Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (81 page)

JAMES DOWNEY:

I think these days Lorne probably takes the network’s calls more. I think Lorne’s personal tastes are probably much closer to performers than to pure writers. To the extent that the network doesn’t agree with the writing staff, Lorne probably agrees on the whole more with the network.

ANDY BRECKMAN:

The problem now is in that room. It’s who is or isn’t standing up to Lorne, who is maybe taking him on when his instincts are a little low-brow or, you know, too middle-of-the-road, or too safe — who is defending the conceptual writers’ pieces in that room. You can almost see by looking at the show what’s happening in that room, the room where they do the read-through on Wednesday nights. You can just see it. What’s happening, from the little I’ve seen of the show, is that nobody is defending the smarter pieces, because there always are smarter pieces being written. The read-throughs, by and large, have a great variety. They are, all of them, fifty sketches long. And there’s a lot of sketches that are great ideas but could use a little work to make them better, and with a little nurturing over the course of Thursday rewrite could be very strong. But there has to be somebody in the room championing those pieces. And I can just tell, just looking at the show now, that there’s nobody standing up to Lorne.

CHRIS PARNELL:

We find out each summer around the first of July if we’re coming back or not. So in the summer of 2001, when July first rolled around,
SNL
asked the actors waiting for news about their contracts if they could hold out for a couple more weeks because Lorne’s mom had passed away, and they asked for time for him to deal with that. And we’re all like, okay, fine, whatever. So two weeks go by and then they ask for another extension of another week. Meanwhile, I find out they’re auditioning new people for the cast, so I got in touch with the other people who were on the chopping block — Horatio, Maya, and Rachel — and then I heard Maya got brought back and Rachel and Horatio also. And then finally I talked to my manager, and he said, “Lorne’s not bringing you back.” So it was a pretty big shock. I thought I was doing all right there. I really thought we’d all come back, but it was me that didn’t.

I gave up my apartment in New York and moved back to L.A. I kept hearing that I might be coming back, and finally I just told my manager to quit telling me these tales, because he would talk to Lorne and he’d say to me, “Lorne says he might be bringing you back,” and I’d get my hopes up and nothing would happen and I’d be disappointed and depressed again. So I said, “Don’t tell me anything else unless they want to bring me back for real.”

Finally, around the end of February 2002, I was about to test for this pilot and found out that day that
SNL
wanted me to come back for the rest of the season. We were hoping to get a guarantee for the next season too, but we couldn’t get that. So I just finally decided that I love the job and I didn’t feel ready to go when I was let go. Lorne apologized for putting me through this waiting thing and this sort of limbo situation. He said he wasn’t trying to cause me any more pain. The only reference he made was to the budget, that it was a budget issue, and that they’d hired four new cast members. He just blamed it on the budget.

One of the things that made being fired bearable was that there was such a collective outpouring of shock from the writers and other cast members that seemed really sincere. It made me feel like I wasn’t just sort of living in some fairyland where I thought everything was okay and it wasn’t.

JON STEWART:

As much as I’d like to think I understand television production and understand what it takes to put on a show, I was absolutely knocked out by how they put that show on, just knocked out. The ability of each fiefdom to know their shit, do their shit, and execute at the level they execute was remarkable — really, really impressive to watch. It’s unprecedented, it really is.

You don’t really think about what effect your presence on the show is going to have. The shit comes all so fast, you don’t have time to think about reactions, and if you start thinking about it, about the effect, you’re sunk. All you can think about intuitively is, “That looks good, yeah, that’s funny, I’ll go with that, or that seems a little too didactic.” You’ve got to be into the thing. If you start thinking like, “Maybe that’ll get picked up by the wire services,” then you’re fucked.

MAYA RUDOLPH:

I have a hard time sleeping. I drive myself crazy with worry and I make myself sick with fear from everything in the world. There are certain weeks where I’m frustrated here and certain weeks that I’m mad at myself because I didn’t write what I should have written or I’ve shot myself in the foot. I think if anything, my biggest thing here and my hardest job to get through is just my own personal fear of not being funny and trying to learn how to write. I never really aspired to be a writer, and here I am writing every week on my favorite show in the world. I make myself sick with worry every week about my writing.

But if I start to take any of this stuff personally or worry about how this is working or how much I’m on, I’m going to drive myself nuts. I have to be here far too many years of my life for that. I don’t want to be unhappy here.

I’m such a people pleaser that I’m sure I wouldn’t let anybody see all the things that are going on in my brain.

I say pretty nasty things in private. I’m a very foul-mouthed young lady. I have a really wonderfully dirty sense of humor. I love really dirty things. You can ask anyone and they’ll tell you the same. I get pissed off, but I’m such a Chatty Kathy that everyone ends up hearing about it. I get mad when I’m not in the show or when I fuck up. If I fuck up, I shake and I get embarrassed. For whatever reason, I get nervous here but I don’t get that nervous. I get nervous like if my dad’s here or if there’s a guy I think is cute and is watching the show. I don’t get nervous because it’s
Saturday Night Live.
I get excited because it’s
Saturday Night Live.

AMY POEHLER:

I’m much too egotistical and insular about my own performance to be able to look at the show as a whole. I do know that everybody who writes and performs here I find really, really talented. I’ve learned that this show belongs to everybody, and everybody feels very entitled to talk about when they don’t like it and when they do. And everybody likes different things.

Whether the show is doing well or not is the last thing I try to think of, because it just gets too much in your head when you’re trying to write. I’ve never watched old repeats of
SNL
because I can’t bear it. I mean reruns of older seasons of stuff, because if the scene’s funny I’m jealous that I didn’t think of it. It’s too intimidating. I just can’t compare myself. I love it so much I can’t even watch it.

May 18, 2002, marked the final show of
Saturday Night Live
’s twenty-seventh season. Winona Ryder was the host, using
SNL
as her “coming out” after being largely reclusive following an arrest for shoplifting. She had been a good soldier throughout the week of rehearsals; she didn’t throw any fits, stage any walkouts, or complain about the sketches. If it weren’t for some whispers amongst the staff that she had set her sights on Jimmy Fallon, her hosting week would have been almost boring.

Overshadowing Ryder’s appearance was the fact that this was to be the last show for Will Ferrell as a cast member. After seven years, he had decided it was time to move on, despite the fact that Michaels and the rest of the producers and cast wanted him to stay. Much of the show was being designed as a final tribute to Will and his many characters — Alex Trebek, the professor in the “Lovers” sketch, even Neil Diamond.

An hour before dress rehearsal, Neil Diamond called on Michaels’s line, and when the assistant said there was a guy on the phone claiming to be Neil Diamond, those sitting around shouted in unison, “Hang up,” believing it to be a crank call. Minutes later, when coproducer Marci Klein entered, it turned out she’d been trying to reach him, and it had been the real Neil returning her call. Klein called Diamond back at his hotel and talked him into making an appearance on the show while Will was doing his Diamond parody. To listen to her pitch was to listen to someone who clearly had done this many times before. “It’ll be great,” she told him. “We’ll send a car for you, and you can spend a few minutes with Will figuring out what you want to do.” Klein, along with producer Steve Higgins and Michaels, had already decided they didn’t want to surprise Ferrell; besides, he already knew that the real Alex Trebek was coming in to help finish out the
Jeopardy
sketch. Diamond agreed, and Klein directed her staff to pick him up and gather Will and anyone else involved in the Diamond number at home base at ten-thirty, between dress and air.

With videotaped good-byes from the cast closing out the show, all that remained for the night was the season-ending party, held downstairs at 30 Rock. There was the usual mass gathering of New York chic, and the traditional more private room for Michaels, the cast, writers, and VIP’s. Donald Trump stood around and watched, while Yankees pitcher David Wells and his wife hung out with former Yankee ace David Cone. Music blared, many danced, but most of all, people seemed to be taking a deep breath. There would be no pressures Monday to invent material for another host, just the promise of summer. Ana Gasteyer would be having a baby, Jimmy Fallon was running off to do a movie for Woody Allen, Tina Fey was writing a movie for Paramount, and so forth.

WILL FERRELL:

We can’t use the word “graduated.” I said that to Lorne once and he said, “I hate that word.” On my last night, the biggest overriding feeling really was that of it being very surreal. It was emotional at times and then strange in the sense that I had so much to do, and was moving around so much from sketch to sketch that it didn’t even really hit me until the very end. And even then I tended to focus on how something played better at dress than it did on air, like I did every week. It got to me more after the show; it was sort of a “retirement party meets a wedding reception.” There was a sense of accomplishment but a sense of I was glad it was over. I will miss most the obvious things — the personal relationships and the people. I’ll miss most the moments you’ll never see: the goofing around during the blocking of sketches on Thursday and Friday. Those were the parts of the week that were the most fun for me. That seventeenth floor has the same feeling of living in a dorm, except that everybody is doing comedy, and I liked that feeling.

What I’ll miss the least for sure is the crazy hours, especially Tuesday night. There really is no reason why we have to come in late on Tuesday and work late and write sketches until seven A.M. It’s a remnant of the coke days, I think. It was fun at first in a weird sort of way, but after seven years of doing it, you have to say, “Wait a minute — why do we do it that way?”

What I hope to do now is establish a career in features; that would be great. My dream of all dreams would be to do what Tom Hanks and Jim Carrey have been able to do: make the transition somewhere down the line from doing comedy to dramatic parts in the movies.

On May 21, 2002 — a few days after that final show of the season — about 150 members of the
Saturday Night Live
family, past and present, gathered in Studio 8H to pay tribute to Audrey Peart Dickman, one of the show’s producers from its beginnings in 1975 to 1993, who had died the previous summer. Dickman occupied a special place in the hearts of the show’s cast and crew for more than two decades; thus the occasion became a rare moment when the show’s past and present met in the show’s home studio.

Chevy Chase chatted amicably with Bill Murray, old animosities gone with the wind, or rather with the passing years. Old-timer Dan Aykroyd joked with new-timers Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey and Horatio Sanz. Such veteran writers as Rosie Shuster, Marilyn Suzanne Miller, Ann Beatts, Herb Sargent, and Alan Zweibel showed up, like graduates at homecoming.

Lorne welcomed everyone to 8H, made very brief remarks, said he had difficulty speaking about Audrey, and left the stage. Murray, among those memoralizing Dickman, recalled how he used to pick her up in the air and spin her over his head. “She was very light,” he said.

Murray said the date marked another milestone, the thirteenth anniversary of Gilda Radner’s death. “Audrey’s gone, Gilda’s gone, Belushi’s gone,” Murray said, “and there’s so many other people that should have gone first. A lot of them are in this room today.” Much laughter from the crowd. “Anybody here that wants to admit that they should have died ahead of Audrey?” The question was rhetorical and facetious, but a few people raised their hands.

Michaels stood at the back of the room during the speeches, inescapably and perpetually, if remotely, patriarchal. It is a family, after all — a family of gifted misfits and brilliant oddballs — and it comes together now and then to remember, to celebrate, to mourn — and, no matter how solemn the occasion, to laugh.

ALAN ZWEIBEL,
Writer:

Emotions are things that I’ve never really seen Lorne easily verbalize. I was hoping, hoping that there would be something emotional that he would say at Audrey’s memorial. Brad Grey, like many others, said it’s too bad he has so much trouble emoting. You just assume over the course of years, especially when people have kids, that there’s a softening, that there’s some sort of emotional acknowledgment, you know. I guess some people it doesn’t work with. I can’t speak about Lorne authoritatively, I just don’t know anymore.

I live in California, so I hadn’t seen a lot of those people and combinations of people in many years, and I was affected by it in a very, very profound way. In a wonderful way. I was happy that I had these kinds of feelings. My mind immediately went to, “Jesus, if Lorne dies, are we still going to be able to get together like this? Who’s going to throw the party?”