Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (72 page)

TRACY MORGAN,
Cast Member:

I didn’t watch the show after Eddie Murphy left. That’s how my community is. We stopped watching basically after Eddie left. He was like the blackest thing on TV then. Now everybody has a sitcom. So I don’t know if I even want to do prime time after this. But I love doing
Saturday Night Live
. It’s late-night. It’s live, baby. It’s like Jackie Gleason. Once you do this show, you’ve made TV immortality. I’m going to be on TV the rest of my life. My grandkids will be able to see this. They’ll have the marathon on cable on Thanksgiving, the
Saturday Night Live
marathon, and Daddy will be on it.

PAULA PELL:

We have a lot of two-person sketches as opposed to big ensembles of early days. I think it’s because of the way we write. We go into little offices with one or two people and someone will have an idea for just one character. I’ve written some pieces with lots of people in them, but it’s hard sometimes if the piece is about a certain character. You have only five minutes to do the sketch and now you have somebody that has to be the center of it. Which is why I think we have a lot of talk shows and a lot of presentational things where it’s like, “Hi, I’m My Character.”

HORATIO SANZ,
Cast Member:

I used to watch it when I was eight. In Chicago. My brothers used to watch it. They shared a room and I’d sneak in and watch it with them. I’ve kind of always in the back of my mind wanted to do it. It had been a dream of mine since I was little. Then in high school you kind of think maybe it’s a crazy dream. At one point I toyed with the idea of being in the CIA, but I think you have to join the army first, unless you’re really smart. Then my brother started acting in college and I’d go see his plays and it kind of made it more like something I could see. I thought, “Oh, it’s more tangible.” So I started doing that. I quit college when I started doing improv and I really figured that’s what I wanted to do. I was at Colombia College in Chicago. I went to film and television school. And I figure that too is another thing you have to be really good at. If you want to work in the crew, you have to be really good. And I wasn’t.

I was in Second City. Everybody would hang out at night, drinking and doing bits. That made it hard to wake up early and make class. Fourteen of us auditioned that year for
SNL
. I’ve auditioned all my life for things, and even when I’ve gotten stuff, I didn’t really give it my all. Like I auditioned for the Roseanne sketch show and
In Living Color.
And I never really gave it my all. I kind of just fucked around. I guess the reason was I didn’t want those other shows, I wanted to wait for this show. I just prepared for this audition really well — more than anything I’ve ever done. I figured this is my shot and I didn’t want it to be like one of those situations where you mess it up and you’re like, “Oh well, there will be something else. If I don’t get the show at least I can say I did the best I could.” They wanted to fly me out the day before; I wanted them to fly me out the week before so I could get acclimated with the city and practice my audition piece. So I went early, put myself in a different hotel, and I just ran my piece, over and over.

I was told by people that I knew on the show, “They don’t laugh at auditions. So don’t be thrown by it. Keep doing your job.” So then when I did hear laughter, that helped me out. I’m thinking, “Oh, this is going better than it normally does.” And then I kind of felt really good about the audition. Even if I didn’t get the show, I would have felt good about it. And then you go into these meetings, like, “Oh, it’s almost done. You have to meet Lorne.” So then you’re just waiting. And then you meet Lorne and he goes, “You did good. We liked you. I think we’d like to have you on the show.” But he doesn’t say you’re hired. He goes, “Okay, you did good. We’re going to bring you out. We’re going to bring you out to New York.” You kind of want to hear that you’re hired. But he doesn’t tell you. So I said, “Should I tell my parents I have to move to New York?” And he goes, “Yeah. Tell them you have to move to New York — but don’t tell them you’ll be on the show.” I guess what that means is that having the job somehow doesn’t mean you’re going to be around in the show.

MOLLY SHANNON:

After NYU drama school, I moved to Los Angeles. I was auditioning for TV pilots and some commercials and stuff but couldn’t really catch a break. There were a lot of young girls my age who were getting pilots, but I wasn’t. So I thought, “I’m just going to focus on writing my own show and developing my own characters and improvising.” A couple years before I got hired I sent my tape to them, when they hired Ellen Cleghorn, but they didn’t respond to my tape, so I just went back and worked on my show and kept writing and developing more characters. This guy Rob Muir and I put together a two-person show called the Rob and Molly Show, and we did that for a couple of years in Los Angeles.

My agent called me and he was like, “Marci Klein is coming to your show — put it together!” I did a show just for her. When I auditioned for
Saturday Night Live
, the person who was having the auditions for Lorne told me, “Whatever you do, please don’t do that Mary Katherine Gallagher character. You’ll never get hired. Lorne won’t like that, he’ll think it’s disgusting and dirty.” Yeah, she said it was such a disgusting, dirty little character that Lorne wouldn’t like it and “whatever you do, don’t do that!” For some reason, she just didn’t think it was right. I don’t want to say her name. But I’ll never forget that lady.

TRACY MORGAN:

You know when I first saw Lorne Michaels? I was working at Yankee Stadium, before I got into show business. It’s where I met my wife fourteen years ago. I used to see Lorne Michaels go in Gate 4 every day. I was selling T-shirts and all that. I was a vendor at Yankee Stadium. Now look where I’m at. It was so ironic that I met Lorne Michaels like that. And now years later, he’s my boss and I’m working on his show. I didn’t know him. I was a kid from the ghetto, trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents.

HORATIO SANZ:

One prevailing frustration is kind of like not knowing where you’ll be the same time next year. But I guess a lot of show business is like that. Another reason is sometimes you start thinking you deserve something. You can fall into a situation where you think, “That sucks, I got screwed.” But there are so many other factors involved in the show. You have to not get too high with the good and not too low with the bad — to kind of be rational about it. Because whether the host likes something could affect whether it’s on the show. Ultimately it’s not our show. Lorne’s the producer. It’s his show. He’ll be here for as long as he wants. Some stay longer than others, but it’s not our show. It’s a shared thing. You have to take those frustrations. Things usually swing around. Like if you have a good week, you’ll have a better one next week.

CHRIS KATTAN:

My parents are Zen Buddhists, but that’s pretty much the least crazy religion, it’s not even a religion really. I had a pretty normal childhood; my parents divorced when I was two and then I lived with my mother and stepfather. My mother left my dad for another man, who was also at the Zen Center thing, but they were friends with people like Leonard Cohen and things like that. We moved to a place called Mount Baldy that was in a mountain, a very secluded area. I lived there from like age four to twelve and I think I went a little crazy up there. I think I really did, because there was nothing to do. I mean, you’re in a mountain, and I guess kids should be around other kids. Like at age eight, nine, somewhere around there, they’re supposed to be around other kids. And I was not. I mean, except for school. I was a shy kid and I didn’t do very many sports and I used to have crushes on somebody every week. I started getting obsessed with other people a little bit — just their personalities. I’d do a lot of observing, but observing while talking with them and stuff like that. I used to get crushes on women like once every three months, a different one. I would never, ever kiss them or anything, because I was not that guy in school, but I would follow them around. That obsession helped me create. It’s almost like I started creating for that person — to get in their good graces, in a weird way. I don’t know what I’ll do when I get married.

TINA FEY:

The seventies and the twenty-first century are just so different. There’s no drugs and there’s no sex at the show now. I would have been terrified if I was here back in the old days.

MAYA RUDOLPH,
Cast Member:

We’re certainly a much cleaner, healthier generation than past generations. Everybody goes to the gym now — except for me. People are eating right and taking care of themselves and not smoking and not doing drugs. I’m being very general, but it’s definitely a reflection of the time and the culture we’re living in. To me, it’s certainly boring compared to the
Saturday Night Live
of yore. We always make jokes about “I would have died if I’d been here in the ’70s. I just wouldn’t have made it.” And then I also sometimes wish for those days, because I wish I was around when everybody was sleeping with each other. It just sounds like a lot more fun.

CHERI OTERI:

I think some people in the cast have fun crushes on other people, but nothing serious. I guess we’re kind of boring — no romances, no drugs. I had an audition once with somebody who used to work here. He’s very, very big in the business now. And as soon as I went in for the audition, he went, “Hey, you guys still doing coke over at
SNL
?” Because back when he was here, he was doing it. What
are
we doing, for crying out loud? Oh yeah. Thinking up characters.

Believe me, we’re not catered to here. You go to L.A., you walk into offices for a meeting or something and they ask, “Would you like a Snapple?” Here we have our refrigerators locked. They lock our refrigerators or they cut back on our beverage consumption. And a lot of us just wait until they have to make popcorn for Lorne and then we all go in like scavengers and eat the popcorn.

KEN AYMONG,
Supervising Producer:

Actually it was probably me — not some network executive — who gave the order to cut down on the food consumption. There’s no question about it: I always look at the financial perspective of the show. I want it to go on forever. I look at the show from a variety of perspectives, and budgetary is certainly one of them. And every so often you sit down and look at it — like, how are you spending your money? It had to do with dinners. Where it became an issue was where I went to the writers and said, “One of the nights has to go away where the entire writing staff is being fed.” Or something along those lines. “One of them has to go, and you have to make a choice.” And it turned out to be Wednesday. So I’m going to plead guilty to that.

WARREN LITTLEFIELD:

Literally, there was one analysis where somebody said, “You know, villages could survive for quite some time on the weekly food budget for this show.” Just insane amounts of stuff. We’d say, “Well, maybe you don’t need that after-show party,” and they’d go, “We can’t do the show if we can’t have the party.” What everyone goes through that week — I think part of the richness of the experience that everyone feels they are doing something so great, so special, so wonderful, that bonds everybody together, is those after-hour parties.

But the food budget was a problem. Okay? Contrast this to Dick Wolf on
Law and Order.
In order to secure a renewal of
Law and Order
, Dick Wolf finally came in and said to me, “We no longer have soda cans on the set.” And I go, “Who gives a shit?” And Dick says, “No, no, you have to understand. We’ve been through every budget item, and a can of soda is more expensive than the half-gallon jugs of soda. Now a glass of Diet Coke is poured from the jug by the glass because it’s cheaper than cans of soda. That’s how aggressive we’ve been in order to make this new deal to renew
Law and Order
to continue on NBC.”

That was the kind of rigorous financial battle that had gone on for a prime-time asset. Now we had this asset in
SNL
, but the dollars were spiraling out of control and we were losing money on it.

CHRIS KATTAN:

This is a really healthy cast. There are no drug problems. Maybe some people occasionally smoke pot, but there’s no heavy drug use, and no heavy drinkers either. When I came here, I heard a lot of Chris Farley stories and stuff like that. And you’re like, “Wow, really?” But now there’s not too much unhealthiness. Everyone’s really healthy. I mean, we all have our neuroses, obviously, or we wouldn’t be here, and we wouldn’t have characters that are so crazy. That’s where our neurosis pops out most likely. I wonder — in the old days, you know, did they perform high? I’m sure I’ve heard that Belushi was all coked-up when he did this or that — you know, blah, blah, blah. But I just wouldn’t be able to function. And I would not want, twenty years from now, to look back and go, “God, I was so coked-up doing Monkey Boy, I forgot what it was like.” I’m glad I’ve done everything sober.

JIMMY FALLON:

I’m twenty-seven and I look thirty. Because I don’t sleep anymore. I feel like I’m getting older fast. That’s one thing they don’t tell you about the job. You hear stories from other cast members, like, “Hey man, good luck. Hang in there, ’cause this place will kill you. One time I got so angry that I threw a phone out the window.” And I’m thinking, I’d have to be mad at the phone company or the phone or something to throw a phone out the window. I’m on the seventeenth floor. Why would I throw anything out the window? I think I’m more humble than that. I’m like, “At least I have a phone!” What made anyone that angry that they got that mad?