, or at least he doesn’t want to. Rocket has an interesting energy, but he’s funny and he’s dynamic and he’s clearly a graduate of Handsome Boy Modeling School:
I grant you I don’t have a sense of the overall cultural opinion on Charles Rocket’s looks, but I feel I can say most network brass would be down to have a guy who looks like that as a lead on a sitcom.
But…there’s that vibe again. That edge. That just-left-of-center oddness. Rocket worked quite a bit after he got fired from Saturday Night Live post-”fuck.” However, he was Geena Davis’ asshole fiance in Earth Girls Are Easy. He was the asshole villain in Dumb and Dumber. The whole point of Richie is that he makes David seem chill by comparison. Rocket is good as that asshole fiance and Mr. Andre in Dumb and Dumber. He’s also The Guy Who Said “Fuck” on Saturday Night Live and when I say that I mean I am not surprised he did that. Also, while he did work and saying “fuck” on live TV didn’t make him a pariah, he was once a Saturday Night Live cast staple pitched as the next Bill Murray or Chevy Chase who ended up doing guest spots on a network dramedy. In one episode he’s really just hanging out. However, he’s also good in that episode. One time he got to play Art Carney as Ed Norton in a fantasy sequence wherein Bruce Willis is Ralph Kramden and I am fairly certain is just wearing a bus driver’s uniform with a bunch of pillows stuffed in it.
Saturday Night Live didn’t get in trouble for Rocket saying “fuck.” It didn’t break any FCC rules because of how late at night it was, “safe harbor” and all that. Rocket was a Jean Doumanian hire for the 1980-81 season, the one after Lorne Michaels and every Michaels hire left. The show was tanking. The ratings were terrible. Doumanian got fired and replaced by Dick Ebersol. Yes, Ebersol then fired Rocket, but he also fired Gilbert Gottfried, Ann Risley, and every writer who wasn’t nailed down. After that season was over, he fired everybody who wasn’t Eddie Murphy or Joe Piscopo. Rocket wasn’t fired for saying “fuck.” He was fired because he wasn’t an Ebersol guy and because he had a prickly, art-school personality. It didn’t end his career. He appeared in 11 movies I’ve heard of and 26 TV shows I’ve heard of. He even “aged well” as they say:
I enjoyed every time Richie showed up on Moonlighting, though I do believe I am done with Richie episodes. I’m glad to not just think of him as the guy from the woebegone time in SNL history, to see him as a genuine talent. Did you know he married his college girlfriend in 1972 and they stayed married until his death? Charles Rocket will always be rich and thin in my book.