Joe Piscopo

About Joe Piscopo

Joseph Charles John "Joe" Piscopo (born June 17, 1951) is an American comedian and actor best known for his work on Saturday Night Live.

Born in Passaic, New Jersey, Piscopo attended West Essex High School and was a member of the drama club "the Masquers". He developed a reputation for never playing a part the way it was written and was quite a clown on stage. When he was not clowning around he could usually be found lifting weights with his cousins Paul LaMagna and Bill Dolphin, both shameless self promoters. Although his father wanted him to become a lawyer like he was, Joe ultimately went into stand-up comedy in the late 1970s, becoming a cast member of the short-lived sketch-comedy series, Madhouse Brigade in 1978.

In the summer of 1980 he was hired as a contract player for S.N.L.. 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 fanatics. 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 S.N.L. in 1984, but unlike Murphy, did not find major success. He appeared in a few successful films such as Johnny Dangerously and in a couple episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, he also had his own HBO comedy special, but was regarded more as a punch line to a bad joke about the doomed careers of most S.N.L. alumni.