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This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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But look at how fast, we re almost halfway through the year.
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Crazy.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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Are you proud of what you ve done in 2024 so far?
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I know.
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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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Therapy can help you take stock of your progress and set achievable goals for the next six months.
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Yeah.
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Listen, therapy is the way to go.
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I did it for a while.
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And I think the thing that slowed me down was what they, is driving to Santa Monica in traffic once or twice a week.
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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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We have the great and powerful Oz on the show, Lorne Michaels.
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He became the unintentional star of the podcast because he s the touchstone for all the Saturday Night Live people is Lorne Michaels.
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The common denominator.
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Yeah, the touchstone, the common denominator, the
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Touch-tonator.
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Touch-tonator, the thing that everyone talks about a lot, that s more on Wheatley than the Touchstone.
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But we were thrilled to get him and it... He s our most commonly asked guest, when will you have Lorne?
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When will you have Lorne?
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And he was very...
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cool to do this because he doesn t do a lot of stuff and he doesn t like to be bothered and I wouldn t either.
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SPEAKER_00
He s got a lot going on.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I took a chance.
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I called him up at home and I said, Lauren, hi, this is Dana and we d love you to come on the talk on our podcast.
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And he goes,
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I don t know who this is, but I don t know.
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So I can t even do that.
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No, he was great.
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So he comes in and he came to the house and did it.
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And it really reminded me of being back at SNL, because me, you, him, it s like sitting at read-through or sitting in a meeting and you have that reverence for him and you want to make him laugh.
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He s like a father figure in a weird way.
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A lot of, pretty much everything I ve had is based on SNL and him keep me on there.
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He s very interesting guy to talk to.
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He s as smart as they come.
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And I don t know, I probably should have brought up my Lorne impression, but I ve talked to him about it off mic before at a restaurant, how I, then I got him at, you know, in 86 when he was in during the, trying to pick the show.
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I still have no fucking first act.
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And that was the first time I got his rhythm.
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And then we talk about Lorne-isms on the show.
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You never leave a hit and he s a brilliant guy.
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I mean, he really is fun to listen to.
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You know what s a funny one?
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I can t say who it was, but someone we know did a movie and he was a pretty big star and it opened very poorly.
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And I was in a limo with Lorne and I go,
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Do you think he ll get another movie?
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And he goes, well, not every studio wants to lose $30 million and work with an asshole.
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Some do.
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Not all of them.
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Well, that s kind of his humor.
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Yeah, that s exactly a good Lorne humor.
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This is what Lorne would say, his sense of humor.
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So we re at the meeting and it s the last show and you go, this is our last show.
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We have a two week break.
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So it d be like really, really nice if the show was really good instead of a bad show.
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You know, you would do that.
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Let s go and take a dive tonight.
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We re being reviewed.
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So, you know, he s just a fascinating character.
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We got to sit with him for a long time.
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And he proved to be very fascinating.
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Everything he said, we hung on.
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Hey, we didn t talk over, keep talking.
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We didn t even talk over Dana.
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So we didn t, we apologized for not talking over the guests.
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Because he s a great storyteller and we get into a lot of things.
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We get into the current cast and his emotional relationship with cast members and how long he has been there.
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50th anniversary coming up.
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Never happened before in the history of television.
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A guy producing a show for a half century.
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So it s amazing.
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You were incredible in this interview, David, I have to say.
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Dana, you really sparkled.
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All right, here he is, our main man.
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Main man, Lorne Michaels.
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SPEAKER_00
Conan s got some money coming in.
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First of all, we want to thank you for coming in.
0
SPEAKER_00
You re responsible for pretty much everything in my life, in the comedy world.
0
SPEAKER_01
First we have to embarrass you and thank you.
0
SPEAKER_01
We had no plan for this podcast, no meeting.
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SPEAKER_01
This won t be in any way used.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s not used or aired.
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SPEAKER_01
But to our surprise and delight, everyone who was on the podcast started talking and saying nice things about you, how much they love you.
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So we just thought, well, can we get him to come on?
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So here we are.
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Well, I haven t done anything else.
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That s the amazing part.
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But as I said, I have a background in radio.
0
SPEAKER_01
Lauren s getting snacks.
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SPEAKER_02
What will make the least noise?
0
SPEAKER_01
Can we open the chips?
0
SPEAKER_01
Make a lot of noise and then not as much noise.
0
SPEAKER_01
Do you like Flamin  Hot?
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SPEAKER_00
I don t know if that s for you.
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SPEAKER_00
I m just reaching for whatever s closest.
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SPEAKER_00
You ll take anything?
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SPEAKER_00
Yes.
0
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Don t worry about the noise.
0
SPEAKER_00
Don t worry about the noise and we ll... I m sorry.
0
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And there s protein bars if you re stuck.
0
SPEAKER_00
So if you re really stuck, just grab those.
0
SPEAKER_00
There s not too much.
0
SPEAKER_01
i ll just talk to dinner for what are you saying at the beverly hills hotel uh...
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In the Margarita Room.
0
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And Davidson s there, because they re doing this show, Babkis.
0
SPEAKER_02
Oh, okay.
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You have touchstones.
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One is the Beverly Hills Hotel, which you re a huge fan of.
0
SPEAKER_01
In Aspen, you stay at the, what?
0
SPEAKER_01
Aspen was more houses, I think.
0
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Okay.
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St.
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SPEAKER_01
Bart s is another touchstone.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and of course, Amagansett.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_01
I remember when- And now Maine.
0
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you did finally pull the trigger.
0
SPEAKER_00
Maine?
0
SPEAKER_00
Maine.
0
SPEAKER_00
I wasn t CC d on that.
0
SPEAKER_00
So Maine?
0
SPEAKER_00
I ll show your pictures.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s pretty far out there.
0
SPEAKER_00
You can t show them.
0
SPEAKER_00
We talked about that last time.
0
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As you get a little older, you re pretty young, you want to get into the country and you want to get in wide open spaces.
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SPEAKER_02
And you want to get to the landscape of your childhood.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
0
SPEAKER_02
And this is as close to Canada as you can get without going to Canada.
0
SPEAKER_00
Oh, is that what it is?
0
SPEAKER_00
Nice, okay.
0
SPEAKER_00
You get sort of, yeah, you re Canadian, so, and what part of Canada, just real quick?
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What part is this near or what part?
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But you were sort of Toronto, am I right?
0
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Toronto, yeah.
0
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I told you, Dana.
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But I left in 1972.
0
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It s changed since then.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
0
SPEAKER_00
And was the reason we did Tommy Boy in Toronto because of that or was it a tax thing?
0
SPEAKER_02
No, I think that was, Paramount was just, they would have done it in Budapest if it was cheaper.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
0
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That s usually where movies flow.
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What was the cost of Tommy Boy versus Wayne s World 1?
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I just want to know.
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About.
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We were 13.5 or something?
0
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Yeah.
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Or 12.
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On Wayne s World?
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35 days of filming.
0
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And which film is your personal favorite between those two?
0
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We weren t 35.
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I think we were more like 25.
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SPEAKER_01
Oh, could have been.
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SPEAKER_01
It seemed it went like that.
0
SPEAKER_02
35 million?
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SPEAKER_01
No, no, no.
0
SPEAKER_01
25 days of shooting.
0
SPEAKER_01
Oh, yeah.
0
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Very quick.
0
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One take.
0
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Penelope s furious.
0
SPEAKER_02
Towards the end, when Howard Koch was- Jim here?
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No.
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Hawk Koch.
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Hawk Koch.
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They were doing the board and Paramount person that I was.
0
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who was giving us directions, said, you know, if you can make this movie for 12, five, I ll leave you alone.
0
SPEAKER_02
And that was sort of the whole idea of it.
0
SPEAKER_02
And then we had an extra day or two.
0
SPEAKER_02
And at one point, the Rob Lowe character was going to have Dennis Hopper as a father.
0
SPEAKER_02
And uh, so that there was a dynamic between the two of them, which would play off in a sense of the counterpoint.
0
SPEAKER_02
And then they said, you have to don t have the extra two days.
0
SPEAKER_02
So- Oh, that went away.
0
SPEAKER_02
To use Mike Myers phrase, we smooshed it, uh, into one character.
0
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And that was Rob.
0
SPEAKER_02
Oh, okay.
0
SPEAKER_01
And he was great.
0
SPEAKER_01
Kurt Fuller.
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That was good.
1
SPEAKER_03
Ended up being lightning in a bottle.
1
SPEAKER_03
I only saw the previews, and I remember been told before where the Paramount guy came back.
1
SPEAKER_03
We did the previews.
1
SPEAKER_03
Mike and I are possessed while they re watching ourselves.
1
SPEAKER_03
We re kind of depressed.
1
SPEAKER_03
Probably John Goldman.
1
SPEAKER_03
He says, it s got Ghostbusters numbers.
1
SPEAKER_03
Let s eat.
1
SPEAKER_03
Right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Is that right?
1
SPEAKER_01
No.
1
SPEAKER_01
We were in a restaurant.
1
SPEAKER_01
How did you remember it?
1
SPEAKER_01
Because I was older.
1
SPEAKER_03
I was dressed as Garth.
1
SPEAKER_01
We did, for sentimental reasons, a preview in Wayne, New Jersey, because it had a multiplex.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think that s where it was.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then we went to a restaurant that was happening in Soho, which had a tin roof.
1
SPEAKER_01
everybody was already, Mike was in complete depression because it wasn t the movie he thought he wanted, you know, it was all that.
1
SPEAKER_01
And he said, it got an 86, let s eat.
1
SPEAKER_01
86, okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
I missed it by nine points.
1
SPEAKER_02
86 for those of you at home is higher than 80.
1
SPEAKER_02
There s two boxes.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it means most people are in the top two boxes.
1
SPEAKER_01
And also that it added up to that.
1
SPEAKER_01
It could be 88, it could be 91, but it was something where he thought, why would you want to keep talking?
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, we won.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we won.
1
SPEAKER_01
Take the win.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that was sort of, it took like a while to get used to it.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then he went into the editing room and, but it was all there.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was all there in that first cut.
1
SPEAKER_01
And part of it was just how fast it moved and the exuberance of it.
1
SPEAKER_01
As I say, most people in America, when they re choosing any kind of entertainment, the phrase looks like fun is the most, is the talk.
1
SPEAKER_03
And I figured out for myself later why so popular.
1
SPEAKER_03
I thought the two so-called losers in town, they dropped AMC pace, they re living with their parents, are having way more fun than anyone in the town.
1
SPEAKER_03
So that s like,
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SPEAKER_03
Who wouldn t want to live in that world?
1
SPEAKER_02
And Tommy Boy, I remember you took me to Chili s after, and it wasn t quite as nice.
1
SPEAKER_02
Tommy Boy s was made for $35 million.
1
SPEAKER_02
Tommy Boy s probably around the same.
1
SPEAKER_02
Same thing.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was always, from the studio, it was always, you know,
1
SPEAKER_01
these movies have to be made for a price, $15, $20 million is a lot of money.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then you go, well, we can do this for 20.
1
SPEAKER_01
No, no, I said 15 to 20.
1
SPEAKER_01
We re gonna aim for 15, but we may end up at 20.
1
SPEAKER_01
But once that happened, you were left alone.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think because nobody considered it important, which was a big plus.
1
SPEAKER_03
And I could watch Tommy Boy and be really comfortable, because I m not wearing or seeing myself, and just thought it was,
1
SPEAKER_03
The start of David s film career, but for Chris, it feels to me like it captured Chris completely.
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_03
Like his physical comedy, his likability.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I got the sentimental side, which was kind of him fighting for the walk through the factory and the scene in the boat.
1
SPEAKER_01
And the bagpipes.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
That was great.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_03
It s like Three Amigos.
1
SPEAKER_03
It just gets shinier and brighter, as Paul would say.
1
SPEAKER_01
And also, they re meant to be fun.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
Do you know what I mean?
1
SPEAKER_01
And everyone, I think when somebody asked me,
1
SPEAKER_01
in an interview about Waynesboro, what were you aiming for?
1
SPEAKER_01
And I said, you know, really a confection, you know, because I said,
1
SPEAKER_01
In a Marx Brothers movie, no one cares whether Fedonia won the war.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s going to go 80, 90 minutes.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s going to be as funny as it can be.
1
SPEAKER_01
Then it s going to go, good night.
1
SPEAKER_01
And everybody s happy.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so the idea that you re going to be tied to a plot and have to stick with scenes that didn t work because they re going to tell the story.
1
SPEAKER_01
as opposed to, you know, Waynesboro s boy has showboy, loses showboy, sees girlboy.
1
SPEAKER_02
I mean, listen, Tommy boy, we always say, like, if you went and pitched a movie of two guys selling brake pads in Ohio, yo, we gotta do this.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s just really, I think it was Lauren saying, these two are kind of funny around the office.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I think you told the Turners, Bonnie and Terry Turner, so can you write something about that?
1
SPEAKER_02
And it was,
1
SPEAKER_02
You would get how we were goofy around the office and then said, if you can... And they did a good job of doing that and then you kind of steered it.
1
SPEAKER_01
And there d be a moment or two in Coneheads too.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, which had already established.
1
SPEAKER_01
And Mike, despite the best efforts of, you know, Mike and Dana was in Wayne s World.
1
SPEAKER_03
And... We had a bit of a competition.
1
SPEAKER_03
That s what Paul would say about him and John.
1
SPEAKER_01
You heard cheers of the audience and then they would put, yay,
1
SPEAKER_03
uh... yeah but we ve lived long enough to be very good friends and love each other
1
SPEAKER_00
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1
SPEAKER_03
The one thing I thought of my notes to ask you, why did you cast me?
1
SPEAKER_01
Originally at the show?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, on SNL.
1
SPEAKER_03
Well, because there was no Garth.
1
SPEAKER_03
There was only Wayne at the start.
1
SPEAKER_03
But I mean, why did you cast me on SNL?
1
SPEAKER_03
Oh, on SNL, I can answer this.
1
SPEAKER_03
Because that was a huge spot, you know, and then you took me and you didn t take a lot of brilliant people, so- Was it Jim Carrey?
1
SPEAKER_03
I m very grateful for it, but- No, I didn t see Jim Carrey.
1
SPEAKER_01
Franklin Davis.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, someone else may have seen him.
1
SPEAKER_01
They said, it s too big for you.
1
SPEAKER_03
Well, I think you did cast it.
1
SPEAKER_03
I don t know if like a situation comedy, but like it was different.
1
SPEAKER_03
Lovett s was a flavor.
1
SPEAKER_03
Phil was a role and somehow I fit in there and you rolled the dice and I m ever grateful for it.
1
SPEAKER_03
But it seems at the time I did not have a lot of confidence.
1
SPEAKER_03
I didn t know what was going to happen.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, I think Lovitz was there from the year before.
1
SPEAKER_01
He was the kingpin at the time.
1
SPEAKER_01
That Twilight Zone cruel thing.
1
SPEAKER_01
You burnt the cast down.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_01
Everyone got burnt up in a fire.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think that was Franken.
1
SPEAKER_01
I just wanted to skim that sketch.
1
SPEAKER_01
I didn t really... Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I sort of knew you d fit.
1
SPEAKER_01
from, what was the name of the club, Igby s?
1
SPEAKER_01
Igby s, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_03
For people who don t know, but now I m here with Lorne.
1
SPEAKER_03
I had auditioned other times.
1
SPEAKER_03
They said you were coming around.
1
SPEAKER_03
I didn t want to do it at the Comedy Store.
1
SPEAKER_03
And then Rosie O Donnell was there.
1
SPEAKER_03
I got 40 minutes.
1
SPEAKER_03
I m waiting to go on.
1
SPEAKER_03
First of all, I m terrified because it s a dream like everyone else.
1
SPEAKER_03
You come through the door.
1
SPEAKER_03
There he is.
1
SPEAKER_03
Then Brandon Tartikoff, the head of the network.
1
SPEAKER_03
Tartar sauce.
1
SPEAKER_03
And then I m like, oh fuck, I m so nervous.
1
SPEAKER_03
And then Cher.
1
SPEAKER_03
And they sat down in the club.
1
SPEAKER_01
Now, welcome dinner, Florida.
1
SPEAKER_01
That was probably my only night with the two of them.
1
SPEAKER_01
But we were somewhere, and I think Cher said, where are you going?
1
SPEAKER_01
And I said, well, I m going to go see somebody I think is good in the club.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I ll come.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then Brandon went, well, I want to go too.
1
SPEAKER_01
Or he was first.
1
SPEAKER_01
I don t remember the order.
1
SPEAKER_01
And they all left.
1
SPEAKER_01
But that wasn t the deciding factor.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was just that you had a clear, I mean, you were funny and you can never much, anytime you talk about funny for longer than a minute, you re not funny, it s not good.
1
SPEAKER_03
It s still whimsical that I found myself to that place at that time.
1
SPEAKER_01
No, and also I d never been there before, probably since.
1
SPEAKER_01
And as I said, I haven t been with those people either, but I do know Cher, I guess.
1
SPEAKER_01
And when I ve run into her, she says, I was there when you were discovered.
1
SPEAKER_01
Her laugh was so open.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
And nice, and she just wanted- Everyone to win.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_02
Also, if Dane is doing, don t want me to jump in, but if he s doing Church Lady, chopping broccoli, things that literally, in your head, you can probably just pluck and put right on the show.
1
SPEAKER_02
First show.
1
SPEAKER_02
Nothing to do different.
1
SPEAKER_03
The whimsy of the Church Lady, because it was part of the set, is probably five minutes of the character.
1
SPEAKER_03
And then I remember,
1
SPEAKER_03
Well, okay, we ll try it.
1
SPEAKER_03
Who knew?
1
SPEAKER_03
And I worked with your ex-wife, Rosie Schuster, for a month.
1
SPEAKER_03
You assigned me to a writer.
1
SPEAKER_03
She was the one who said church chat, because we thought of a talk show.
1
SPEAKER_03
And I remember bringing the two dresses into you.
1
SPEAKER_03
One was a little more feminine, and you just pointed at the one we used.
1
SPEAKER_03
And then as it turns out, it was such a great thing for the show, because I had Phil and Jan coming in and being brilliant, and or Sigourney Weaver, the first show,
1
SPEAKER_03
And Victoria Jackson.
1
SPEAKER_03
And also Sean Penn.
1
SPEAKER_03
And then Sean Penn, and then all these religious scandals.
1
SPEAKER_03
So again, that was a freaky, lucky thing for all of us.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think it was like, very often with the character, you have to find, or at least my end of it is, you have to find the context.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, with Mike and you in Wayne s world, it was like, he had a very
2
SPEAKER_03
very specific look in mind, which was the basement, the stairs coming down, Nora played the mother.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yes, hair metal thing.
2
SPEAKER_03
The Garth thing was, I think you should do it with Dana, and somehow that evolved.
2
SPEAKER_01
That was your suggestion, yeah, for sure.
2
SPEAKER_03
And then the moment it worked, it was like on a 10 to 1.
2
SPEAKER_03
And it played, played pretty well.
2
SPEAKER_03
Because it was fresh and had energy and it looked like fun.
2
SPEAKER_03
And it was.
2
SPEAKER_03
And then after that, Mike had been at the show three months, four months?
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, something like that.
2
SPEAKER_03
But after that, it was like, why are we in that corner?
2
SPEAKER_03
Right.
2
SPEAKER_03
And you re in that corner because you designed a set that had the stairs and whatever.
2
SPEAKER_03
An entrance and an exit.
2
SPEAKER_03
You re as far from the audience as possible.
2
SPEAKER_03
So from that point on, I think it moved to home base.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_03
And that was like, yeah, we don t need the background.
2
SPEAKER_03
Which is incredibly powerful to be at home base.
2
SPEAKER_00
Home base is right in front of the audience.
2
SPEAKER_00
You can really time the laughs.
2
SPEAKER_00
Where the monologue is.
2
SPEAKER_00
Where the monologue is, I m just telling people at home.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_00
Where it s like right at the audience, right down the camera.
2
SPEAKER_03
As the warmup, which was designed a certain way, it is still the same.
2
SPEAKER_03
you re moving down, you know, like somebody s, somebody does, now it s Che.
2
SPEAKER_03
Right.
2
SPEAKER_03
And then Keenan comes out and sings with the girls.
2
SPEAKER_03
And then you sort of, the light starts to go down and you know you re looking at that spot.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_03
Or you re looking where the cold opening is gonna be.
2
SPEAKER_03
You re trained.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so you get a sense of where the focus is.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s just amazing, Lorne, that you re still there.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I ve come back a few times and did update or whatever.
2
SPEAKER_01
You can t get past it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you ll never forget it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I think that for all of us who are unknown, go on the show and for the audience to see Will Ferrell do what he did, see how David evolved,
2
SPEAKER_01
It s such an amazing visceral experience.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s nothing like it, and the music and the way you kept it the same is extraordinary, that you didn t let any regime trick you out and change it.
2
SPEAKER_03
What s interesting is there s four new people coming in.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s amazing.
2
SPEAKER_03
And because of the pandemic, we couldn t let... There was no place for anyone to go, so we kept adding people because you have to add people every year.
2
SPEAKER_03
And suddenly we had like 23 people.
2
SPEAKER_00
And go like, this is insane.
2
SPEAKER_00
And everybody s angry because they re not playing time.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so, and then people left.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so it was so much fun seeing these new people because they re exactly where you should start.
2
SPEAKER_03
They ve never been on television.
2
SPEAKER_03
They don t know.
2
SPEAKER_03
They don t generally, if they have representation, it s,
2
SPEAKER_03
primitive and you just sort of see them and there s like that exuberance and excitement and it just shows and that energy shows.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so when you start with people who ve never been on television and the audience gets to be part of that process and live with them through it, then I used to say, I m gonna say it now again, that the four longest years of your life are high school.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_03
You don t have any money, you don t have a car.
2
SPEAKER_03
Any girls.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so staying up late with friends or staying up late by yourself to like one o clock in the morning is like a really exciting thing.
2
SPEAKER_03
So when people say the best cast that ever did it, generally it s when they were in high school.
2
SPEAKER_03
Totally.
2
SPEAKER_03
So if that, you know, and they go, oh, well, no, the best was, you know, you and Hartman and you, you know, and you go and follow.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then you go, when were you in high school?
2
SPEAKER_00
And then you go, oh, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_00
No, I mean- Yeah, no, there s just- It s true, and you have the time, and you talk about it with your friends, that s the only game in town.
2
SPEAKER_00
Especially back then, like that, I mean, there s more competition now, and it s great that you re still crushing it, because with so many things to choose from, that was, I think when,
2
SPEAKER_00
You have a transition kind of now where some are leaving the, you know, more familiar faces.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t mean anyone s not as good.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s just some people get more opportunities coming up.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the same thing happened.
2
SPEAKER_00
It took me longer to get my footing when we had Dana.
2
SPEAKER_00
Unfortunately, it was just too good.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was- Oh, no.
2
SPEAKER_03
And also I think Ben Stiller came in at the same time as Mike did.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_03
But he sort of saw, this could be a long wait.
2
SPEAKER_03
You know, like-
2
SPEAKER_03
Because Sandler, everybody was there and it was killing it.
2
SPEAKER_03
And what was interesting about that time was the only people who liked it were the audience.
2
SPEAKER_03
Critically, it wasn t.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now it s a golden age now.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we were not like, now Barstool Sports said we were the best cast.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then you back then, they were like, this is the worst bunch of assholes, untalented humps.
2
SPEAKER_01
Even when we had, on a given night back in the late 90s, or early 90s, sorry, late 80s, we would have toonses.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m talking about just, we d have a Sprockets.
2
SPEAKER_01
Maybe I d do Bush or Perot or McLaughlin Group.
2
SPEAKER_01
Mike might do, I don t know,
2
SPEAKER_01
Talking in Lady, whatever her name was, but we had so many.
2
SPEAKER_01
When did Sandler sing a song?
2
SPEAKER_01
Dave would do a Hollywood minute.
2
SPEAKER_01
So there was a given moment in time you must have felt like, hey, I got a lot of things to hit here.
2
SPEAKER_03
And you know, we re doing that documentary on Jim Downey.
2
SPEAKER_03
I talked to him for four hours.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s only going to take 10 years.
2
SPEAKER_03
But my son Eddie is working on it and he grew up kind of on the show, et cetera, but doesn t really know that period.
2
SPEAKER_03
And he keeps showing me things from that period that are like hilarious.
2
SPEAKER_03
And one of them he showed me recently was Perot on Larry King.
2
SPEAKER_03
And it s so funny.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s a perfect Downey piece.
2
SPEAKER_03
You re great at it.
2
SPEAKER_03
Will s doing Larry King, which he s not known for.
2
SPEAKER_01
And there was Chris Kattan in there.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was people, their platforms were very exotic.
2
SPEAKER_01
And Ross Perot was the same old thing, because he s the same old dribble every time.
2
SPEAKER_02
Are we gonna do this?
2
SPEAKER_02
Can I finish one time?
2
SPEAKER_02
Or are you gonna keep talking all the time?
2
SPEAKER_02
I mean, the rhythm of that was so infectious.
2
SPEAKER_01
I never had more fun doing a character.
2
SPEAKER_03
And you could do that speed.
2
SPEAKER_03
You always had that ability.
2
SPEAKER_03
That was something I saw in the audition.
2
SPEAKER_03
You could move something that fast.
2
SPEAKER_01
If I can catch a wave with it rhythmically in my head, and I know that it s like casting a line to the audience, can I finish one time?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I know that.
2
SPEAKER_02
Little hooks, micro hooks.
2
SPEAKER_02
You re gonna laugh right now, because you can t not laugh, because that s the way I m talking.
2
SPEAKER_01
Can you figure it that way?
2
SPEAKER_01
With a gesture.
2
SPEAKER_01
I know, it is exactly like a song.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Extrapolated.
2
SPEAKER_03
But you audition with music.
2
SPEAKER_01
I did have a little piano thing and stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m not recommending that because it s really time intensive.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was about to say, for that reason, I m out.
2
SPEAKER_01
The other night, just I was at the improv doing a benefit and I m kind of bombing.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I m not, I m doing okay.
2
SPEAKER_01
Then I go, fuck it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I go, I did a thing on SNL called Chopped Broccoli.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s packed.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I do it and give it my all on the piano, standing ovation.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I should never go on and do anything else.
2
SPEAKER_01
It killed... Yeah, I thought that story was heading to a bomb.
2
SPEAKER_01
Why?
2
SPEAKER_01
I only did it once.
2
SPEAKER_03
Who do they think it is?
2
SPEAKER_03
Because people ask me all the time.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was... We gave him a name.
2
SPEAKER_01
To me, it was just random rock star.
2
SPEAKER_01
Nigel something.
2
SPEAKER_01
What was he called?
2
SPEAKER_01
Derek something.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it s Brit.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a British.
2
SPEAKER_01
But it s not McCart.
2
SPEAKER_01
No, it s not McCartney.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then I buried it by, we did a sketch where the record company, it was a little too sophisticated, tells him he has to die because his record sales will go up and look what happened to Jim Morrison and Hendrix, but I don t want to die.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was one of those, and it laid there, but Chuck Broccoli lives on.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, Lauren, when you watch these auditions, it s interesting because I was newer to comedy.
2
SPEAKER_00
All I want to do is kill.
2
SPEAKER_00
And cause I, my audition was different.
2
SPEAKER_00
We ve interviewed a lot of these people and I m hearing a lot of them were at eight H, which would be just horrifying, but, and it s dead silent, you know, and everyone s out there and shoemakers eating peanuts, you know, no one, it s like, Hey, come down for the audition.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s tough to audition.
2
SPEAKER_00
But when I did,
2
SPEAKER_03
Weren t you brought in a little bit as a writer?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, the thing was I came in and Dennis, right before I walked on, people were at Catch a Rising Star.
2
SPEAKER_00
You might ve been there.
2
SPEAKER_00
I actually don t even know if you were there.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was, you know, some writers came down and a handful was me, Rob Schneider, and Tom Kenny, and we were just doing standup.
2
SPEAKER_00
So we do it and Dennis Miller comes up before and he goes, hey, Spudling, he goes.
2
SPEAKER_00
Are you going to bring the A game?
2
SPEAKER_00
And I go, I mean, it s all the A I got.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I don t know, it might be a B, but my best is might be B. And he goes, yeah, I m saving it for another audition for American Idol.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I go, listen,
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and he goes, you don t want to kill too hard.
2
SPEAKER_00
Throws a red flag with these guys.
2
SPEAKER_00
They don t want to get some road hack.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I go, so don t do good.
2
SPEAKER_00
And they re like, David Spade.
2
SPEAKER_00
I go, Dennis, don t do good.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I realized now when I watch comics and stuff, I look at writing.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I can tell someone has game in two lines.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s like name that tune.
2
SPEAKER_00
I go, first line might be a fluke.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then they do the next joke.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I go, there s something going on here.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s like,
2
SPEAKER_00
you get an eye for it.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I think you guys all had that.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I can watch someone and not see if they kill or not.
2
SPEAKER_00
I didn t almost hear it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I just go, oh, that s a good one.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, that s a good one.
2
SPEAKER_00
So Dennis said later, or maybe Downey said, no, we liked your writing.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I don t even know.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t think we did that well, but that didn t matter.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was more like, oh, I liked the way you put that together or that thought or that.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that, I appreciate that.
2
SPEAKER_01
How would you describe that, that sensibility that you look for?
2
SPEAKER_03
Well, what I think was happening then was,
3
SPEAKER_01
we had a kind of murderer s row of people that were going to be dominating for a long time.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you were going to get to be Ross Perot, but in the other debate.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was going to come back and do both parts.
3
SPEAKER_00
I saw David sitting in the corner dressed as Perrault, and he looked so sad, but it was just for the wide shot.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was a fluky thing, but yeah, that was... You did well.
3
SPEAKER_00
But what I m getting at is that there s... You were Perrault.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s a thing which I ve done a bunch over the years, which is I ll bring someone in as a writer.
3
SPEAKER_01
you know they re gonna be cast eventually.
3
SPEAKER_01
You buy some time, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
But they won t go through that self-doubt, why am I not getting on?
3
SPEAKER_01
And people say, I m on, but I don t see enough, whatever.
3
SPEAKER_01
I added that though to my stress.
3
SPEAKER_00
People, I ll talk to comedians who ve auditioned and they tell me what they ve auditioned with in the last five or eight years, and I won t tell them, but I m thinking to myself, not gonna get it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
And whether it was, like, you re not afraid of any kind of humor, but it was something scatological, but it wasn t funny.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I could just tell it didn t fit kind of the frequency of you, Lorne Michaels, and your lieutenants.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s a certain thing, and it s hard to describe it because it s got a wide bandwidth,
3
SPEAKER_02
But there is something- You can see it at read-through when someone new puts in something and everyone goes, oh Jesus.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s a little off-putting.
3
SPEAKER_01
And read-through is an honest room.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s no, Bernie s not there, so there s not, and the network s not there, there s no booming laugh.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it s got, yeah, it didn t play.
3
SPEAKER_01
And same with the show, when something doesn t work, there are no laughs on the air.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, who do you blame?
3
SPEAKER_01
That s the high wire.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s the fairest thing in the world, really.
3
SPEAKER_01
And also you feel you ve earned it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
But there are people like Bowen, I brought in as a writer.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s great.
3
SPEAKER_01
You want people to see how the process works.
3
SPEAKER_01
Cause it s figuring it out those first few weeks that, you know, that s it and that s cut.
3
SPEAKER_01
You don t like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And how fast it goes and costume changes and the...
3
SPEAKER_01
Molly s pointing at a line that changed or the writer forgot to tell you.
3
SPEAKER_02
I think Chris Rock ran into that problem of, you know, we were stressed and frustrated we weren t getting on fast enough, but Chris Rock comes in and they re like, you re Eddie Murphy now.
3
SPEAKER_02
and you re on in seven sketches and Franken s screaming at him about a Confederate, he s playing a general and he s going, no!
3
SPEAKER_02
And I m like, poor Rock, he s in too much.
3
SPEAKER_02
Like it s too much right away.
3
SPEAKER_02
And here s the cards and here s this.
3
SPEAKER_02
And I think it got him off, it was a tougher situation for the guy who s one of the funniest in the world.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, but you knew, at least I knew he was really good.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, of course.
3
SPEAKER_01
But normally you get to develop in the background.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right, you watch a little bit.
3
SPEAKER_00
Phil and Jan and I were in the cold opening and I d never done sketch comedy, just stand up.
3
SPEAKER_00
So my first show, and I wasn t, I didn t realize later, I guess I knew I was before the monologue, but I didn t know I was in the cold opening.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s how green I was.
3
SPEAKER_00
We were just in the first one.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was Game Show Psychic.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if it was Jack Candy.
3
SPEAKER_00
Is that what it was?
3
SPEAKER_00
Jack Candy.
3
SPEAKER_00
Jack Handy, you know, I would answer the questions and Phil was perfect in Jan, and so we had no time to really acclimate, but it was kind of nice.
3
SPEAKER_00
Everyone was really involved.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is something Higgins said, and I don t know if you made it, but that you basically wrote the Constitution.
3
SPEAKER_00
of Saturday Night Live, and then you see all these incarnations.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I m a baby boomer, I m doing late 80s stuff, and then you re the constant, and then you re seeing what kind of Will Ferrell stuff or Bill Hader humor, and then Kate McGinnon, and so you re adaptive in a sense, you re observing.
3
SPEAKER_00
So are these new four people, are you seeing something just a little 2022 different?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and one of them, by the way, is from Arizona.
3
SPEAKER_01
Shut the fuck up.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I said, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he said, yeah, that s where David Spade s from.
3
SPEAKER_02
Famous.
3
SPEAKER_02
They told you?
3
SPEAKER_02
It was like a credit.
3
SPEAKER_00
Scott s the only one.
3
SPEAKER_00
And also the changing culture of comedy, but you re still there and you re adapting, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think
3
SPEAKER_01
The room is great, you know?
3
SPEAKER_01
It s the best.
3
SPEAKER_01
And an 8-H, you know?
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh yeah, not some of the hallowed grounds.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s a safe space.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you kind of, people relax into it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s scary for the auditions, of course.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
But it s also, at some point you have to bat at Yankee Stadium if you re gonna be in the major leagues.
3
SPEAKER_01
So pretending that that won t exist and you go right from a club to on the air wouldn t work.
3
SPEAKER_01
No.
3
SPEAKER_01
Passing through that threshold, because it s scary.
3
SPEAKER_00
And for you personally, because I always saw you kind of as a coach, in a way, that so every castman... It s literally what Jason Sudeikis calls me.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re always doing sports metaphors.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you complimented me once, third person, said, Lauren said you reminded him of Don Mattingly.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I was like...
3
SPEAKER_00
That, I looked it up.
3
SPEAKER_00
Take it.
3
SPEAKER_00
But you see all these personalities come and go, and have you gotten more astute or that it surprised you?
3
SPEAKER_00
You kind of go, well, this cast member will be like this.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think this one s gonna do well later.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you must have some intuitive sense, or is it all just sort of surprising sometimes?
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, like of these four you ve just hired, do you have a sense of them?
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe 10 years ago,
3
SPEAKER_01
Somebody who was new to the network, but was a senior person.
3
SPEAKER_01
We were having dinner and he said, can I ask you an SNL question?
3
SPEAKER_01
And I went, sure.
3
SPEAKER_01
No, it was great.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he said, you know the update with Jost and Che?
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you think that s working?
3
SPEAKER_01
And I said, no.
3
SPEAKER_01
He said, oh, you know.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I went, yeah, no, no, it s a thing of like,
3
SPEAKER_01
The way I say it, which is unpleasant, is that all babies are ugly, unless they re your baby.
3
SPEAKER_01
And after three months, people say, what a beautiful baby.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you have to live through that period of people not being good.
3
SPEAKER_01
Somebody blows a line.
3
SPEAKER_01
Somebody comes in on the wrong foot.
3
SPEAKER_01
Somebody gets a cue late.
3
SPEAKER_01
Wally doesn t, the card doesn t come up.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s all that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And people go, I don t think that guy s that funny.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you go, no, he is.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think when you see chemistry and you sort of know they re going to work well together, well, you and Chris, you know, it was just there from the beginning, it was there off stage, but it was also very clear on camera.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, it seems like the audience starts to discover you and like you because you get enough bass hits.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then you as a performer and David, we just get more confident and that feeds on itself.
3
SPEAKER_01
Also, you go from however
3
SPEAKER_01
successful you thought you were to famous.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that transition is just different suddenly.
3
SPEAKER_01
In the first season, we had a limo for the host.
3
SPEAKER_01
That was the extent of our budget.
3
SPEAKER_01
And at the party,
3
SPEAKER_01
John Belushi would quite often go and sit with the host towards the end, and then as they re getting into the limo, he d say, you know, so John would say, I ll drop you off.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he d drop the host at the hotel, and then he would just drive around all night with his face, like people, limos were rare then, so who is that?
3
SPEAKER_01
And then he d just be, you know, hand on the roof.
3
SPEAKER_02
I like when we, first of all, we didn t have cars back then.
3
SPEAKER_02
It wasn t that far long ago, but to the set, which probably was better to have because snowing and they re like, Marcy s like, Spade, are you here?
3
SPEAKER_02
I m down at Manny Hanny.
3
SPEAKER_02
And I m like, well, I m trying to get there.
3
SPEAKER_02
I live on the Upper West Side, but in snow storm.
3
SPEAKER_02
And then I get there.
3
SPEAKER_02
And then afterwards we got to share, like, you know, made sense.
3
SPEAKER_02
Cass gets a car.
3
SPEAKER_02
I d share one with any feature player or whatever, and then, and Norm would take one to Atlantic City.
3
SPEAKER_02
Anyway.
3
SPEAKER_02
Where he did very well.
3
SPEAKER_02
Where he did very well.
3
SPEAKER_02
Marty s like, I m telling Lauren immediately, but I was gonna ask you about, you just said something about Farley.
3
SPEAKER_02
Do you remember the stupid story where Farley was dating Aaron at work?
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I remember that.
3
SPEAKER_02
this is just someone that worked at the office, a nice, very cute girl.
3
SPEAKER_02
And then on the break, they broke up and they came back and she started dating Steve Martin.
3
SPEAKER_02
And so Farley comes back from Wisconsin and Sandler and I are in the office and he goes, so I smoke a guy here, Aaron s got a new fella.
3
SPEAKER_02
And I go, yeah, but he doesn t know.
3
SPEAKER_02
And he goes, well, he might be richer, but he s not funnier.
3
SPEAKER_02
And he s not better looking and he s not more famous.
3
SPEAKER_02
And we were like, eee.
3
SPEAKER_02
Whoops.
3
SPEAKER_02
All three.
3
SPEAKER_02
And he s like, shut the fuck up.
3
SPEAKER_02
We re like, oh.
3
SPEAKER_02
You can t get better than Seymour.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s a tough one.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, so Lorne.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so Lorne.
3
SPEAKER_00
I have a lot of questions.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
3
SPEAKER_00
Look at this.
3
SPEAKER_00
It seems to me like you love it when the cast and the writers are melding.
3
SPEAKER_00
You don t want either side to really dominate completely.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think,
3
SPEAKER_01
I made the choice because when I worked on the show Laugh-In, which was a number one show, to which I contributed almost nothing.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was a junior writer, but we were never at any read-through.
3
SPEAKER_01
We didn t go to the studio.
3
SPEAKER_01
We were in the writers offices.
4
SPEAKER_02
it and other people would rewrite it and whatever.
4
SPEAKER_02
So it wasn t what I thought working at a comedy show would be.
4
SPEAKER_02
And so the idea of elevating the writers, because every person from the network and particularly everyone in the control room goes, oh, the writers can do no wrong.
4
SPEAKER_02
But the point with it is, it s
4
SPEAKER_02
that collaboration between a performer and a writer is, and then the performers all learn how to write, do you know what I mean?
4
SPEAKER_02
Or at least how to recognize, because the performers- To survive.
4
SPEAKER_02
Know rhythm and timing.
4
SPEAKER_02
You know, that s too many words, cut that back.
4
SPEAKER_02
Do you know what I mean?
4
SPEAKER_02
And the writers theoretically think about content of some sort.
4
SPEAKER_01
They don t like to trim.
4
SPEAKER_01
No, they do not like to trim.
4
SPEAKER_01
I would tell Al and Jim, I go, with a bush cold opening, I go, you gotta cut some words out, because I feel like I m doing homework.
4
SPEAKER_01
Can t do 13 pages.
4
SPEAKER_01
I feel like I have to get through it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And they did it, but yeah, I was- And they do it immediately, because they never talk back.
4
SPEAKER_01
They never ever argue with you or whatever.
4
SPEAKER_01
I didn t realize how much they all wanted to be on camera till later.
4
SPEAKER_02
And then you saw Change Bank with Jim.
4
SPEAKER_02
Change Bank was great.
4
SPEAKER_00
Silver tones, man.
4
SPEAKER_00
Commercial parodies were another secret weapon.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think there s just a thing of watching people
4
SPEAKER_02
on a stage really enjoying themselves, feeling comfortable when that level of confidence is there and you know that you got it.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s just a different thing and it comes through at home.
4
SPEAKER_02
You just can tell.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s exhilarating.
4
SPEAKER_01
On the 40th, because Mike and I were closing the show, which I want to talk about the 40th because I think it was sort of magic, but I said we should either be very offended or very flattered because it s a four-hour show and there we come as Wayne and Garth.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we so happened to land it so beautifully, and Kanye West was there, and we kept going to him, and I felt so in the pocket.
4
SPEAKER_01
But, God, you had to fight the nerves, because everyone was a famous person in the audience.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that was a tough room.
4
SPEAKER_02
And worse, because the seating was screwed.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, the 40th was just a fly by the seat of your pants.
4
SPEAKER_02
I mean, it wasn t a normal- But people were still coming in and I had to send Jimmy and Justin out.
4
SPEAKER_02
So they really took a bullet, because people were moving in, still seating and they re performing.
4
SPEAKER_02
Because the audience was only celebrities, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it was live at eight o clock.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, former hosts, former cast.
4
SPEAKER_01
Music.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then you had a spillover room and people were mad there in the spillover room.
4
SPEAKER_01
That room was pretty famous too.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ve never been to that.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_00
And by the way, I don t think there s any plus ones.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was just- And the 50th will have no plus ones.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s fucking- Well, what do you think of the 50th?
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, isn t it surreal?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
I mean, and then I was in, I had to give an Emmy speech and I hadn t planned on it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that s right.
4
SPEAKER_01
Congratulations.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, thank you.
4
SPEAKER_01
You win again.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was like seven years in a row or something?
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
Six.
4
SPEAKER_02
Six.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m thinking about next year.
4
SPEAKER_02
You have to write this stuff down later.
4
SPEAKER_02
I think I was going to say, I don t want to say, well, I m getting ready for season 48.
4
SPEAKER_02
Because it s insane.
4
SPEAKER_02
You know what I mean?
4
SPEAKER_02
And yes, there was five years I wasn t there, you know, after the first five.
4
SPEAKER_02
But you just sort of go.
4
SPEAKER_02
And the other thing that s familiar to people who are joining the show is the school year.
4
SPEAKER_02
You know, that we come in in the fall, take Thanksgiving off, we take Christmas off, you know, Easter, whatever, and spring break, and then it s summer, and you go away.
4
SPEAKER_02
And the original plan was not.
4
SPEAKER_02
The network just wanted us to do three shows a month all year round.
4
SPEAKER_02
And I went, the seasons are gonna run into each other.
4
SPEAKER_02
And also, it s so...
4
SPEAKER_02
such a pressurized environment, you have to get away from everybody.
4
SPEAKER_02
I mean, for me, because I want to kill everybody by the end.
4
SPEAKER_02
And you just want to get out.
4
SPEAKER_02
And so you go away and around the end of July, you go, yeah, I could go back.
4
SPEAKER_01
Start to miss it, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now when the network or whoever, the people you talk to about the show, try to convince you to do something, how do you, I mean, if you, how do you navigate that?
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, have you ever lost an argument?
4
SPEAKER_01
Because it seems like you ve
4
SPEAKER_01
have a winning percentage of keeping the show quality or its brand.
4
SPEAKER_02
If it was anything to do with religion, particularly in the 70s, there was... Jim used to write this thing called What If, and it would always be...
4
SPEAKER_02
Written in by a 10-year-old paperboy from out of Tuna, Illinois.
4
SPEAKER_02
And what if Spartacus had a Piper cup?
4
SPEAKER_02
You know, it s like those kind of... And then we do a reenactment of it.
4
SPEAKER_02
And at the time, a state senator in New York, in arguing for capital punishment, said that if the Romans hadn t believed in capital punishment, there would be
4
SPEAKER_02
no Jesus, and there d be no Christianity, which seemed insane to me, but I understood how you could get there logically.
4
SPEAKER_02
And the movie Straight Time, which was Justin Hoffman coming out on parole and
4
SPEAKER_02
His criminal friends trying to get him back into crime.
4
SPEAKER_02
So we did it as Jesus gets off with three to five, and then he... Some of the apostles are going, come on, one more miracle, no one gets hurt.
4
SPEAKER_02
Now, to me, it was just comedy, but it really got… Because you d have to know the relationship between me and Howard, because in the first five years, it d be like, well, we can t just do pop.
4
SPEAKER_02
And I go, well, you know, we wanted to do this.
4
SPEAKER_02
And so that week we had Keith Jarrett, and it was like jazz piano.
4
SPEAKER_02
And it was brilliant, but it was like now this sketch, which was nine minutes, we re arguing up until air, really at 11 o clock, at which point it s like,
4
SPEAKER_02
I m going, uh, really?
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, you re denying the divinity of Christ, which I go, we re not really.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s, you know... It s also a comedy show.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
And maybe that s the Canadian part.
4
SPEAKER_02
But all I m getting at is it was like an absolute no.
4
SPEAKER_02
Wow.
4
SPEAKER_02
Not even that.
4
SPEAKER_02
And I said to one of the network people who was in the room, who I ll spare.
4
SPEAKER_02
I said, does this offend you?
4
SPEAKER_02
And he said, listen, Lorne, I d let you put cock sucking on the air if we get a 40 share.
4
SPEAKER_02
So I m the wrong guy to ask.
4
SPEAKER_02
And I went, oh, this is really helpful.
4
SPEAKER_02
Thank you.
4
SPEAKER_01
We had Mr. Clockworthy, I think, in the 80s.
4
SPEAKER_01
And in church chat, I initially had penis in there a lot, and he wanted some of those cut out.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so I substitute for penis, I put in more your throbbing, baldness area.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was way more pornographic, but that s good.
4
SPEAKER_01
No penis.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and I think that for us, because it s live and because we were on the honor system at the beginning, we re still on it.
4
SPEAKER_02
I was at the Emmys the other night and a bunch of people said, fuck.
4
SPEAKER_02
And you go, yeah, you re going to get a laugh, but it s not going to age well.
4
SPEAKER_02
You know?
4
SPEAKER_02
But it is that move, the temptation to do it.
4
SPEAKER_02
And for us, we would lose affiliates.
4
SPEAKER_02
I don t think you lose anything anymore, but there s something about... And when we were doing Wayne s World, I d been... In 1990, I was in
4
SPEAKER_02
Anyway, I was on something, a trip.
4
SPEAKER_02
On a yacht.
4
SPEAKER_02
And I was with people that I wasn t normally with, and they talked about watching the show with their kids.
4
SPEAKER_02
Now, no, you know, in the seventies it was not supposed to trust anyone over 30.
4
SPEAKER_02
And it was like, we were doing it for the people we knew and we didn t think the rest of the country cared.
4
SPEAKER_02
And they really didn t until Mr. Bill showed up.
4
SPEAKER_02
And they were talking about sitting there with their teenage daughter and how,
4
SPEAKER_02
how great it was to both be laughing at the same things as a family.
4
SPEAKER_02
Anyway, I didn t have kids, so it was kind of, I thought, oh, that s it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that was Schwing and Sphincter says was her.
4
SPEAKER_02
No, we were doing that.
4
SPEAKER_02
Oh, the Madonna.
4
SPEAKER_02
The Madonna thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
with the Evian bottle.
4
SPEAKER_02
What was the movie, Truth or Dare?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, Truth or Dare.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was in a unitard.
4
SPEAKER_01
She goes, look at the thing on that guy, or whatever.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it was... And they were doing the Evian bottle like that, and she wanted to do it, and I m going, ooh, if I had a 16-year-old daughter, that d be really cringe stuff.
4
SPEAKER_02
And we do lots of things that are shocking, but I think you can t just be shocking.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think it s great to have hard rails and so it s so you can be a little naughty, but you can t just full-blown No, I mean the penis sketch where we re all in a nudist colony fantastic
5
SPEAKER_02
Fantastic piece.
5
SPEAKER_02
Fantastic piece really holds up.
5
SPEAKER_02
Didn t it take a year or two to get it on?
5
SPEAKER_02
We lost Toyota.
5
SPEAKER_02
We lost two, three big sponsors because people would boycott a dealership.
5
SPEAKER_02
Because of that sketch.
5
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_02
And because people would say, you know,
5
SPEAKER_02
whoever has the dealership in Mississippi is calling central headquarters going, there s people outside here protesting.
5
SPEAKER_02
And why are you sponsoring that show?
5
SPEAKER_01
Guys had a nudist colony.
5
SPEAKER_01
We had a slat so you d see our legs.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think Hanks was on it.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think it was Smuggle, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it was just, nice penis.
5
SPEAKER_01
How you doing?
5
SPEAKER_01
How s your penis?
5
SPEAKER_01
And we said penis like intentionally like 300 times or something.
5
SPEAKER_02
You missed that one, didn t you?
5
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and the repetition of it was where the laughs were.
5
SPEAKER_02
I don t think it got great laughs.
5
SPEAKER_02
Right.
5
SPEAKER_01
No.
5
SPEAKER_01
No.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t think so.
5
SPEAKER_02
But there are certain writers who never don t hear laughs, so.
5
SPEAKER_00
You never don t hear laughs.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I know, they go, kill.
5
SPEAKER_00
Actually, but like old ones like Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger, Pepsi, Pepsi, those I don t think kill the first time around.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t think Conehead s kills the first time around.
5
SPEAKER_00
And you train the audience, this is good.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then later they go, oh, those are the best.
5
SPEAKER_00
And you go, it didn t even work.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, very often the first one s not a hit.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_02
But.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_02
We did the very first show, we re still trying to find out what areas of the studio had sound and we were on there.
5
SPEAKER_02
There was a piece that Rosie wrote called Bee Hospital.
5
SPEAKER_02
And it was a maternity hospital for bees.
5
SPEAKER_02
And Frannie Lee did the costumes and they were great, the bee costumes.
5
SPEAKER_02
And every now, they re just men,
5
SPEAKER_02
pacing.
5
SPEAKER_02
And then every now and then, the nurse would come out and say, it s a worker.
5
SPEAKER_02
Oh, it s a worker.
5
SPEAKER_02
And it was just that, it s a worker.
5
SPEAKER_02
Oh, yeah, it s a worker.
5
SPEAKER_02
And then it was, it s a drone.
5
SPEAKER_02
Oh, it s a drone, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_02
Anyway, it played to silence because you couldn t hear it.
5
SPEAKER_02
It was in the far corner of the studio.
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that s terrible.
5
SPEAKER_02
So the only note we got
5
SPEAKER_02
from the network was the bees thing didn t work, so don t do that anymore.
5
SPEAKER_02
So the second show, the bees came on and tried, and then Paul Simon was hosting.
5
SPEAKER_02
He said, no, no, the bees is cut because it didn t work.
5
SPEAKER_02
The third show, they snuck on in a sketch with Rob Reiner and Penny Marshall, and then there was a long
5
SPEAKER_02
more and more they re taking, people in the back are bees.
5
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah, that was a big thing.
5
SPEAKER_02
And then Rob went into a long speech about how the bees didn t work, it s not funny, and then Belushi did that, a variation on that speech from Billy Jack.
5
SPEAKER_02
of like, you know, you have Hollywood writers, you have this, you come here, and we re, you know.
5
SPEAKER_02
And they kind of walked off to one tin soldier, you know, like.
5
SPEAKER_02
One tin soldier.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so that was then the bees were there.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s what we loved about that show.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
It was anarchy, and it was so different.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
And also, don t tell us what s funny.
5
SPEAKER_00
All right, guys, that was part one with Lorne, and we re going to do the whole part two next week.
5
SPEAKER_00
This has been a podcast presentation of Cadence 13.
5
SPEAKER_00
Please listen, then rate, review, and follow all episodes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Available now for free wherever you get your podcast.
5
SPEAKER_01
No joke, folks.
5
SPEAKER_01
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.
5
SPEAKER_00
The show s lead producer is Greg Holtzman, with production and engineering support from Serena Regan and Chris Basil of Cadence 13.