Part 29 (1/2)

Gary Oldman, who would be my dream host personally, was booked, and on a Thursday night before the Monday that he was supposed to come in, something happened and he had to drop out. I think Tom Hanks came in and really saved us on that one. Gary Sinise was another one. I was so excited. It's always the ones you're like really excited about that drop out. You call in Alec Baldwin, Tom Hanks, John Goodman; John's done it when someone has fallen out. I mean, this is a major thing to ask somebody - ”Hey, can you show up in two days?” - when they're not prepared.

No one has ever dropped out during the week of the show, no, because the minute you get here it's too much fun. I mean, honest to G.o.d, they are treated so well. When Jackie Chan got here, he said, ”I want to get on the plane and go home.” And I went, ”Ha ha ha.” I said, ”I promise you on Sat.u.r.day night at the party, you will be telling me you want to do this again next year.” He goes, ”Never,” but I was right. Some of them freak out when they get here on Monday, but by Sat.u.r.day they all feel like it's one of the most fun things they've ever done.

You know that nightmare when you didn't study for the exam or you're naked onstage or something? I knew I was really producing the show when I started having dreams about hosts and musical guests not being there. Sometimes I'll be talking to Lorne and I'll go, ”How are you not nervous?” I absorb. One host in particular was really nervous. I almost threw up during the monologue because I was so nervous for him.

Gwyneth Paltrow gets more people coming up to her saying, ”You were so funny when you hosted Sat.u.r.day Night Live” than there are saying, ”You were amazing in Shakespeare in Love and congratulations on your Oscar.” People recognize when people are good.

GWYNETH PALTROW, Host: For someone like me, who's usually relegated to corsets and British accents, it's really fun to get to do something like hosting. It's great fun for me to play a white girl who wants to talk like a ghetto chick. I never get to do stuff like that otherwise.

The first time I hosted, I felt incredibly nervous - not only about how it would come off but if I would make it through the night, because I adrenalize so much in those situations. When I was walking out to do the monologue, I couldn't feel my hands and feet. But the last time I hosted, I wasn't nervous. I really knew what to expect, and I just felt very free and very lucky to have an opportunity to be ridiculous. I've had experiences where I've been under extreme pressure, an awards show or something like that, but it's very finite. This whole experience lasts for an hour and a half of live television. When you do a play, there's three hundred people sitting there. Not millions.

My mom hosted once in the eighties. She just told me, ”It's going to be great,” as opposed to kind of chronicling what it was going to be like. She said, ”Make sure you do this kind of accent,” that type of stuff, and, ”Make sure they stretch you as much as possible and do things that you never get to do ordinarily,” because this is such a great chance to do that.

In one sketch I played Sharon Stone and got in all kinds of trouble. She was very offended by it. She kind of talked about it a lot in the press and stuff. I think she was very unhappy with it and she felt it was mean-spirited. But then she proceeded to go on TV and stuff and say I was disrespecting all the women that came before me, and stuff like that. She waged a press campaign against me. I look at it like it's a rite of pa.s.sage to be lampooned on that show. If people are making fun of you on that show, that means you've made it and you're in the cultural lexicon, and it's flattering. I suppose some people are less game for that sort of thing.

ELLEN DEGENERES:.

To be honest, there was a time that I was scared of them, because as you know everybody is fodder. They'd made fun of me, especially the whole situation when I met Anne Heche, that whole situation was on a lot. I'm way too sensitive and my feelings got hurt and it was hard. Now I have perspective on it, and they were right to do so, you know?

CAMERON DIAZ, Host: I don't like making fun of other people. I like making fun of myself. I really don't like playing other celebrities and making fun of them. This program is about current events and parodies, which are fun, but I don't want to partic.i.p.ate as the person who's doing a parody of a person who's possibly at that moment being humiliated publicly.

GWYNETH PALTROW:.

The nicest thing Lorne ever said to me was after the first time I hosted. There was a sketch at the very end of the show where I was supposed to say, ”I'm Gwyneth Paltrow and you may know me from Emma and all this stuff but what I really like is hard-core p.o.r.n.” And the sketch at dress was like a minute and thirty seconds, and he came up to me and said, ”We're unfortunately going to have to cut it out of the live show. I don't want to - I love this thing - but we're going to have to cut it because it's thirty seconds too long. We're over.” And I said, ”I can do it, I'll shave thirty seconds off.” And he was like, ”Are you sure?” and I said, ”Definitely.” And so I did it and I shaved exactly thirty seconds off, and he came up to me after and he said, ”No one has ever been able to do that except” - I think it was Bill Murray and someone else - ”and no girl, I mean no woman.” So I felt very good about myself.

LISA KUDROW, Host: When I hosted, I wasn't really looking at it like, ”Wow, I wanted to be part of the cast of this show and I didn't get to do it, and now I'm hosting. Yay for me.” It didn't feel like that, because it's too terrifying to host. It's this speeding train, and you feel like there's no choice but to smash into the brick wall.

I didn't feel confident enough to impose my own taste on the sketches. I know some people do, and they are pretty firm with Lorne Michaels and the writers about, ”No, this one's no good, I don't want to do that sketch, and you've got to do that sketch.” I didn't feel right about that, because I thought, ”Lorne Michaels has been doing this for fifteen years and who am I to say that sketch won't work? He thinks it will work.” And I deferred a lot.

Thursday or Friday, you're feeling, ”No good can come of this! It's not possible this is going to work out.” But on Sat.u.r.day night, when you're behind that door, about to be introduced, you have to gear up, focus, and commit to, ”It's going to be just great. It's going to be okay.” I'd been told a lot of hosts end up in tears before the show starts. I thought, ”Well, at least I'm not crying. It's not that bad. So I'm going to be okay.”

At Groundlings I had done a lot of live work. It did have that great feeling of you get to own the material when it's live. It's between you and the audience. Unless your mind starts wandering to, ”When this is over, then I have to run over there and change into something else.” That's when you're in trouble, because you can't then be dealing with the task at hand.

WILL FERRELL:.

The worst host was Chevy Chase. He was here the first year that we were here, and then he came back the next year and that was the kicker, the following year. It started right from the Monday pitch; you could just tell something was up. I don't know if he was on something or what, if he took too many back pills that day or something, but he was just kind of going around the room and systematically riffing. First it was on the guys, playfully making fun, until, when he got to one of our female writers, he made some reference like, ”Maybe you can give me a hand job later.” And I've never seen Lorne more embarra.s.sed and red.

In hindsight, I wish we'd all gotten up and walked out of the room. It was just bad news. I will have to say Chevy's been nothing but nice to me personally, and I think he thinks I'm funny, so I'm cool with him, but yeah, he's been quote-unquote the roughest host. A little sn.o.bbish, and he'd yell at someone down the hallway - scream and yell - and you would look at him, and he'd see you were looking at him and he would smile like, ”I'm just joking.” We'd be like, ”No, I don't think you are.”

The other kind of cla.s.sic one - and he wasn't so much abusive, but he was just all over the place - was Tom Arnold. Even Lorne was like, ”This will be a bad show, this will be a bad week,” and sure enough, it was like, ”Oh, this guy is horrible.” Once again, though, he wasn't mean. I think you'll find a consensus on the Chevy Chase thing.

DAN AYKROYD, Cast Member: You know, it's a funny kind of little I-don't-know-what, but I don't want to host. I'm a superst.i.tious guy, like I have these little things in life - I won't fly on the thirteenth, I don't go under ladders, and if a black cat crosses my path, I'll chase it with a white spray gun or something. And I just really actually would prefer to be remembered as a cast member, formerly, a Not Ready for Prime Time Player. I came in and did Dole, I did Haig, I did the thing with John Goodman when we were doing the Blues Brothers revival. I'll sort of fill in and play music and be a part of the show, but I just want to be remembered as a cast member, not host. I know it's kind of strange. If they need me, we'll do the ghost of Nixon haunting Bush, or Dole anytime you want, or Carter or a Conehead. I'll come back and help, but I just kind of want to be remembered as a cast member, that's all.

ANA GASTEYER, Cast Member: The one miracle is that every host makes it through. I've seen really drunk people make it through, I've seen really stoned people make it through. Everyone makes it through. The system has been around for twenty-seven years now; it's pretty well oiled and sensitive - it just happens.

Of course, you see a lot of true colors. I mean, even the coolest person in the whole world at some point s.h.i.+ts their pants because they're so nervous or so elated that they made it through this terrifying thing and wasn't it fun.

I credit Lorne and Marci and the show for kind of making each host feel like that was really the most special show, because I've seen people who we've unanimously thought stunk up the barn still really experience elation when it was over and, you know, feel so celebratory and excited by their experience, and it's cute. You see it even in people that are very, very hip and cool.

It's scary. People act like idiots when they're scared. You know, total idiots. Jerry Seinfeld was fearful. Totally fearful. He was very controlling and weird about knowing what sketches had been picked. He was like, ”What about this idea?” He made people mad, but then once he knew what sketches had been picked, he was lovely, it was amazing. So everybody has their shtick. Obviously we prefer it when there's somebody like that who brings something to the party - over, you know, somebody who's like, ”Well, she's a pretty girl.”

CHRIS KATTAN:.

There are some weeks where the writers are just kind of unmotivated and it's like, ”What are we going to write for this person,” you know? She's so generic, she's like this person, or he's like this person, and it's like the same thing again. And then there's the obvious ones, like when Jennifer Lopez was here, it's like, ”Oh well, we've got to hit these jokes and these jokes,” and then it turns out she doesn't want to make those jokes, so then how can we do it subliminally?

JIMMY FALLON:.

It's kind of an amazing thing when you're with a writer. You see the joy in the human face, and not because of what they're writing, or the job of writing it, but the excitement that they're going to unveil a good reference or a good bit, kind of like a mad scientist rubbing his hands together and giggling: ”If this monster works, I'm a genius, and if it fails, it's back to the drawing board.”

They're excited not about writing it, but about what the audience's reaction will be. It's kind of exciting that way for the writers. Writing itself is tedious. No one ever really enjoys writing until it's done. But you're excited to see people read it, excited to think, ”Will they get it? Will they like this line?” It's line by line. It's just cool to watch how insane these guys are.

MOLLY SHANNON:.

Kevin s.p.a.cey was really great when he came. He was an amazing host. He's just like a machine: ”I want to do this, I want to do that.” He just creates the whole thing. He just comes in with a plan and he follows it through, and he was like masterful. He was amazing to watch. He just came in and had great ideas and he's funny.

TINA FEY:.

Part of the beauty of the show is that at its longest it's only a week; come h.e.l.l or high water at one A.M. on Sunday, it's done. It's like taking the SATs; they will say, ”Put your pencils down,” at a certain point. It is best when the host trusts us. It's easiest for us when people come in and trust us. When someone comes in and they're really diffi-cult, it kind of brings us all together against them.

MARCI KLEIN:.

The host drives the show much more than people realize. When I first started working here, I was shocked that the host had anything to do with this show. I think people kind of have the image that the host takes a limo in on Sat.u.r.day after reading their part - they just don't know.

I think the best host that will make a good show is somebody that is confident and trusting enough to let go. When you come here, you need to trust that we're not going to let you go out there and destroy yourself. Lorne and the writers, all of us, really want the hosts to be as good as they can be.

Tom Hanks, when he comes here, he's here until five o'clock in the morning almost every night really working on the show, because he wants it to be funny, and that's why he's a good host. Christopher Walken is another great host, because he's so easy for the writers to write for. He's a great guy, and he doesn't come with a bunch of people who are telling him, ”Hey, that was funny.” You'd be surprised at the people who do that.

STEVE HIGGINS:.

Christopher Walken is always a great show. You can't lose no matter what he does. I love having John Goodman and Alec Baldwin around. Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston were a lot of fun too. We've had some clunker shows, but they all blend together. I think when the hosts come here they're on their best behavior. If they're not, they have everything to lose and nothing to gain.

TINA FEY:.

My advice to anyone that hosts: Don't bring your own writers if you want people to love you. That was one thing I thought that Conan O'Brien was very smart about, because he has a staff of writers downstairs but he didn't bring anybody, he came up here and put himself in our hands, which was a good move. Sometimes people with a large entourage can be difficult. It's difficult when a host will have like a publicist in their ear telling them what's funny. That always seems like bad news when you go down to talk to the host in their dressing room and you're talking through a publicist.

Comedy people are hard sometimes, because they have their own kind of comedy that they do and they can be very resistant to what they will and won't do. I think they're usually my least favorite. A host who actually writes on the scripts and hands it back to the writer is usually bad news.

JAMES DOWNEY:.

It was ironic when Jerry Seinfeld came, because some of the people he brought used to work here at the show. I can tell you that that approach has a terrible track record. I mean, almost without exception, when they bring writers along their stuff doesn't get on. We will have the read-through without there being any kind of prejudice against them. It's just that often they write stuff that eats it.

HORATIO SANZ:.

Tom Green brought in a few of his own writers and was kind of more preoccupied with his image as a guy who doesn't give a f.u.c.k. And the show I think suffered.

JON STEWART, Host: It was the first time I'd been asked to host, and I jumped at it immediately. I didn't bring any of my own writers with me; they've got plenty. They're very, very talented people over there who already know their thing, and hopefully I went into it thinking I'd bring a little something to the process and shape it in a way that would give this show a little different flavor than it had the week before. We had a great time doing all that stuff. It's a very collaborative environment. I really had just a mind-blowing good time.

I thought the process that they used to hone material was really smart. The way the show came into focus makes complete sense. It's very linear, it's not arbitrary. There's obviously politics a.s.sociated with any organization, especially one that's been alive for that long. As the host you obviously are a guest, and it's a different atmosphere. But when you're around some place for a week, you can pick up what's what and who's what and where's what and that kind of s.h.i.+t.

CHRIS KATTAN:.