Charles Rocket- why do you think the SNL alum killed himself in 2005?

Did his firing from SNL hurt his career? He was popular on the show until he got himself fired, and was expected to be the “new” Chevy Chase (who was the shows first biggest breakout star) but it just never happened. Of course his premature firing didn’t help matters.

I always felt bad for him.

I didn't watch it around that time. I've nwver heard of him, honestly. I'll have to look it up online. But if this clip is any indication...I won't like him.

He was pretty much set up to be the next big thing, filling in the spots of Chevy Chase and Bill Murray.

I thought Charles Rocket was rather sexy. Lorne Michaels is a petty old bitch who would hold a grudge for 10,000 years if he could live that long. Also a lot of the shit he has produced aside from SNL is unfunny and sucks like Jeff Palmer in a cum swallowing film.

Charles wasn’t on the show with Lorne Michaels. He was on the show with that guy who replaced him who ended up getting fired and replaced mid season lol

I didn’t know who he was until I googled him and I said “oooh I know him”.

He’s way hotter in that SNL clip.

Early victim of cancel culture

He was hot. From what I remember that’s what got him cast. They thought him being attractive plus a comedian would guarantee him to be their new star.

Ok this is going to sound twisted but now that I remember him, I remember that movie “It’s Pat” and being turned on by his characters obsession with Pat. I think he falls in love with Pat in the end, no??

That movie would never fly today.

If it's an SNL personality it's most probably drug related.

This was the Jean Doumanian season, which was brief and tumultuous. Doumanian was approved by Lorne Michaels to be his replacement.

By the time of this episode, NBC was considering canceling SNL for good. The critics and audiences hated it, and the cast knew they were on the chopping block. When Charles uttered the f word at the end, Doumanian knew she was gone.

But if you want the bottom of the barrel, watch the Malcolm McDowell episode, considered at the time to be the single worst episode in SNL history. Several sketches were so bad they got no laughs from the audience. (And there was no "sweetner" like Lorne has today). And several sketches that were just vile and tasteless.

Charles went on to some decent success playing Bruce Willis brother on Moonlighting, but his career never gained momentum.

R13 watch the 1985 season. That’s considered the worst season of the show.

The Malcolm McDowell and Francis Coppola SNL episodes are awful. The Coppola one has to be seen to be believed.

It's a shame that they never went beyond Season 5 in SNL DVD's. Are there other seasons in whole available for streaming? And not any of the recent crap either.

[quote]Ok this is going to sound twisted but now that I remember him, I remember that movie “It’s Pat” and being turned on by his characters obsession with Pat. I think he falls in love with Pat in the end, no??

[quote] That movie would never fly today.

From what I remember he didn't fall in love with Pat, but was too obsessed with figuring out the gender of Pat. I liked him as the "villian" type in the film.

There was some drama a few years back when Jill Soloway, creator of Transparent trashed SNL and the Pat sketches. Julia Sweeney later responded that she feels the character is dated and wouldn't fly today.

I remeber the Pat movie airing frequently on HBO and Cinemax and basic cable channels like Comedy Central up until the early 2000s. I don't think it's ever been on streaming services like other SNL character movies like Superstar and Wayne's World have been.

All seasons are available for streaming on Peacock. They make them hard to find though. You have to go to the Saturday Night Live hub, then at the top you will see large graphics, and you need to hit the right arrow until you get to a photo with a banner at the bottom stating New Episodes Weekly. Ignore Kim Karashian, and the SNL Vault. Once you click on the right graphic you will be able to choose all seasons. Hulu has 1-5 and 30-present. Peacock has everything in the gap, as well as the episodes that are on Hulu.

"falls in love with Pat in the end, no??"

R10 - We don't end questions with the word "No," dear.

Jill Soloway can cram it in her front hole. Pat wasn't transgender. Pat was just a person with undefined secondary sexual characteristics.

Jill Soloway is a joyless cunt. The first season of Transparent was just okay. It sucked after that.

Agreed, R19. Jill needs to shut the fuck up about this that happened almost 30 years ago

Not to hijack the thread but Julia Sweeney “atones for the sins” of her Pat character on the Showtime series “Work In Progress.” Julia plays a version of herself, it’s pretty interesting.

Of course, the show stars an overweight, middle-aged lesbian so Datalounge hates it.

R17 thank you. I just went on Peacock and see they have every season. I am about to watch the Malcolm McDowell episode

Hi features were quite unfortunate. I hope his son is okay now.

You'll be disappointed if you go onto Peacock to watch old episodes of SNL. Some of them are so truncated, they're only 15 minutes long. It's not just a matter of the live music performances being gone, it's whole sketches being eliminated. I gave up after a short time.

He was found dead in a field with his throat slit. Left no note.

I think he was murdered.

Rocket had a recurring role on Moonlighting as the older brother of Bruce Willis. Maybe Bruce and Cybill drove him over the edge?

Jamie Lee Curtis hosted during his brief season.

Yes R27, and it wasn't a very happy experience for her.

Charlene Tilton's nervous scream laugh

R25 Jane Fonda’s mother slit her own throat as well. One means business in that manner.

He played an Angel of Death on Touched by an Angel. After John Dye who played the other Angel of Death died, some people joked about there being a Touched by an Angel curse.

R16 Didn’t he try and make out with Pat? Lol.

How do you slit your own throat. That's insane

r27 Jamie Lee Curtis attempting comedy? Suddenly his suicide makes sense.

I can't believe this is still up all these years later, but this blog post from when he died in 2005 was one of the most interesting things I've ever read about him, not the post itself but the comments. Lots of people who knew him, and plenty who don't think he killed himself, mostly because of the manner in which he died.

But why would someone kill him? Did he know too much? Lol

So puritanical about language. In the rest of the English speaking world you here “fuck” on broadcast TV all the time past a certain hour. Even back then. In 2021 if someone uttered the word on a station at 2 in the morning their FCC license would be reversed.

Maybe a drug thing, R36? I find murder more plausible than going out into a field and cutting your own throat.

I remember him most for playing the Dad in Hocus Pocus.

It's kind of sad nowadays people only know him as the dad in "Hocus Pocus".

I really liked him in Max Headroom, that was one of my favorite shows as a kid. In fact, I don't think there was anything I didn't like him in, but he did seem to get typecast as a villain when I think he could have done a lot more.

R39 for saying fuck on live TV

There is another actor who looks a lot like him, so much so that I’ve always thought that actor was Charles Rocket in things. Dammit, I’m getting old and I can’t remember the other actor. I was watching some rerun this last year and thought I was watching Rocket until I saw the credits.

Rocket played the new husband of John Goodman's ex-wife(Mo Gaffney) in the TV series "Normal, Ohio." He was a New Age type, really rather likable once you got used to him. I enjoyed the whole series, limited as it was.

So she was fired in 1981 and it took 24 years before it finally got to him.

[quote]If it's an SNL personality it's most probably drug related.

They are/were ALL druggies

His IMDB resume is a lot longer than other SNL alumni

R35- Here is a post copied and pasted from the site. Wow. Sounds like Darrell Hammond's situation...

When I found out on 30th October 06 about Charlie’s death no-one seemed to know why he had killed himself. I had to know. This sent me on a quest, which lasted 6 weeks. It’s way too long to explain but eventually I came into contact with a writer called Josh Karp. He had the answers that made everything I’d been researching fall into place. He had been researching since early this year Basically we both agree that Charlie committed suicide because of what his parents did to him. He suffered horrendous abuse at their hands. physical, mental & emotional. He was tortured. It’s too shocking to put into words & too long a story for here. What happened on SNL didn’t help either. Everything got to him & all his anger & pain became all-consuming. He killed himself in the way he did because of his rage against his parents, snl & some other stuff. I thought you should all know. yasmin

The Josh Karp that fan is referring to at r51 posted earlier in the comments there, asking if anyone had info about Charles and if they would talk to him for a potential article. No idea if he ever actually got around to writing anything.

I'm an idiot incapable of using Google.

R51 is hilarious. Thank you.

I had nothing to do with it

I don't even know who the fuck that was.

[quote]There is another actor who looks a lot like him, so much so that I’ve always thought that actor was Charles Rocket in things. Dammit, I’m getting old and I can’t remember the other actor.

The guy who played Ferris Bueller's dad? Also the hot guy's dad from the gay Nightmare on Elm Street movie?

Shame he had to off himself due to career limitations.

He could always have joined Team Rocket.

He was part of that RISD new wave clique with the Talking Heads.

It was all Charlene Tilton's fault!

While it takes guts to slit your own throat, I doubt it's very painful if you have an extremely sharp knife. I think you would bleed out and pass out pretty quickly.

His Rocket Report’s are the only thing considered good about season 6.

R48 I’m pretty sure Elliott Gould included that in the opening skit in 1980, because he had worked on the show before. Everyone on the SNL set did tons of cocaine, including people behind the scenes.

After he was fired, Susan St James's husband took over the show, which means Jayne Curtain was involved in the firing as they were lesbian lovers at the time.

[quote]How do you slit your own throat.

I remember reading that Rocket took two utility knives and held them against the sides of his throat, pulling them down together that severed his jugular veins.

Charles played Richard Addison on both Moonlighting and Cybill.

He was cool. It’s a shame he was cast in low paying roles

Here’s a a really, really long article about him. Wow, his parents were evil if this story is true.

R62, the Rocket Reports were par for the course in that horrible season. The highlight was absolutely, unquestionably, the work of Eddie Murphy, often ad-libbed. One of the books noted that the Weekend Update bit that he anchored was met with dead silence. Murphy did a commentary and the audience started howling and applauding. He finished and Rocket continued. Dead silence from the audience again.

R70 Eddie Murphy is always credited as the force that saved SNL. The show was on the verge of being canned. They say he saved it and brought interest in the show again.

He wasn’t a regular that season though, and just recurring. He was added about midway into that season, which ended up getting put on hiatus after episode 13. They didn’t even finish that season.

He is one of the few people they kept and brought into the next season and he became a star.

What sealed the deal for him being fired was that NBC was getting thousands of letters from people after the episode demanding he be fired and outraged that he cussed. The following week he was fired but they let him do that weeks episode.

I don't know, r69, I don't find that Yasmin person credible, her comments tend to sound conspiratorial and overly melodramatic.

He was handsome and a decent actor. It was terrible bad luck that he was featured on that dreadful Jean Doumanian SNL season. It didn't further his career to be on that piece of shit. It didn't further anybody's career. I guess he had his demons. I wonder if the debacle of SNL helped him along his path of destruction? Anyway, it seems like he was just another Hollywood casualty.

Sad - I don’t understand how anyone staying up to watch SNL would be outraged over profanity for a show that aired at 11:30 pm. It’s not like he said it on Sesame Street.

[quote]I don’t understand how anyone staying up to watch SNL would be outraged over profanity for a show that aired at 11:30 pm.

They weren't. it was just an excuse by NBC to get rid of producer and most of the cast that was being slammed by the critics.

R76 they were. You must be new to this country.

R77 is right. I think some DLers only surround themselves with people like them, liberal etc. and forget that most of the south and middle America (and high North) are conservative and offended by shit like this.

Especially 40 years ago.

The way that blonde screeches like a cockatoo, dang.

R35 - I looked at the comments and it seems many believe it WAS suicide, including the comment from s friend:

[quote] We played in a band together in Los Angeles and he was not only truly the funniest, most dynamic story teller I have ever known or will likely ever meet, but an incredibly sensitive and loyal friend. Unfortuately he had his demons which caused his early and rather brutal demise. To answer the concerns of some of the above posts, it most certainly was a self inflicted wound, brought on by a littany of things too personal for a public forum.

I remember letters of outrage in the local TV guide-like special section of our newspaper, that we would get on Sundays. I had to ask around and find out what the “bad word” even was, since it wasn’t reprinted, of course. It was covered on the news stations, too.

R81 same. I remember people were upset by it too. It was a big deal at the time that he said fuck on TV.

Yeah I remember my dad being concerned about me staying up and watching it when I was in high school. I never understood why, since the humor pushed the boundaries, but was never something to be worried about. It’s not like I was staying up to watch a porno. 🙄

Have any of his siblings come forward?

R80, I didn't say no one in the comments thought it was suicide, I said there were people in comments who didn't believe it was. You're arguing against a point I never made.

r78

There was NO MASS OUTRAGE. He was far from the first person to use the F-bomb on TV. If SNL had been a hit that year, it would've blown over.

SNL was being killed critically and in the ratings, facing competition from new series like Fridays and SCTV. NBC took the controversy as a way to reorganized the show. Had it been a hit this would not have occured.

I was alive during the time, I know, you all just want to present a side of history that never was. Sure people complained but so what? If the show was working NBC would have just ridden it out. He was a sacrificial lamb, the excuse NBC needed to weed out the producer and save the show.

R85 is right, if the season had been going well, it would have caused a stir but then died down and be laughed off these days. Instead, because the season had been savaged from the very beginning, critics and angry fans took advantage of the furor to use it as a kind of "last straw" example of how terrible SNL was.

People were also really resentful of Rocket being specifically pushed as a new Chevy Chase or Bill Murray. Those were Boomer legends and people were mad Rocket appealed to GenX sensibilities (which is why he was so perfect for Max Headroom, Earth Girls, Moonlighting). Eddie Murphy was the stand-out star of that SNL season in part because what he did was an extension of old 1970s SNL.

If Rocket hadn't have said "fuck" on air then something else would have happened that would have caused a hiatus and reboot of the season anyway. His was just the first screw-up to give them a reason to shut down and try again.

Jean Doumanian was a disaster. I read in one of the SNL books people working on the show called her the Ayatollah Doumanian. She was apparently very close to Woody Allen, in addition to being Lorne’s handpicked successor. Mason Williams, Smothers Brothers comedy writer and musician (he wrote and performed “Classical Gas”) was hired as head writer that year but left after the first few days of dealing with Doumanian. He was lucky to bow out when he did.

Jean did give Eddie Murphy his big break, however. The show was running short that night, and she needed to fill about 5 or so minutes of airtime. She told Eddie to go on and do some standup, and the rest is history.

Charles Rocket was an excellent character actor and might have made a bigger impact in a different SNL era. His problem was weak writing, backstage chaos, and the fact that he was “anointed” the star of the show even before he had done anything to earn the title. That fueled resentment among his fellow cast members, including Murphy. Rocket’s “f” bomb was just a convenient excuse for NBC to phase out Doumanian and most of the rest of the cast so Dick Ebersole could take it over the following year.

Doumanian produced several of Woody's films...til he caught her stealing profits from him!

Why is that freak trying to rewrite history?

[quote]Mason Williams, Smothers Brothers comedy writer and musician (he wrote and performed “Classical Gas”) was hired as head writer that year but left after the first few days of dealing with Doumanian. He was lucky to bow out when he did.

I have two signed copies of a book Williams self-published in 1966. "Worth" $2000-$4000 per copy. Can't wait till he dies and their value increases.

Doumanian was never Michaels' choice, much less anointed one. She was an associate producer who was responsible for booking musical act and the like. It was an important job but she was never a part of the nuts and bolts of writing, producing and creating the comedy. Michaels was shocked when she was named Executive Producer.

Although she gave Murphy a small break, she clearly didn't recognize his talent, It was NBC that pressured her to give Murphy more to do. Her two pets were Rocket and Ann Risley, the Diane Keaton look alike who was one of the most untalented ever on the show. Risley and Allen were good friends and that's how she got the job. Risley once told Murphy to get her some juice and he just sat and didn't budge.

[quote] Mason Williams, Smothers Brothers comedy writer and musician (he wrote and performed “Classical Gas”) was hired as head writer that year

I never knew he was a writer. My dad loved that song. DL is so educational.

This skit from that season sticks out in my mind as especially awful.

The opening scene to the first episode of the season was great.

[quote] The opening scene to the first episode of the season was great.

Like hell it was. Elliot Gould in bed with all the cast members...it was just tasteless and gross.

R97 it was a terrific introduction to the new cast.

It was the primary advertising image for his 1969 movie Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, r97. It was used in advertising and on some posters. Over a decade later, it wouldn't have been "tasteless and gross" but a quaint old memory.

[quote] it was a terrific introduction to the new cast.

No, it was just nasty. And a harbinger of the shit that was to come. Lots of stupid sex jokes.

Charlene was so pretty and a nice person

This skit from S7 (1981–82) was so bad it would have been right at home in S6.

I've only seen him in Star Trek Voyager (The Disease) I believe

where Kim bangs an alien & gets glowing skin as a result.

I did a deep dive into the Charles Rocket suicide and it is grim. The guy endured horrific parental abuse while growing up, both mentally and physically. He was child #5 of 8 on a farm, and he and his two older brothers slept in the same bed and their parents referred to all three as a portmanteau of their names, as though they were all one person. They also tested them as one, eradicating their individual personalities. The father dragged them all outside when Charlie was around 6, made them put their thumbs on a stump and held an ax over them and said if he ever caught any of them with their thumb in their mouth, he'd chop it off. There were also savage beatings.

Charlie coped by disassociating and being a very talkative class clown. He was quite popular in school and when he went off to RISD, that continued. Everybody knew him or knew of him; he was looked up to and some considered him a "genius." He was considered largely responsible for the creative, Bohemian atmosphere that ruled at RISD at that time. His clowning had taken on a decidedly creative bent (we didn't see any of this durng his short stint on SNL) and he inspired and influenced many there.

Anyway, SNL happened when he was 31 and what was supposed to be the making of him was his undoing. He was blamed for almost the entire cast being sacked, and held up to public ridicule. Slowly, he managed to claw his way back to become a character actor who worked a bit, but every few years, another SNL anniversary or documentary or book or what have you brought up the "Charles Rocket said fuck on the air!" stuff again. When people recognized him, that's what they said to him. "You're that guy who almost got SNL killed!" For decades.

He killed himself on the eve of yet another SNL anniversary tribute that he was supposed to appear in. Literally, the night before. Of course the show wasn't responsible, the people who wouldn't let it go weren't responsible. It all went back to his horrible childhood, which he repressed rather than dealt with. Once he was working only sporadically (at the time of his death he'd been out of work for nearly a year), those demons came rushing back to the forefront. He used two utility knives he'd grabbed from a toolbox in his barn - yes, he'd bought an old farmhouse a few years before his death, unconsciously or semi-consciously returning to the setting for his childhood trauma. His wife found him while walking the property with their dog.

Enough with the parental abuse. One person said that. It’s not known knowledge and never came from him.

The journalist that Yasmin lady supposedly got information from has never written anything about Charles Rocket, best I can tell, and I am unconvinced he would just tell an obviously overzealous online stranger details about someone's child abuse.

Several people claiming to have known him have shared stories of the abuse. Albeit, they are anonymous accounts so should be taken with a grain of salt.

Poor Charles. I blamed him for the failure of the revamped show and his F-bomb. But he was pretty much collateral damage. He sounded like a really sweet man. So sad that he never really sought help.

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