> I dispute the description of him as being "always a solid impressionist".
> In the Fresh Air interview he described himself as a caricaturist, which I
> think is right, and he also expressed some uncertainty as to how good they
> were, which I think was also right....

Anyone who's trying to get laughs while doing impressions is going be
a caricaturist, whether we're talking about David Frye or Rich Little
or Frank Caliendo or Darrell Hammond. You can usually tell who
Hammond's doing without needing an introduction of the character,
unlike, say, Jason Sudeikis.

> I anoint him as the least stable cast member in the history of SNL in spite
> of the excesses of Belushi, Farley, and even O'Donoghue. Of course I can't
> take into account behavior we know nothing of, but if what Hammond
> describes in his book is true, he was even more unstable, while working on
> the show, as any of the more famous bad boys....

I certainly defer to your expertise in the area while recognizing that
you're not trying to diagnose someone from a handful of media reports.
I also agree wholeheartedly that we don't know what we don't know.
Before Hammond started taking about this, I had no idea that he was
any better or worse off than other SNL performers, and I would in fact
have guessed that his longevity indicated that he was in pretty good
shape. It may be that if others went public, we'd know about worse
situations. It wasn't as bad, but Jay Mohr wrote a memoir of his SNL
years called "Gasping for Airtime" where he talks about dealing with
severe panic attacks.

-- 
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