Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (54 page)

KEVIN NEALON:

I got a death-threat letter once from some crazy person, just saying he didn’t like what I did on “Update.” He said, “How you became so unfunny, I’ll never know, but your days are numbered. I’m going to put a bullet in your big fat head.” Well, for about a week after that, I went around asking people if they thought I had a big fat head.

VICTORIA JACKSON:

I was always trying to figure out a way to make fun of the news, but I just never fit into the news. Then Christine Zander came by and laid this
People
magazine on my desk, and it said, “I am not a bimbo,” with Jessica Hahn’s picture. And Christine goes, “Hey, this would be perfect for you.” And then she walked away, and I thought, “Write me the thing — you’re the writer.” But I went to my typewriter, because we all had our own offices, you know, but mine was mostly just empty all the time — I had pink and blue tulle stapled to the ceiling to look like clouds and I used the phone a lot to call long distance because it was free — but I thought, “I am not a bimbo,” and in like ten minutes, I typed up the whole song.

But Lorne didn’t put it in the show. And I met with him and said, “Lorne, everybody loved it.” And he goes, “I don’t know. It shouldn’t be the blues.” I asked him, “Could it be in if I changed the melody?” And he said, “Uhhh, go talk to Cheryl.” So I went to see Cheryl, who was the piano player in the band. I told her Lorne wanted more of a pop sound, and she changed the melody.

Then I did it and everyone loved it. It was the Sting–Steve Martin show. I couldn’t believe that a song I wrote was actually not only on national TV but that Sting and Steve were watching me, and it was perfect. At the party afterwards I could tell everyone was like loving it. And then it was in the paper the next day. The
Wall Street Journal
had an article called “1987 — The Year of the Bimbo,” and they talked about all the bimbos in the news that year, like Donna Rice and Jessica Hahn, and they mentioned my song. So I framed it and it’s on the wall.

CAROL LEIFER:

There were two women on staff, me and Suzy Schneider, and she got fired in January. I’m used to boys-club situations. From starting in stand-up to any staff I worked on, women are always the minority, and I’m used to it and I’m very comfortable in that situation because I’ve never felt alienated. I’ve always felt welcomed by the men in those situations. It’s only when I’m in a situation where I don’t know the guys that I see the boys-club mentality.

LORNE MICHAELS:

The Turners’ big thing was “boys club,” and that was a very hard thing to overcome. There was an incident, I think, when from what I’ve heard described — I wasn’t there for it — I think Adam Sandler peed in a plant to make Downey laugh or something, and Bonnie Turner was disgusted by it — with, I’m sure, absolute justification. She was also, you know, a mother, and this all seemed to be wasting time. It was a natural complaint. And it was the end of a cycle: that it was a boys club and that women were not treated well.

VICTORIA JACKSON:

I was the first woman in the cast to get a lead in a movie —
Casual Sex?
And my poster was all over town. And we never talked about it, but I’m sure that was everyone’s goal. So that probably really bugged the rest of them, you know. No one ever said a word about it. It was invisible.

My theory is that men compete better than women. The men were competing against each other too, for lines, but when they compete and then the show is over, they pat each other on the back and have a beer. Women are much more vicious and scary. They don’t do that. And sometimes I actually thought the other women were going to try to poison my coffee and kill me. If I had a really good joke in a sketch that got a huge laugh and was like a really great moment that would be repeated for all eternity — as in the “Big Pill” sketch, where I got this huge golden nugget of a great moment — it got mysteriously taken away from me. And I was like, “Why don’t I have a line all of a sudden? It got a huge laugh at dress rehearsal.”

They weren’t nice to me. Maybe they were jealous or something.

JAN HOOKS:

I had a huge ego. I just loved anybody that wanted me to show my stuff. I will do it. Oh man, let me go out there and show my stuff. And in my midtwenties, it kind of hit that it wasn’t a hobby anymore, that it was my vocation, that I had to do this in order to live. And that shaded it in a whole different way. It made me afraid, you know.

Frankly I kind of miss those silly years of youth, where you’re all ego and you just want to get out there and show your stuff. But now, I don’t know. I’m in therapy.

NORA DUNN,
Cast Member:

I hadn’t been to church in years, but when I got the part on
Saturday Night Live
, I went right to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and just wept, because it was monumental. It really came out of the blue. I’d never even considered in my head that I was ever going to be on television.

No one takes you under their wing at
Saturday Night Live.
There are no wings. I was also shocked that it was so hard for the writers to write for women.

JON LOVITZ:

I think that Nora Dunn got a lot of her stuff on because of her relationship with Lorne. She would get everything on. I thought that was the reason, and a lot of other people thought that was the reason. Then she would complain: “The show’s against women.” She got all of her stuff on — almost all of it. She had her own writer hired for her, Christine Zander. And then she would say how tough it was for women and stuff. I just was like, what are you talking about?

She fought with a lot of people. She fought with me the first year. And then the second year she started again, and I said, “I’m not going through this with you for another year.” She would pick a fight. She fought with everybody. And then one time, one of the funniest things was seeing Dana with her. It was Dana’s first year, and I go, “You’ll see.” He asked me, “What are you talking about?” And then they did this
Star Trek
thing, or maybe it was a Church Lady. And he and Nora were just screaming at each other.

One of the funniest things was seeing her and Terry Sweeney both dressed as Diana Ross or Nancy Reagan — and the two of them screaming at each other over who gets to play which women.

VICTORIA JACKSON:

Nora told us the first day I was there that she had a close relationship with Lorne. I’m not spreading gossip, since she actually told everyone herself — probably to intimidate us. I don’t respect people who do that. I just went, “Oooh.”

We had this meeting and one of the producers asked us what was wrong with the show. And everyone was supposed to say something, but no one was saying anything. And it was all of us sitting on the floor like high school or kindergarten or whatever. And the door was shut and she said, “Okay, come on,
something’s
wrong with the show.” Because there was a lot of tension and fighting and anger and stuff. And finally I go, “Okay, I’ll say it in one sentence. You really want to know?” And then I felt like I was Robert De Niro — “You really want to know?” Like, “You talkin’ to me?” I repeated it three times to build up the courage to tell the truth.

So then I was shaking, and I stood up and told everyone that what was wrong with the show was those two women — I pointed to Nora and Jan — and all the things they did bad: They didn’t cooperate in sketches and they slammed doors in people’s faces and back-bite and backstab and all that, you know. And then there was like silence and no one said anything. And so they both got up, really slowly, and walked out of the room. And then I said to the others, “Thanks a lot for standing up for me.” Because everyone agreed, but no one said anything. And Dana goes, “You didn’t hear anyone disagreeing, did you?” And everyone burst out laughing. And so then, after that, they were afraid of me and they didn’t mess with me anymore. I mean, it was weird. It was kind of like you got rewarded for being mean.

TERRY TURNER:

Victoria ended up standing on a chair and said Nora was a bitch. And she turned to Jan and said, “And you, you’re the devil.” So this explosive meeting where everyone got together to discuss how we could make our work situation better just got immediately crazy.

There was more backstage melodrama to come. When vulgar macho comic Andrew Dice Clay was booked to host
Saturday Night Live,
cast member Nora Dunn found his act so politically incorrect, so antifeminist, that she refused to appear on the same television program with him.
SNL
was making headlines again — and not loving it.

RICK LUDWIN,
NBC Vice President for Late Night:

I will admit to a professional mistake when Lorne first said to me, “What do you think, Andrew Dice Clay is being offered to us.” Andrew Dice Clay was then the hottest thing in comedy, and my reaction was yeah, we should do it. I knew he was controversial, but
Saturday Night Live
had been no stranger to controversy over the years, and frankly, controversy can help ratings. So my reaction was, “Let’s do it.” Lorne obviously has the final say and agreed to do it, and it was only after that that I caught Clay’s concert film on HBO or someplace. And after I saw it, I thought, “Oh my God, we’re going to catch far more heat than I anticipated.” Because I didn’t realize just how misogynistic his act was and is.

On the night of the show, the network broadcast standards people insisted that
Saturday Night Live
be put on a delay so that if Andrew Dice Clay said something or did something that needed to be cut, it could be cut via seven-second delay or whatever it needed to be. Nowadays, you can do that electronically and it is a much, much easier method of delaying the video and the audio, but in those days it was still a matter of having one reel of tape on one machine recording the program and then literally the tape sort of going down to the floor of the tape room and back up to a second machine that would play it back. And Lorne was very wary of that system, because you just never knew; it was too untested and unreliable.

As it turned out, there was no point in the show where the censors wanted to cut anything, but because of the technical nature of this thing, this sort of jury-rigged system, the video got screwed up, and Lorne vowed never again. Whatever the circumstances, he would never allow that sort of tape delay on
Saturday Night Live.

Saturday Night Live
is
live
live. If someone were to say “fuck,” it would go out over the air. At least the East Coast of America would hear it. They would make a repair for the West Coast.

BOB ODENKIRK:

Lorne waits until the last second and then he picks whoever’s hot. He and Jim Downey picked Andrew Dice Clay, and I don’t think they knew who he was or what he did. I don’t think they’d ever heard his act. And so they were shocked.

NORA DUNN:

I didn’t hear about Andrew Dice Clay hosting until Monday. I was very familiar with his work. He had a routine about sticking a woman’s head into the toilet, fucking her up the ass, and then telling her to make him some eggs. Where’s the joke?

VICTORIA JACKSON:

I think the Andrew Dice Clay thing was totally a publicity stunt on Nora’s part. We’d had other comics that degraded women. Like Sam Kinison. Sam made fun of Jesus Christ and although I’m a Christian, I still went to work, because my contract wasn’t based on, “I come to work if I approve of the host.” If Nora’s passionate platform of life is women’s rights, she was meaner to me than anyone in my life, and I’m a woman, so obviously she doesn’t really love women.

LORNE MICHAELS:

I came back on a Sunday. Nora Dunn announces to the press that she’s not doing the show. It would have been nice if she’d called me. Already it was like a circus. It all seemed so out of whack. The reason I got so furious and stubborn about it was, “Wait a minute. You haven’t seen what he’s done yet. You’re just assuming that we’re going to put him on in a full embrace.” I was on
Nightline
the night before the show and some woman said something about Hitler and the Holocaust, and I went, “Whoa. Just a minute. How did we jump to the Holocaust? Because the Holocaust is really a giant thing, and we’re here talking about a comedian with a bad act. And we haven’t even done anything with him yet.”

My sympathies were with him. One of the things you’ll find is consistent from the beginning to now is that we’ve always obeyed the rules of hospitality. You don’t invite somebody to your house to piss on him. My point is that this person has put themselves in your hands, they’re completely vulnerable, the show only works if they look good, so why would you have anybody over that you don’t like? What — because you need the ratings? It doesn’t make any sense. He was completely vulnerable.

Nora painted herself into a corner, I think. We’re not one big happy family, you’ve probably figured that out. That said, everybody plays by a set of rules.

NORA DUNN:

To me, Andrew Dice Clay hosting was the pinnacle of everything that upset me about the show. I still feel that it’s a black mark that they endorsed him and let him walk through that door.

Anyway, I talked to a couple people at the show, told them I wasn’t going to do the show, and then I made a statement. My brother had given me the name of a friend of his who was with the Associated Press, and he said, “You’d better just cover yourself here.” So I made my statement to the guy, and he told me he wouldn’t release it unless I wanted him to. I thought by Wednesday it would all be resolved and they would just tell him, “We’d rather you don’t do the show.” Then the reporter called me back to say that another statement had come out of
Saturday Night Live
saying that I wasn’t asked back for next year, and that I was disgruntled, that I was doing this because I thought I was being fired — which was a complete falsity. So we released my statement because of the other statement. I think Lorne did the
SNL
statement and I was very hurt by it. I felt betrayed.