Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. It was quite a groundbreaking concept
Speaker 1: back in nineteen seventy five. Celebrity impersonations, satirical news segments,
Speaker 1: musical performances, and sharp sketches by the not ready for
Speaker 1: primetime players, all of it live and late at nights.
Speaker 1: No television show has made its mark on comedy, pop culture,
Speaker 1: and politics more than Saturday Night Live, and for generations,
Speaker 1: the show continues to be as culturally relevant as it
Speaker 1: was on its premiere five decades ago. Later on, I'll
Speaker 1: speak with SNL writer and producer Steve Higgins ahead of
Speaker 1: the show's historic fiftieth season. But first I'm talking with
Speaker 1: Susan Morrison. She's the article's editor at The New Yorker
Speaker 1: and author of the new book Lorne The Man who
Speaker 1: invented Saturday Night Live. Before The New Yorker, Morrison was
Speaker 1: the editor in chief of The New York Observer, the
Speaker 1: features editor at Vogue, and one of the founders of
Speaker 1: Spy Magazine. But her first job was a writer's assistant
Speaker 1: for Laurene Michael's series The New Show. There she met
Speaker 1: writer and new Yorker legend. Lillian Ross Morrison would eventually
Speaker 1: continue on an editing career path, but she recalls an
Speaker 1: early passion for writing and journalism.
Speaker 2: My English teacher kind of turned the lights on. And
Speaker 2: my high school friend Adam Liptak, who now covers the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court for The Times, and his intellectual family of
Speaker 2: Hungarian emigres, they really they just you know, they gave
Speaker 2: him my first espresso.
Speaker 3: And got me reading the Village Voice, you know, the
Speaker 3: whole thing.
Speaker 4: But when you're there, this ignites this writing passion definitely.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I never was one of those editors
Speaker 2: who secretly had a hankering to write.
Speaker 3: I loved my editor job.
Speaker 2: But ten years ago I had this preposterous notion my
Speaker 2: kids had gone to college. I was suddenly an empty nester,
Speaker 2: and I thought, I guess I'm gonna have a lot
Speaker 2: of free time, you know, which didn't turn out to
Speaker 2: be true, of course, and just sort of jumped into
Speaker 2: this book project. It had just been the SNL fortieth anniversary,
Speaker 2: and I realized that I had a lot of thoughts
Speaker 2: and a lot of perspective on the show and Lauren
Speaker 2: and just decided to do this and I'll tell you
Speaker 2: it was hard because a lot of biography is really
Speaker 2: not an easy one to start with. It's kind of
Speaker 2: like writing an encyclopedia. It's so many facts, really right,
Speaker 2: you to really take the measure of a person like that,
Speaker 2: And you know, and I did it while keeping my
Speaker 2: not on demanding day job as an editor at The
Speaker 2: New Yorker. So and there were many times during these
Speaker 2: years when I thought I was out of my mind.
Speaker 2: But I'm so happy with it now. I'm so happy
Speaker 2: that I did it.
Speaker 1: How much of Lillian Ross's profile piece Laurenne informed her
Speaker 1: biography of him was did a foundation for well.
Speaker 2: Lillian was a close friend of mine and I was
Speaker 2: her editor for twenty years, and we would talk about
Speaker 2: Lauren because I worked for him briefly in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 2: But you know, when Lillian died and I'm her literary executor,
Speaker 2: so I'm in charge of all of her papers, I
Speaker 2: kind of have expected to find MASSI file cabinets full
Speaker 2: of notes about Lauren, but I didn't. But we talked
Speaker 2: about Lauren. She did not ever write her profile for
Speaker 2: The New Yorker because of Sean's firing, but what she
Speaker 2: did do because she I think she felt she owed
Speaker 2: it to Lauren to do something. She wrote a fairly
Speaker 2: short piece that ran an interview magazine. You know, it
Speaker 2: had some interesting bits in it, it didn't have a
Speaker 2: lot of groundbreaking stuff. And Lauren always told me that
Speaker 2: when Lillian was talking with him working on the profile,
Speaker 2: she was chiefly fascinated with She loved to talk about
Speaker 2: his mother, who she met, Florence Slippowitz, who I never
Speaker 2: had a chance to meet, and the scene around her,
Speaker 2: her kitchen table. I guess Florence was a kind of
Speaker 2: a cantankerous woman, but I don't think it was that
Speaker 2: easy to be her son. She I think he was
Speaker 2: sparing with the compliments in Lauren's presence, but if he
Speaker 2: wasn't around, she'd be bragging about him. But I think
Speaker 2: she was the kind of person that people in the
Speaker 2: neighborhood came to.
Speaker 1: And you're not around, I've seen your paces. When you're
Speaker 1: in front of me, I'm so diffident you're you're crying.
Speaker 2: But that was she was really interested in all of that.
Speaker 2: He used to say, that's all she would talk to
Speaker 2: me about is my mother's table. So there was a
Speaker 2: little bit of that in that profile. But in any case,
Speaker 2: it's not as if I got any kind of tranch
Speaker 2: of material from Lilian, but you know, it was certainly
Speaker 2: something that we had in common. And I think that
Speaker 2: when I showed up in Lauren's office ten years ago
Speaker 2: and said, I've just signed a contract to write a
Speaker 2: book about you, I don't need anything from you. You know,
Speaker 2: you know, I know your world and your people, but
Speaker 2: if you'd like to let me interview you and give
Speaker 2: me access to the you know, I think it'll be
Speaker 2: a better book and they'll be more accurate and richer.
Speaker 2: And after kind of sitting down and taking a couple
Speaker 2: of gulps, he agreed because he knew me a little bit,
Speaker 2: and I think that he did feel as sort of
Speaker 2: an ongoing threat. You know, I'm sort of picking up
Speaker 2: where Lillian left off, and there's something nice about that.
Speaker 2: And as you know, lineage and connections and history, these
Speaker 2: things interest learned.
Speaker 3: They mean something to him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's no, he's when you talk to me about
Speaker 1: when you have when you have his attention, I mean,
Speaker 1: his mind is always. I mean I'm not saying the
Speaker 1: show runs on autopilot. It gets his full attention, but
Speaker 1: he's very good at it, and he can do it
Speaker 1: queen rather defintely, but he's so wide raging in his appetite.
Speaker 1: How did you get into SNL when you were sixteen
Speaker 1: years old?
Speaker 3: I know that was against the rules, wasn't it.
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yes, So I lived in Stanford, Connecticut. One of my
Speaker 2: best friends, Robin Guerrino. She was cool, and she had
Speaker 2: an aunt who was a secretary at NBC. We had
Speaker 2: watched some of the early shows. You know, when you're sixteen,
Speaker 2: that's what you did. You would stay home and watch
Speaker 2: SNL and get out your bong. Right, So robins Anne
Speaker 2: got us four tickets and we grabbed a couple of
Speaker 2: guys that we thought were cute from our high school
Speaker 2: and took the train.
Speaker 4: In security was rather lax back than in the seventies. Was.
Speaker 2: We sat right there, right next to home base, and
Speaker 2: it was completely thrilling. I am sure a lot of
Speaker 2: the references in the show went right over my head,
Speaker 2: but just the deconstructed aspect of it, sitting in the
Speaker 2: middle of a working television studio with all of this
Speaker 2: stuff happening around me, that's what made the biggest impression
Speaker 2: on me. Found it enormously exciting and also then later
Speaker 2: when I was telling Lauren about this, he didn't know
Speaker 2: that I was there when I was sixteen. But that
Speaker 2: particular show I think was close to his heart because
Speaker 2: it was a Ellie Gould hosted that show. It was
Speaker 2: one of the classics of the first season where the
Speaker 2: great Michael O'donah Hugh star Trek sketch was on that
Speaker 2: show where Gould plays an NBC executive walking onto the
Speaker 2: Starship Enterprise telling them that the show is canceled, and
Speaker 2: you know, Captain Kirk played by John Belushi just treats
Speaker 2: him like some alien life form, and it's a brilliant
Speaker 2: breaking the fourth wall. It was brilliant, and Leon Redbone
Speaker 2: was the musical guest.
Speaker 1: In a way, it's easy to talk about Lauren, but
Speaker 1: impossible to talk about You can suggest things, you can
Speaker 1: make observations about him, but to analyze him and make
Speaker 1: any conclusions about him as the most impossible. He has
Speaker 1: a small cadre, a very small cadre. Everything is always
Speaker 1: the richest and the most full and the most warm
Speaker 1: in your heart has a special pleasure that's in the
Speaker 1: early days. So everybody that accompanies him from the early
Speaker 1: day Steve Martin, Paul Simon McCartney, all these legends of
Speaker 1: music and comedy and so forth. What I realized was,
Speaker 1: you're never really a part of that group unless you're
Speaker 1: in the cast. I hosted seven teen times. I used
Speaker 1: to joke and say, God, I'd love to be a
Speaker 1: member of the cast. Then I became one for four years.
Speaker 1: I did the trump thing overwhelmingly for two years, and
Speaker 1: a bit less in the third and fourth year. But
Speaker 1: I never have the same connection with those people that
Speaker 1: the ones who are in the cast. The bond between them,
Speaker 1: the bomb between those people on that show is one
Speaker 1: of the most profound things I've ever seen in this business.
Speaker 2: Well, it is interesting so many of them, when they're
Speaker 2: talking about the experience of being in the cast, they
Speaker 2: use they use military metaphors. They say it's like being
Speaker 2: in the Marine Corps, or it's like jumping out of
Speaker 2: an airplane holding hands all together. It's this kind of
Speaker 2: peak experience. And I think that it's a combination of
Speaker 2: the cutthroat competitive nature of the show. And I don't
Speaker 2: mean that in a negative way. The point is, as
Speaker 2: you know, because you've done read through, they're four hours
Speaker 2: worth of material generated at least every week, but only
Speaker 2: you know, sixty some minutes of it with commercials are
Speaker 2: going to make it by Saturday, so inevita. Things are cut.
Speaker 2: People's hopes are dashed, you know, people don't get on
Speaker 2: the air or some But there's that, and then also
Speaker 2: the adrenaline of it being live. I think a lot
Speaker 2: of viewers don't have any idea what that actually means,
Speaker 2: because there isn't anything like it that's live on television.
Speaker 3: The only other thing is sports.
Speaker 2: The way if every viewer at home could sit in
Speaker 2: studio eight h once and get that experience of having
Speaker 2: the cranes flying over your head and seeing the scenery
Speaker 2: hauled in and out and the cue cards rewritten, the
Speaker 2: experience of not knowing until eleven fifteen whether you're in
Speaker 2: the show or not. I think those are enormously bonding experiences.
Speaker 1: One time, we were doing thirty Rock and Zucker was
Speaker 1: the head of NBC at the time, and he came
Speaker 1: out to the studio at Silver Cup and Queens. He
Speaker 1: turned to a small group of people and he said,
Speaker 1: this is the most expensive half hour of television I
Speaker 1: have on my network. And you look at SNL and
Speaker 1: you're thinking of what does this cost? Yeah, the show
Speaker 1: costs an enormous amount of my per week. And what
Speaker 1: I always say is I always suggest that mourn among
Speaker 1: his you know, thrilling gifts and so forth, is that
Speaker 1: he makes each owner of the company coming and go
Speaker 1: and says to them, go ahead and replace me and
Speaker 1: see what happens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but anything you're.
Speaker 1: Going to bring in is bound to lose money. How
Speaker 1: many people have tried to take down Laurn? How many
Speaker 1: people have said I'm going to cancel that, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be the one that finally euthanizes SNL.
Speaker 4: Nobody's taken down Lauren and he makes money.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He often talks about the show is it's sort of
Speaker 2: like a David Lean epic on television, just in terms
Speaker 2: of the vastness and the production values. And I think
Speaker 2: there have been times. I mean, in the book, I
Speaker 2: talk about how in the nineties when there was a
Speaker 2: much more activist kind of management, in particular Don Olmeyer
Speaker 2: in la Really, you know, they were feeling successful because
Speaker 2: of Steinfeld and some other things, and they just said, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're just going to go into SNL and fix it.
Speaker 2: And they you know, they made him fire Chris Farley.
Speaker 2: They made him fire out of Sandler, they made him
Speaker 2: fire Jim Downey, and then they went for him. Warren
Speaker 2: Littlefield said things in the press suggesting that, you know,
Speaker 2: even Lauren Michael's job wasn't safe, and they really tried to,
Speaker 2: you know, get under the hood and meddle with it.
Speaker 2: And again part of Lauren's genius, you know, people Conan
Speaker 2: O'Brien says, you know that after a nuclear apocalypse, you know,
Speaker 2: it's just going to be a lot of cockroaches walking around,
Speaker 2: but Lauren will be in his office for being the
Speaker 2: fish casting the cockroaches is the next cast. Ideas, it's
Speaker 2: always a long game with him. He's he knows how
Speaker 2: to just kind of keep his head down and sail
Speaker 2: through it all.
Speaker 1: You know. He turned eighty this year. This is the
Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary of the show. Obviously, people have been talking
Speaker 1: about it quite regularly for the last year or so.
Speaker 1: When I came and did the show for the first
Speaker 1: time in nineteen ninety, I think it was I did
Speaker 1: the show the first time and that was obviously their
Speaker 1: fifteenth or sixteenth season, And to think I was doing
Speaker 1: that show and thinking, who on earth would have thought
Speaker 1: this thing would go fifty years.
Speaker 2: Well, Dana Carvey told me a funny story. You know,
Speaker 2: he came in in I guess it was maybe eighty six.
Speaker 2: You know, Lauren took a hiatus of five years after
Speaker 2: the first five years, and then he came back and
Speaker 2: he had a terrible first season back nineteen eighty five
Speaker 2: when he had hired all these young actors from John
Speaker 2: Hughes movies, Anthony Michael Hall, Robert Downey Junior. Very good people,
Speaker 2: but just people who didn't really cohere as an SNL cast.
Speaker 2: So the next cast, which really jelled it was Dana
Speaker 2: Carvey and Kevin Neilaan and John Hooks. But Carvey said
Speaker 2: that he came in and he thought, God, I'm going
Speaker 2: to be in the last cast. This is going to
Speaker 2: be the last gen. This thing is going down the tubes,
Speaker 2: and nobody had any idea that it would just go
Speaker 2: on like that. And anyway, you talked about your first
Speaker 2: hosting gig, and I remember Lauren telling me, you know,
Speaker 2: when he would see Carvey, I mean, Carvey just really
Speaker 2: blew everyone away. He would just watch him doing his
Speaker 2: George Bush or his George Michael Church lady and he
Speaker 2: would just say he's a fucking show pony. And apparently
Speaker 2: the next person that he would say that about was you.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: And I remember him.
Speaker 2: Saying watching you do the Canteen Voice with Adam Sandler
Speaker 2: and where you're a Scout leader and kind.
Speaker 4: Of like, I'm very aggressive groves on this.
Speaker 2: Poor boy, and we're just going marveling from under the bleachers.
Speaker 3: Alec will do anything.
Speaker 4: I've heard that, and that was me. I said, I'm
Speaker 4: going to just be like them.
Speaker 1: I'll do anything silly, put the pie in my face,
Speaker 1: pull my pants down, I don't care. I remember once
Speaker 1: I decided to do that, they just kept asking me
Speaker 1: to come back. And just because they asked, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you need to go. And I said, I never
Speaker 1: had more fun in my life making films. Says I
Speaker 1: always tell people can be challenging, but it's rarely fun.
Speaker 4: It's rarely fun.
Speaker 2: Well, what you've described it's been, it was really fun.
Speaker 2: Kind of picking up all the SNL LINGO. I mean,
Speaker 2: I should have just put a glossary on the back
Speaker 2: of the book. But what you're describing just coming and being,
Speaker 2: you know, doing your job and sketches. They call that
Speaker 2: playing parts, and they love it when a host will
Speaker 2: come in and be good in service parts, in sketches.
Speaker 2: The hardest thing for that writing staff, and the writing
Speaker 2: staff in Lauren's mind, is in some way really the
Speaker 2: heart of the show. The hardest thing for the writing
Speaker 2: staff and for the performers is when a host comes
Speaker 2: in and just wants to be the funny guy in
Speaker 2: every sketch. They feel that that kind of tanks the show,
Speaker 2: tanks the cast.
Speaker 1: I came to New York in nineteen seventy nine to
Speaker 1: finish school. I'd gone three years full time somewhere else
Speaker 1: to GW but I came to NYU to finish and
Speaker 1: get a degree in theater. You know, you had Bill
Speaker 1: Hurt and Sir Gurney and Raoul Julia and Glenn Close
Speaker 1: and of course Marilyn Cazal. If you didn't make your
Speaker 1: bones in the theater in some way, you were somewhat illegitimate.
Speaker 2: Right And I think that Steve Martin sometimes says, you know,
Speaker 2: in New York, you get successful. In Hollywood, you get hot,
Speaker 2: you know, a different thing. But I you know, Lauren
Speaker 2: is kind of a theater kid nerd. You know, he
Speaker 2: grew up going to the theater, putting on plays in
Speaker 2: his camp, and he always likes to say that he
Speaker 2: is one foot in the theater. And I think it's
Speaker 2: really interesting how many of the S and L people
Speaker 2: are the same. I'm sure plenty of them are movie buffs,
Speaker 2: but there are also people who want to sing the
Speaker 2: score to Oliver, you know. And you see this in
Speaker 2: like whenever John Mullaney hosts Now, there is always a
Speaker 2: really elaborate production number that is kind of a send
Speaker 2: up of some Broadway musical like Diner Lobster. And they're
Speaker 2: all really comfortable in that milieu, you know, the black body.
Speaker 4: It's in their blood.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing I love about Lauren is that, you know,
Speaker 1: we've known people who are honored, who are feted, and
Speaker 1: who are exalted in this business, who seem all too
Speaker 1: ready to accept those honors. There's a little slight swift
Speaker 1: to them. A lot of the comedy people. I find
Speaker 1: it interesting because they're the more insecure group, the comedy star.
Speaker 1: But Lauren, in my mind, times it out beautifully. He
Speaker 1: waits till the very last six seven, eight years to
Speaker 1: take a bow. He was not prone to take a bow.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was one of the people that helped
Speaker 1: to facilitate his getting the Kennedy Center Honor. Lauren waited
Speaker 1: to accept those awards when it was like you just
Speaker 1: couldn't stop it anymore. There was just this avalanche of
Speaker 1: laudatory feelings toward him.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I think for one thing, the big fortith anniversary
Speaker 2: show ten years ago, which was a sensational show and
Speaker 2: an emotional time for a lot of people, really had
Speaker 2: an effect on him. And I think it was Bill
Speaker 2: Murray who said to me, you know, yeah, we were
Speaker 2: all there, but it was impossible for us not to
Speaker 2: all realize that we probably won't all be there for
Speaker 2: the fiftieth. I mean time March is on. And I
Speaker 2: think he's also acutely aware of that, you know he
Speaker 2: Aside from the show, one of Lauren's huge achievements was
Speaker 2: in creating this culture, creating a world, a big sandbox
Speaker 2: that everybody can play and people cross from different generations
Speaker 2: act in each other's shows, and they all know each
Speaker 2: other and they're part of a big family. And I
Speaker 2: think he's starting to realize that, you know, anything that
Speaker 2: will bring the tribe together is a good thing, and
Speaker 2: that was it was very moving at the Kennedy Center
Speaker 2: to see all those people together. There is something about
Speaker 2: getting a Lifetime Achievement award that for a lot of
Speaker 2: people makes them worry that that means they're getting shuffled
Speaker 2: off the stage. You know, there's a sort of a
Speaker 2: down heel from here exactly. But I also think that,
Speaker 2: you know, Lauren is smart enough to know that a
Speaker 2: lot of galas that want to honor you, you know,
Speaker 2: they just want to sell a lot of tables just
Speaker 2: one of your names. They know that people are going
Speaker 2: to come and salute you, and it's just, you know,
Speaker 2: life's too short. Perhaps I was at the Kennedy Center,
Speaker 2: which was really fun. One of the things that I
Speaker 2: thought was so interesting about it is, you know, early
Speaker 2: in his life, Lauren was trying to escape the cheesy
Speaker 2: variety television gulch, you know, the way TV shows like
Speaker 2: Sonny and Cher were always shot on these huge, wide
Speaker 2: stages with cyclorama walls and big velvet curtains and a
Speaker 2: lot of Medley's and and you know, he wanted something
Speaker 2: much more raw and cool, which is what SNL was.
Speaker 2: But sitting there in the Kennedy Center honors the show
Speaker 2: that they put on from yes, it was fun. It
Speaker 2: was all of his friends and everything, but it was
Speaker 2: that kind of old style variety show and a lot
Speaker 2: of Medley's And he told me a story about Paul Simon,
Speaker 2: his friend Paul Simon who got an honored at the
Speaker 2: Kennedy Center some years earlier, and having his co honor
Speaker 2: Rey Elizabeth Taylor, lean over to him during you know,
Speaker 2: some performance of Bridge over Troubled Water, and Liz Taylor says,
Speaker 2: how does it feel when they fuck up your song?
Speaker 4: Kennedy author and editor Susan Morrison.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying all the SNL talk, check out my
Speaker 1: episode with paula Pell.
Speaker 5: I used to write a sketch called six Degrees Celsius
Speaker 5: and it was like a boy group and Will Ferrell
Speaker 5: was their manager. He had tinted glasses of course, you know.
Speaker 5: It was Jimmy Fallon and Chris Catan and Chris Parnell
Speaker 5: and they were a boy group. And then we'd have
Speaker 5: the host in it while that week and Sync was there.
Speaker 5: We asked in Sync to be another boy group in
Speaker 5: this competition on the show, playing a fake boy group,
Speaker 5: and so I wrote a song called hold the Pickle,
Speaker 5: and they were like McDonald's employees and so and sinc
Speaker 5: came out with like McDonald's outfits on and saying hold
Speaker 5: the pickle, and they're so they were so crazy talented,
Speaker 5: Like they got there and looked at it for ten
Speaker 5: minutes and had full harmonies, in full choreography. I mean,
Speaker 5: they threw that shit together.
Speaker 4: I was just amazed.
Speaker 1: For the rest of my interview with Paula pelle Head
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Susan
Speaker 1: Morrison shares Lorne Michael's rules for sketch comedy and why
Speaker 1: cast members love being called into the principal's office, and
Speaker 1: later I catch up with Steve Higgins to discuss Saturday
Speaker 1: Night Live's fiftieth season. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing. Susan Morrison and I have both had
Speaker 1: the privilege of working alongside Lorne Michaels and benefiting from
Speaker 1: his wisdom and experience. I was curious about what Susan
Speaker 1: thought about Lauren showing no signs of slowing down in
Speaker 1: his eighties.
Speaker 2: Well, I think he's extremely good at delegating and extremely
Speaker 2: good at finding talent, and yet even his top ye deputies,
Speaker 2: I think recognize that they need him.
Speaker 3: He is the center.
Speaker 4: Make sure that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Coonor O'Brien told me that everyone thinks that Lauren
Speaker 2: has the secret. I don't know what it is, but
Speaker 2: they think he has it. And Bill Hater likes to
Speaker 2: say everyone who has ever worked there spends the rest
Speaker 2: of their life trying to figure him out. It's a
Speaker 2: combination of I mean, he's a great talker, as you know,
Speaker 2: words kind of flow out of him like jazz, and
Speaker 2: yet he can also keep things close to the vest
Speaker 2: and be a little bit a little and be a
Speaker 2: little bit aloof and a little bit mysterious, and it's
Speaker 2: a very interesting management technique. People want his approval, they
Speaker 2: want his time. There's a story about how Chris Farley
Speaker 2: used to love being called into Lauren's office, even though
Speaker 2: it was usually to be lectured about his drinking or
Speaker 2: drug problem or something. You know, there was an air
Speaker 2: of being called into the principal's office. But even that
Speaker 2: people like because they just want that proximity to his
Speaker 2: power and his mystery and another thing he has. And
Speaker 2: I think it's been accentuated as the years have passed.
Speaker 2: You know, in the beginning, he was the same age
Speaker 2: as everybody. They were all peers, and that made management
Speaker 2: a little bit complicated. Now he's, you know what, forty
Speaker 2: to fifty and sixty years older than some of these people,
Speaker 2: and many of them regard him as a father figure.
Speaker 2: And he had a lot of father figures in his
Speaker 2: own life because he lost his father suddenly when he
Speaker 2: was fourteen. But he has developed this. You know, he's
Speaker 2: a guy with a lot of axioms, a lot of rules,
Speaker 2: a lot of rules of thumb. He loves to give
Speaker 2: people tips on how to live and how to find
Speaker 2: an apartment, how to get their kid into bribo. Yes
Speaker 2: by now exactly. But in the same way that he
Speaker 2: has all of his rules of sketch comedy, you know,
Speaker 2: do it in sunshine. You know, don't overload the premise,
Speaker 2: don't put a hat on a hat. The sets have
Speaker 2: to be hard wall reality. Early on he realized that
Speaker 2: in comedy, you don't want the character to have a
Speaker 2: funny name like Walter Crankcase or wear a silly hat,
Speaker 2: because that overwhelms the comedy writing and the comedy performing.
Speaker 2: You know, you want that to be the the main event.
Speaker 4: Now you're two girls.
Speaker 3: I have two girls.
Speaker 4: Are they in the biz at all.
Speaker 3: They have both been in the biz.
Speaker 2: Nancy worked for Adam Scott on severance for this whole
Speaker 2: last second season and was really she was utterly indispensable
Speaker 2: to Adam and Ben and Helen has She's been making
Speaker 2: short films and she recently moved to Asheville, North Carolina,
Speaker 2: just to kind of get out of the city and
Speaker 2: try a different place. But yeah, they were both theater
Speaker 2: kids who are interested in television and movies and doing
Speaker 2: very interesting things.
Speaker 1: I think one of the ultimate stories about Lauren is
Speaker 1: we're at the gala at the Museum of Natural History
Speaker 1: of Lauren's is the big mocker there. So I go
Speaker 1: there one year and of course, any relationship that's important
Speaker 1: to you, any relationship that you really feel it's such
Speaker 1: a great opportunity for you as a person out in
Speaker 1: terms of business. That person is someone who's important to you,
Speaker 1: and you're so grateful that you know them that you think,
Speaker 1: how can this relationship deepen and go even further? And
Speaker 1: I wasn't thinking that when I said this slam, but
Speaker 1: I turned him in front of a group of people,
Speaker 1: and there were other people there, and I turned him.
Speaker 1: I go, you know, Lauren, You're the only man I
Speaker 1: know who I feel this close to, who I've never kissed,
Speaker 1: And he literally just had the greatest Lauren face, and
Speaker 1: he goes, let's keep it that way.
Speaker 2: He's very good at the quick, deadpan comeback, the right comeback.
Speaker 4: He nearly always I've never seen him wrong. He's almost
Speaker 4: always right.
Speaker 2: There's a funny bit in the book where his talent
Speaker 2: people are describing a Steve Carrell movie, I think it
Speaker 2: was called Marwin that was about to come out because
Speaker 2: Correl was an upcoming host, and they said, yeah, Steve
Speaker 2: Carell plays a guy who gets bullied by neo Nazis
Speaker 2: because he collects little dolls, and Lauren just kind of
Speaker 2: takes a beat and he goes, how can I invest?
Speaker 3: It's just.
Speaker 1: Author and editor Susan Morrison. I've had the honor of
Speaker 1: host SNL more than a few times, and while there,
Speaker 1: I've gotten to know Saturday Night Live writer and producer
Speaker 1: Steve Higgins. Steve Higgins is a very busy man, juggling
Speaker 1: his role as announcer of the Tonight show with Jimmy
Speaker 1: Fallon while overseeing the SNL writer's room and making casting
Speaker 1: decisions alongside Lorne Michaels. Higgins is a returning guest on
Speaker 1: Here Is the Thing. I first spoke with him live
Speaker 1: at Guildhall in East Hampton in twenty eighteen. I recently
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to speak with Steve Higgins again, right
Speaker 1: before the launch of Saturday Night Live's fiftieth season. I
Speaker 1: wanted the writer and comedian to reflect on his start
Speaker 1: at SNL back in the nineties.
Speaker 4: Nineteen ninety five, nineteen ninety five, Wow, wow, what is
Speaker 4: that is my twenty ninth Clinton was present, Yeah, Daryl
Speaker 4: was Clinton, Alec Baldwin and Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 1: Now that leads me to you must be struck every
Speaker 1: now and then if you have time to think about
Speaker 1: what we couldn't do anymore that we used to do
Speaker 1: years ago.
Speaker 4: I kind of think of it as like, would this
Speaker 4: make someone sad if they saw it? And then you go, well,
Speaker 4: then that's easy to not do. And I'm sure there's
Speaker 4: ways to do stuff. Still, I think it's not as
Speaker 4: hand tying as people say. And I think it's loosening
Speaker 4: up now too, because I think people are getting more like, oh,
Speaker 4: come on, they used to say intent doesn't matter and
Speaker 4: you go, well, yeah, it kind of does. So I
Speaker 4: think it's coming around to again. Mean spirited stuff is
Speaker 4: not you know, that's always just mean.
Speaker 1: But do you read at their bead through on Wednesdays?
Speaker 1: Do you do their bead through? And everyone's howling laughing? Right,
Speaker 1: this is a tough crowd to make laugh They realized
Speaker 1: there's no point in laughing if it isn't funny, because
Speaker 1: that's not going to help us get where we want
Speaker 1: to go. When you do something that they think is
Speaker 1: funny and they're all cracking up, do you turn around
Speaker 1: and throwsta and people go, we can't do.
Speaker 4: That it's funny? Well, usually that's because it was like
Speaker 4: a radio piece where you go like, oh wow, that's
Speaker 4: super funny. But what are you going to see? Yeah,
Speaker 4: what are you going to play with? That just going
Speaker 4: to be a shot of somebody said talking and then
Speaker 4: describing this thing that Usually it'll be like, you know,
Speaker 4: lines like and let me see your note and you
Speaker 4: wrote that in crayon, you know what I mean? You
Speaker 4: go like, oh, well that's okay, somebody to show it.
Speaker 4: Then you know, you're more describing it than stuff. And
Speaker 4: also we're trying to It's like people love as you know,
Speaker 4: put table lefts in like, you know, we go like,
Speaker 4: we're not HBO people. We can't do I would say,
Speaker 4: make it an innuendo, not an up your assa. So
Speaker 4: they go like, well it's it's a blowjob. No, that's
Speaker 4: not that's not no. No, well just not saying yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: we're a network show. Please. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, when they started doing the show, and I've forgotten this,
Speaker 1: and I don't think. I didn't think I would, but
Speaker 1: when they started doing the show live on the West Coast,
Speaker 1: that's been how many years now, oh gosh, ten, yeah,
Speaker 1: something like that, Yeah, a few few, and they started
Speaker 1: doing that, they had to kind of dial it down.
Speaker 4: If it's a network a little bit prime time. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so when you were the show now is not as
Speaker 4: it's not. It's not as ripe because it's prime time.
Speaker 4: Because there we really could say whatever we wanted to.
Speaker 4: After what is it eleven thirty? The FCC rule ends
Speaker 4: at whatever, you know, sometime that you're free. But it's
Speaker 4: like now that we're eight. I think it's kind of
Speaker 4: like Howard Stern. You know, once he could do whatever
Speaker 4: he wanted to. He went to, IY, might as well
Speaker 4: just be good and have fun without whatever, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, It became a different thing, and I
Speaker 4: think that's run. Yeah, that's more fun than you know,
Speaker 4: like my generation of people never tried to fool the sensors.
Speaker 1: Well mean, obviously I always refer to when we did
Speaker 1: thirty Rock and Tina taught me. They all taught me
Speaker 1: the difficulty of doing it in prime time on a
Speaker 1: network show and having a you know, makes you more clever,
Speaker 1: it makes you smarter. But for you guys, obviously it
Speaker 1: was a ratings boondoggle for the show.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, once you're on the West Coast live and you
Speaker 1: bring that audience that might not see a tape show, right,
Speaker 1: people who might not stay up till eleven thirty, they
Speaker 1: might record it in the old days people recording with
Speaker 1: tapes and it like that.
Speaker 4: But this was a huge boost for the show, correct. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think also it just made sense that they didn't
Speaker 4: have anything on you know what I mean, and we're
Speaker 4: doing it anyway, so why not And yeah they're not
Speaker 4: showing anything. It was, you know, murder, she wrote, maybe
Speaker 4: I think at one time or something like that.
Speaker 1: Now, fiftieth anniversary, you start thirty years ago, so you're
Speaker 1: season twenty Yeah, twenty one. You're thirty years ago, in
Speaker 1: ninety five or twenty nine years ago. Did you ever
Speaker 1: imagine the show would go on? I mean, I know
Speaker 1: that's a silly question, but I myself when I did,
Speaker 1: you did.
Speaker 4: Well because it's like the Tonight Show, right, They're not
Speaker 4: going to lose the IP or whatever they call it,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, it's too valuable. It might change,
Speaker 4: you know, like whenever Lauren leaves would won't be probably
Speaker 4: for another ten years or something like that. But then
Speaker 4: they're going to have to redo it. It's like Johnny
Speaker 4: Carson leaving. You know, it's like they'll go to whatever. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 4: whatever it is, they'll do whatever they have to do.
Speaker 4: Cut slash the budget, and you know, make a new
Speaker 4: less Castle show, less pre tapes, less money, spend less grandeur.
Speaker 1: Lauren is someone who one of the because I'm obviously
Speaker 1: a great admirer of his as well as he's my friend.
Speaker 1: Lauren taught me that when you're at a certain point
Speaker 1: in the ratings, like with thirty Rock, we were not
Speaker 1: a ratings juggernaut, but we were at a point where
Speaker 1: were at a level in which they knew that they
Speaker 1: got rid of us. Anything they replaced us with, it
Speaker 1: was going to make less money. And the same is
Speaker 1: true I assume with SNL, which is that they Lauren
Speaker 1: has always been to convince them that it is in
Speaker 1: their interest to keep the show on the air. Do
Speaker 1: you think that's true that the thing is stayed on
Speaker 1: the air largely because of Lauren.
Speaker 4: In the form it is, yes, right, because he's a master.
Speaker 4: He is an empresario. You'd need like ten people to
Speaker 4: replace him, right, because he does all the he talks,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, everything he goes, everywhere he goes.
Speaker 4: It's about SNL, every party he goes to, every premier
Speaker 4: he goes, everything he goes to, and his rolodexes or
Speaker 4: whatever they call it now contacts are deep.
Speaker 1: Switching to the cast for a moment. I mean, in
Speaker 1: my mind, when you look at it with the right lens,
Speaker 1: it's pretty much the same. Who you're going after what
Speaker 1: you want. It may change somewhat, you may have a
Speaker 1: little more of this and a little less of this
Speaker 1: or what have you. But the casting of the show
Speaker 1: is I mean, obviously the faces and the dynamics are
Speaker 1: very very different, but the cast of the show is
Speaker 1: pretty much some age wise, Yeah, their roots where they
Speaker 1: come from.
Speaker 4: Well, it's also just change looking. No, it's always just
Speaker 4: who's the funniest person out there and we'll figure out
Speaker 4: what to do with them then, you know, just put
Speaker 4: the funniest people you can find in auditions and things
Speaker 4: like that and just get them in the building and
Speaker 4: we'll see what happens. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 1: But without naming names, when someone is not invited back
Speaker 1: when they when they were there for a year or
Speaker 1: such show, and then they're gone, they're typically gone. Why
Speaker 1: they just this that doesn't know alchemy there or.
Speaker 4: Usually it's like sometimes it's something happened or or that
Speaker 4: they can't replicate live, you know what I mean, Because
Speaker 4: it's a very specific skill set to perform live at
Speaker 4: the time at the thing and be better than dress
Speaker 4: then you you know, be better in there than you
Speaker 4: were dressed, but be just a good enough at dress
Speaker 4: to get it on and to be able to function
Speaker 4: in the high stress you know world of You know,
Speaker 4: it's like fighter pilots. Not everybody's cut out to be
Speaker 4: a fighter pilot. That doesn't mean they're not good, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean. There's there's people who didn't do
Speaker 4: well on the show with the specific skills, yeah, who
Speaker 4: did great other places, and it's like you go it
Speaker 4: just whatever. For whatever reason, they couldn't master that format.
Speaker 1: I feel like what I understood back them was that
Speaker 1: the cast had to find a way, whether they were
Speaker 1: writing themselves or people were writing for them. That was
Speaker 1: really the anvil, the crucible there of their career going
Speaker 1: on was could they either do the writing.
Speaker 4: Or muster the force.
Speaker 1: They don't, then they had to exactly someone had to
Speaker 1: fall in love with them and become their writing partner.
Speaker 3: It's really like.
Speaker 4: No other show, right, It's like all of show business.
Speaker 4: And I was like, if you you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: because then it's like you're hot one day or not
Speaker 4: one day. You're then one day, and you've got to
Speaker 4: figure out how to make peace people want to work
Speaker 4: with you and want to be with you and want
Speaker 4: to watch you, and figure out who is the best
Speaker 4: people to work with, who's the wrong people to work with,
Speaker 4: what kind of material you should use on other shows.
Speaker 4: It's really like hear casts take the script go. Writers
Speaker 4: don't meet the people on the show. They're in the
Speaker 4: separate building and nessa ells more like old studio system
Speaker 4: where writers and performers on seventeen are the same, you know,
Speaker 4: and it's like it's just figuring out how to navigate
Speaker 4: the skill set. You need to get your stuff on
Speaker 4: the air and work. You know, a lot of people
Speaker 4: too like things at the table too, like screaming at
Speaker 4: the table, kills at the table. Humans don't like it.
Speaker 4: They get scared. Like Molly as Mary Catherine Gallagher, she
Speaker 4: would always have to get up and say superstar because
Speaker 4: ross people thought she was really hurt, and she probably
Speaker 4: did really hurt. She's Bruce's But the brilliance of Molly
Speaker 4: to go like superstar, you know, and would That's one
Speaker 4: example I'd say to newcast members Tuesday, you can't play
Speaker 4: a loser. You can't somebody who thinks they're a loser.
Speaker 4: They could be a loser, but they can't think that.
Speaker 4: We don't want to think your characters shaken, Yes, and
Speaker 4: there will. Damon Roberts, he's a winner, he's a winner.
Speaker 4: He doesn't you know, he doesn't want here. Don't wait
Speaker 4: on my parade.
Speaker 1: Molly Shannon was the Chuck Bednarik of the Evil Canevil
Speaker 1: of comedy I mean she do this, you know, was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: you're you're worse than Farley. You're stronger than You're tougher
Speaker 1: than Farley. But I see that people who they combined
Speaker 1: with people and they have this relationship with a writer,
Speaker 1: and you see them just fly, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: whoever Paul Lapel was fixated on, whoever she liked a lot.
Speaker 1: And I was always a beneficial because the Tony Bennett
Speaker 1: stuff and she'd write that stuff and I thought I
Speaker 1: was gonna cry. I would sit in her room and
Speaker 1: just cry. And you say, just like a roll of
Speaker 1: barbecue Frido's. You know, no clippers could tame those poka chips.
Speaker 1: I mean, where does this come from from?
Speaker 4: This girl? The mom where you're cressing her feet and
Speaker 4: the doctor came and said she's gone.
Speaker 1: That once made love to a woman's feet for nine hours.
Speaker 1: Then the doctor came in and said, mister Bennett, she's gone.
Speaker 4: God.
Speaker 1: But let me just say this about you, which is
Speaker 1: you're so funny and smart in that managerial way.
Speaker 4: Like to work for you.
Speaker 1: There's never a thought when you're working for somebody who's
Speaker 1: management of any kind where even if they are funny,
Speaker 1: they're im muted, they're not charming at all. But with you,
Speaker 1: I feel like people are more inclined to listen to
Speaker 1: you and follow you because you are very charming and
Speaker 1: funny in your banter and you're not just writing stuff
Speaker 1: that's funny and handing in when you're talking to somebody,
Speaker 1: you're funny.
Speaker 4: And I'm wondering you could.
Speaker 1: Have worked a lot of other places.
Speaker 4: I think once I started there, it instantly made all
Speaker 4: other TVs seem boring, right, and movies seem boring. Like
Speaker 4: I don't even like to go on pre tapes anymore
Speaker 4: because there's something about the live that you go like,
Speaker 4: this is using every part of your brain. You felt
Speaker 4: like every and also that we do stuff you use
Speaker 4: every part of you know, we write pieces that take
Speaker 4: place in the sixteenth century, eater World War two, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean. Also, there's never a it's never yeah,
Speaker 4: it's never dull exactly. Think about all the Godfather Part
Speaker 4: four and you're you're looking at the stuff, you go,
Speaker 4: oh my god, these these wigs are better than movie wigs.
Speaker 4: These costumes are the sets. When we switch to HDT crew,
Speaker 4: only thing we had to do was trim the lace
Speaker 4: on the wigs more. That's the only change we had
Speaker 4: to do because Eugene and those you know, they and
Speaker 4: the sets were so beautiful that because they were from theater,
Speaker 4: so they had to look real up close. So we
Speaker 4: were our sets are over. You know, we've never used
Speaker 4: the two dimensional rule of television or movies. Everything was gorgeous.
Speaker 4: So and also you're doing a show like you're reading
Speaker 4: those books when your kid, Wow, I want to be
Speaker 4: a writer in New York and work on your show
Speaker 4: of shows. Well, they don't make that anymore, so you can't.
Speaker 4: And then apparently they do, and this show shouldn't exist.
Speaker 4: It's it's like taking a time machine and everything about
Speaker 4: it is blessed. And every time you get in the mood,
Speaker 4: you gotta go, oh, I got to remember I get
Speaker 4: to do this. I don't got to do this. I
Speaker 4: get to do this thing that you still enjoy it
Speaker 4: like him, Yeah, I enjoy it. And somebody you know,
Speaker 4: somebodys you go like, I can't you know it. But
Speaker 4: for the most part you're going like, where else are
Speaker 4: you going to go to do that?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: There's no other place on earth that's like this place,
Speaker 4: And so it'd be like once I did that. The
Speaker 4: first five years, I was just scared to death, you know,
Speaker 4: when I'd smoked so much. I was come to realize
Speaker 4: self medicating through coffee and cigarettes.
Speaker 1: As you recall, Lawn said that about the sets when
Speaker 1: it went HD. He said you could really see more
Speaker 1: vividly how stained the sets were from Marcie's smoking.
Speaker 4: With the problem with.
Speaker 1: HD, it all became really clear how much smoking Marcy
Speaker 1: had done. It all kind of grade everything. So Keenan
Speaker 1: has been on there for I don't even want to guess,
Speaker 1: like twenty years or something like that, right, And you
Speaker 1: wonder why does he stay?
Speaker 4: I mean, probably it's a question for him. But whence
Speaker 4: he stays the same thing he loves it's he loves
Speaker 4: it and he's so good at it and he can
Speaker 4: do other things. When you're cast, you work like twenty
Speaker 4: weeks a year. Yeah, you know what I mean. You work.
Speaker 4: You're there like we have a way of a fo
Speaker 4: n Yeah, your four week run coming up, and it's
Speaker 4: just like you don't it's like working on the pipeline
Speaker 4: or whatever, you know what I mean. It's like you're
Speaker 4: an oil people crying in their office yes, exactly, and
Speaker 4: you don't you really, you don't pretend like you have
Speaker 4: a life, right.
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live writer and producer Steve Higgins. If you're
Speaker 1: enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to
Speaker 1: follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Steve
Speaker 1: Higgins shares the rules at SNL to keep the show
Speaker 1: at the top of its game. I'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to Here's the Thing. To celebrate the fiftieth
Speaker 1: anniversary of the iconic sketch comedy show, NBC will air
Speaker 1: a three hours Saturday Night Live primetime special. Steve Higgins
Speaker 1: reflects on the irony of the date of this upcoming anniversary.
Speaker 4: Saturday Night Lives fiftieth anniversaries on Sunday, February sixty exactly.
Speaker 4: It was on Sunday last time too. Remember that was
Speaker 4: a Sunday, Yeah, because with Jimmy the next day.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh Jesus Priest, remember we did thirty Rock
Speaker 1: Live from eight h I love that.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I still find scripts in my office on nine,
Speaker 4: like under the front desks and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 4: under the couch. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Jack mcbair did the show a couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: and he was so great, and I just remember him
Speaker 1: sitting there. We did the live show, and he's like,
Speaker 1: somebody says they want to kill live television. It's useless,
Speaker 1: and Jack says, oh, no, remember the old Joey Montero show.
Speaker 1: He was like you, mister Jordan. He didn't like to
Speaker 1: rehearse and he wanted the unitior as fast as he could.
Speaker 1: And I thought they were pretty spot on there about
Speaker 1: Tracy Morgan. Yeah, Tracy Morgan, Tracy Jordan, the overlap. But
Speaker 1: then we did that thing where I did that little
Speaker 1: sketch about where I played like a Dean Martin man Quay,
Speaker 1: and it was so much fun. That's what I love
Speaker 1: was playing people who were just like no one else
Speaker 1: would ever ask you to do that. No, like me
Speaker 1: with Tony Bennett and this and that and then Trump,
Speaker 1: which I mean I always say to people, I don't
Speaker 1: think my Trump was anything special, but I gave him
Speaker 1: what I thought he deserved. It was his spirit, well
Speaker 1: but exactly. And plus, as people don't understand, you're doing
Speaker 1: the cold opening of a live TV show in a
Speaker 1: studio we have to split the difference between the camera
Speaker 1: and the audience. Sometimes you're too loud because you're playing
Speaker 1: to the crowd, and sometimes you're you play a little
Speaker 1: softer and it's not as funny, you know, and you've
Speaker 1: just got that script. Yeah, ten minutes. But he's a
Speaker 1: little brassy because we're like, what do you want me
Speaker 1: to do? Come out and do with like a really
Speaker 1: deep impersonation of Trump. That'll be like a nineteen minute
Speaker 1: cold opening, and ain't gonna be cold. It's gonna be
Speaker 1: half baked.
Speaker 4: What I think is funny tell me is that you
Speaker 4: were one of the best mimics in the world. I
Speaker 4: don't know if people know this. And the thing you're
Speaker 4: most famous for it is an impression that you don't
Speaker 4: even do you know what I mean. I would never
Speaker 4: do that. No, It's like it's like your brando. Your
Speaker 4: brando is perfect.
Speaker 6: You and I are like two dogs sniffing each other
Speaker 6: and I'm sniffing you and you're sniffing me, and my god,
Speaker 6: my god, I hate that.
Speaker 4: I just I just hate it.
Speaker 6: And you say whatever you want to say to me,
Speaker 6: and I'll say whatever I want to say to you.
Speaker 4: In his moomoo in his momo and then is that
Speaker 4: all right with you? I was like, you got it, man,
Speaker 4: you got it. I'm gonna say what everyone, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: let you have it. Now here comes. Oh you won't
Speaker 4: be like that. Huh. Here we go and the four
Speaker 4: stages a Pacino so he's.
Speaker 1: Young, Butchina young Cerpaco. He's up here really high. He's
Speaker 1: grinding his teeth. Who knows why, I can guess, and
Speaker 1: he's and he says, you are going to go for
Speaker 1: a walk with out coups, you'll fuck me. I put
Speaker 1: one in your back. That's it from Cirproco. Then then
Speaker 1: Pacino is like, you know, uh, you're out of order.
Speaker 1: You're out of order. No, you are out of order.
Speaker 1: You gotta get that order. You gotta get the New
Speaker 1: York just right, I think. And then you get into
Speaker 1: the third phase where he's like.
Speaker 7: Way down, he's so down here. Let me tell you
Speaker 7: something you you don't understand. And then you get into
Speaker 7: the Southern version. Then he would for a period where
Speaker 7: he's sound like Fogo and Leghorn. He was like, I
Speaker 7: realize you don't know.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I saw her going down the street and I was like,
Speaker 1: whoa to get back to the show just for a moment.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously during the season you have little time.
Speaker 1: But I wonder do you still make it a point
Speaker 1: to watch other comedy on shows and see what other
Speaker 1: people are doing.
Speaker 4: Does that feed you? Does it inform you at all?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 4: Do you need to know that to do your show? Well?
Speaker 4: You watch talk shows for I watched them for like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, I look at how that person would
Speaker 4: be a good host, you know what I mean? Like
Speaker 4: you see them on the being lively or whatever, and
Speaker 4: you go, hey, you guys, yeah, it's well it's not
Speaker 4: I don't decide it, but I go, hey, that person
Speaker 4: was really fun on Jimmy, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Or this person was that or whatever. And then it
Speaker 4: feels sadly, it all feels like a bustman's holiday watching comedy,
Speaker 4: do you know what I mean? So you're like, I
Speaker 4: usually watch like documentaries or go home listen to a
Speaker 4: book on tape, or listen to a pot What.
Speaker 1: Do you do?
Speaker 4: You like films? You're like, what's your programming? I have
Speaker 4: been a lot of reading and books on tape.
Speaker 1: You have internet out there in the country. You have
Speaker 1: internet there we.
Speaker 4: Have Intra, which is just connects my building to the next. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 4: it's like Interstate Highway, right, but it's all feels like
Speaker 4: but no film, no, you know, binge TV shows. I
Speaker 4: try to, you know what I mean, Like, but what's
Speaker 4: about the comedies? What's the fast one I watched?
Speaker 7: Was?
Speaker 4: I watched The Bear because my niece is in that.
Speaker 4: What happens too is I get into shows and then
Speaker 4: this is why I'm old, because I don't like this
Speaker 4: six years and then you forgot that. You watch the
Speaker 4: first two seasons and then it comes out again and
Speaker 4: you're going like, there's no even water cooler talk anymore.
Speaker 4: So you don't even know because people go, oh, don't,
Speaker 4: I can't, don't no spoilers, So now we can't even
Speaker 4: talk about that. I binge the Sopranos like every two years. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's a binge the last year and I kind of now,
Speaker 4: I'm just going back to things that I know happened
Speaker 4: before the world got so dark. So oh, you'll watch
Speaker 4: things I've seen before.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to watch things because people will tell
Speaker 1: me and I don't really care. But I watch things
Speaker 1: where there's something I feel like I've got I don't
Speaker 1: want to miss.
Speaker 4: Like Jennifer Coolidge in White Lotus. Yeah, I saw that.
Speaker 1: I wasn't big on White Load, nothing wrong with it,
Speaker 1: but I thought, oh, I don't know if I want
Speaker 1: to watch this. And then somebody said, but you've got
Speaker 1: to see this woman in this role, and she was
Speaker 1: just amazing.
Speaker 6: I love.
Speaker 4: What's also that thing where people tell you stuff and
Speaker 4: then when you've heard enough about it, you go like,
Speaker 4: and then all you do is watch it for well,
Speaker 4: it can't be that good, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: You can put up with a lot of stuff and
Speaker 4: you can't explain why it's so fascinating to watch these people,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. And so rarely do you
Speaker 4: see something that transforms everything and you go like, oh
Speaker 4: that is something else. Oh my god, because how rare
Speaker 4: is that.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget him. At the Emmys, I go to
Speaker 1: the other side to say hi to a couple of
Speaker 1: people doing some you know, wopping break there of like
Speaker 1: ten minutes or something, and I go over and I
Speaker 1: see everybody from Westworld seated together. There's Ed with Amy.
Speaker 1: Now I worship Amy. I did Streetcar on Broadway with
Speaker 1: Amy in ninety and your mom loved ed and my
Speaker 1: mom loved that exactly.
Speaker 4: Well, a lot of women love that.
Speaker 1: But anyway, he's there and I lean into him. He smiles,
Speaker 1: he gets up, he gives me a handshake, and I
Speaker 1: lean into him and I whisper.
Speaker 4: I go, what is your show about?
Speaker 1: And he goes, I was hoping you'd tell me. Last
Speaker 1: couple questions, why do audiences? Do you think? Why have audiences?
Speaker 1: Because this is the critical thing of the numbers weren't there,
Speaker 1: and there's times that the numbers weren't there, but they
Speaker 1: fought back and made some changes.
Speaker 4: We are now the number one entertainment show on television,
Speaker 4: all of television. Right. No, I, it's just sad, right
Speaker 4: because you know what I mean, because the the TV
Speaker 4: watching has gone down so much that a show at
Speaker 4: nothing to do with our show. But that shouldn't be
Speaker 4: the way. It shouldn't be a show that's on at
Speaker 4: eleven thirty at night.
Speaker 1: And obviously the show wouldn't have stayed for this inconceivable
Speaker 1: amount of time, fifty years. It's just unbelievable to me
Speaker 1: and Lauren there for all but that slug of time
Speaker 1: where he left briefly for a couple of years or
Speaker 1: few years. But you can't survive if you don't have
Speaker 1: an audience. What is the thing that audiences keep returning to.
Speaker 1: I think it's that he's Lauren set up. He's like
Speaker 1: the James Madison of comedy.
Speaker 4: He's set up these rules so that the show isn't
Speaker 4: run by a seventy year old man. Clean hits, fair, hits,
Speaker 4: everything is right, you give change all those rules that
Speaker 4: he's set up for doing sketch comedy that weren't skits.
Speaker 4: There were sketches and played to the top of your game,
Speaker 4: be as smart as you can. Those are the rules
Speaker 4: that haven't changed at all. The jokes might change, But
Speaker 4: the thing about people, yeah, the references change and things
Speaker 4: like that, but the but the way you treat the
Speaker 4: references hasn't changed, and the way you perform it hasn't changed.
Speaker 4: So I think people go there because they you know,
Speaker 4: it's like and the sets are the same.
Speaker 1: The sets as.
Speaker 4: Exactly if you look at Wayne's world, I've seen that
Speaker 4: set many times every living room. The people there, the
Speaker 4: writers have a responsibility to be accurate and to be
Speaker 4: well informed and to be you know, every once in
Speaker 4: a while we make a mistake. But you know, it's
Speaker 4: like Sarah Paleler they're wearing. The costumes are exactly what
Speaker 4: they were the you know what I mean, if there
Speaker 4: was a debate, everything is the way it's a and
Speaker 4: the stuff you hear, you trust that it's not going
Speaker 4: to be made up from whole cloth, that you can
Speaker 4: learn something. You know. It's like watching Monty Python when
Speaker 4: you're a kid and you'd go like, oh, there you go.
Speaker 4: I know there's a reference about the Spanish Inquisition. I
Speaker 4: know that they're telling the truth about that because I
Speaker 4: trust them, and I think that's what it is. People
Speaker 4: go there because they know it's a safe space to
Speaker 4: see stuff that isn't going to be inaccurate.
Speaker 1: Now there's a political season coming up, obviously, and you've
Speaker 1: got you've already got a Trump James Austin Johnson is Trump. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you have Maya who's agreed to.
Speaker 4: Play, which makes everything better. She's gonna Yeah, that's gonna
Speaker 4: be a big deal. I mean, it's also a great
Speaker 4: thing of like Biden and Obama weren't as fun to
Speaker 4: watch as Clinton or you know what I mean. It's
Speaker 4: like there's not a good even if you're the best Bush, Yeah,
Speaker 4: exactly the best. You know, Will made that fun, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean, Like he's like, yeah, so good
Speaker 4: him and now and just there's something about Maya who
Speaker 4: can come out and do Kamala, who's like juts.
Speaker 1: And she's gonna come to New York periodically and do
Speaker 1: the show over time. She's not gonna be here for
Speaker 1: the whole season again.
Speaker 4: She's got kids. The kids are getting old. Favorite people
Speaker 4: on Earth, they are getting Yeah, pearls, they're all, they're
Speaker 4: all getting older.
Speaker 1: I mean, ninety nine percent of me now thinks she's
Speaker 1: gonna win after the debate, But there's still that one
Speaker 1: percent of me that's afraid theft and so forth right.
Speaker 4: And there's also that Yeah, nothing is for sure.
Speaker 1: But do you find because of people maybe tired of it,
Speaker 1: but he winds up winning somehow. You're not going to
Speaker 1: go with him week to week?
Speaker 4: Are you? I don't think so. It's just it's hard
Speaker 4: to do, right, it's done. It's just done. It's like
Speaker 4: it's just so he's the same, So the gags are
Speaker 4: the same. Yeah, it's very difficult to You have to
Speaker 4: get dig deeper and deeper and deeper, because you know,
Speaker 4: to half the stuff. You'd go, come on, the President
Speaker 4: of the United the ex president is not going to
Speaker 4: say that that Haitians eat dogs and cats. He's not
Speaker 4: going to do You can't do that, that's ridiculous, right,
Speaker 4: And then he does it, and then it's so beyond
Speaker 4: any comic thing that you can't think of what could
Speaker 4: you do that would be worse than what he did
Speaker 4: or funnier or crazier or whatever.
Speaker 1: But this lends me, This leads me to the conversation
Speaker 1: quickly about the film, the SNL film. So it's the
Speaker 1: first night, the first show, it's the evening there, and
Speaker 1: I think that my problem with films like that. Nothing
Speaker 1: against it. I mean I heard it's good and people
Speaker 1: have said all good things, but I don't necessarily lean
Speaker 1: into that kind of thing because I think about it's like,
Speaker 1: if you're going to be honest, it's almost like a reenactment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's hard. Even when you read books, it's like,
Speaker 4: and also everybody's as you've learned as you get older,
Speaker 4: everybody's truth is true to them. So you go like,
Speaker 4: I was there and that's what happened. I didn't remember
Speaker 4: that at all, and everybody's recollections are different and things
Speaker 4: like that, and you go like and also watching it
Speaker 4: will just feel like you're at work for an extra
Speaker 4: hour and a half.
Speaker 1: So let me just finish by saying, I want to
Speaker 1: settle an old, old piece of lore over there Saturday
Speaker 1: Night Live, and I'll let you finish this sentence. I
Speaker 1: was told by people over these years, now Low, these
Speaker 1: thirty years, that you have the biggest blank on the
Speaker 1: staff of SNL. You have the biggest blank. What is it?
Speaker 4: Office? Exactly? The office? No office? You got it? Enterprise.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Do you remember when you did Charles Nelson Riley on
Speaker 4: The Actors Student, Why can you believe that? With will?
Speaker 4: Oh my god, you played Lore?
Speaker 1: He goes and what I can't even remember those lines,
Speaker 1: but it was so funny when I'm on there and
Speaker 1: I see he said, hold your glasses between your thumb
Speaker 1: and your finger and just go like this and shake
Speaker 1: him like this, And I thought that was probably one
Speaker 1: of the most insane things I've ever done in my career, Like,
Speaker 1: who am I doing that? I want to thank you
Speaker 1: for all the memories you've given me, Charles Nelson Riley.
Speaker 1: I wrote that the guy that wipes his ass with
Speaker 1: a dog, wrote that he went on to be a
Speaker 1: big movie director, but.
Speaker 4: I remember where he started. Alec Bolbins wiping his ass
Speaker 4: with a dog. God bless him. I love you. I
Speaker 4: love you too.
Speaker 1: My thanks to author Susan Morrison and my friend Steve Higgins.
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing is recorded at CDM Studios in New
Speaker 1: York City. This episode was produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice,
Speaker 1: Maureen Hobn, and Victoria de Martin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial.
Speaker 1: Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.