CNN story
Apparently, he committed suicide by cutting his own throat! :eek:
Color me stunned. While I didn’t care much for him on SNL, he was good on Max Headroom playing the sleazy network head.
Ironic way of dying, considering that (IIRC) he sort of ‘cut his own throat’ (i.e., committed career suicide) by uttering the f-word on SNL.
That’s too bad; my sympathies for his family.
Is he the only person to have dropped the F-bomb live on SNL?
Norm MacDonald has, at the very least.
Another victim of the old SNL curse.
Although Rocket was indeed fired within a week of using the “f” word on SNL, the whole cast, except for Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo, was dismissed anyway at the end of the 1980-1981 season.
Don’t know about that. I doubt he would have become a big star after SNL. Nobody was watching that year and it pretty much sucked. He seemed to have a pretty decent career despite being fired. He showed up quite frequently in TV and movies.
Agreed – I just remember that at the time it looked like a deliberate act that would result in the end of his career. He ended up faring better than some SNL alums.
Paul Shaffer was the first “f”-er in 1980, when he said “fuckin’” instead of “floggin” in a skit.
He appeared at the University of Florida Halloween Festival sometime between 1979 - 1982 along with Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics. He billed himself as “Charles Rocket & His Electric Accordion” - his show-stopper was “Wild Thing”. No, really.
VCNJ~
Considering how Wendy O came to her demise, that really is weird!
Not many SNL alums (especially from that era) appeared in Best Picture winning movies. Rocket was in “Dances with Wolves”. Of course, he was also in “It’s Pat”, but that’s neither here nor there.
Not to mention “Earth Girls are Easy.”
That’s a shame.
According to imdb it looks like he’d been getting some work the past couple of years.
I remember that. He was one of 4 cavemen Beatles.
Wow… Nobody played swarmy cad bad guy like him. I’ll miss seeing him in stuff and saying “Hey it’s Charles Rocket!” He wasn’t a “Hey that’s guy!” to me. I know his name.
Big fan of his. That’s really sad.
Fuck.
Do you recall any details? Was it a news bit, or a sketch?
From the Internet Mobie Database:
My strongest memory of the guy is in that SNL episode that ended with “Who shot CR?” (as a parody of the whole “Who shot JR?” cliffhanger on Dallas that was the In Thing of the Moment back then).
And, yes, he did have to appear as a smarmy cad bad guy to pull that one off.
and boy, he did not look happy in the latests ones.
Of course, that doesn’t mean anything, but he sure looked like he had the blues.
