Part 20 (1/2)

TERRY TURNER, Writer: When I got onto the show, there was a sense that this show is over. I remember sitting in a restaurant with my father-in-law in New York, and he said, ”My son-in-law here works on Sat.u.r.day Night.” And the waiter said, ”G.o.d, I thought that thing was off the air. It's been bad for so long.”

VICTORIA JACKSON, Cast Member: I lived in L.A., had my own house, and I had already been on a canceled series, and let me see, I remember I was pregnant in '85 with my first baby. I was twenty-six years old. I was doing a commercial in the desert for a truck company, and I was nauseous and everything and I didn't want them to know I was pregnant, because they might fire me, but I wanted the money 'cause I was the breadwinner since my husband never worked. And so I came back to L.A. from that commercial, and I heard someone say my name was on a list at the Improv to audition for Sat.u.r.day Night Live and why wasn't I there? And I was like, ”Huh?!” n.o.body told me about that. William Morris was my agent, but n.o.body told me that there was even an audition.

Here's the cut to the chase: I had the baby. I did The Pick-Up Artist. And all of a sudden the phone rings in the summer of '86. And my baby's three months old and it was someone from Sat.u.r.day Night Live, and they said, ”Do you want to audition for Sat.u.r.day Night Live tomorrow?” And it didn't even go through my agent. It didn't go through anyone I knew. It was like they called my home directly. I have no idea how they got my phone number. It's really mysterious. And I said, ”Oh. Sure.” And then they said, ”There'll be a plane ticket waiting for you at LAX tomorrow morning at eight A.M. to come to New York and audition.” And they said to be sure and bring all your characters. And I said okay. So I hung up. And I was like, ”I don't have any characters!” I never was in the Groundlings and I never took improv and, you know, basically the way I got on Johnny Carson was I had a six-minute stand-up comedy act that was mostly doing a hand-stand while reciting poetry.

So I hung up the phone. I told my husband, ”I'm going to New York tomorrow to audition for SNL and they said bring your characters.” And I looked at him like bewildered, you know. I knew about SNL and Belus.h.i.+ just 'cause you know it as part of culture, but when I grew up we didn't have a TV, and then I was in college and I didn't have one, and then I was trying to get on TV so I was always busy. So then I flew to New York. I brought my ukulele and my handstand; the handstand traveled with me. And I got on the plane and I thought, ”Now if they lose my ukulele, I have no audition,” because, you know, I don't have characters. And they lost my ukulele.

So then I got picked up and they took me to a hotel where the other girls who were against me were staying. There were about ten other girls from Canada and Chicago. The next day they marched us all down the street in a row, like ducks, past that big guy Atlas holding the world. I wore my French maid costume from when I was a cigarette girl, because that's when I started doing the stand-up thing. I was really nervous.

We were all in the hallway waiting and then everyone was whispering that one of the girls had done a strip routine for her audition. And that's a really dumb idea, I think, because you can't really be naked on NBC, you know? Even if you look good naked, it's not going to help a comedy program. So then I did my little stand-up comedy act. I guess I had about ten minutes. I sang my songs and did my handstand poetry, and Lorne was watching with about three Lornettes. You know, they're called the Lornettes, the girls who work for Lorne and make sure he has plenty of popcorn. The bravest cast members would eat some of Lorne's popcorn but I was scared to. But one time I did and like one kernel fell on the floor and one of the Lornettes gave me a dirty look. They're not supposed to let any of them fall on the floor, you see.

So I did my audition and then they said, ”Oh, spend the night. Lorne wants to see you tomorrow, but he doesn't come in until four P.M. because he wakes up late and starts the workday at three P.M.”

Then he met with me and he said, ”Well, you - um - I loved your audition. It was really funny, but I don't know if you're really strong in character.” And I said, ”Oh - well, I could talk like this and be British.” And he goes, ”Uh-huh, yeah.” I go, ”I could talk like this and that's a character.” And he goes, ”Uh, yeah.” And he goes, ”Well, like if I wanted you to be Annie Hall, you know?” And I said, ”Well, then I would just wear men's clothing and kind of look at the ground a lot.” And he goes, ”Well, what if I wanted you to be - a housewife in the Midwest?” And I said, ”Well, I am a housewife.” So then I went home and I thought, ”Oh man, I was so close, but he's not going to pick me.”

So I was supposed to be on Carson again in two weeks, and I thought, ”Hey, what if I continue my audition on national TV? That would really impress Lorne.” So I asked The Tonight Show and they said, ”Sure, but just don't say the name of the show.” So I got all these tapes of people and tried to imitate them - like Tina Turner and Teri Garr and stuff. But it wasn't my strong point, you know. So I thought, well, if I just try to do the impression and people know who I'm doing and they laugh - well, all your goal is, is to make laughter, so it doesn't matter how you get there. So I sat next to Johnny Carson and I told him I was auditioning for a show and I had to do characters and I said, ”Let me do them for you, and if you can guess who I'm doing, then I'm doing it good, right?” He goes, okay. So I went, ”Oh, oh, Archie! I'm sor-ree!” And he goes, ”Edith Bunker.” And I go, yeah. And the audience claps. And I go, ”I don't know why I'm here. Just go to a commercial. I don't have anything to say. I don't know why I'm here.” And Johnny says, ”Teri Garr!” And I go, yeah. And then I went, ”What's love got to do, got to do with it.” And I danced, you know. And he goes, ”Tina Turner.” And I go, yeah. And so then I was smoking a cigarette. And he goes, ”I don't know, Bette Davis?” And I go, no. And he goes, ”Who is it?” And I go, ”I made her up.” And then Johnny laughed so hard. The audience laughed too. And then he goes, ”If you made it up, how am I supposed to guess who it is?” And I go, ”Oh, I don't know. I'm supposed to make up characters in this show, you know.”

So then my manager at the time took the video of that show to Lorne's L.A. hotel in case he wasn't watching that night. And then, about a week later, they called me at home again. It was ten o'clock on a Sunday night. And she goes, ”Congratulations. You're in the cast of Sat.u.r.day Night Live.” And I was like, ”Oh, thank you.” And she goes, ”There will be a ticket waiting for you at LAX in the morning, and we're putting you in a hotel until we find you an apartment.” I was like, ”Oh, thank you.” So I hung up the phone and then I screamed really loud. Because I had been trying to act real cool in front of her. And then my baby woke up and started crying, and then my ex-husband - he doesn't handle pressure very well - he threw up. On the bed.

TERRY TURNER:.

When we got there, Bonnie and I had been married for a bit. One thing good about us is we've always worked together, and she could sh.o.r.e me up and I could sh.o.r.e her up, and we could yell at each other too. We both went in for therapy during the show. So that might have helped. Wait - I can't believe I just said that, that Sat.u.r.day Night drove us both to therapy. I'd never thought about it until now.

BOB ODENKIRK, Writer: They hired Robert Smigel as writer, and then while Robert wrote I would sort of work with him on the phone every week and pitch him ideas and help him with his ideas. And meanwhile I was continuing to write sketches in Chicago, and I would mail those in to Robert and he'd pa.s.s them around the office, and sometimes they would do a joke of mine on ”Weekend Update.” I think there was maybe even one sketch that I might have written that was done. And so people were kind of familiar with my work and I came in and did an interview the following year, which was Robert's second year, and then I was hired a few months later. I interviewed with Lorne, which was extremely weird. I basically had a huge chip on my shoulder, and mix that in with Lorne's traditional intimidation and it's not good. I didn't respond to the way he likes to approach young performers and set himself up as some kind of very distant, strange Comedy G.o.d.

KEVIN NEALON, Cast Member: When Aykroyd and those guys were on - the original years - I moved out to California to do stand-up, so I was always out there in the clubs when the show was on and didn't get to see it that much. I never really thought that was my gig. I didn't do characters or impressions. My stand-up was basically off-the-wall, absurd. I was influenced by Andy Kaufman and Albert Brooks and Steve Martin, you know.

The clubs in 1975 were really tough. Audiences were really brash and heckling, and they're all crammed in these little rooms, and the comics were just tough New York guys, and there was a lot of profanity and heckling going on. And I remember seeing Larry David on stage one night follow some heckler right out into the street and slug it out with him. So I thought California would be a good place.

VICTORIA JACKSON:.

Oh, another thing - in my audition, when Lorne said I think you're weak in characters, I said, oh, well, you know who's the greatest female character actress in America? Jan Hooks. And I didn't even know if he knew her, but I had already worked with her on The Half-Hour Comedy Hour, which was trying to be like SNL, and I was like a baby at the time. It was like my first TV show. a.r.s.enio Hall was the star of it. And I had seen Jan be brilliant - like backstage when the cameras weren't even on, she would do a lesbian gas station attendant in Atlanta. And she would just go into these people and I thought she was like great. I mean, personally she pretty much hates my guts, but professionally I thought she was like a genius, so I told Lorne. And I told her later, ”I told Lorne to hire you.”

KEVIN NEALON:.

I was renting a house in the Hollywood Hills and Dana was living in an apartment over the garage, temporarily, and there was another comedian I was living with and a writer, and I was dating Jan Hooks at the time.

JAN HOOKS, Cast Member: Kevin was great. We were really, really good friends. And my mom got sick. My mom had cancer. And I just grabbed on to Kevin and he went down to Atlanta where my mom was. And we just started this relations.h.i.+p - it was a relations.h.i.+p out of a kind of trauma. And the only problem was that we both got Sat.u.r.day Night Live in the middle of it.

He was hired as a featured player and Lorne wasn't quite sure what I was. He thought the year before I was too old, and then I heard through the grapevine that he thought I had a weird mouth and he didn't want to hire me because of my mouth.

TERRY TURNER:.

Dana and Bonnie and I wrote a lot of the Church Ladys together, but it was Dana's creation. We sort of played support. We were the only people - because we were from the South and there was a cable industry in the South that hadn't quite reached into New York - we were the first people who really knew, next to Jan, who Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were, and all of the nuances of who they were, which is sort of how we got into the Church Lady, because it became a target of that character. And we were sort of the people who could access it quickly.

JAN HOOKS:.

I knew Tammy Faye Bakker from the seventies. She had a show in Atlanta - when I worked in Atlanta. I would just religiously, pardon the pun, watch. It was just unbelievable. And I turned my friends on to Tammy Faye. And I actually went in to Lorne and said that there's a woman that's on cable, Tammy Faye Bakker, and I would really love to do her. He said, ”I've never heard of her.” I said, ”Yeah, but she's such a great character.” And then, lo and behold, the scandal happened.

ROSIE SHUSTER, Writer: Dana's audition tape was the most amazing audition tape I've ever seen, because he nailed impressions and pushed them to this surreal place but he also did these amazingly absurd, highly original characters like the chopping broccoli guy. I especially responded to this rudimentary version of the Church Lady. The smug superior att.i.tude was there. And the consummately couchy ”Isn't that special?” I think that character reminded me of a Waspy, repressed side of Toronto that was very big on shaming. So I mentioned that to Lorne and he teamed me up with Dana, who at the time was this sketch-comedy virgin, and together we anch.o.r.ed this character in a ”Church Chat” talk-show format. And we added all this t.i.tillating talk of engorged naughty bits and all that kind of stuff.

”Church Chat” stole the rehearsal and it got moved up to open the show, the first show of the new season. So it was pretty prominent, pretty scary. But it struck a main vein pretty instantly, instant franchise time, and they were very fun to write. The Church Lady would project her filthy erotomaniac imagination all over the poor hapless guest, whoever they were. She would basically verbally slime them with her own repressed garbage and then she'd go to town shaming them. She had a black belt in shaming. And then she'd coyly suggest their behavior was the work of Satan.

Thinking back, I think the Church Lady was the forerunner of what Kenneth Starr did to Bill Clinton.

DANA CARVEY:.

The very first night was a crisis. The Church Lady - which no one knew if it would work - was going to be the last sketch on in the dress rehearsal, right before the good-nights - in other words, the dumping ground. But then it killed in dress and they moved it up to be the very first sketch. And then I had this chopping broccoli thing, and then the show was sort of on my shoulders for some reason, and I felt just intense pressure. I would essentially cry in my dressing room. I'm emotional. And then I was swearing at myself in the mirror. There was so much pressure, because there I was, thirty-one, I never thought I would get on Sat.u.r.day Night Live, and here was this first show, I was unknown, I had never done sketch comedy, the red light was going to come on, twenty million people, the pressure was so extreme, at least the way I felt - and then it came off great. So that was a huge moment.

JAN HOOKS:.

The show changed my life, obviously. But I have horrible stage fright. And with all these, you know, stand-up comics who I love - you know, Dana and Dennis and Kevin and all these people - you know they wanted their shot, they wanted to get in there and do it, but I was one of the ones that between dress and air was sitting in the corner going, ”Please cut everything I'm in!”

VICTORIA JACKSON:.

The first live show of my life, my ex-husband had a hemorrhoidectomy performed in the hospital on the day of my show and he's like, ”Why aren't you here visiting me?” I'm like, ”I'm on Sat.u.r.day Night Live! For my first time! Are you kidding?”

JAN HOOKS:.

Victoria Jackson? I thought she had a pretty good gig. I just have a particular repulsion to grown women who talk like little girls. It's like, ”You're a grown woman! Use your lower register!” And she's a born-again Christian. I don't know, she was like from Mars to me. I never really got her.

DANA CARVEY:.

I'm too pa.s.sive-aggressive to have ever had a fight with Lorne. But we had little snippets. You're working under conditions where you're exhausted. If I'd been a.s.signed an impression that I didn't get and I just tanked at dress, he'd say, ”Dana, are you ever going to get John Travolta?” or whoever. ”No, I'm never going to get it, Lorne, you should just cut it.” ”Really???” My thing was like, ”Church Lady's not happening tonight.” And I would just say, ”Well, maybe we should just cut it.”

”Rrrrrrright. So you're saying we're going to cut the thing that's going to make the show.”

”Well, that's my suggestion.”

”Dana, no no no no no no, don't misunderstand me.” Lorne is so brilliant at getting in your head. ”No no no no no no, don't misunderstand me, I think it's fabulous, if you want to go that route, that burlesque route, um, it's fine, but I think you'll find if you keep it smart, it's where all the good stuff is.”

See, I had to learn all that, because I thought a laugh is a laugh. And then Lorne and those guys were kind of like, well no, there's different levels, there's smart laughs and there's dumb laughs. Being a stand-up comedian to me, it was just, ”Get the f.u.c.king laugh at all costs.”

VICTORIA JACKSON:.

I brought the writers food. They were all very intensely writing. Their goal wasn't to make me a star; most of them wrote themselves into the show to become stars. If you want to get in the show more, you could always bring the writers some food. Well, I tried that.

I asked Robert Smigel, ”Robert, how come I never get to do any impressions? I never get to do any characters.” And he says, ”Because you're nasal.” And I said, ”There must be someone nasal I can do an impression of.” He goes, ”Roseanne Barr is kind of nasal.” And I said, ”Let me do her. She's hot now. She's nasal, can I do her?” And he's like, ”Hmm.” And so he wrote a sketch, and I was thrilled.

Jon Lovitz always tried to help me get in the show too. Dana and Kevin and Lovitz - they helped a little. Kevin and Dana wrote me into ”Hans and Franz” as Roseanne getting liposuction.

KEVIN NEALON:.

I think Hans and Franz made Dana and me laugh more than any other characters when we were writing them. It's funny how something like that will permeate the culture and become pop culture. It seems audiences are like parrots, they like to repeat phrases that either have some kind of cadence to them or are silly. Whether it's ”Isn't that con-veeen-ient?” or ”We want to pump - you up,” or whatever it is - ”Cheeseburger, cheeseburger.” It's something that everybody can relate to, when they get around at the office on Monday morning and just kind of laugh, because everybody kind of recognizes it. They can all be in on the laugh. And they can use it as their own little personal joke. I mean I do that too, with other people's stuff. If I hear a lot of Mike Myers stuff, like ”Yeah, baby,” I find myself doing that. People need that occasional catchphrase in their life. The coolest thing for Dana and me is that on the s.p.a.ce shuttle they were doing Hans and Franz, which was fun.

JON LOVITZ:.

You're always competing. I mean, it's not like you want the other people to do bad, but it's just the way it's set up because, you know, you write all Tuesday night and then they pick like three of the forty sketches at read-through, and then they whittle that down to fourteen of them, then six would get cut. Only about eight or nine make it to air. It was compet.i.tive. I mean, it just was the way it worked. And when I was there anyway, it was almost like the writers against the cast, and if you got a lot of stuff on one week, the next week there'd hardly be anything written for you. I also think that the writers would just write for themselves really a lot of times. And just whatever they happened to think of, that's what they thought of. So certain writers you ended up hooking up with because, you know, your humor was more like theirs. I worked a lot with A.Whitney Brown doing the Liar character the first year. And then Al Franken would write for me a lot.

When I was on the show, like just say from '86 to '90, that group stayed the same for four years. You know, the eight of us. And it was very compet.i.tive but everybody was working really, really hard and really wanted the sketches to be great. And also I think our group was into saying let's do this sketch but also try to do great acting, like the best as actors. And play it really, you know, funny, but also trying to make it really real and believable.