Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (73 page)

JANEANE GAROFALO,
Cast Member:

The show is so good now, and the cast is so strong, I’m assuming somebody has come in and done an exorcism of some kind.

ANDY BRECKMAN:

Reruns of the show are syndicated. And what happens is, every time a show is run, you get a little less money. The first time it’s rerun, you get I guess close to half your salary — a nice check. And then the second time it’s rerun, you get a little less and a little less, and now it’s on Comedy Central so often that what me and other writers get is — is just insane. What we get in the mail are piles of checks for seven cents. Just piles of checks. And by the time you write your account number on the back of it and sign each one, your hand hurts. It’s an ordeal. And that’s what my career at
SNL
is down to now — cramps in the hands and seven-cent checks.

JAMES DOWNEY:

One thing that has definitely changed — and this smells like the network to me — is that in the early years of
Saturday Night Live
, the show would very admirably use its clout when booking music acts. It was like, “We’re doing very well, we don’t need to book a music act that’s going to bring in huge numbers.” So we would have some obscure, relatively obscure, or at least interesting choice. Like Sun Ra was on once. Nowadays the choice of the music seems, to me at least, entirely about getting kids to watch or earning a big rating. I think they’ve had like the Backstreet Boys on two or three times. And in the old days, that’s the kind of thing that would have prompted a full-scale staff revolt. As far as the hosts — I have to admit there have been some in recent years whose names I did not recognize. I just didn’t know who they were.

JOHN ZONARS,
Music Coordinator:

I think the musical philosophy has always been to try to balance established, very famous, and well-known acts like the Rolling Stones with a sort of cutting-edge, not necessarily breaking act, but an act that is sort of avant-garde. The idea of having an avant-garde act is always important I think to Lorne. And essentially no matter who tells you what about the different bookers that were in place and the bookers that are in place now, it’s Lorne who books the show.

LORNE MICHAELS:

We’re at a place generationally where you can do Britney Spears, where enough people are baby boomers who have kids. And you can put an eighteen-year-old host on, and it will hold the viewers and actually increase the audience.

I would know enough to book Eminem, but I wouldn’t presume to pick the song he would sing. Whereas in 1975, I would have been, “What do you mean, you’re not doing” this or that song, you know. I think you have to step back and find your role.

ALEC BALDWIN:

I asked Lorne once, “Is there any way the host can very innocently try to influence who the musical guest is?” And Lorne just looked at me very bemused and said, “What did you have in mind?” And I said, “What about someone who’s a great singer of standards — how about Rosemary Clooney?” And I thought Lorne was going to swallow his tongue. And then he explained to me the basic rule that governs the musical guest selection: The cost of bringing the musical guest to do the show is often shared by the record company, because it’s very expensive to bring them and the crew and all their technical equipment to New York and NBC. And very often it’s an artist who is promoting current product, and since it’s a promotional tool, the label shares that cost.

JOHN ZONARS:

When we have a musical act perform, the network has evidence that proves that the ratings drop off, and frankly it took me a long time to accept that, because in my world, everyone is worried about the music. We only watched the show when we were kids because we thought the musical act was cool. But the network started telling Lorne that the ratings were dropping off during the musical act and that we should only do one song and that the song should be after “Update.” And while they may have a point — I can see how Middle America doesn’t care about music, they just want to see the Cheerleaders do their skit — I think it inherently screws up the rhythm of the show.

Considering the gazillions they’ve earned at the box office — we’re talking mythic money — Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy are possibly more revered by the new breed of Not Ready for Prime Time Players than are Chevy and Gilda and Dan and John. Of course, a good many flop films have been based on
SNL
skits or have featured former
SNL
cast members. But the show is obviously still seen as a springboard into Hollywood, and key cast members have no shortage of scripts submitted by eager producers anxious to cash in.

WILL FERRELL:

I think there’s a perception that there’s like this instantaneous thing that happens, whether it’s movie offers or whatever. But it’s all very gradual, and even after being on the show for five years you still feel tenuous about your existence. People go, “What a great stepping-stone,” but we’ve all been happy just to have a job. It’s like, I mean, initially while you’re here, you’re just — I mean, there was a part of me that could have quit after the very first time I was on the show. Really. It was like, “Wow, I did it, I was on an episode of
Saturday Night Live
,” and I almost wanted to keep it pristine.

JIMMY FALLON:

I’m not reading anything cool. I’m not reading any scripts that I enjoy. Everyone wants me to do a goofball comedy where it’s like high concept — I get like robot feet or something. It’s ridiculous like that. I could be a millionaire, yeah, easily, but I’d rather have peace of mind than a paycheck. I could drive myself crazy just thinking about it. My new move is I just might try dramatic parts until I find the right comedy or until I get off the show. You know — keep learning with really good directors and learn how to act and then — then I’ll just be unstoppable when I’m off the show, because I know I can do that too.

ANDY BRECKMAN:

You can’t deny the show is a launching pad unlike any other that I can think of. It’s a farm club. It has an amazing batting average. It’s like a shot on the old
Tonight Show
, which was so prestigious because it led to so many other things.

MOLLY SHANNON:

Lorne produced
Superstar
, my movie about Mary Katherine Gallagher. Those movies are very cheap to make. They’re low-budget, cheap comedies. It maybe cost $14 million and it made $30 million in domestic box office, and then it makes a lot in video, because we have a lot of kids who watch it over and over and over again, and they memorize the lines — little girls and stuff like that. So
Superstar
was a very profitable little venture for Paramount Pictures. One of those low-budget cheapies.

I do have another movie in development at Paramount. Lorne will be involved in that too.

CHRIS KATTAN:

When I first got on the read-through table, it was very quiet during my sketch, they didn’t really laugh at all, and I thought, “God, this is terrible.” And then Lorne put the sketch in, it made it in, and it was like the second sketch of the night. So I was really excited and people were just — you know, a featured player has never had their first sketch on in their first week or whatever. So I was very excited that I had.

It was flattering when Lorne said, “You know, you’re like the new Mike Myers to me.” I was like, “Oh wow.” He meant that in a sense of, “You’re going to take care of yourself and do your own stuff.” And you can see when you watch the old shows that Mike Myers wasn’t there throughout other people’s sketches. It was more like, here’s the Sprockets and here’s “Wayne’s World” and here’s his “Coffee Talk,” and that was his stuff. So it’s a great way to always be on your toes, and you know, it’s good training to only rely on yourself.

JANEANE GAROFALO:

The general attitude over there is that with the Tina Fey regime and the Steve Higgins regime, things started turning around. I think the prevailing attitude had been that women just aren’t quite as funny.

MOLLY SHANNON:

First of all, there aren’t that many slots for girls. There was me, Ana, and Cheri. So the girls that get there are tough girls, you know. Those are strong women, I would say. We all got along well. I think that either way you just sort of have to take care of yourself. It’s not a man-woman thing. They’re not going to put something on because it’s a girl sketch, they’re going to put it on because it’s funny. Maybe before that, women had different experiences than I did, but my experience is they’re going to put it on if it’s funny, not because you’re a girl, that’s just silly. You’re just in competition with yourself.

DARRELL HAMMOND:

I had no idea that people could be so tired and miserable — because of so much pressure — and yet still be good and still be funny.

JACK HANDEY,
Writer:

Even today I’ll have dreams where it’s like late Tuesday night and I don’t have an idea for the show. And then Lorne comes into the dream and he’s wearing my pants.

DARRELL HAMMOND:

When I came here Lorne told me, “We don’t go on the air because the show’s ready, we go on because it’s eleven-thirty.” Here, you’re going to be asked to be at your best when you feel your worst. If you’re hoarse, have the flu, didn’t have time to prepare, didn’t sleep well last night, feel depressed — too bad. It’s eleven-thirty and it’s live, so you’ve got to change your mental state. Sometimes, by the time you go on, you’re so tired you don’t even remember why you thought something was ever funny in the first place.

CHERI OTERI:

You get in here and you start doubting yourself. Each week you’re auditioning for a show you already got. Each week you’re proving yourself. You’re starting over week to week. It made me very emotional and unstable. When I did
Just Shoot Me
, Thursday came around and this feeling came over me, this really great peaceful feeling, because I thought, “Oh my God, no matter what,
I’m going to be on the show
. I’m not going to get cut.”

Here’s the thing I didn’t know about
SNL:
I knew that you
could
write, but I didn’t know that you pretty much
have to
write if you want to be in the show. There were shows I got cut out of completely! My dad came up from Nashville when we had Garth Brooks, and I was completely cut out of the show.

It was in my third year on the show that I finally stopped being devastated and crying about it. Julia Sweeney said that she had my dressing room, and she told me, “God, how I cried in that room.” And it’s just the way the show works. But there’s no show like it. The good part is that you get to be something different every week. And you get to be seen in front of millions of people. And then I thought, what am I going to do after this? What’s going to be as exciting as this? I’ll feel good about not having the disappointments, though. I’ve gotten better at that. Because I was pretty much known as someone who didn’t take it very good.

CHRIS KATTAN:

Cheri Oteri and I had one thing in common back when she was on the show. We were really left to write for ourselves. You know, it was pretty much up to us. We could never really assume some writer would take care of us. There are some performers that could assume that. But Cheri and I are more specific, I think. And we had our stock characters, so it was a little difficult for us, and I guess it was a little rough for Cheri. This place can be very unfair, and I think it was a little unfair to her sometimes — like it was up to her every week to come up with something or she’s not on the show. Which is a real bummer, and that’s happened to me a lot. So I’m like, “Oh God, I guess I’ve got to come up with a new character for this week,” because I am one of the people that can’t assume that a writer will take care of me unless that person takes a chance.

TINA FEY:

Certain words chill the audience regardless of context, “rape” being one of them. There’s a piece that Adam McKay wrote for Rachel Dratch to do in “Update” that was so funny to all of us, it was about some guys who had written a book about how rape is natural. It was just part of the caveman mentality that lives within all of us and it’s part of nature. And Rachel did this “Update” feature as herself talking about how she agreed with the book and how she loved to rape dudes and graphically described these rapes that she had done on men and got into how she was going to rape the two male authors of the book. And Rachel is, you know, pint-sized and adorable — but the audience, even though it was her saying those things, they just could not, did not, go with her on that.

JIMMY FALLON:

I never complain about anything. I could care less. The only complaint I have, which I hope it never gets to this point, is I never want to get out there because I’m me and the piece is in front of me and it’s like, “We need to put Jimmy in the show.” Because they do that sometimes. Like, “We’ve got to put Molly in the show.” I never want to be that guy. I don’t want to do crap. I don’t want people seeing me do a bad piece. If it doesn’t work, then cut it. You have to think of what’s going to work and is everyone happy. I’m one of the guys who’s more for the show than for me.

CHERI OTERI:

I talked to Laraine Newman about stress. She talked about how are you going to deal with the pressures because there’s so much pressure here. And I was a mess my first three years. I was very emotional. I cried a lot, and it didn’t all just have to do with the show. I felt very lonely for some reason. I went to work and then I went home, I went to work and then I went home. Maybe that was my fault, but I don’t want to do much outside of work. I don’t know why.