Part 30 (2/2)

Tom Hanks did the opening monologue, Bill Murray and Paul Shaffer revived Murray's old lounge-singer routine, there were touching tributes to the show's many fallen comrades, and Robert Smigel contributed a cartoon mocking Lorne Michaels, who privately lamented that if he had eliminated Smigel's animated mugging from the show, ”Page Six” of the New York Post would have reported it. Asked about the cartoon later, Smigel insisted it was a labor not of revenge but of admiration, another example of the curious love-hate relations.h.i.+p common to Michaels's professional progeny. America had sometimes hated - well, disliked - Sat.u.r.day Night Live over its fitfully hallowed haul as well, but this was a night to forget all failings, real or imagined - a night to commemorate all the good times and antic.i.p.ate more to come.

BILL MURRAY, Cast Member: The old days? I don't really reflect on them. What are the old days - working real hard, sort of that new excitement of having made it, going to the party after the show, and really just sort of competing. It was a compet.i.tive time. You threw out there what you had and you saw how it stacked up. Whenever I get together with a few of those guys it sort of comes back.

We spent so much time together so intensely that I guess it's like war buddies or something. You don't have to see them to remember. I don't see the players much at all. I live in the Northeast; most of them live in California. I don't see them very often at all, but when I see them it's great. Like at the twenty-fifth anniversary, we were all there so it was great. Everything they do is fine with me. Anything that happens with them is fine and will always be fine. We just went through too much for me not to wish them well.

You talk about friends for life and stuff, and that's what it is. We'll always be connected; we're sort of working together. I don't know if it's just the reruns, but we're always sort of working together all the time. We sort of went to school together and we're sort of carrying that stuff out into the world. We all have that experience and we're affected by it and we carry it out there. When I see them, I feel like they're doing the same thing I am - they're out there and they have that history and that experience that only the players had, and only they could ever know what it was like. It's sort of a secret in a way. It's like a talisman. It's something we walked away with. We got to walk away not just with the side effect of success, but with the experience. Having the experience was probably the greatest thing.

When I did the twenty-fifth-anniversary show, there was a very warm feeling, a great feeling of like we were all in the same fraternity or sorority, we all like went to the same school somehow, and it was a really small school. I enjoyed people more than I ever did - other guys from other generations and casts and so forth. I felt no feeling like ”ugh.” Because you always used to feel that this could have been different, or you could have done that a little better or something. But there was none of that feeling at all when we got together again. It was just, ”Hey, look at this group.” I was able to enjoy everyone so much. I had the best time. It was really delightful.

Tom Davis and I and Paul Shaffer and Marilyn Miller got together to work on something for the show. We went to Paul's apartment and spent like a couple days doing it. Danny came over. It was like a party. Paul opened some really good wine. Somebody rolled a joint. It was hysterical. We just started telling stories - all the time thinking, ”We don't want this part of it to end. We don't want this part of it to stop.” We were in no rush to write the sketch. I wanted to do a Bruce Springsteen song. I just thought ”Badlands” was the right song. And I was arguing with Marilyn. It's great to argue with Marilyn. In the old days, I didn't get Marilyn at first. She used to argue so vociferously, I used to think, ”What a b.i.t.c.h this woman is.” She's sort of this Jewish princess with a literary bent, and it was always like, ”I don't even know how to talk to someone like this.” I would just say stuff like, ”Marilyn, come on, you're wearing thigh-high boots. How the f.u.c.k am I supposed to take you seriously?” That's all I could say to her in my head. I couldn't really argue with her about the point of it, because she didn't get my point of view. She didn't get me at that point. The mistake was always to argue with her about the thing. The right thing to do was always make her laugh. If you could make her laugh, then she could see that you knew what you were talking about, because if you were good enough to make her laugh, you must be funny. And it took me years to figure that out.

So anyway we were arguing about ”Badlands.” There's some lyric in ”Badlands” that's really appropriate for what we did, for what we'd done. It wasn't ”Born to Run” and just doing a cla.s.sic song, which is what we always used to do; ”Badlands” was more about what our experience had been. It was really about us. And Paul was like, ”'Badlands'?” And when we started singing the song, his eyes lit up and he got it. He looked at me and he got it. Marilyn was still arguing and Paul said, ”It's going to be 'Badlands.'” Paul will listen to everything, he's a fantastic listener, but when he actually speaks, he's speaking because he knows the right answer. So when he got it, it was like, ”Great. Now we're there.” The writing of it and doing that as a group was really fun. I think we took five or six days to finish it.

Singing the harmony part with Paul to ”Badlands” on that show was one of the high points of my entire career. We hit the notes. We pushed the h.e.l.l out of it. We even put more lyrics in. They wanted to cut lyrics and cut the time and we said, ”No, this is what we're going to do,” and everybody just got out of the way. And when we did it and we nailed it, I thought, ”Bruce Springsteen's got to be liking this.”

It was sort of an honor to have the first sketch on that show, I thought. And I thought we just killed. We had a blast. And to really just go out there, cold, and to show them that we still had it, that we can go out there and kill, no warm-up, just walk out there, the show opens up and kills from the first minute - that was great. And then the show just sort of cruised from there on. Everybody was funny, everybody was loose. The show was a success from the first sketch. If the first sketch had died, there would have been tension, there would have been anxiety, people would have pushed a little too hard. G.o.d, they did a great show. Everybody did great. Everybody was funny. The party was great; the party went on and on.

TOM HANKS:.

At the twenty-fifth-reunion show, I remember thinking, ”Why did I get saddled with the monologue again? Why am I always the guy with the monologue?” I did the monologue in the fifteenth-anniversary show too, and actually made a joke about it: ”I've been elected to come out with what is traditionally the funniest part of the show, the monologue, the host monologue.” It's a terrible job. But then again, to go up there and do it on the twenty-fifth-anniversary show, come on, that's a thrill. And an honor.

I think a lot of people who leave go away saying they're never going to come back. They feel just devoured by the experience of doing the show. But as time goes by, I think they realize that, hey, they were part of something that is singular and that there's still nothing else like on TV. I think it's interesting that there have been many, many attempts to try to re-create whatever Sat.u.r.day Night Live does, and they all fail. That's why I found the twenty-fifth-anniversary reunion so emotional, because all these people from different eras who had gone through this quagmire and had been in the trenches and everything, they just forgot about it and were feeling real celebra-tory. It was a nice evening. Lord knows, it was star-studded as well.

AL FRANKEN:.

Sat.u.r.day Night Live was a very positive experience for all of us. It was like really just a wonderful f.u.c.king thing for everybody. There were pressures and there were some people who didn't succeed with the show as much as they would like and may have some feelings about that. But like this last anniversary show was a wonderful experience. Maybe it's just from being older, but everybody sort of didn't care. Like it didn't matter whether you had become a $20 million a movie performer or you were Laraine. Everybody was sort of like, ”We did this thing.” They might have felt differently ten years ago or something. But it was a great experience. The more people have experience with other things, the more they appreciate what we had.

Of course, I'm sure you've heard some very bitter things too.

ANDY BRECKMAN:.

Downey hates the way that Lorne recently has had guest stars in as sort of stunts. He'd turn around and there's Joe Pesci or Robert De Niro or Jack Nicholson. Who can we get, who's in town, who can pump this up? My kid brother, David, eleven years younger, he wrote for one year on Sat.u.r.day Night Live, back whenever the Pesci De Niro thing was, and he was struggling. Because he writes kind of smart, writerly pieces, and they were just looking for stuff to feed characters. He was not getting material on that he could sell at all.

And the first sketch that he officially got on the show survived the cut between dress and air and was slated for the last slot of the show. And Lorne lately has been cutting sketches even during the show, so even being on the final rundown is a little tenuous. But he was officially on and he was thrilled, and it was his first sketch on - and then when Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro, in the middle of that show, made their surprise appearance, the recognition applause in the studio - I didn't have a stopwatch, but it seemed to go on over sixty seconds, it seemed to never end, like a full minute or ninety seconds of recognition applause. And my brother was watching and knew that because of that, his sketch would be b.u.mped. And that just killed him.

MAYA RUDOLPH:.

I pa.s.sed on my first audition because I'd gotten another job offer. But I didn't really want it. This is all I ever really wanted to do. I waited my whole life to be on Sat.u.r.day Night Live. And then when they said come and audition, I'd just been offered a job on a hospital drama called City of Angels, a new Steven Bochco series. So I pa.s.sed on the audition and I was miserable for a month. I was shooting this drama during the week and doing comedy on Sundays. And Steve Higgins came to the theater and he said, ”If you don't get picked up for your show, would you be interested in coming back to New York?” And I said, ”Yes, please.” I never wanted to make that mistake again. So I ended up meeting with Lorne. If interviews are based on how you think you did, I did horribly and should not have gotten the job. I was quite convinced he was not going to give me the job. I didn't feel very secure in the meeting and I was terrified, and I think I ate a piece of popcorn and I was afraid I was going to choke. I just remember being quiet. I'm not a very loud comedian when I'm in one-on-one, and I remember walking back to my hotel thinking, ”I will never enter that building again.” It was the worst interview of my life. I was an idiot. I was horrible and not convincing.

They brought me in at the end of the twenty-fifth season for the last three shows of that season. I don't think a lot of people had much fair warning that I was coming, as far as what I've been told from the cast. I think I was sort of dropped on them a couple days before I came: ”Oh, by the way, this new girl's coming, Maya Rudolph.” And I think it definitely made a lot of the women feel, ”What does this mean for us? Are we being replaced?” A lot of people were sort of like, ”What the h.e.l.l? We had no idea you were hiring a new cast member at the end of the season.”

And I think it made a lot of people feel worried or threatened that things were being shaken up here. That didn't happen - but I was not well received by all.

It was like going to school and everyone already knew where to sit in the cafeteria. There were only three shows left. It was such a hard thing to adapt to, because everyone knew their place and knew what to do and the rhythm of the show and how it works, and I didn't really know anyone here. I was terrified. It was really horrible.

ANA GASTEYER:.

I can't speak for other women entirely, but I think that for me the distinct disadvantage of being a woman in any situation - particularly one as compet.i.tive as this one - is that I have a really hard time turning off the social-political filter. I don't think that the men in our cast sit around concerning themselves with who likes them and who doesn't as much as I think women do - and as much as I do as a woman. I think that's a feminine quality that I have, that I'm intuitive about interpersonal relations.h.i.+ps and I worry about interpersonal relations.h.i.+ps and interoffice politics, and I spent a lot of energy concerning myself with that as opposed to like my work getting on the air, and I think that men are just more comfortable with the compet.i.tion.

I speak to college groups and stuff about being a woman. This era has been clearly less scathed - if that's a word - and if anything, I think we were exalted, for reasons that weren't always clear to me early on, Molly Shannon and Cheri Oteri and I. We got press for it. We got press for being this trifecta of women that turned the show around. I mean, that's what they talked about. I don't think there's such a thing as actual exaltation every day in this place, because there's just too many creative people that need exaltation at any given time. But, you know, we were written up and we were photographed together. That sort of signifies that you've changed a tune, and certainly we heard it anecdotally all the time - that the women are the best thing on the show.

JANEANE GAROFALO:.

Life is a boys club. So SNL is a reflection of that. But Molly Shannon and Ana Gasteyer and Cheri Oteri and Rachel Dratch and Tina Fey kicked a.s.s. They came in and would not be denied. I'll admit that I was not prepared to deal with the wall of resistance. Molly was. Molly is a much stronger person than me. And she is easily more talented than me.

I'm not being self-deprecating. I think Molly came in and her att.i.tude was right on the money. And it was, ”I'll kill you with kindness.” But she's f.u.c.king very tough. And she is writing and writing and writing and she will not take no for an answer. And she also would not get involved in the bulls.h.i.+t. No gossiping, no nothing. The males were worse gossips than the females. And Molly did not play that game. She didn't get involved with drugs and alcohol. She was there to work.

MAYA RUDOLPH:.

I think there's nothing s.e.xier than a funny lady. Funny ladies are pretty d.a.m.n s.e.xy. There's so much wit and confidence in that, and I love that. I like being a funny lady. I feel I've definitely become more of a woman because of my job - that and turning thirty.

AMY POEHLER, Cast Member: I'm of the school that loves crazy makeup and wigs and teeth. I always want my characters to look uglier than I'm allowed or than I have time for. I think as I've learned through meeting many people that come through here, Vanity is the Death of Comedy. The minute you start feeling you're hot stuff, you're in trouble. I'd much rather have people laugh than go, ”Whoo!” I don't want any of that. I think it's pretty hard to be s.e.xy and funny at the same time. Some people can do it, but few can pull it off.

MIKE SHOEMAKER, Coproducer: Lorne always says that producers are supposed to be invisible. So our jobs are really ill defined. To put it simply, Kenny Aymong is studio, Marci Klein is talent, and I kind of cover the connection between the cast and the writers and the producers. But truthfully we overlap, because if there's something that you're good at, you wind up doing it. There's things that Marci does, the way she deals with certain talent, that's genius, but if I were to tell you what it was, it would probably diminish its effectiveness. It's in the way she talks to a host or a cast member. I have to deal with the well-being of a lot of the cast and writers, because they're mine in some ways. When somebody has like a complaint or a problem I'm usually the first stop - for certain people. For other people the first stop is Marci or Steve Higgins. Whenever someone's cut from a sketch, I deliver the bad news. When someone's freaking out, I provide emotional support.

When you're a producer your job is talking to people and getting them to do things you want them to do and yet having them feel that it's their choice and that they're not being forced. The plan of the show is that everyone - cast, writers, performers - they're all doing what they want to do and it's theirs and they own it, and at the same time it's also what we want to do, but we have in some ways to make them feel that it's theirs.

We don't dictate things. The show's like a stampede, and I feel that my job is kind of to keep it going. When someone falls and is about to be trampled, you pick them up and dust them off and kind of send them on their way. You can't really effect change but you can try to avert catastrophes.

JIMMY FALLON:.

Mike Shoemaker is a producer, a writer, a therapist. He's the guy people complain to about not being in the show, or ”Hey, can you get someone to write something for me?” They'll go to Shoemaker, because they're afraid to embarra.s.s themselves and ask the writers. When you first get the show, he's the orientation guy. He helps all the new people get acquainted with the place.

Sometimes he forces new writers to sit with a cast member and write something. He does it a lot. That's how I came up with ”Jarret's Room,” actually, the Internet talk show. I had this idea, he goes, ”I'll put you with this new writer, Matt Murray; you sit in the room until you write it.” We sat there for four hours and we wrote it.

The show needs Mike. Definitely. I don't know who else I would talk to. He's also a ghost writer, definitely, for ”Update.” He writes jokes, he punches stuff up. He's been there since Dennis Miller, I think. It's like going to school. His comedy mind is great. I always go to him to bounce stuff off of him. He says, ”Oh that's funny” or blah, blah, blah. Sat.u.r.day mornings, he's always up there with me and Tina writing the jokes, picking what's funny and how to punch it up.

Lorne will come out and say, ”You milked it a little bit too long.” Like I asked him about the Ian McKellen thing, my reaction after he kissed me. I thought I milked it one beat too long. Lorne goes, ”Yes, you did.” Ian was more aggressive on the air than at dress, by the way. If you watch it in slow motion, you'll see a little tongue action. He really went for it, man. Anyway, I knew Lorne would tell me the truth, but Shoemaker said, ”That was fine. It really worked.” He's just always very positive.

All previous mishaps and calamities that had befallen Sat.u.r.day Night Live since it was founded were rendered insignificant when, on September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorists flew pa.s.senger jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Center - jolting New York, shocking the world. For the producers, writers, and cast of the show, there was a subtext to the tragedy: The twenty-seventh season premiere was eighteen days away. Or was it? Should the fall season be delayed under the circ.u.mstances? How much news of the day could decently be satirized by a comedy troupe? Was any attempt to wring laughs out of current events automatically in poor taste?

On the major decision - whether to air the season premiere in its scheduled time slot - Michaels had to do little deliberation. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, soon to be named Time magazine's Man of the Year, asked Michaels to go ahead with the show as a signal that life in New York was going ahead as well. Since first taking office, Giuliani had been a semifrequent visitor to the show, dropping by occasionally during the live telecast as he made his rounds on a Sat.u.r.day night and having hosted on November 22, 1997. This time, on September 29, he would deliver the first punch line to the first joke to air after the attack.

First, Michaels's longtime close friend Paul Simon sang his song ”The Boxer,” a number that Michaels himself requested (though others on the staff found it dubiously appropriate). Onstage, a crowd of New York firemen and policemen listened silently, grim faces panned by the studio cameras. The song over, Michaels stepped up and asked Giuliani if it was all right for Sat.u.r.day Night Live to be ”funny.” Giuliani responded, smiling slightly, ”Why start now?” Then, when the laughter subsided, Giuliani exultantly shouted the show's famous opening line.

Live from New York, New York was alive.

AMY POEHLER:.

I was home in the East Village on 9/11. I could see the towers out of my window. All of us who were working on the show at the time called each other to see if everybody was okay, and then after all that died down the next question was, What are we going to do? Do we even have a job? I was thinking they might postpone the show. There was talk about everything coming to a halt. Even thinking about your work, your work in comedy, seemed so kind of frivolous at the time you couldn't even indulge in thinking about it. And then a couple weeks went by and it was like, ”Oh yeah, we gotta put on a show.” I just remember it being incredibly emotional and Rudy Giuliani being there. It was very tense and very weird.

RUDOLPH GIULIANI:.

Lorne asked me if I would appear on the first show they did after September 11. They had visualized what they wanted before they talked to me. In other words, they wanted me and the police commissioner and the fire commissioner, and they wanted a group of firefighters and police officers in order to do something that would honor them. But they also wanted to see if I would appear and in essence make it easier for people to laugh again, basically say to them, ”It's okay to laugh.”

I don't remember if it was Lorne or Brad Grey who called me and actually wanted to know if I thought it was okay to go ahead with the show, which Letterman had also asked through his producers - whether it was okay to go ahead with that show. Several people had called me to ask me that. I think at Sat.u.r.day Night Live, they were debating whether to do it that week or the next week. And I said not only did I think it was okay to go ahead with the show, I said sooner rather than later. People have to get back into learning how to laugh and cry on the same day, because they're going to be doing it for a long time.

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