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This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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Look at how fast, we re almost halfway through the year.
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Crazy, yeah.
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Are you proud of what you ve done in 2024 so far?
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I mean, you always want to do more, right?
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Life goes so fast, David.
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It s important to take a moment to celebrate your wins, make adjustments for the rest of the year.
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Listen, therapy is the way to go.
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This is online.
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It s a great idea.
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Very convenient.
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It helps you.
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You ve got coping skills, how to set boundaries.
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I mean, there s so many things you can do here to be a better version of yourself.
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You can probably always sharpen it.
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Yeah, I mean, I had a therapist in Portland and I would commute and that was a pain.
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That s a long drive.
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I know it was 1300 miles one way, but you know, it s good therapist.
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But yeah, this one you can mix and match and your thoughts kind of control you and you want to master them.
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David, Seth Meyers.
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That s right.
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Good guy.
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Seth Meyers on the show this week.
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Seth Meyers was a little after us.
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But I hosted when he was the head writer.
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That s right.
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And it was great to write with him.
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He s really sharp.
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He s just a very nice guy, very bright, articulate.
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Young man.
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He is very articulate and he seems like he has his act together.
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Worked with some really good people and had some funny stories about a lot of them and really good inside baseball about SNL and his own talk show.
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And he s done a comedy special or two.
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He s done a pretty well for himself, this kid.
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And if you look at his time on SNL, which we go over his timeline, he really bridged a lot of casts and he was,
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Really?
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He was there during that.
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There was sort of, I think other people refer to it as the murderous row, but he was a really good guy to have around because he was, he was around all those years, either writing for everybody performing himself or doing update.
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And he did it solo for many years as well.
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So he has a big SNL career.
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So this was a good, uh, good guest for us.
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And, and we know him.
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And I had fun reliving a story that I forgot about that when I hosted that we were in a sketch with Amy Poehler.
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Did we talk about that with Seth?
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Which one?
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Maybe we talked about with Amy, but Seth was the director of that.
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He played the director.
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We were in a movie, me and Amy, and Seth is the fake director in the sketch.
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Anyway, I don t wanna give it all away.
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Let s just let them hear it.
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I know, I said something that Greg won t be able to use, but it was on a Zoom for this thing up at the other house, and I said, yeah, I can do stuff from up here.
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Last week, I did Amy Poehler in the barn.
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It just sounded sick.
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That sounds good.
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You can cut that.
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I don t think anyone believes that, but it s fine.
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It s funny.
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Okay, so here s Seth, guys, and we just had a nice time with him.
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Seth, non sequitur theater.
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So I did a gig in West Virginia.
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Do you want a sound check?
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Well, I ll ask you in a second.
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Are you a sound check guy?
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So just make it sound really good.
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Jay Farrell was there the night before.
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So I said, just give me Jay s sound.
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Okay, go off mic, go out.
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And then just a huge slap back echo.
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And I m like, do I stop the show?
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But maybe it s the room, they can t.
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But that was so distracting because I would talk, but I couldn t really, it came back.
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And then it talks back to you?
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Is that what it is?
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Garbled, yeah.
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It s like an echo effect.
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Seth Meyers is our guest.
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Do you think that Dave Farrell likes a big slapback echo?
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Do you think that was on his writer?
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Uh, well, if you drop the echo and just go big slap back, I have no idea.
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No.
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You always, I always do a sound check for this very reason.
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It s so rare that it s a problem.
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I mean, Nate Bregazzi, all these, I don t do it either.
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Really?
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Well, I will, I will remember to ask, is there a slap back echo?
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Now you will, sure.
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In this theater.
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It s a combination of laziness and unprofessionalism on my end, but I just don t want to get there at three in the afternoon and go in and I m like, hello?
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And they re like, okay.
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Yeah, I wouldn t do three.
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But I would do, I try to show up earlier.
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If they say be there at 6.30, I m like, what about six for a sound check?
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Yeah, I wouldn t.
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Now, what are you looking for?
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How meticulous are you?
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Like a little more bass, a little more bass?
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Nothing.
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I have no taste at all about music or sound or lights.
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They asked me what for the lights.
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I 100% have your take on it, Dana, which is whatever the last guy had.
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But I just want to be there in case something.
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Right.
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And you want to be able to because people are coming in and a casino and you want to be able to kind of see them and comment, not brightly lit, but just a little light.
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Yeah.
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Anyway, but no, no, don t move on to the set yet.
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I think I learned a lot from what you do before a stand up show.
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So I m happy to talk about this.
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It s so riveting to the audience.
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So when I get on- They love this stuff.
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Here s another problem, Seth.
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You get on and there s like a fucking wind turbine on your side of your face.
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I go, was Beyonce here last?
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Because I don t want my hair blowing to the side and now I have cotton mouth.
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And I go, hey, can we turn off AC unit 104?
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And then no one, everyone already checked out.
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Once you re on stage, they all leave and go to smoke.
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Everyone on the crew.
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Okay, stand up story question.
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Have you ever mistakenly been chewing gum right before you go out and then you realize that you have bit your tongue or the side of your mouth and you are bleeding?
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Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome.
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And your mouth is bleeding.
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Anyone ever had that?
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No, I ve never had that.
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Seth, how many stand-up dates have you been consistently doing stand-up these last 20 years?
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Or on and off?
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Yeah, on and off.
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My special I taped pretty much right before the pandemic, so then it was good timing that I didn t have an act for the 18 months that nobody could do an act.
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And then I ve sort of started.
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after your name pops up in my world sometimes like if i was that that s what s here last week for the corporate data that s couldn t make it will you do it yeah yeah i hear a lot that you because again especially corporate things dana you hear about people bomb and i always hear that you have done very well when i ask who did it last year i like to always
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Don t you always go, how d they do?
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How d they do?
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That s what I say.
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First of all, they re very difficult.
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James Austin Johnson, the Trump extraordinaire and president, he called me recently because he was doing some for the first time.
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He was like, well, how do you do these?
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Because you re just playing to silence and they re having a steak dinner.
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So what i do is i go online i check the corporation and then i give a fake speech as if i m knowledgeable about their economic data and i think we can see growth in the third quarter i just do a lot of tricks but they love it they love they love you what about you that s i went to an event in new york i think lauren asked if
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Bill Hader and I would do it together.
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And so Bill was Stefan and I was me, and we did this charity event.
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And afterwards, Bill said, oh my God, we bombed.
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And I was lucky enough to know, oh no, that was great.
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For a charity event, we just crushed.
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For this, yes.
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Yes.
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I always come off, even if I bomb, I always go, wow, that was a great audience.
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I had a great time.
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Even if I m dead silent, you can hear me.
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And everyone looks, they kind of go, he thought it was good.
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He doesn t know.
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I do like to do a meet and greet.
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I have to, I like doing it after the show, because even if you thought it was rough, they will often say that was so much better than what we usually have.
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Right, oh yeah, we had this guy named not to be mentioned and it was awful.
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Seth, here s another trick, and then we re gonna talk about, I don t even know what, but when I get off, they go, you contractually have to do 50, let s say, or an hour.
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And you go, fine.
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And then it s bombing so badly, you get off at 51.
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I m supposed to do an hour.
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The first thing I say is, did I go too long?
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And they go, Oh, no, actually, I go, Oh, my God, thank God.
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I was like, I thought it was like an hour and a half.
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No, no, it was actually, it was a little short.
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Oh, thank you.
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Okay, good.
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And they re like, wait,
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I did because they don t have to pay you.
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Sometimes they get excited and they want your entrance to be, and I go, that only buys me 10 seconds.
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This is amazing.
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So it s a car show.
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They got me a go-kart and I m supposed to go through the audience.
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I go, it s not.
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And the music is like Metallica and the car.
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You know, and then the music comes down.
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I step out of the car and it s the biggest wall wall.
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Now, what do you come on to music?
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Ladies and gentlemen, do you come out, just walk out?
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I usually walk.
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They usually play.
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And again, I just have no taste for this.
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They ll sometimes just play like five seconds of the opening credits for for late night.
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I will say, and if any corporate planners are listening, nobody at a corporate event wants more than 45 minutes.
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And I know they want their money s worth and they think, give us an hour.
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Nobody at a corporate event.
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Oftentimes we re going on.
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And the next thing is they all get to have dinner and drinks together and talk to their colleagues.
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And it doesn t matter how red hot the comedian is.
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An hour is too long at a corporate event.
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I ve had in the early days, they d say 70 and a 10 minute meet and greet.
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And then it got down to some of them were 30 to 45 and like a half hour meet and greet.
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It became more about me being a museum piece at this point in my existence on the planet, so they want to get the picture with the guy from the early, early, late 70s.
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You re right, Seth.
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It s hard to say you re paying a lot, I m telling you.
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Even 30s a lot, but do 45.
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The last 15 will be horrifying, but you ll do it.
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And then, and they, all they want to do is, you re right.
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If they have something after, or they just want to talk, they re drinking.
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And if you re a surprise and they re like, at the end of your eight hour meeting, we have an extra hour tacked on of someone you, and they re like, I heard it was Gwen Stefani.
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And I walk out and they go, what the fuck?
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And then they go, oh, okay.
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And then I do it.
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And they re like, they all rushed to the bar.
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And it is true.
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You re right, David, because you want to say like, I m not I m not saying this because I m lazy.
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I it s only yes.
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It s out of my day.
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I can do it.
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I m just doing it for you and your people.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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They get up at six, the open bar s at five, they see me at 10.
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Anyway, we don t- I have a real question for Seth.
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Let s start the program.
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Ladies and gentlemen- Aside from what Seth, I have to say he looks great.
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And whatever you re doing on Zoom, I need to do it.
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I need to helicopter your team out.
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He looks tan, he s clear, I can hear him.
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I look like fuck pie.
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I don t know, I shouldn t even be on this Zoom.
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I, you got to have the camera up.
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We re going to talk later, but, but, but Seth has a little bit of scruff.
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Yeah.
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Let me ask you a question.
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So you ve just been for someone who s been working nonstop for 20 years at an extremely high level.
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So the strike hits.
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Yeah.
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Was this your longest break?
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I mean, you had pandemic breaks, but then there were zoom stuff, but this was probably your longest break in like 20 years or something.
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I mean,
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Yeah, definitely.
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Because the pandemic, we immediately went back to doing the show.
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So I was alone, but I was working.
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Yeah.
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Oh.
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And so this was the only thing that was close was the last strike, which was 100 days.
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And this was, you know, 100, almost 150.
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So this was nuts.
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The difference between this time and last time is I have three kids.
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So it didn t really feel like
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a break.
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I would say that my time was used very well.
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And I did try to get out and do shows because I liked being in front of an audience.
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But it was a very, very strange, long break from being also the entirety of my career has taken place in 30 Rock.
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So it was weird to not be in this building.
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How long do you, do you not, this is a good one.
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How long do you not tell, how long do you not tell your wife and kids there s a strike so you can just leave at a certain time in the day and just go to wherever you want?
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And then they finally go, wait, you re not even going to work anymore.
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You go, all right.
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I mean, I think I could have made it a full month before.
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Because certainly none of them watch the show.
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So it wouldn t have been that.
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That s great.
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Yeah.
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Are you amazed?
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Because I assume it s accelerated.
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I don t know what your childhood was like, but just how integrated the parent is with the child in modern parenting.
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I think it s just systemic and it s it s just environmental but yeah it s it s not like your dad or my dad there are five kids that we barely song do your yard work and get the hell out that kind of stuff everyone knows that but when you re home with.
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Three kids are they because you have three are they have an ecosystem of entertaining themselves.
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They re still a little young, but the two boys.
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So it s seven, five and two.
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And so the two.
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Oh, yeah.
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Yeah.
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They re they re kind of entertaining themselves a little bit.
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The it was both good and bad that the strike fell during the summer because it was good because, you know, obviously that s a better time to not be going to an office.
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And it was bad because they just didn t have school.
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So they were just around the whole time.
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And that s why I started multiple podcasts, just to have a reason to tell them to be quiet.
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Daddy s working.
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Oh, right now you have your podcast, you have you have one solo and then you have the five tenors.
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Yeah, so I do.
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I do one with my brother called Family Trips at the Myers Brothers.
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And yeah, then strike five, which will be wrapping up the strike basically ended because people collectively decided they didn t want our podcast to keep going.
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Who thought of the name?
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Because it does.
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It s it s pithy.
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I don t know what you would call strike force five.
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I mean, it is.
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I m going to guess all John Oliver.
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SPEAKER_00
No, it was Colbert.
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SPEAKER_00
I think it was Colbert.
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And it was originally just the name of our text chain that we started in the run up to the strike because we did want to make sure we were all on the same page knowing that it was likely to happen.
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And so that was the name of the text chain.
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And then Kimmel had the idea for the podcast.
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And we realized that it was we already had a very good name.
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SPEAKER_01
And you re the only 1230 in the bunch, right?
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I m the only 1230 in the bunch.
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SPEAKER_00
Also, thank you for saying 1230 when in reality now, I think it s 1237, which is even more embarrassing to say.
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SPEAKER_00
When you tell somebody you re on a show that starts at 1237, it sounds like- Why does that happen for the regular viewer?
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SPEAKER_00
I think it s about the affiliates and station breaks and stuff and the local news and all really thrilling things.
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But yeah, it s all gotten pushed back a little bit.
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I mean, when I m watching your stuff on YouTube and you have these gigantic amount of hits and stuff, it seems like, I mean, obviously it s looser at 12.30.
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If all things being equal, it seems better to be doing your show at that time.
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As far as more fun, I don t know the financial part of it, but it does seem just loose.
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That one hour later, you just got freedom, right?
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Well, yeah, I think it also helps that you re on after.
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SPEAKER_00
And I don t think that Jimmy Fallon s not having fun.
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SPEAKER_00
I think he s having a lot of fun, too.
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But I think the network s paying a great deal more attention to his show than our show.
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SPEAKER_00
And so that just gives you the freedom to do what you want, especially after.
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the COVID break where we didn t have an audience, we were just doing a show for almost 18 months without a live audience.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we kind of kept using those instincts as we got the audience back.
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SPEAKER_00
And so the show has been very loose and very fun to do.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s one of the reasons I, you know, didn t go back to wearing a suit is it just seemed like, oh, you know, I m going to let people know when they tune in that we re, we have a little bit
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more of a laid back vibe about what we re trying to get done here.
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SPEAKER_02
You re the Fetterman of the strike force.
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SPEAKER_00
I m the Fetterman.
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SPEAKER_00
I was the first guy there.
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SPEAKER_00
I was the first guy there.
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SPEAKER_00
Although Fetterman makes me look like I m in a tuxedo.
1
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So the stress of being the head writer at SNL and all that, and then when they approached you, you could tell, if you have a lorn, to do this show, you know, you re the host and is it four nights a week?
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Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
Is it easier or harder or you re still figuring out how compared to being the head writer at SNL and then being in a lot of sketches?
1
SPEAKER_00
I will say this was very hard when it started, but it s easier now because unlike SNL, where each week a different host comes in and completely changes the
1
SPEAKER_00
DNA of the week.
1
SPEAKER_00
We now every week we re trying to make our show and everybody here is sort of rowing in the same direction.
1
SPEAKER_00
Whereas the thing about SNL and especially being the head writer is it just never got easier.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think you maybe got a little bit better at it, but the headaches that would come up on any given week, you just couldn t get out in front of them.
1
SPEAKER_00
There was never a way to.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, make it a foolproof.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s almost impossible that it gets it stays as hard as it does, but it does.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and you re also, you feel like you re in service to an institution and you don t want to sort of besmirch its legacy.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you re working for Lorne, you know, having to see Lorne every day is just in general harder than not having to see Lorne every day, you know.
1
SPEAKER_02
Because he can be everywhere, giving notes to everything.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes, I mean, we re in a very nice position where I mean, I think also, you know, you guys have spoken of Schumacher, you know, with me and Schumacher working on the show, like we re two people that Lauren sort of turned to a lot in our tenure at SNL.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I think he has a lot of confidence in us.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so we don t have to he doesn t feel the need to check in with us on a day to day level.
1
SPEAKER_02
And you know how he thinks.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes, slowly.
1
SPEAKER_01
And how he talks.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
When I was there and you re the head writer, I just noticed, and I met with Jim Downey too, but you were just involved in every sketch basically, and overriding and doing, and just a funny little anecdote.
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SPEAKER_01
out from me when I was hosting earlier, I don t know if it was 98 or 2000, Tina was assigned to do church chat with me because Lauren will do church chat.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, he just tells you.
2
SPEAKER_01
All right.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then she would do the church lady when we were in the office writing.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then 10 years later, I m doing it.
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SPEAKER_01
You re going to help me with it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then you would do a church lady impression when you were writing jokes as a church lady.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I don t want to say who did it better.
2
SPEAKER_01
Mm hmm.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re both great.
2
SPEAKER_01
But that was you.
2
SPEAKER_01
You had a very good ear for the lady.
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SPEAKER_01
Let s put it that way.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was a real I mean, there are many surreal things that happen in your time at that show, especially if you re someone who grew up watching the show.
2
SPEAKER_00
But that is very high on the list.
2
SPEAKER_00
Spending that week with you where you know, not only do we get to work on a church chap, but also a Wayne s World.
2
SPEAKER_00
That was a real that was a real trip where I was definitely pinching myself the whole time.
2
SPEAKER_01
When you went back to host, did they have things they want you to do?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, I had a very different time at the show than you, Dana, in that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, you had your update segments and all that stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s about all I had.
2
SPEAKER_00
I felt, I will say, I have no proof except for how late they asked me.
2
SPEAKER_00
I do get the sense that someone dropped out.
2
SPEAKER_02
Fallout, boy.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and then, you know, because I was like, usually I feel like we knew the host before the Sunday night.
2
SPEAKER_00
Before, can you run over here and be in 30 sketches?
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SPEAKER_00
And I, you know, I was doing this show.
2
SPEAKER_00
We had to cancel a week of the show, which was no big deal.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I was very excited to host.
2
SPEAKER_00
I d been gone, I only think about three years, but there was literally nothing I did that anybody wanted to see me do again, other than update.
2
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, I did start as a cast member and sort of worked my way into being a writer and the guy on update.
2
SPEAKER_00
So they had already tried me in sketches and it had been a failed experiment.
2
SPEAKER_00
You went backwards.
2
SPEAKER_00
I felt for the writing staff the week I came in, who had to figure out a thing that had already been tried and not figured out.
2
SPEAKER_00
I had a wonderful... Did you just do an hour-long update?
2
SPEAKER_00
Did you come in as a feature player?
2
SPEAKER_00
Sorry, go ahead.
2
SPEAKER_02
What s that?
2
SPEAKER_02
He came in to host and just did an hour of updates.
2
SPEAKER_01
You ll do updates.
2
SPEAKER_01
Good night.
2
SPEAKER_01
You came in as a feature or a full-fledged cast member?
2
SPEAKER_00
No, I was a feature.
2
SPEAKER_00
I started with
2
SPEAKER_00
Amy Poehler, and then Dean Edwards and Jeff Richards were in my class and we were a normal.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we were featured.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was featured for two years and I had a real, either first or second summer, I had one of those like, they re not picking you up yet.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, one of those.
2
SPEAKER_02
Oh yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
I know that too.
2
SPEAKER_00
Where they basically, I mean, they are saying, they haven t decided on you yet.
2
SPEAKER_00
What they re gonna do is look at every other funny person.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re doing a tour of Second City, the improv.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, as long as they don t find one person they like more, you re good.
2
SPEAKER_01
And when did you accelerate?
2
SPEAKER_01
When did you take over the show, essentially?
2
SPEAKER_00
I will, I mean, I definitely benefited from Tina s departure, but I sort of, I would say really sort of gutted through the first five and a half, six years on the show.
2
SPEAKER_00
But when Tina left, and again, I was, you know, I wasn t at the rewrite table.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was just a cast member.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then Lauren called me in and asked me if I wanted to be a writing supervisor for Tina s last year.
2
SPEAKER_00
What does that mean?
2
SPEAKER_00
That s sort of like right underneath the head writer.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I ran a table.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was one of the people who ran the table.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that was the first time I felt like I had added any value to the show that they couldn t go find elsewhere.
2
SPEAKER_00
The thing for me, and again, I m not being hard on myself, but when I
2
SPEAKER_00
I wrote a lot of things for group sketches where other people would be in them.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the longer I was there, the more really funny people showed up, like Hader, Sandberg, Sudeikis, Forte, Fred.
2
SPEAKER_00
And they were this kind of guy.
2
SPEAKER_00
Every one of them could do my best move better than me.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so as a writer, I would rather put Bill Hader in my sketch.
2
SPEAKER_00
than me.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so if I felt that way, I certainly knew the rest of the writing staff felt that way, too.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that was why it was very nice for me to find my way into Head Writer and then, of course, Update.
2
SPEAKER_01
longest running update until Colin took over.
2
SPEAKER_00
These two guys.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Blew me out of the water, these two.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you were there 12 years, 13 years?
2
SPEAKER_00
12 and a half.
2
SPEAKER_01
12 and a half years.
2
SPEAKER_01
The first five tough, and then you became head writer and then update guy extraordinaire.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, I felt very, I felt at home then in a way that I, if late night hadn t popped up, I didn t have really an exit strategy.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was very, in a way that probably wasn t good, I became content at SNL.
2
SPEAKER_02
Does Lorne have all, what does he have there?
2
SPEAKER_02
He has your studio, which is called what, Nine or something?
2
SPEAKER_02
We re 8G.
2
SPEAKER_02
8G, he has 8H, it s gotta be some expensive real estate there.
2
SPEAKER_02
Does he have anything else?
2
SPEAKER_02
Was that Conan s?
2
SPEAKER_00
Fallon s downstairs, he s six.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, right, oh, wow.
2
SPEAKER_01
Is that right, he is?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was in 6A in 1981.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, doing your show?
2
SPEAKER_01
A sitcom with Mickey Rooney and Nathan Lane, one of the boys.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, right.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I was in 6A in Rockefeller Center for six months.
2
SPEAKER_00
What a bummer there s no sitcoms in 30 Rock anymore.
2
SPEAKER_00
That would be such a fun thing to have.
2
SPEAKER_02
Was 30 Rock the sitcom in 30 Rock?
2
SPEAKER_00
No.
2
SPEAKER_00
30 Rock was it... Silver Cup?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s right.
2
SPEAKER_02
Is that in Queens?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yep.
2
SPEAKER_01
We own a piece of that, David.
2
SPEAKER_02
Oh, you re from Queens?
2
SPEAKER_02
I m from normal parents.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s from someone s act.
2
SPEAKER_02
That was crowd work when I was doing standup.
2
SPEAKER_01
That was a good one.
2
SPEAKER_01
So when you, um, I could ask you a lot of different questions.
2
SPEAKER_01
One is, uh, how did day drinking come about?
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, cause that is, that is unbelievably entertaining.
2
SPEAKER_02
Not your day drinking, but the sketch.
2
SPEAKER_01
Day drinking the segment where Zeth goes with celebrities and they get kind of drunk.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s incredibly entertaining to watch.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
The interesting thing is I think having the late night show and having watched a lot of Conan, certainly when I was in college and the man on the street stuff that Conan did, I aspired to do that as well.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I had so much anxiety.
2
SPEAKER_00
being in public doing the show and that lack of control and knowing you had to sort of find it as opposed to have it planned ahead of time.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s all edited, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
You gotta shoot eight hours to get like one segment.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes, and you have to talk to, and for every funny person you find, what the audience doesn t see is the eight weirdos where it was sort of aggressive or strange or just dry.
2
SPEAKER_00
And with day drinking, I sort of drink away my anxiety about it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like anybody with sort of a,
2
SPEAKER_00
you know, social anxiety and it becomes a lot more fun.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we actually don t have to cut it down as much as you d think.
2
SPEAKER_00
But the first time I did it was with my brother and we just thought it would be a fun thing to do because I like doing stuff with my brother.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it was Retta, the wonderful actress, comedian said, oh, I want to do that.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we never thought it d be a thing we would do with guests, but because Retta did it and it was so much fun, we kind of got more people signed on.
2
SPEAKER_00
And now, well, you know, people ask all the time to do it and we have to be a little bit, we try to be a little,
2
SPEAKER_00
what s the word, cautious with how often we do it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because it is, I am drinking an amount that as I get older, I probably should not do often.
2
SPEAKER_02
How do you keep up with some of these guys?
2
SPEAKER_02
There s a couple of guys, I won t say who, but I m sure they could drink you under the table.
2
SPEAKER_00
No, no, the only person, the only person who I think left me in the dust was Rihanna, because at the end of that, she definitely was going out.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like that was like the beginning of her night and it was most assuredly the end of mine.
2
SPEAKER_01
So nobody s driving cause it s New York.
2
SPEAKER_01
So there s no- It s New York.
2
SPEAKER_00
So everybody s safe and sound.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s good.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s a weird bit that I can t believe people do, and it s a great idea if they do.
2
SPEAKER_01
What s that hot sauce one on YouTube?
2
SPEAKER_01
You do hot sauce.
2
SPEAKER_01
Hot ones.
2
SPEAKER_01
Have you guys done hot ones?
2
SPEAKER_01
I haven t.
2
SPEAKER_01
I will not do hot ones.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s a compelling.
2
SPEAKER_00
I did hot ones.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think it s wonderful.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think that guy s a really good interviewer, and I think the hotter the wings get, the less you re capable of editing your own answers.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it s very smart.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because you re in pain, and so the anxiety is supplanted with agony.
2
SPEAKER_00
Genuine pain.
2
SPEAKER_02
Oh, yeah, it s funny because most of my interviews I just want to like have a nice time.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re an outlier.
2
SPEAKER_02
I m so weird.
2
SPEAKER_02
Oh, you know, I saw Dana, I ll tell Seth, you ll like this.
2
SPEAKER_02
I did a show at Town Hall the other night.
2
SPEAKER_02
When this airs in 2026, we ll just say.
2
SPEAKER_02
But I did Town Hall, it was great.
2
SPEAKER_02
who comes back, Kenny Amon.
2
SPEAKER_00
Did he really?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, isn t that great?
2
SPEAKER_00
Prince of the City.
2
SPEAKER_02
He was in the audience.
2
SPEAKER_02
I think I was talking about something we talked about in the show, we mentioned him a lot and then I emailed him and then he said, I heard you re coming to town, David.
2
SPEAKER_02
And I said, yeah, I d love to come with the wife.
2
SPEAKER_02
So I got him in, half price, took care of him and he came in.
2
SPEAKER_02
Then he came back after, he was hesitant to, he said, he didn t wanna bother me.
2
SPEAKER_02
And then he came back, he s exactly Kenny Amon, super fun.
3
SPEAKER_02
about that Sinead O Connor thing that I said.
3
SPEAKER_02
I said, how much of what I say on the show is a lie?
3
SPEAKER_02
What do you think?
3
SPEAKER_02
What s the percentage?
3
SPEAKER_02
And he said, you got the Sinead O Connor one a little wrong.
3
SPEAKER_02
And I go, oh, he still has the picture.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, now I will admit, David, when I heard you tell that on your show, I knew you were a little wrong, because Kenny had told me that story so many times.
3
SPEAKER_02
I m telling you, I, you know, you remember something back, whatever.
3
SPEAKER_02
It wasn t that far off, so we talked about it.
3
SPEAKER_02
So there was, she did rip up the picture, that part was true.
3
SPEAKER_01
I saw that.
3
SPEAKER_02
And then I walked out, I picked up a piece, that s true.
3
SPEAKER_02
I kept it, he never got it back from me, is one problem he said.
3
SPEAKER_02
He said he brought me in and said, I heard you have a piece, and I said yes, because I was bragging to the office.
3
SPEAKER_02
And then he said, we re gonna need it back.
3
SPEAKER_02
And I guess I didn t give it back, and then he, there was a legal problem, he tried to get it back from a current affair, then he got it, and then he said, then he kept it, he had it for Joe Pesci monologue.
3
SPEAKER_02
I guess they still didn t have my piece, I don t know what I was thinking, I was terrified of my job, why in God s green earth did I not bring it back in?
3
SPEAKER_02
And he said, it wasn t a very important piece.
3
SPEAKER_02
It was a lot of like white and I go, okay, relax, it s important.
3
SPEAKER_02
It was a good, solid piece.
3
SPEAKER_02
And then he has it now.
3
SPEAKER_02
And Lorne asked him for it and he said, no.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, Lorne asked him for it for that touring sort of SNL museum exhibit they were doing.
3
SPEAKER_00
And good old Kenny shot him down.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I will say, you know, Kenny probably, but that s the thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
And by the way, Kenny got, you know, Kenny had to bear the brunt of Lorne s whimsy
3
SPEAKER_00
for the entire run he was at the show.
3
SPEAKER_00
The amount of time I sat there when we would do picks on Wednesday night, and Lauren wouldn t be able to choose between two, I d look at Kenny and say, can we do both?
3
SPEAKER_00
And Kenny would be like, we don t have the space, Lauren.
3
SPEAKER_00
We physically don t have the space.
3
SPEAKER_00
And Lauren s like.
3
SPEAKER_00
You ll figure it out.
3
SPEAKER_00
And just like poor Kenny would have to let go.
3
SPEAKER_00
Of course.
3
SPEAKER_01
He did seem anxious.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, such a nice guy, but he is great.
3
SPEAKER_01
His eyes were wide open and he was on the move during show week.
3
SPEAKER_01
You could tell that he was trying to.
3
SPEAKER_02
He was the guy getting everything done.
3
SPEAKER_00
He was the guy getting everything done.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I will say, because he did look like, he s the way you wanted a guy in a control room for a live TV show to look.
3
SPEAKER_00
Arms crossed, just worry lines.
3
SPEAKER_00
But when a show was over and Kenny took you aside and told you he loved to sketch you done, that meant more than almost anybody.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because you realize that for it to actually break through his wall of anxiety and bring him any joy, it had to be a genuinely funny piece of comedy.
3
SPEAKER_02
22,000 million shows.
3
SPEAKER_01
What was the hardest thing you ever felt that you landed there?
3
SPEAKER_01
Would it be a certain update piece or a sketch or?
3
SPEAKER_00
I wrote the Amy, Tina, Palin, Clinton sketch and that s the hardest anything played in the room.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that was great because I didn t have any performance anxiety about it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I had sort of written this thing that was then in the hands of these two incredible performers.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that is one of the few times in my run at the show where I just sort of stood on the floor
3
SPEAKER_00
knowing that it would go great and just got to sort of bask in that reaction.
3
SPEAKER_00
The other thing about it, because it was just an in one, you know, I think sometimes when you write something on the show, your fear after it plays great address isn t that the actors will get it wrong, but maybe Lauren made you cut something and you re just worried about the shot being late.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because again, it s not the director s fault, but they re calling these shots so fast.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was always so frustrated when a sketch went great at dress, if anybody wanted to make a change because- Or the audience was tough.
3
SPEAKER_02
You don t know what s going to happen.
3
SPEAKER_02
Or it s after following something and something, for some reason, it steps on some jokes and you re like, oh my God, I never saw that coming.
3
SPEAKER_01
If something kills a dress and then a line of yours in an ensemble piece, and then later on you find out that you didn t step into the light or it was turned away, so the camera wasn t on you.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you realize later, well, it wasn t my fault.
3
SPEAKER_01
you know yeah it s a that s the torture of s now but when it works like i did you sit with um tina did you know she had a really great impression and rhythm and also sort of a look alike element to just sit with her a little bit and then write the sketch or you just assume she would
3
SPEAKER_00
I think that was the first one.
3
SPEAKER_00
And in the subsequent ones, we worked on them more together, but she was doing 30 Rock at the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
So there wasn t a lot of free time in her schedule.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think people forget that she wasn t a full cast member at the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
She was actually juggling those two things.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then once it became what it became, I mean, again, I think we only did six, but I think we did, you know, six in sort of a nine week period.
3
SPEAKER_00
She and I both had this fear that they would get worse and somebody would say they were getting worse.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we kind of redoubled our efforts to keep it good.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that was where, you know, not just Tina as a performer, but having Tina as a writer on those was invaluable.
3
SPEAKER_01
I can see Russia from my house.
3
SPEAKER_00
but now I gotta own it up.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know who wrote that line.
3
SPEAKER_01
Lauren?
3
SPEAKER_00
Shoemaker?
3
SPEAKER_02
Oh, Shoemaker, really?
3
SPEAKER_02
That s a great prop to give Shoemaker.
3
SPEAKER_00
Shoemaker, it was heartbreaking because it was Saturday morning and we re all at the update table where we re sort of picking the jokes.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we would get in, I think at 1130 on Saturday morning and start going through the update jokes.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I had the sketch out and was just going through it one last time and sort of asking,
3
SPEAKER_00
the room for jokes, and a shoemaker said, I can see Russia from my house, and it was just, you immediately knew, oh, that s the best line, and that ll be the one that gets quoted forever.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, goddamn, what a short, concise.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, good for him, memorable.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s perfect, perfect comedy writing.
3
SPEAKER_01
The thing about political impressions is that the audience still is coming on to the person.
3
SPEAKER_01
Sarah Palin walked out the Republican convention, first time everyone saw her.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know how soon after you guys did that, but it seemed like as the season went on,
3
SPEAKER_01
she kept doing Meet the Press or whatever she was doing, and so the audience was getting more and more familiar.
3
SPEAKER_01
I remember them all landing really hard, at least that s of the Palin.
3
SPEAKER_01
Palin was like Ross Perot, I always say to people, fully form comic character
3
SPEAKER_01
just coming right out of the box.
3
SPEAKER_01
You didn t have to go, not gotta do it or try to find a way to make it funny.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so it s great when great writing meets a great performance.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then the moment for Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live, it s like a peak moment on the history of SNL, I think.
3
SPEAKER_01
Very true.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then there are other times where it s me playing John Kerry where none of those things happen.
3
SPEAKER_01
There was no way.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, John Kerry just that, you know.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s not that much there.
3
SPEAKER_01
Tough to get a hook.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
I had a line, he looked like the tree from the Wizard of Oz.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I would just do that and say, that s John Kerry.
3
SPEAKER_01
Or he was saying, my apples don t, you know that.
3
SPEAKER_01
You just make up something.
3
SPEAKER_01
But no, he was tough.
3
SPEAKER_00
Which is good.
3
SPEAKER_00
Which is like, that s a very good like standup approach.
3
SPEAKER_00
But with this, when you have to do a guy for six sketches, it just, you run out of moves.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you start with no moves and then you run out.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s funny because I remember during the Palin year, there was a lot of,
3
SPEAKER_00
press around SNL and I would do interviews and people would say, it just seems like every election year, SNL comes alive.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I would say, not every.
3
SPEAKER_02
Not every.
3
SPEAKER_02
Gary, I like you start with nothing and it runs out from there.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, also, you know, George W. Bush was funny and Will, was Will there in 2004 still or someone else took it over?
3
SPEAKER_01
Will?
3
SPEAKER_00
No, Will was gone, so it was Will Forte was doing Bush.
3
SPEAKER_01
But that was a funny character.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so he and I could find no purchase at that point.
3
SPEAKER_00
That was, I mean, I think six, five people did Bush after Farrell left.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s jury duty.
3
SPEAKER_00
And again, you re following a guy who, because his Bush was almost as much Farrell as Bush, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, because once somebody identifies the hooks, then yeah, it s hard to stay away.
3
SPEAKER_00
And election Bush was sort of a more likable Bush before you re doing, you know, Iraq, you know, Iraq War Bush, which is then like people don t like them.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they also miss Will Ferrell.
3
SPEAKER_00
There was a lot stacked up against you when you were trying to do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then you come in with Kerry.
3
SPEAKER_01
Did anybody, Jim Downey, give you any kind of catchphrase?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, Downey was helpful.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, Downey and- I m John Kerry.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I don t have a clue how to do that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Daryl Hammond also would come and try to help, but it wasn t, you know, that s like, it s a weird, like Daryl Hammond trying to help somebody like me with an impression would be like,
3
SPEAKER_00
LeBron James trying to teach me how to dunk.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, you dunk like this.
3
SPEAKER_00
You d be like, yeah, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I don t have any of those parts.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, wait a minute.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re Hugh Grant.
3
SPEAKER_00
Passable.
3
SPEAKER_01
Also, you have a passing resemblance to Hugh Grant.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, that s what helps.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m passing.
3
SPEAKER_01
No, but you had, I know, well, it s a podcast.
3
SPEAKER_01
You could do it or not, but I think you have one of the best ones.
3
SPEAKER_00
No, no, frankly, frankly, sorry.
3
SPEAKER_00
That was it.
3
SPEAKER_00
That was just a guy.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I did audition with it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I did audition with Hugh Grant.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I have a special place in my heart.
4
SPEAKER_02
You just do that much and you get applause, and that s about it.
4
SPEAKER_01
That was a in and out.
4
SPEAKER_02
People don t know that you get a sign like, there s Spade, you re gonna be this and this, and then you ve got like an hour before we do.
4
SPEAKER_02
But it doesn t mean you re doing a good impression, it s mean you re gonna rely on hair, makeup, and an outfit, and then get something close, and just get through a sketch.
4
SPEAKER_01
Whose idea was Dylan and Tom Petty for you guys?
4
SPEAKER_00
It was us.
4
SPEAKER_01
Was that you?
4
SPEAKER_01
I did Tom Petty when I was in the hat.
4
SPEAKER_00
I did Dylan at Update.
4
SPEAKER_00
He d done a concert, he had the hat.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think Bonnie Turner and Terry may have suggested that, I think.
4
SPEAKER_02
Probably because they knew I did Petty.
4
SPEAKER_00
I can t believe someone remembers it.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was a very memorable, it sort of seared in my mind, the cut to the two shot of you, because you had such that, your facial position for Tom Petty was so funny, Spade.
4
SPEAKER_00
Which he doesn t extend it, so he owned that, he was already.
4
SPEAKER_02
Sounds weird, he sounds a little like Dylan, a funny two shot, just to look, the look again, that s a classic example, a look is funny.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, they were, it was also the sort of, it was apex petty look, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Those like little glasses, a lot of hat work was going on for both guys.
4
SPEAKER_02
So I had- I took that hat from the guy who worked the valet at the Marriott Marquis in downtown.
4
SPEAKER_02
And it was a, I had that hat forever.
4
SPEAKER_00
Dylan was easy to do a hacky Dylan, but you know, have you listened to Dylan lately on his albums and stuff?
4
SPEAKER_00
Which I love old Dylan, but it s very different.
4
SPEAKER_00
Soon after midnight, I have a date with the fair queen.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, but then it was just, hey, you know, all that 60s stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
Not my best moment, but thanks for bringing it up, Seth.
4
SPEAKER_01
Do you know, have you ever seen that photo that floats around the internet every year that posts a photo of the traveling Wilburys and how old they were when they were in the traveling Wilburys?
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s heartbreaking how, like just so young.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think Roy Orbison was the oldest and he was maybe like 42.
4
SPEAKER_01
42, I know.
4
SPEAKER_02
They say that Golden Girls were all 26.
4
SPEAKER_02
That s true, that s true.
4
SPEAKER_01
A lot of hair and makeup work in there too.
4
SPEAKER_02
Carroll O Connor when he did All in the Family was 15.
4
SPEAKER_02
He looked like shit.
4
SPEAKER_02
There were two other guys.
4
SPEAKER_02
There were two other guys in his suit.
4
SPEAKER_00
Once Sinatra said, I did it my way, he was 27.
4
SPEAKER_00
A little early, Frank.
4
SPEAKER_00
Live a little more life before you go down that road.
4
SPEAKER_02
Everyone s living longer and everyone s getting, it s not so terrifying.
4
SPEAKER_02
to be, I guess, I mean, you always think you look like shit, and then 10 years later, you re like, oh, I looked great back then.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s tough.
4
SPEAKER_01
You just know, however bad you look now, it s gonna be great in 10 years.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s fucking worse.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we re stacked like a decade apart without putting numbers down, so it is kind of funny.
4
SPEAKER_00
In a science story.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m suing Zoom, by the way.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s 10 years later, and then it s 10 years later, and then we go to, but I look to Keith Richards, you know, quit smoking at 80, and he feels great.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, a lot of my heroes, like, heroes, whatever, you know, Jack Nicholson, Redford, all these people, Jane Fonda, are in their mid-80s now.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s the weirdest, I mean, of those guys you just said, it is, Jane Fonda looks outstanding.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I do want to give a shout out to how well that person has aged, just exceptional.
4
SPEAKER_00
And as a performer, Frankie and Grace, so really, she s wonderful.
4
SPEAKER_02
I just did something with Christie Brinkley and unsurprisingly, she s stunning.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
69.
4
SPEAKER_00
Don t people want to be, instead of, would you rather someone say, oh, uh, he s, he s looking really good for his age or he s hot.
4
SPEAKER_00
Would you like to be called hot still, David?
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, Spade, he s hot.
4
SPEAKER_00
But from a woman.
4
SPEAKER_02
I never got that ever.
4
SPEAKER_02
So yeah, I ll take fucking any scraps you got.
4
SPEAKER_00
How would you like to be described, Seth?
4
SPEAKER_01
I have reached the age, and this is not, this has not come from a place of self doubt, but I have reached the age where if someone said I was hot, I would think something is wrong with them.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know what I mean?
4
SPEAKER_01
Whereas good, you look good for your age, I could take as a sort of value judgment that I can put in my pocket and feel good about, but you look hot.
4
SPEAKER_02
I think what most people do is compare themselves to the stepdad on stepdad porn and just see how you look, you know, compared just looks wise, not wiener wise.
4
SPEAKER_02
Anyway, we re gonna look at a clip.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, stepdad porn, I knew.
4
SPEAKER_00
I just won $1,000 and that was gonna be mentioned during this podcast.
4
SPEAKER_02
Thank you.
4
SPEAKER_02
I was getting into it going, I gotta, I don t, shouldn t I do that?
4
SPEAKER_02
I just shouldn t do that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Also, I m almost certain no one searches for it by that.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, I think they might, I think I would imagine you lean into step daughter when you do in the search bar, but that s, that s not.
4
SPEAKER_02
You know what mother daughter porn is not mother daughter.
4
SPEAKER_02
I mean, in a perfect world, but it s, it s actually just actresses.
4
SPEAKER_02
They have an ingenue and a grizzled vet.
4
SPEAKER_02
Anyway, let s look at a clip.
4
SPEAKER_01
By the way, who else is that grizzled vet?
4
SPEAKER_01
Probably younger than Roy Orbison.
4
SPEAKER_02
Grizzled vet in porn is like 36.
4
SPEAKER_02
They re like, I ve done 3 million films.
4
SPEAKER_00
Did you guys ever do a porn related sketch?
4
SPEAKER_00
Because Nealon and I did one.
4
SPEAKER_00
Ridiculous.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think it bombed.
4
SPEAKER_00
A porn related sketch on SNL.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh man, there were definitely some in my time.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m trying to think if I worked on any of them, but I don t think so.
4
SPEAKER_00
Neil and I were in barber chairs with our shirts off and we were porn stars and people were working on manscaping or curating bar.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it was like, yeah, put a little fence down there, make it nice for the people, fluff it up.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was all this abstract.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s all we had.
4
SPEAKER_00
It bombed here and it bombed then.
4
SPEAKER_01
The one that was great in my era that I had nothing to do with was Vanessa Bayer and Cecily Strong were former porn stars who would do commercials for like Swarsky crystals.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it was always, they would always pronounce the name wrong and they were really dead-eyed.
4
SPEAKER_01
Their performance was charmingly dead-eyed.
4
SPEAKER_01
Charmingly porn-ish.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and then they re both just such funny performers, but that was those sketches really Yeah, there s that answer question Dana.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well Keenan has the best answer about who s the Greatest castman, you know, everyone likes to make rankings for short albums and everything and he said the women I
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, that s a good answer.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because when Norah Dunn was there and Jan Hooks and Victoria, it was much more male dominated.
4
SPEAKER_00
Some of it is because of men in politics, so forth and so on.
4
SPEAKER_00
Julia Sweeney.
4
SPEAKER_00
But then it seems starting with Sherry Oteri or Vanessa and others, and then it kept building into just Tina and Amy and Maya.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we had Tina, Amy, Maya, and Wig at one point.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s like crazy to have those four in a cast together.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes, and Dratch was there for some of that.
4
SPEAKER_00
She s always a score.
4
SPEAKER_00
Funny, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, there was a real sense that in that era, there was literally nothing they couldn t do.
4
SPEAKER_01
and sort of late in the week.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then you add Bill Hader and Sudeikis and Fred Armisen and Will Forte, you know, that era that you straddled, I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_00
We had a killer run.
4
SPEAKER_01
I would say that like too, that when, you know, we re talking about that, you know, the Sarah Palin stuff, like the cast at that time with Tina sort of coming back and popping in was definitely the strongest top, and it was small.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, one of the things, and I feel bad,
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, I m obviously happy for them that they re all on SNL, but, you know, sometimes when the cast gets to 20 people, it s really hard for people to break through.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we were only about 10 or 11 at one point, and that was really nice.
4
SPEAKER_02
That s rare because we got big and ours and to have it go backwards is very rare.
4
SPEAKER_02
These usually add.
4
SPEAKER_00
We had seven, so everybody got to be on the show a lot.
4
SPEAKER_02
All the birds got fed.
4
SPEAKER_00
How do you get relaxed on the show?
4
SPEAKER_00
How do you get good on the show without being on the show?
4
SPEAKER_00
So you re right, when it s 20 and you have cast members, don t blame them.
4
SPEAKER_00
Why leave something that you re brilliant at staying 10, 12, 13 years?
4
SPEAKER_00
People are on the junior varsity for so long, but I guess it s just the way it is.
4
SPEAKER_01
That, because I think part of it is you do sometimes just need to get assigned a thing or two a week where you get the rep without having to necessarily kill, you know, those big political sketches where you get thrown, you know, some senator at a panel and you have a few hours, but you just get in front of the camera and you get to learn cards and other people are gonna have the big laughs and people watching at home wanna find
4
SPEAKER_01
those new people they can root for and they have to see you in order to root for you.
4
SPEAKER_02
And you get the butterflies out of the way because they always come but at least you get a feel for how sickening it is to actually walk 10 feet on camera and turn your turn to face the cameras you go.
5
SPEAKER_02
Oh my god, this is horrible.
5
SPEAKER_02
The other thing, Danny, you know when you do it, especially at the beginning, you just do your bit and get some laughs and you walk off and everyone s doing their job and you re standing in the hallway going, did like five million people just see that?
5
SPEAKER_02
I don t even know.
5
SPEAKER_01
I never really would think about it.
5
SPEAKER_01
It went out live, it s over.
5
SPEAKER_01
So, Zeth, I want to ask you two things in a minute, whether you would ever become the executive producer of the show, because your name s been tossed around.
5
SPEAKER_01
Great, great, great.
5
SPEAKER_01
And one is, my theory s about the longevity, and there s probably 10 metrics to this.
5
SPEAKER_01
But one is, when you see an athlete or an actor try to do live sketch comedy, you re watching a reality show.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then when you see people who are never heard of them, never seen them, they re just coming on SNL, and you re watching them get their big break, is another reality show.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if it s whoever thought of the show, but when SNL has a bad show, like say a football player is bombing or whatever, it s still really compelling.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that s kind of not, I mean, a bad show for me watching it is pretty compelling because watching the cast member know it s bad, but holding up the... Why do you think 50 years?
5
SPEAKER_01
I m sure you re asked all the time.
5
SPEAKER_01
I am.
5
SPEAKER_03
Well, I it s interesting because I think that even though it s compelling, people would still criticize the show for being bad the week that athlete was bad or, you know, an actor ate it.
5
SPEAKER_03
But I will say a few years after I left, there s this really funny writer on the show.
5
SPEAKER_03
He s not there anymore, either.
5
SPEAKER_03
Mike O Brien and Mike and I were back sitting in an office.
5
SPEAKER_03
and the current writers were complaining about how bad the host was that week.
5
SPEAKER_03
And it was a major movie star who was sort of being impossible and they were all in such a bad mood, but their stories were so funny about this person s behavior.
5
SPEAKER_03
And we said, look, the good news is this, like when you leave this show,
5
SPEAKER_03
you will talk about the disaster week so much more than the weeks that were great.
5
SPEAKER_03
Because it s just so much funnier to remember how terrible someone was.
5
SPEAKER_03
So even though I feel bad for the audience when they watch a terrible week, just know that the writing staff and the cast will be able to dine out on that week for years.
5
SPEAKER_03
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_03
In a good way.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean marcy clyde when she was on i guess at times she had to like the host was having a nervous breakdown and like eleven fifteen.
5
SPEAKER_01
I can t i can t make it and she had to go talk to what i didn t want to give his name because you know but the drama behind that show forget the funniness just the drama.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t know how many nights, I m sure you had this experience, Seth, where I don t know if it s gonna make it tonight.
5
SPEAKER_01
It seems like such a shit show.
5
SPEAKER_01
And now it s like almost 11 when we re going into Lauren s office, 50 of us jammed in to get notes and we re on in 28 minutes and you keep your bald cap on.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s like a Fleeney-esque thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
People have their cold opening fake nose on.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s just, it s surreal.
5
SPEAKER_03
I feel so, I retroactively feel so terrible about, you know, cause I think,
5
SPEAKER_03
being a writer on the show, you sometimes forget how human the cast is because Lauren will give you, you know, again, like you said, at 1120, Lauren finally lets you out of the office and you re making changes to a cold open that s going to be on TV in 10 minutes.
5
SPEAKER_03
And then the times that I would run up to somebody like Bill Hader, who the minute he started on the show, we started leaning on him for things like impressions, you know, hosts of
5
SPEAKER_03
news shows, which would often be the framing of the cold open.
5
SPEAKER_03
And so here s Hayter doing an impression of somebody he didn t even know existed last week.
5
SPEAKER_03
And you re running up to him at 1124 saying, Hey, this line s different.
5
SPEAKER_03
This line s different.
5
SPEAKER_03
This line s different.
5
SPEAKER_03
And you just, you re treating him almost like a computer program and assuming he s going to be able to like process the information and deliver it because that s how it looks.
5
SPEAKER_03
Because ultimately he was so good at it.
5
SPEAKER_03
He would always
5
SPEAKER_03
make you have more confidence in him week after week after week.
5
SPEAKER_03
And then you forget all these years later, oh my God, the anxiety we were putting on that person who had to actually be the one who was on camera doing that job.
5
SPEAKER_03
I mean, you had to do it your whole time on the show, Dana, like the amount you probably started the show with cold opens.
5
SPEAKER_01
I had a weird trajectory because I came in with Phil and Jan Hooks and Kevin Nealon and so forth.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then I just happened to be in the first sketch.
5
SPEAKER_01
Madonna did the cold opening on my first show, apologizing for the 85 season, like it never existed.
5
SPEAKER_01
So then it was me, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks in a game show.
5
SPEAKER_01
where I was a game show psychic.
5
SPEAKER_01
I knew the answer before Phil would ask the question, you know, that kind of thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then, and that killed, you know, cause Phil was so great and Jan and I was riding that wave.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then I, I did church chat with Sigourney Weaver up and then I did chopping broccoli.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I came in, I had so much shit.
5
SPEAKER_01
My ex manager went to the stars, Brad Gray came into my office at like 11, 20, same kind of thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
And he talked like this, he goes,
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t know why, I don t know why, but it s your show.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s your show tonight.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t know why it happened, but it s just laid out that way.
5
SPEAKER_02
It s very true, it can go any way, and you get three killers.
5
SPEAKER_01
But when you re forced into that, and I was using things from my standup, which was helpful, I knew where the hooks were, but the nerves handling the terror and the nerves, like your first, but you remember your first time, you re like really crazy nervous, because a sketch was leaning on you.
5
SPEAKER_01
or you re doing something at update because an update you re talking and then your chair pivots when you re a guest on update and you re kind of thrown out there.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s an interesting vibe as well.
5
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I was lucky.
5
SPEAKER_03
The first update I did that landed, I got to talk as myself.
5
SPEAKER_03
I got to be Seth Meyers and I was talking.
5
SPEAKER_03
I was a Red Sox fan, which is true.
5
SPEAKER_03
And so sometimes when you write from truth, it s a little bit easier.
5
SPEAKER_03
And it was about how I hated the Yankees my whole life.
5
SPEAKER_03
But because of 9-11, I was rooting for the Yankees to win the World Series.
5
SPEAKER_03
But since Red Sox fans never get what they want, I had to root against the Yankees in order for them to win.
5
SPEAKER_03
And so it was just,
5
SPEAKER_03
It made sense to me.
5
SPEAKER_03
I d written it myself.
5
SPEAKER_03
It felt like a piece you would do in stand-up.
5
SPEAKER_03
And I remember that went great, and I walked off, and not to keep calling back Shoemaker, but Shoemaker met me, and I ve been giving him shit about this for 20 years.
5
SPEAKER_03
He goes, it ll never go that well ever again.
5
SPEAKER_03
It was like, hey, I thought I d take a victory lap, but he was, you know, the reality is he wanted to remind me and probably, I don t know if you felt like you needed that reminder because that s such a monster for a show, that Scorny Weaver show.
5
SPEAKER_03
Like it must ve been crazy the second week where you realized, oh, oh, it doesn t get, like the last week doesn t lead to the next week.
5
SPEAKER_01
No, no, I was barely in the show.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think I did Casey Kasem for 30 seconds.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I think Lauren saw me at the party and kind of got patted on the shoulder.
5
SPEAKER_01
It goes up and down week to week.
5
SPEAKER_02
Brad Gray, 1120.
5
SPEAKER_02
This isn t your week.
5
SPEAKER_01
This isn t your show.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t know why.
5
SPEAKER_03
Just because you mentioned her, I want to tell my favorite Marcy story, which is the promos, you know, the famous SNL, like, hey, this week I m the host and you re going to be seen.
5
SPEAKER_03
Marcy had, I had to go with Marcy into the host s room to tell them about the promo.
5
SPEAKER_03
And she handed this stack of promos and the host read them all and said, none of these are funny.
5
SPEAKER_03
And Marcy just took the whole stack and said, well, in that case, I ll throw them in the garbage.
5
SPEAKER_03
And just dropped them in the garbage in front of the host and walked out.
5
SPEAKER_03
And I didn t know we were allowed to talk to the host like that.
5
SPEAKER_02
I was in charge of promos for two years.
5
SPEAKER_02
It s the roughest job.
5
SPEAKER_02
It s the most thankless garbage job.
5
SPEAKER_02
But you get to meet the host.
5
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, Shoemaker has a few promos that Farley wrote in his office that are really, that are really funny and unusable.
5
SPEAKER_03
It will not surprise you, they are unusable.
5
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I think I was there for those.
5
SPEAKER_02
And then he d come down, David, I wrote some, because he d go, they d sometimes go up to the writing room and go, everybody, kick in a few fucking promos.
5
SPEAKER_02
Stop for a second.
5
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We need something.
5
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And then I d gather them and go down.
5
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And then there s a couple of stink bombs in there from Farley.
5
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I think he d write himself in some of them too.
5
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But they would also throw in cast from, you know, they d say, hey, bring Chris down or bring in, you know, whoever they thought was funny that week to do a promo with the host.
5
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My worst host dressing room was Mick Jagger wanted just a first joke in his monologue.
5
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And so Mullaney and I had a piece of paper where we d written 15 jokes that we collected from the writing staff about
5
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that he could say as his first joke.
5
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And our plan was just to go back and forth.
5
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And I, Mulaney read the first one and Mick Jagger didn t laugh.
5
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And he goes, what s the next one?
5
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And Mulaney handed me his paper.
5
SPEAKER_03
And I read him the second one and he didn t laugh.
5
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And he goes, what s the next one?
5
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And I handed it back to Mulaney.
5
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And there were very clearly 15 on it.
5
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And John goes, that is all we have.
5
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Because we just realized, we put our favorite two first.
5
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And the fact that he hadn t broken his heart, we re like, it s only going to get worse.
5
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Let s just spare us all the embarrassment.
5
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And then you just kind of walked out or see you later, man.
5
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Yeah, we just kind of walked out and said, you know, let s just go back to the drawing board.
5
SPEAKER_03
I think it s very clear that we don t have the answer on these
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pages.
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Did you ever find something that he landed and you remember?
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I bet if we go back and watch the monologue from that show, the answer is no.
6
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There is that thing, which I know is a bummer to hear, which is sometimes you just, sometimes it is, hey, it s so great to be here.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, you just have to start saying words and let the audience know that this show is, I mean, the first update joke is very rarely the best update joke, almost because you re just trying to like pull the focus in.
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Settle them in.
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And get people to pay attention.
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I think that the guest hosts that do Q&A from the audience is maybe one of the more fail-safe
6
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I love a Q&A from the audience.
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Yeah, you have all those different flavors.
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And you get the cast to fucking act like they re in the audience.
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I think I wrote one for Walken where he had written questions he wanted the audience to ask him.
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That s funny.
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That was my... Where do you buy your pudding?
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Read the one I told you, instructed you to read before.
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Exposes it right away.
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Monologues, solo venture.
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That s why they call him Mono One.
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Just making it up.
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I wrote a sketch for him my first or second year, and it was a sketch called Pranksters, which I m still pretty proud of.
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And it was one of those sketches that killed at the table, and then we got in the rewrite room, and because it had killed at the table, everybody had a lot of ideas.
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Sometimes you can overwrite it.
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And so then we bring it out, and we re rehearsing with Walken, and we get like two pages into the new version, and he just stops.
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He goes, you ruined it.
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He goes, you gotta go back to the way it was.
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And we did.
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And it worked great, but he was right.
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It s that thing of sometimes, you know, you can overwrite.
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You can joke on a joke on a joke.
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It s no good.
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All right, before we let Seth go, Dana, ask him.
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Is this normal?
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Is this a normal amount of time?
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I don t want to cut you short.
6
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No, I have just one question for him.
6
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But do you have one, David?
6
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Well, I was going to see who he thinks might want to take over, who could handle that job, if anyone.
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I don t think anybody can handle that job and I m being genuine.
6
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Don t you think it s a one man, there s only one man, there s only one man for the job.
6
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If you really think about the lanes that Loren has to fill, it s pretty big and how he resisted
6
SPEAKER_02
Oh, it s got to go to an hour, or it should be more pre-tapes, or you need a new theme for the band.
6
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So this was decades.
6
SPEAKER_02
Anytime there was a dip in the show, he had the corporate trust, whatever, Universal now, whoever he had to talk to, and he held it steady.
6
SPEAKER_02
And now you think, God, isn t it brilliant that it just stayed branded, identical?
6
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That s why everyone we ve talked to on this podcast
6
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Everyone s had the same experience the same tiny room the eight age all of it so.
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Yeah i mean it also i think it s different no i think the other part that people forget is that lauren s.
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Status is a icon is incredibly important based on every host to go through those doors.
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because everyone knows who he is.
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And because of that, everyone from all walks of entertainment or politics or sports trusts him.
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And it only works if the host trusts him.
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And if it was somebody else, you know, look, it could be, you know, it could be somebody who maybe worked on the show before, or maybe was a successful producer somewhere else, but no one s going to have that cultural currency with every single person who comes in there.
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And also they don t act up the host because they go, this is a guy, just the respect of 50 years.
6
SPEAKER_04
And so if it s someone new, they know they sort of outrank them.
6
SPEAKER_04
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_04
Like they do on a movie set or something so they can sort of get away with their shenanigans.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, because he knows everybody s seen it all.
6
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And the unflappable Lorne character, which he cultivated as part of his comic persona, that he would never panic.
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In the first year he was out there with my first few shows, he d had a glass of Chardonnay on 8H.
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The show s going on in between sketches.
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Oh, this has to breathe.
6
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So I guess he has a calming effect to a host.
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Yeah do this and it ll be great you re gonna be happy at the party and you know he s very good at.
6
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Public relations it s also i think when i hosted at this point.
6
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I feel like i knew lauren as well as you can know and i remember right before sketchy sort of walked over.
6
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And I thought, oh, this is going to be this new experience with Lauren.
6
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I m going to find out what is it that he says to hosts right before sketches start, because that s the one thing I d never been privy to, despite all the time I spent.
6
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And he walked over and he said some version of, and just walked away, like literally barely a word.
6
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Just as sort of a nod.
6
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And I was like, that is part of his, you know, part of his enduring, you know, talents in this field is sometimes knowing when not to say anything.
6
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And I think very few people have it.
6
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In power, in show business, very few people know how sometimes saying less is more.
6
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This sketch has to breathe.
6
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That s right before you re starting.
6
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Seth, let s not fuck this up.
6
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I, this is one of my, my last show, because I stayed through, about halfway through my last season before I left, and I wrote, it was the Super Bowl episode, and I wrote a sketch for Melissa McCarthy, where she had ordered a bunch of wings for a Super Bowl party, and they, it was very obvious there was no one at her house, but she was pretending, she was pretending to yell at people off camera to explain why she had these like three trains of chicken wings.
6
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And I was under the bleachers with Lauren, and it just,
6
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It just played to silence.
6
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And Lauren, when it was over, looked at me and goes, and again, this is my last show, and I d been there, you know, 12 and a half years is a long time.
6
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And he looked at me and goes, what am I gonna do without you?
6
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That s great.
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Yeah.
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I also, my favorite, I think my favorite Under the Bleachers, it s a Lovett story.
6
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When you hosted, Dana, Lovett s came to the show.
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Do you remember that?
6
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And it was such a dream, in the same way that it was a dream to spend a week working and writing with Dana.
6
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And also, let me note, Sean Penn s Celebrity Roast was a sketch I wrote when you were there, Spade.
6
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Oh, was I Owen Wilson?
6
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You were Owen Wilson.
6
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That is a real feather in my cap as well.
6
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It s a great one, great one.
6
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It was a great one.
6
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Lovitz walked underneath the bleachers right before the show started and goes, started shaking all their hands, goes, John Lovitz, John Lovitz, John Lovitz.
6
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And then he turned to Lauren and went, and you are?
6
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He loved just dinging Lorne in the, you know, when you d pitch ideas, you know, for an hour on Monday and the host is sitting there and everyone s pitching.
6
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And then the very end, John would always go, Lorne, what are your ideas?
6
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You know, I go, John, why are you trying to?
6
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Disturb our boss.
6
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I was there for Will Ferrell s final show, because we overlapped for one year.
6
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And the last pitch, Will brought in an old typewriter.
6
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And every time, while people pitched, he was typing as if it was his job to write them all down.
6
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And it was this really loud typewriter.
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So people would pitch and be like,
6
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And you know, there s so few laughs in pitch.
6
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So it s just this really loud, and he would go, and Will went last at pitch, and it went all the way around, and then Lawrence goes, Will, and Will just basically like rolls up the paper, and the way you do on typewriters,
6
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and then he just very quietly reads through everything he typed and he said, no, I think we re good.
6
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See, I never got that comfortable to do something, but I love that Will has that looseness to him to just do that.
6
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The show always had some anxiety to it.
6
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Yeah, that idea.
6
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I ve never, yeah, a bit in Lauren s room.
6
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In front of the host, you don t know.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that would be hard.
6
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So, Zeth, you re going back.
6
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You re going to do the show.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I don t know when this will air, but we will be back doing shows again.
6
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I m going to start in a couple of days.
6
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And it s the craziest, just for a second, the craziest political environment ever, I think.
6
SPEAKER_02
I mean, they say it every time, but say kind of the craziest.
6
SPEAKER_02
So how are you to look forward to it?
6
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How are you going to manage it?
6
SPEAKER_02
I mean, you do the closer looks, you do your comedy.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
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I mean, it s really nice because the closer look is this thing that we sort of built that can kind of hold anything.
6
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And so we don t need any one kind of news to know we have a show.
6
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We sort of have this bucket that we can fill with whatever we want.
6
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And I would certainly rather live
7
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in boring times, don t get me wrong, but it is, processing the anxiety is easier with a show than just walking around muttering to myself in the streets.
7
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So I m happy to be back with other people that also think it s fucking crazy.
7
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One of my writers, Sal Gentile, who writes A Closer Look, described our show as written for and by the formerly sane, and we try to keep that as the way we approach things.
7
SPEAKER_00
How are you?
7
SPEAKER_00
I mean, because everything is like we have these two horses in the race.
7
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Trump has got his indictments and he s Trump.
7
SPEAKER_00
And then we have Biden, who even in The Washington Post, New York Times are kind of gone.
7
SPEAKER_00
What s?
7
SPEAKER_00
Hello.
7
SPEAKER_00
Is everything OK over there?
7
SPEAKER_00
You know, so how do you navigate that?
7
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Have you done a closer look on current Biden?
7
SPEAKER_00
Because when he first came out, I didn t really know how to get an angle on him at all.
7
SPEAKER_00
But now he s more interesting.
7
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it s really, it s sort of day to day, but I think that as we get closer and we get more into, you know, debate type stuff.
7
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Who s the nominee is.
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Yeah.
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I mean, obviously it kind of goes without saying it ll be him.
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And so there won t be a situation where we have,
7
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you know, it s obviously not gonna be a Democratic primary season.
7
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And it was interesting for us last time, but then fascinating how quickly it became a Biden show.
7
SPEAKER_02
I thought that we were gonna have 10 Democratic candidates and it would go on until the very, you know, I certainly thought it would be a super Tuesday situation.
7
SPEAKER_02
It was nuts that it was sort of over by South Carolina.
7
SPEAKER_02
So we have, that sort of then takes your focus on it because there, you know, Biden, other than, you know,
7
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the general he hasn t been a part of a horse race for years and back when he was in horse races he was never close enough to be considered a frontrunner.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s funny how little he even appeared, I guess 88?
7
SPEAKER_02
Who played Biden in your era?
7
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In 88, I wonder, I was assigned Bush, I don t know
7
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who would have done him, he may have dropped out soon enough that we didn t do him.
7
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Yeah, never had to.
7
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I mean, I just remember- Phil was Stockdale.
7
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Dacus did him in 2010.
7
SPEAKER_00
Oh, really?
7
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Yeah, Suds, I used to write those for Suds.
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Suds was a great, it s funny because- Suds.
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You know, Suds, and we call them Suds.
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But Suds did him- He had a funny take on Biden.
7
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Very fun.
7
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I, you know,
7
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I would do this on stage that I think that, when again, I didn t think he was gonna be the nominee, that when he ran for president in 2020, that Obama must ve thought, wait, you thought my vice president wasn t the last job you were ever gonna have?
7
SPEAKER_02
You thought it was a stepping stone job?
7
SPEAKER_00
Joe, Joe, you don t have to do this, Joe.
7
SPEAKER_00
Joe, you don t have to do it.
7
SPEAKER_00
No, no, no, no, no, no.
7
SPEAKER_00
But I, I, what I did was I looked at the town halls because I looked at him in 2012 and his debate, uh, vice presidential debate with
7
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with what s his name?
7
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Paul Ryan.
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And he was pretty strong.
7
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And then the town halls, he just had different rhythms, different stories, a different kind of attitude.
7
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But it s very interesting.
7
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It s such a hot oven out there.
7
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And I, my style is to do, I do both.
7
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I ll do Trump and my Trump.
7
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I think all of our Trump s got a little better because of James Austin Johnson who made it into like jazz.
7
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I mean, it s, he s got breathing techniques on his, his Trump is crazy brilliant.
7
SPEAKER_00
And so, and your Trump, your Trump has gotten really, really good.
7
SPEAKER_02
Cause I saw recently and what did, what did I try to,
7
SPEAKER_02
I try not to think about it at all.
7
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I try to just let Trump speak through me, which I feel like what s your hook into Trump?
7
SPEAKER_00
Do you have a because I always mine is that he always sounds like he s pitching a family vacation.
7
SPEAKER_00
We re going to be going things where you won t believe we re going to do it.
7
SPEAKER_00
And people say, no, but we re going to do it anyway.
7
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, all that kind of stuff.
7
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So I like the one that we keep coming back to is.
7
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That big guy, strong guy, tears in his eyes.
7
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Like that, you know, these makeup stories about sort of, it s always, you know, vague, amorphous people, but they re always very big, very strong, and very, very emotional about how much they miss him.
7
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And I- I love, there s so many hits that he has, like, he s a stone cold loser, is a great one.
7
SPEAKER_00
A lot of people are saying i haven t heard anything now what a beauty not a 10 not a chance she s not my type i mean he has like a million.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s deeply funny phrase is deeply deeply funny the buying the only thing that made me laugh was when he does the whispering.
7
SPEAKER_00
Cause the rich don t pay their first share.
7
SPEAKER_00
And then it goes really loud.
7
SPEAKER_00
Cause I know how to be down.
7
SPEAKER_00
I can t believe it s not butter.
7
SPEAKER_00
So that whisper to the yell was the hook that got me.
7
SPEAKER_02
That was really good.
7
SPEAKER_02
The first time I saw you do the whisper thing on Colbert, it was a real like, ah.
7
SPEAKER_02
Ah, that s it.
7
SPEAKER_02
Fuck.
7
SPEAKER_00
My dad, lost his job.
7
SPEAKER_00
No joke, not getting around here.
7
SPEAKER_02
No joke, no joke.
7
SPEAKER_00
Number one, the two part, number two, three.
7
SPEAKER_00
But you know what?
7
SPEAKER_00
We re all in this ecosystem, so run with anything.
7
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I remember 2012 that you mentioned the vice presidential debate and in those years, Paul Ryan, I would write,
7
SPEAKER_02
I would write sort of a template debate sketch, but then everybody would pitch in based on having watched the debate.
7
SPEAKER_02
And I remember that my phone rang and it was Downey, the aforementioned Jim Downey, former head writer, legendary SNL staff member.
7
SPEAKER_02
And he had this bit that made it in, which was my favorite bit of that debate, which was how Biden kept talking about Scranton and how he s from Scranton, but made Scranton sound like a super shitty place.
7
SPEAKER_02
And it was just like,
7
SPEAKER_02
I m from Scranton.
7
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This is a backwater.
7
SPEAKER_02
These are hardscrabble people.
7
SPEAKER_02
You drive through Scranton, roll up your windows.
7
SPEAKER_02
And it was just a really funny downy observation that Biden talked about his hometown, both from a point of pride and also like never fucking go there.
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, he tells a story recently, I think it was kind of funny that he
7
SPEAKER_00
You know, I m eight years old and I see two men on the street, Scranton, Pennsylvania, they re kissing.
7
SPEAKER_00
I asked my pops, what s that?
7
SPEAKER_00
And my pop says, that s love.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s just love, son.
7
SPEAKER_00
A teamster from 1953 talking like that.
7
SPEAKER_00
It feels very woke.
7
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, but you know.
7
SPEAKER_00
God love them.
7
SPEAKER_00
God love them.
7
SPEAKER_00
God bless America.
7
SPEAKER_00
Thank you, Seth.
7
SPEAKER_00
So, Seth, thanks for coming on.
7
SPEAKER_00
You re a key piece of Saturday Night Live history.
7
SPEAKER_00
This is where I go into my, you know, an amazing run on Saturday Night Live.
7
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, one of the very few people is just, where are you going to work?
7
SPEAKER_00
Rockefeller Center, which is a magic building and a magic place.
7
SPEAKER_00
It is.
7
SPEAKER_02
Lucky.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s where Kenny Amon worked.
7
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
Hey David, how are you?
7
SPEAKER_00
Shoemaker, please say hello.
7
SPEAKER_00
I will.
7
SPEAKER_00
Congratulations on just having a cool show to go to.
7
SPEAKER_02
Thanks guys.
7
SPEAKER_02
Come visit us soon now that we re going to be back doing it again.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m going to come in that hot seat again.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m going to get in the hot seat.
7
SPEAKER_00
Get in the fucking hot seat.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I m not gonna, and I m gonna just go crazy.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m gonna go completely just- Unusable.
7
SPEAKER_00
Unusable.
7
SPEAKER_00
No, no, just go super high energy and just rather than kind of lean into my age, I m just gonna like get some 500 and just go nuts.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m just telling you now.
7
SPEAKER_00
Can t wait.
7
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
7
SPEAKER_00
All right, guys.
7
SPEAKER_00
Pleasure.
7
SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
7
SPEAKER_02
Thank you for having me, guys.
7
SPEAKER_01
This has been a podcast presentation of Cadence 13.
7
SPEAKER_01
Please listen, then rate, review, and follow all episodes.
7
SPEAKER_01
Available now for free wherever you get your podcast.
7
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No joke, folks.
7
SPEAKER_00
Fly on the Wall has been a presentation of Cadence 13, executive produced by Dana Carvey and David Spade, Chris Corcoran of Cadence 13, and Charlie Finan of Brillstein Entertainment.
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SPEAKER_01
The show s lead producer is Greg Holtzman, with production and engineering support from Serena Regan and Chris Basil of Cadence 13.