Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (75 page)

Part of the beauty of the show is that at its longest it’s only a week; come hell or high water at one A.M. on Sunday, it’s done. It’s like taking the SATs; they will say, “Put your pencils down,” at a certain point. It is best when the host trusts us. It’s easiest for us when people come in and trust us. When someone comes in and they’re really diffi-cult, it kind of brings us all together against them.

MARCI KLEIN:

The host drives the show much more than people realize. When I first started working here, I was shocked that the host had anything to do with this show. I think people kind of have the image that the host takes a limo in on Saturday after reading their part — they just don’t know.

I think the best host that will make a good show is somebody that is confident and trusting enough to let go. When you come here, you need to trust that we’re not going to let you go out there and destroy yourself. Lorne and the writers, all of us, really want the hosts to be as good as they can be.

Tom Hanks, when he comes here, he’s here until five o’clock in the morning almost every night really working on the show, because he wants it to be funny, and that’s why he’s a good host. Christopher Walken is another great host, because he’s so easy for the writers to write for. He’s a great guy, and he doesn’t come with a bunch of people who are telling him, “Hey, that was funny.” You’d be surprised at the people who do that.

STEVE HIGGINS:

Christopher Walken is always a great show. You can’t lose no matter what he does. I love having John Goodman and Alec Baldwin around. Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston were a lot of fun too. We’ve had some clunker shows, but they all blend together. I think when the hosts come here they’re on their best behavior. If they’re not, they have everything to lose and nothing to gain.

TINA FEY:

My advice to anyone that hosts: Don’t bring your own writers if you want people to love you. That was one thing I thought that Conan O’Brien was very smart about, because he has a staff of writers downstairs but he didn’t bring anybody, he came up here and put himself in our hands, which was a good move. Sometimes people with a large entourage can be difficult. It’s difficult when a host will have like a publicist in their ear telling them what’s funny. That always seems like bad news when you go down to talk to the host in their dressing room and you’re talking through a publicist.

Comedy people are hard sometimes, because they have their own kind of comedy that they do and they can be very resistant to what they will and won’t do. I think they’re usually my least favorite. A host who actually writes on the scripts and hands it back to the writer is usually bad news.

JAMES DOWNEY:

It was ironic when Jerry Seinfeld came, because some of the people he brought used to work here at the show. I can tell you that that approach has a terrible track record. I mean, almost without exception, when they bring writers along their stuff doesn’t get on. We will have the read-through without there being any kind of prejudice against them. It’s just that often they write stuff that eats it.

HORATIO SANZ:

Tom Green brought in a few of his own writers and was kind of more preoccupied with his image as a guy who doesn’t give a fuck. And the show I think suffered.

JON STEWART,
Host:

It was the first time I’d been asked to host, and I jumped at it immediately. I didn’t bring any of my own writers with me; they’ve got plenty. They’re very, very talented people over there who already know their thing, and hopefully I went into it thinking I’d bring a little something to the process and shape it in a way that would give this show a little different flavor than it had the week before. We had a great time doing all that stuff. It’s a very collaborative environment. I really had just a mind-blowing good time.

I thought the process that they used to hone material was really smart. The way the show came into focus makes complete sense. It’s very linear, it’s not arbitrary. There’s obviously politics associated with any organization, especially one that’s been alive for that long. As the host you obviously are a guest, and it’s a different atmosphere. But when you’re around some place for a week, you can pick up what’s what and who’s what and where’s what and that kind of shit.

CHRIS KATTAN:

When people recognize you for the first time, it’s really a shock. And especially when you’re like in a restaurant somewhere pretty public and somebody’s looking at you and you go, “Why is that person looking at me, what’s your problem?” Now if I were to go, “What’s your problem?” that guy would probably think I’m an ass-hole. But I still do that.

CHERI OTERI:

It makes me feel good when people say, “Yours was my favorite cast.” Especially older people who have been around. That just makes me feel good. But I don’t feel competitive at all. Why put that pressure on you of what happened before?

CHRIS KATTAN:

Will gets written for a lot because he’s, you know, an Everyman. He’s hilarious, he’s brilliant, and the writers love him more than anybody. I think Will is even better than Phil Hartman in some ways. He’s the utility man, yes, but he also has characters like the Cheerleaders and the Roxbury Guys that I do with him.

RACHEL DRATCH,
Cast Member:

Oh my God, I love doing that “Lovers” sketch with Will so much. That comes from when I was in college. There was a professor; my friend had her and kind of got to be friends, and before the break for Christmas, she asked my friend what she was going to do and she said, “I don’t know.” And the teacher goes, “Yes — just take it easy — read a book, take a bath, eat a bonbon, spend time with your
luv-uh
.” So that became for me and my friend just this big thing we would say all the time,
“luv-uh.”
Later Will and I were writing something together and he’s like, “What about that ‘lover’ thing that you said in that other scene?” Those are the funniest things, the things you joke around with friends. So then we developed it. We’re like,
eeeuughhh
, you know, when we write it. I laugh so hard, it makes me sick.

The first time at read-through we could not get through it, just like on the show we cannot get through it. I try not to laugh too much, because I don’t like it when I’m watching TV and I see someone breaking up all the time; it becomes sort of cheap. But sometimes you just can’t help it. I’ve never been chastised by Lorne for it, but I don’t know what happens while he’s watching it. Will will just make a face or go like,
“unnhhhh unnhhhhh,”
or something, and it just gets me.

WILL FERRELL:

I like to sneak out on the floor a lot of times during the show and watch — you know, when I’m not having to run around somewhere — and I’ll catch Lorne just like chuckling to himself, something no one ever gets to see, and I don’t know if all the times that you don’t see him laugh are just part of a façade he has to wear, like being principal or something.

We have these Tuesday night dinners where we will go out with the host. Lorne’s a fascinating guy to sit and talk to. The times when Lorne gets frustrated is when — the typical thing of, “What is all the fruit doing in the background there?” Or it will be some suggestion where he’s like, “I want you to remove something.” Okay, we’ll cut that. “No, no, no, but I actually like that.” But I thought you said… So he can be very vague at times, and the thing you end up losing from a sketch or a piece is a thing. You’ll be like, “What did he mean?”

JIMMY FALLON:

I got all these zits on my face, as you can see; I’ve broken out from lack of sleep. It’s tiring. It’s just so tiring. Man oh man.

DAN AYKROYD:

Some of the greatest moments in a comedian’s life are when you are dying. Horatio Sanz and Will Ferrell told me they sometimes watch shows or material they have done on the show that didn’t work but that they thought was great, and they sit there and laugh at how dead it is, and at how little the audience is reacting. I remember watching Johnny Carson; Carson was funniest when he was dying.

TINA FEY:

There are a lot of places every week where you’re seeking approval. First you want your piece to kill in the read-through. Sometimes your piece kills in the read-through, and even though it doesn’t end up in the show, you can still hang your pride on that. Then you want it to work in dress and then you want it to air. If you get some of those things and not all of them, I always figure, well, I got two out of three. At least you can walk with your head held up somewhat. You want the things that you think are genuinely funny first, and then beyond that you start thinking if something has a topicality — that maybe it wasn’t in the best shape at the table but it’s very topical and we can make it work. And then as the meeting goes on, it comes around to who’s not in the show. Who in the cast is not being represented in the show? Well, what do we have for them? Is there anything that worked enough for them at the table that we can make it work better by air?

RICK LUDWIN,
NBC Vice President for Late Night:

There have been a couple of times where I had to play Judge Wapner in a dispute between broadcast standards and the writers or performers. There was some line in a David Spade “Hollywood Minute,” I forget exactly what it was, where broadcast standards said “absolutely unacceptable” and David Spade said, “Well, I’m doing it,” and it went back and forth, a ping-pong thing, and finally broadcast standards said, “If you do it, we’re going to drop audio.” And he said, “Well then, drop audio, but I’m doing it. I’m saying the line.” And so he did it. He said the line, and broadcast standards dropped the audio.

Robert Smigel, who pushes the envelope about as far as you can push it on broadcast television, has had a number of dustups. The first time I met Smigel, he and Conan O’Brien were writing partners on
Saturday Night Live.
Conan denies this, but my recollection is they had written the famous penis sketch for Matthew Broderick, with broadcast standards saying, “There’s a tonnage issue here. We’ll let you say it three times, but we won’t let you say it ten times.” So there’s this odd debate back and forth: “We’ll give up this penis but we want to keep that penis.”

Another week Smigel did a cartoon about global businesses, GE being one of them, and their connection to Ted Kaczynski, the serial bomber. The notion that global businesses were running the world was basically the theme of the piece. It was a very clever sketch. When I saw it, I immediately passed it on up the line, to whoever was in charge, because I wanted everyone to know what was going on. Standards tentatively okayed it, and we put it on, and it aired once. But then it got pulled from the repeats. And Smigel, I remember, was all upset about it being taken out of the repeats. I said, “Robert, it got on the air. You were not censored. It got on the first time.” It got on once — but never again.