ASK BILLY CRYSTAL HOW HE GOT STARTed, and he will say in the living room, where as the youngest and shortest of three boys, he was also the loudest. "After dinner, we would perform for 20 or so relatives impressions of Aunt Rose with the sagging upper arms and Uncle Max with the pants the size of New Jersey." He learned show-biz patter, pulling his chair alongside the old Magnavox TV and pretending to be the next guest on the Jack Paar show, peeking down Jayne Mansfield's dress and rolling his eyes, flacking his latest gig. "You know, Jack, I'm really looking forward to eighth grade. A lot of interesting transfers, some hot new teachers -- it's going to be a good year."
He graduated to stand-up after listening to comedy albums his father would bring home from his job at Commodore Music, a record label and store in Manhattan. For visits to Grandma's house on Thanksgiving, Mom packed a suitcase with costumes: the three Crystal Boys would do Ernie Kovacs' Nairobi Trio and take turns as Mel Brooks' 2,000-Year-Old Man.
His wonder years in Long Beach, on Long Island, N.Y. -- the loud relatives, the overtanned mah-jongg ladies at the swimming pool, the horseradish and stuffed cabbage, the vacations in the Catskills -- are at the heart of his new movie, Mr. Saturday Night, which he wrote, directed, produced and starred in, quite an achievement for someone who didn't know what a key grip was seven years ago. Crystal set out to portray someone who embodied the idols of his youth -- Milton Berle, Jack E. Leonard, Alan King -- yet exuded the fear of failure that makes some comics do themselves in, onstage and personally, instead of waiting for life to do it to them.
Crystal says he is not Buddy, although he makes him so instantly recognizable in his Nipsey Russell loungewear and pinkie ring, in his scathing put-downs and maudlin sentimentality, that the character seems to come from the inside out. Crystal says he only wanted to show "the terrorist inside each of us, who can ruin things at any moment." But like many people for whom affection comes easily, Crystal may have felt driven to test his positives. "It was easy to like Harry ((in When Harry Met Sally . . .)) and Mitch ((the mid-life ad guy in City Slickers)), but not Buddy. I wanted to elicit the complex affection for someone who does rotten things but who is not a rotten man."
It may only have been possible for Crystal to portray this wrinkled, self- absorbed baby with a cigar once he was safely beyond such a fate himself. At 44, he is now at the top not only professionally -- considered in the same breath with Steve Martin and Robin Williams -- but personally as well, uncommonly secure in a business where ego tremors routinely register 9.8 on the Richter scale. He has lived in the same house in Pacific Palisades, Calif., for 12 years, been married to the same woman for 22. He has scarcely missed a volleyball game of either daughter: Jennifer, 19, who is now studying acting in London; and Lindsay, 15. An exciting Saturday is when his good friends, director Rob Reiner and his wife, come over, or when he goes to root for Los Angeles' basketball underdogs, the Clippers. "For a star," says Reiner, who directed him in Harry, "he's the most normal man in America."