Joe Piscopo

Joe Piscopo (born June 17, 1951, Passaic, New Jersey) is an American comedian, known for his work on Saturday Night Live. Piscopo planned to study acting but went into stand-up comedy in the late 1970s. In the summer of 1980 he was hired as a contract player for SNL. The show had gone through major upheaval, as all the writers, major producers and cast members had left that spring. The all-new cast bombed with critics and fans. Piscopo and Eddie Murphy were the exceptions and the only two cast members to be kept when Dick Ebersol took over the show in spring 1981. Piscopo was best known for his boorish impressions of celebrities such as Frank Sinatra (he wrote Sinatra a letter asking his permission; Sinatra agreed and jokingly dubbed him "vice-chairman of the board"). Piscopo left SNL in 1984, but unlike Murphy, did not find major success. He appeared in a few semi-successful films, and had his own HBO comedy special, but was regarded more as a punch line to a bad joke about the doomed careers of most SNL alumni.

External link

• IMDb entry