Joe Piscopo (In Spotlight)

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 in his cousin Pauly's garage (Paul LaMagna) with another cousin Scarecrow (Bill Dolphin). 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.He appeared in a few semi-successful films, appeared in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, 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 S.N.L. alumni.

In recent years, Piscopo appeared in the long-running Broadway revival of Grease, guest-starred on major TV series such as Law & Order and toured with other SNL alumni such as Kevin Nealon and Victoria Jackson. Piscopo is most often cast as a villain in comedies most like the Chuck Norris vehicle Sidekicks and Johnny Dangerously. He appeared as ladies man "Rocky" in the contemporary version of Herman Melville's Bartleby (2001). Some in his native New Jersey have urged Piscopo to run for state office, and Piscopo considers himself "a Democrat, but a little conservative".