Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (65 page)

I had such a lucky run on that show that it felt like the right time. I still feel that way. I have no regrets. If I’d left after five years, I’d have missed out on a lot, but if I’d stayed two more years, into nine years, I don’t think it would have been the right move for me. A lot of people stayed a lot less. Martin Short only did twenty shows. I feel bad for those guys. They didn’t get to really explore it.

TOM SCHILLER,
Writer:

I left for good in 1993. It happened abruptly and without any human contact between me and Lorne, and it kind of threw me. Suddenly I went to the office and guys were putting my things in boxes. They said “management” had asked Lorne to clean house. But Lorne was nowhere to be found when I wanted to ask him why this was happening to me.

And yet it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened, in a way, because I should have left three years earlier.

JULIA SWEENEY:

I would say my first two years, and even up to my third year, were fabulous. And then my last year was just like one of the worst years of my life. I don’t know exactly why. I think that Lorne was feeling a pressure to concentrate more on the younger talent, which wasn’t even — particularly in age — years younger than me, but it was like going from like the Dana, Phil, me sort of emphasis, to the Chris Farley, Adam Sandler sort of emphasis. I think I got one sketch out of my whole fourth year.

I complained. I think Lorne really liked me a lot, but I could see in his eyes that I wasn’t part of the new order. I don’t think anyone cared whether I left or I stayed. And then finally I went to him in March. I had such a difficult time. It’s like every week I was writing and writing and nothing was getting on and I hadn’t really been the driving comedic force of a sketch like for — like until March, when I went just insane and forced Lorne to put on a sketch that I had written for Patrick Stewart. And the sketch went on last, and it did okay. But I could tell that it was sort of a favor to me to shut me up. Overall, I was over.

In April I went and told Lorne that I wanted to quit. My contract was five years, and it had only been four years. And he would never ever tell you, “Please don’t go.” I wasn’t looking for him to say that. I knew that even if he felt that way a thousand percent, he would never say it. But I knew that he also didn’t want me to go, not so much because he wanted me there but because he didn’t want to have the drama of me leaving. Not like it would be that big of a drama. But it’s almost like I felt like he just wished I would disappear and we didn’t even have to have the conversations about me leaving.

But by then I had so made up my mind. My agents would say, “Don’t leave a job ’til you get another job.” And I had saved up like $70,000, which was like to me a zillion dollars. And I felt like I would have scrubbed toilets with a toothbrush rather than come back to that show. There was no job I could imagine having to do that would have been more difficult than returning to that show the next year.

LORNE MICHAELS:

Michael Eisner called and said he wanted to make a movie based on her character Pat, and I said I didn’t think so. Then Julia came to talk to me. I had the right to stop her, because NBC owned the thing. But I said, “Good luck,” and I let her make the movie. And ever since, it’s been on
my
record. They say “
Saturday Night Live
movies like
It’s Pat.
”
And
she’s unpleasant about the show! And I go, “What?” Well, why — because her life didn’t turn out quite the way she wanted? Now it has, she’s done a one-woman show, and she has a baby, and she’s defeated cancer.

CHRISTINE ZANDER,
Writer:

I got to know Phil even better. And this was after I had moved to L.A. and they had moved to L.A., after we worked together. Phil was a wonderful guy, incredibly generous and good-hearted, but I think he was difficult to get to know. I think maybe with his male friends it was easier, but I don’t really feel like I knew him completely. I think he became unhappy, because the last two years the new talent started to come in, it got a little bit more cutthroat, because, you know, the old guard wasn’t getting written for as much.

DAVID MANDEL:

The final season for me was really, really exhausting. I started poking around Los Angeles for sitcom writing and got an offer from
Seinfeld.
If I was 90 percent sure I was leaving before, knowing I had
Seinfeld
pushed me to about 140 percent.

TIM MEADOWS:

The worst year from my perspective was the year before the big changeover. The last year with Sandler and Farley and Spade and all those guys was, I think, the most fun backstage, but the least fun on-camera. We had good times and we enjoyed each other’s friendships, but there were too many people. The writers and the cast people didn’t gel, you know. I think after doing a certain number of years, it seemed like there were thirty people trying to race to the finish line, instead of people sort of like being a relay team and the writers handing out funny pieces for the performers to do.

There were a lot of talented people, and it was weird, because when you looked at the people that left during that big changeover, a lot of those people went over to write and produce for
The Simpsons
and
Seinfeld.
Sandler and Farley and Spade and Jay Mohr, and all these talented people that were in the cast, went on to do other things.

ROBERT WRIGHT,
NBC Chairman and CEO:

When Don Ohlmeyer first came in ’93, we had the issue of replacing Letterman, who’d jumped to CBS, and Lorne had cleverly got himself the commission to do that. And so Lorne was going to be the executive producer of the show starring someone. “Someone” didn’t exist, and Don was very anxious about this and wanted to participate in it. This was the first time they were really together. So we had this sort of open audition, and people were submitting tapes and whatever, and they’d gone through a number of people, and I saw the tape on Conan. Lorne already knew Conan was the one he wanted, and I thought it was the best of all the tapes we had seen, and there were lots. It was the beginning of our relationship with Conan. Don didn’t particularly like this, but he did agree that he was the best. The fact that he was totally unknown presented some huge problems for us. But Lorne got support from Don and got support from me and was willing to take on the issue that he wasn’t well known. Some of the other people were known, so that was a big deal. But it’s worked out well for all of us.

AL FRANKEN:

The last season of the show that I was on, Kevin Nealon had been the “Update” anchor and was going to leave as anchor next season. So the spot was open, and it was something I’d always wanted to do, so we had sort of a test. And I did it and Norm Macdonald did it. And it got sent out to Ohlmeyer. And this is something I’d always wanted. So Lorne and Jim take me out to dinner to give me the bad news, right? I know that’s what the dinner is about, but neither of them can kind of get up the courage to tell me. So we’re eating dinner. We’re talking about everything else. We go through the appetizer, the entrée, it’s a nice dinner at a nice Italian restaurant, some place downtown. Finally we get to dessert and coffee, and we’re having our coffee, and I go like, “Guys — what’s going on with the ‘Update’ thing?” “It’s Ohlmeyer, it’s Ohlmeyer.” And I go, “Well, okay.” But I’m heartbroken, and now I know I’m leaving the show. It’s this big blow to me. And then the check comes. And neither Lorne nor Jim has brought their credit cards. So I have to pay for the dinner. But I got reimbursed. It has a happy ending.

LORNE MICHAELS:

The writing was on the wall with Al when he didn’t get “Update” and Norm Macdonald did. Which was a very tough decision. I think there was a feeling at that moment, from Ohlmeyer in particular, that Al was too associated with the show — the “old” show.

NORM MACDONALD:

Adam Sandler liked me and he told Jim Downey about me, and then Jim Downey said I could come on the show. I wanted to be a writer and performer. I wasn’t a very good writer and I wasn’t a very good performer, but I could be a writer-performer. And the one place I could do that was
SNL
, because Lorne was always good with letting writers perform if they were funny.

I always thought Chevy was the best guy at doing “Update.” Most people were not good at it, you know. So I didn’t think if I was bad I’d be singled out. Just basically Chevy and Dennis Miller were the only good ones, ever. So I wasn’t worried about it.

JAMES DOWNEY:

Most of my friends liked the Norm “Update.” They thought it was better than previous incarnations of “Update.” They liked the way we did it — deadpan, just very straight, no frills, and the jokes were smart — and they would say it was the reason they watched the show or the best thing in the show. The prevailing attitude at the show and at the network was that “Update” was the problem of the show, and I know Lorne felt it was really hurting the show. He would never say it to me directly.

When we brought Norm in, Herb was still in charge of it, but because Norm was my protégé, I had for the first time a lot of influence, and then I brought other people in. So “Update” was suddenly being group-written again. A lot of writers would kick in things. We liked writing stuff for Norm, because he was great at handling words. He worked with us at editing things down so they could be as tight as possible.

JANEANE GAROFALO:

I certainly am a big fan of Jim Downey as a person. I really like Jim. But he was not in control when I was there, when he should have been. He should have been looking out for some of the cast’s best interests too, and he wasn’t. And he was not available for meetings. He is a great guy and an extremely funny guy and, as a person, I would hang out with Jim Downey anytime. But at that time, he was not there for the cast.

NORM MACDONALD:

Jim Downey is the best. He was producer the first year I did “Update,” and then after that he got fired as producer and I got him just to do “Update,” which was good for me because I got to work with him full-time and he was great. He was a brilliant guy. He was the funniest guy there and the smartest. He would work as sort of like a great editor. You know, he would take the jokes and figure out ways to sharpen them and improve them and, you know, narrow them and stuff like that. And he knew about politics, which I had no interest in at all. So he could think politically and stuff.

JAMES DOWNEY:

There’d be some giant hack joke that you knew would destroy but it would be an embarrassing thing to do, and I could always say to Norm, “This thing will kill, but you know it’s tacky.” And he would not do it. Or I would say, “This is brilliant, but there’s not a chance it’ll get a laugh from the audience” — and we would do those.

ADAM SANDLER:

Downey taught us our taste. I’m not sure if Jim would like that, all the bad reviews I get, but I think I’m doing stuff that Downey would like. But if Herlihy and I wrote a skit and we showed it to Downey and he smiled and then said, “What if the Canteen Boy says this,” me and Herlihy would bump chests and go, “Yes! Downey gave us greatness!”

FRED WOLF:

After Chris Rock left the show, he came back like six or seven months later to visit. And my office, at that time, it was me, Norm Macdonald, Adam Sandler, and David Spade. And we were back there and Chris Rock came to visit all of us. And he said he’s been out there in the world, doing some other shows, doing some other comedies, and doing some movies, and working with
In Living Color
, and all this sort of stuff. And he said that it’s really great but the one thing that he has recognized is that there is no one like Jim Downey out there. And that was a sad thing.

DAVID MANDEL:

Some of the greatest jokes that were ever added to other writers’ sketches at the table came from Jim Downey. So even in something he didn’t necessarily write, I just — I can’t explain it except to say he impacted everything that went through, and this is not to take anything away from the current people at
Saturday Night Live
, who I think are great. But I’ve sat through the way they rewrite, and they rewrite relatively quickly, and you just know they don’t stay until five in the morning. And that’s not a bad thing. I’m not sure it was great that we stayed until five in the morning. But Jim Downey added things to sketches that no other human being could, and I’ve seen Jim like dictate a sketch from his head as if — it must be like the way genius chess players see chess. It’s almost as if he’s reading from a script in his head that the rest of us can’t see, and he’s trying to read and dictate it.

I sat in a room with him once when John Malkovich hosted. We did a Menendez brothers sketch, if you can remember, where Rob Schneider and John Malkovich played the brothers, and their testimony was that there were two other Menendez brothers — their twin brothers — who were responsible for the killing and were waiting in the bathroom, and then they would get up and go get the other Menendez brothers and come in. They would switch sides and sit down and pretend to be two other Menendez brothers. They would then be asked where the first two Menendez brothers were and be told that they were in the bathroom.

And this kept going on until then one left and never came back. I sat in the room at like six in the morning with Jim lying on a couch and basically, a couple of us got a few jokes in, but this came fully formed out of Jim’s head. And to this day I’ve never seen anything like that.

JAMES DOWNEY:

That summer I never heard from Lorne or anybody from the date of the last show in May of 1995. The phone never rang, which I thought was kind of insulting. Finally Dana called me and said, “I can’t believe those fucking assholes haven’t even talked to you.” And he said, “Do you want to come to work for my show?” I said, “That’s very nice of you.” And then like five minutes later Mike Shoemaker called and then Lorne got on the phone and said, “Hey, you want to write for the show?” And that’s when I said I would only do it if I could just do “Update.”