Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Lauren Michaels is one of the most influential figures in
Speaker 1: American entertainment. I went to visit him at his corner
Speaker 1: office and Rockefeller Center. It's seventeen floors above the skating rink.
Speaker 1: Then there's a huge fish tank in the corner. It's
Speaker 1: the same office he's had since nineteen seventy five, when
Speaker 1: he started Saturday Night Live and proceeded to launch the
Speaker 1: careers of some of the biggest names in comedy Belushi, Ackroyd,
Speaker 1: Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock,
Speaker 1: Will Farrell, Tina Fey. The list goes on and on
Speaker 1: and on. He's a rare producer and that he's truly
Speaker 1: involved in all aspects of production. Yet he says when
Speaker 1: he does his job right, he leaves no fingerprints. Lord
Speaker 1: Michael's life in comedy began in the late nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: when he worked at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto
Speaker 1: alongside his writing and performing partner Hart Pomerantz. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't television. Lord Michael started out in radio. It was
Speaker 1: a show called five nights a week at this time,
Speaker 1: and we did political satire every week. We thought we
Speaker 1: were potentially bringing down the government, and the fact that
Speaker 1: no one was listening didn't occur to us for at
Speaker 1: least the first year. But we loved doing it. It
Speaker 1: was just a chance to write and perform every week.
Speaker 1: Radio had a larger budget at that point than television
Speaker 1: because people had more radios than the television. It's just
Speaker 1: it's a government system and they allocated based on fairness,
Speaker 1: which is very Canadian thing to do, not necessarily on
Speaker 1: the edge of technological change. But there was a radio
Speaker 1: show produced like the Tonight Show, full orchestra, done every
Speaker 1: day in Toronto, which was called The Rust Thompson Show.
Speaker 1: And we were hard as the writers on that and
Speaker 1: we performed once or twice a week. Now where did
Speaker 1: that begin though? For you? Did you go to school
Speaker 1: for that or did you? No, no, no, no, I
Speaker 1: went when I graduated from University of Toronto. I had
Speaker 1: taken nothing that was of any pro drama theater. I'd
Speaker 1: worked in theater there, but it was more. There was
Speaker 1: a review that University College UC Follies, which was a
Speaker 1: satirical review music and comedy, and I co wrote that
Speaker 1: and directed it. So so from the beginning, I mean,
Speaker 1: even before you go into CBC radio and before Hard
Speaker 1: Palmer ants there, even in college what you characterize a
Speaker 1: satiric review, comedy review, that was your bailiy Wick from
Speaker 1: the beginning. I think it was what was in the
Speaker 1: air at the time. It was just the beginning of
Speaker 1: the questioning of authority. Which was the year I did
Speaker 1: it was we were no longer talking about World War Two.
Speaker 1: The first part of my childhood, that's all anyone talked about.
Speaker 1: Every teacher I had at school had been in the war.
Speaker 1: It was pretty much the gloom of that hung over
Speaker 1: most of the fifties s. Yeah, and then we television
Speaker 1: came into our lives and and everything changed, and so
Speaker 1: the CBC. How long are the radio years? The radio years?
Speaker 1: Think three years. The funny part about the show, the
Speaker 1: Russ Thompson Show, was at a certain point, five or
Speaker 1: six months into it, the producer of the show came
Speaker 1: in and met with us and he said, the show's
Speaker 1: not working. We don't know whether it's you guys or Russ.
Speaker 1: So we thought we'd start with you guys. So we
Speaker 1: were the first, Yeah, and then we began writing for
Speaker 1: comedians Woody Allen and John Rivers and a little bit
Speaker 1: Dick Cabin. How do you get into that door? Heart?
Speaker 1: Heart did that. He was very good at approaching people.
Speaker 1: We would come down to New York to write for
Speaker 1: people and what he was incredibly generous and encouraging, and
Speaker 1: we had no impact at all on his career, but
Speaker 1: he was very helpful. Then we got hired on a
Speaker 1: television show in as writers called The Beautiful Phillis Dealers
Speaker 1: Show and which was a variety show at NBC in Burbank.
Speaker 1: And then from there, when that was canceled, we were
Speaker 1: hired on Lapin, which was in its first season for
Speaker 1: George for George laughter, Yeah, what was the dynamic when
Speaker 1: you go to Los Angeles in the late sixties and
Speaker 1: you're writing for network television? Did you feel like that
Speaker 1: was It wasn't at all the romantic idea of what
Speaker 1: I thought being in show business would be well. On
Speaker 1: lap In, the writers would write and then it would
Speaker 1: be edited by a head writer, and then we did
Speaker 1: not go to the read through. We were at at
Speaker 1: a motel in Burbank, uh and we would all have
Speaker 1: lunch together and that was fun. I didn't even have
Speaker 1: to have offices. No, we had offices, but they were
Speaker 1: in a motel, which was you know, it was the
Speaker 1: boom period of Burbank. So um, it's not let NBC. No,
Speaker 1: we've used offices that our motels before exactly. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: what was interesting about it was that it was the
Speaker 1: number one show and on one level it was like
Speaker 1: the greatest credit you could have, and it certainly did
Speaker 1: wonders for you know, like self image and career, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't fun. You'd write, you know, monologues for Dan
Speaker 1: and Dick, who were really nice to us. Did you
Speaker 1: get to go to the tapings of the show. We'd
Speaker 1: go to the studio if they were doing the monologues,
Speaker 1: and they would read it from the cards. They would
Speaker 1: see it for the first they were some of the
Speaker 1: most famous card readers, but they also just they would
Speaker 1: just see it for the first time on the car.
Speaker 1: They did not want their work in any way interfere
Speaker 1: with their life. And we worked there for a year
Speaker 1: and then I got a call from the head of
Speaker 1: the CBC asking what it would take to bring us
Speaker 1: back to do shows. You were still hard on television yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's where I learned how to do television. Why
Speaker 1: do you say that, because I spent a huge chunk
Speaker 1: of my twenties, you know, in an editing room. We
Speaker 1: would shoot in the studio, we'd be in front of
Speaker 1: an audience and then what were you doing? It was
Speaker 1: called The Heart and Louren Terrific Hour, and we were
Speaker 1: the stars. Yeah, and there was you know, one ensemble
Speaker 1: and a musical guest James Taylor was on one. Cat
Speaker 1: Stevens Birth. The idea for the other show that you
Speaker 1: eventually wound up doing. I don't know whether you know.
Speaker 1: There was a real form then called Variety, and it
Speaker 1: was comedy Variety and it had you know, music and comedy,
Speaker 1: and we would perform in front of an audience, but
Speaker 1: mostly it was built in the editing room. And the
Speaker 1: way that laughed in was I remember that we came
Speaker 1: out of the first show with like sixteen hours worth
Speaker 1: of tape and I met with the editor. I had
Speaker 1: no experience of it at all, and he said, well,
Speaker 1: we just why don't we just watch it? So we
Speaker 1: watched the first four hours. We were discussing a catch.
Speaker 1: He said, I think in that piece we could pull
Speaker 1: out that part and I was still thinking script. I
Speaker 1: wasn't in any way thinking visually. And he said, no,
Speaker 1: your arm there is is by your temple and then
Speaker 1: you put it down. And he was looking for continuity.
Speaker 1: He was an editor, he actually saw it. I said,
Speaker 1: how did you do that? And he said, I can
Speaker 1: teach your eye to see, and he did. I learned
Speaker 1: how things are put together, and how what to look
Speaker 1: for in composition, and how to make something work, and
Speaker 1: the role that sound played because it's all radio with pictures.
Speaker 1: Nobody cared about sound then. When we first did SNL
Speaker 1: the first five years, it was a boom. When you
Speaker 1: see Elvis Son ed Sullivan him in the Jordan eires,
Speaker 1: it's just a boom. They got what they got. We
Speaker 1: have better sound on this interview than I had in
Speaker 1: the first twenty years of my career. And what I
Speaker 1: realized then about myself is that I'm much more interested
Speaker 1: in the production that I am in performing. What changed
Speaker 1: for you? I saw it in the editing room one night.
Speaker 1: I looked at myself before a take. I see my
Speaker 1: eyes checking the lighting, seeing where the cameras are in
Speaker 1: terms of their angles, and you're seeing a guy who
Speaker 1: all his instincts are technical and director just kind of look, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm seeing a guy who's preoccupied, and then the slate happens,
Speaker 1: and then there's this smiling artificial Yeah. Snap, too artificial.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I was sincere Yeah, yeah, allow in my opinion,
Speaker 1: speaking for myself, as a little artificial, yes, exactly, we reached.
Speaker 1: I had the same experience when I was on stage
Speaker 1: when I was at University of Toronto in the theater
Speaker 1: there and we were doing a play written by Shelley
Speaker 1: the Poet and it was called en Chi I think,
Speaker 1: definitely dull. But that's not the point of the point
Speaker 1: of it is I was in the middle of a
Speaker 1: scene with an actor and it was exciting to be
Speaker 1: on stage and all that. But I looked in his
Speaker 1: eyes and I realized, Oh, he's actually that guy. You know.
Speaker 1: I knew he turned lines with some charm, but he
Speaker 1: actually had turned more character. Yeah, which I thought, Oh,
Speaker 1: I see that's what actors are. They actually can do that,
Speaker 1: you know. Whereas yes, for me, it was like it
Speaker 1: was fun to be in shows and I've done them
Speaker 1: at summer camp and I've done them in high school
Speaker 1: and and uh, but you had a pure instinct at
Speaker 1: that time where you just said, there's this other thing
Speaker 1: I'd rather be doing that I was more and you
Speaker 1: walked away, So so you So you ended that situation there. Ye, Well,
Speaker 1: in Canada there was still a kind of national self loading,
Speaker 1: best expressed by the then head of the CBC. We
Speaker 1: were slow in getting our start dates for production for
Speaker 1: the next season, and I had been offered by Sandy
Speaker 1: Warnick and Burdy Brulstein, who I had met when I
Speaker 1: was working in California, agent and manager respectively. They said,
Speaker 1: you want to come back and work on a Burnston
Speaker 1: Shriver summer show for like Yeah they were and they
Speaker 1: were funny and it was like smart shows. In ten weeks,
Speaker 1: I went to the the head of the department at
Speaker 1: the CBC and I said, I have this other offer,
Speaker 1: but I will stay here. At the time, I was
Speaker 1: caught up in the idea that I would be of
Speaker 1: the first generation of Canadian artists who would be able
Speaker 1: to stay in Canada. And why is that? Why did
Speaker 1: you feel that because everyone had always left and the
Speaker 1: moment that you left in Canada, people started to treat
Speaker 1: you differently, and I thought, well, that's idiotic. We should
Speaker 1: be were involved enough, we should be able to stay
Speaker 1: here and work here. They had the CBC that I
Speaker 1: was working for, said, I said, I had this offer
Speaker 1: and it's just for you know, ten weeks. He said, well,
Speaker 1: if you're that good, why are you here? And I thought,
Speaker 1: I want to be here that you know. And then
Speaker 1: I realized against Yeah, And also I realized is Van
Speaker 1: Gogh a Dutch painter. He really painted in France. And
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, I see, so nationalism isn't the best
Speaker 1: way to you know, you go where the work is.
Speaker 1: So I went out and I did that, and then
Speaker 1: I came back. Even as we're talking about Canada, your
Speaker 1: accent just came back, you just said, I went out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I realized I'd come to the end of that period,
Speaker 1: and I moved back to California ninety two, and I
Speaker 1: lived at the Chateau Marmont un till I moved here,
Speaker 1: which is seventy five. I had my thirtieth birthday in
Speaker 1: the lobby of the Chateau Marmont, which hadn't had a
Speaker 1: party then, I believe since lived there. Yeah, so certainly
Speaker 1: one of the happiest parents of myne. You we're gonna
Speaker 1: get to that in a minute. But you have a
Speaker 1: real fondness from Los Angeles. Yeah, I love you have
Speaker 1: a Yeah, you have a very very warm spot for
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and you who are New Yorker. Yes, the
Speaker 1: nice part about being Canadian is you don't have to
Speaker 1: make that decision. You know, you're in California and it's
Speaker 1: there's grass in February and the sun is shining. You know,
Speaker 1: this is fantastic. But if you're from New York, then
Speaker 1: l A becomes like, well, no, you know, it becomes
Speaker 1: that it's a lot of people get an entire career.
Speaker 1: Well I think different. That's true, and I've been very
Speaker 1: guilty of that myself. The thing about Los Angeles is
Speaker 1: if you do it in your twenties, you can find
Speaker 1: and understand sepulvida, which is if you grew up in
Speaker 1: a city with a grid, you're going, well, so what
Speaker 1: do you mean this crosses will Shire? And then then
Speaker 1: if you're on that s you get off at Robertson
Speaker 1: and you think you're up here. Yes, exactly. But when
Speaker 1: you're in your twenties, you're going to a lot of
Speaker 1: parties where you're just following some to or somebody gives
Speaker 1: you directions and this is at a time it's hard
Speaker 1: to recall, but it's pre gps. No, no one wants
Speaker 1: to learn where they're going. But anyway, I had a
Speaker 1: very happy time there and I worked for Lily Tomlin
Speaker 1: and I wrote on her show, which was like ten
Speaker 1: or twelve weeks, and at the end of it it
Speaker 1: was time to go back to Canada, and I realized
Speaker 1: I wasn't visa wise, I wasn't going back. No, it
Speaker 1: wasn't that. It was that the CBC wanted me to
Speaker 1: do something, but they want to be back six months
Speaker 1: in advance of that nagging I'm gonna be the normal
Speaker 1: leader of Canada or no, not even normally. I think
Speaker 1: it was just that you would be able to work there.
Speaker 1: But here's what I realized, without Malcolm Gladibo, who's also
Speaker 1: a Canadian, articulating it, because we didn't have the benefit
Speaker 1: of that, then it's the ten thousand hours in doing
Speaker 1: twelve shows in ten weeks. Working at that pace, you
Speaker 1: get better. In Canada, working on a show every four
Speaker 1: months or five months, you overthink every thing. There's so
Speaker 1: much at stake, and there was something about working at
Speaker 1: that pace and working in a system that was really
Speaker 1: clear cut, like if the numbers were there and you
Speaker 1: had ratings, then you were hit, and they weren't there,
Speaker 1: then you were a flop, Whereas in Canada you could
Speaker 1: be sustained by quote unquote critical approval or the fact
Speaker 1: that what you were doing was quote unquote worthwhile. And
Speaker 1: at that point in my life I kind of needed
Speaker 1: clarity of which is one of the reasons I'm drawn
Speaker 1: to comedy, because you're trying really hard to make people laugh.
Speaker 1: If they don't laugh, it's really so I do. Lily
Speaker 1: Thomas Show gets nominated for an Emmy. It was a
Speaker 1: pilot special four series and I am co producing with
Speaker 1: Jane Wagner. We spent forever on it and then at
Speaker 1: the end it didn't get picked up. But Dick Eversoul,
Speaker 1: who was the new newly appointed head of late Night,
Speaker 1: had come from ABC Sports and had meant Herbschlosser on
Speaker 1: a plane and by the time they landed he was
Speaker 1: the director of late night Television and he had this
Speaker 1: idea of doing many pilots in late night, using late
Speaker 1: night to be a testing ground for prime time. It
Speaker 1: was actually kind of prophetic because now when you look
Speaker 1: at prime time, all the networks, almost all the creative
Speaker 1: talent came from late night. I agreed to do one
Speaker 1: for Dick. And I was, as I said, living at
Speaker 1: the Barmont, and I came home one night two o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning, which was not unusual for me, and uh,
Speaker 1: there was a message from Dick. Could you be at
Speaker 1: the poll Lounge at seven o'clock in the morning for breakfast?
Speaker 1: No better for me then than it is now. And
Speaker 1: I went, um, okay, what's it about it? And he
Speaker 1: said they decided to do one show as opposed to
Speaker 1: twenty pilots, and yours is one of the ones that there,
Speaker 1: and they all want to meet you. So I came
Speaker 1: and it was Dick and the head of programming, the
Speaker 1: head of research, and the head of talent. I could
Speaker 1: kind of tell that they were like tribal elders in
Speaker 1: a way. They were just sort of looking at me
Speaker 1: like is he all right? You know? It was just
Speaker 1: basically an approval process. But I seem normal enough, and
Speaker 1: was I, you know, trouble I had lost. That's interesting
Speaker 1: because because that's was ever thus in the business where
Speaker 1: I mean, talent is not the only coin of the realm.
Speaker 1: I totally want to realize, can we hand you a
Speaker 1: lot of money? And it does he seem like a
Speaker 1: plaque or whatever? And I and I was just turned thirty,
Speaker 1: but I did have credits and I hadn't been nominated
Speaker 1: for stuff. And Dick called me and he said it
Speaker 1: went well, and then they wanted me to fly to
Speaker 1: New York and how do you feel about that? I
Speaker 1: was excited by it. But Herb Schlausser, who had a
Speaker 1: very romantic notion of production in New York, I thought
Speaker 1: it should be live. Well, I'd never done live except
Speaker 1: for radio. And I said, what was everybody else in
Speaker 1: the processing? Was he the lone voice? He was the
Speaker 1: lone voice. He decided that it should be an eight
Speaker 1: age because eight h was the big NBC studio and
Speaker 1: it was lying vacant, and all of the production moved
Speaker 1: to l A. All variety was in l all of
Speaker 1: that crap music hall, all of those variety series which
Speaker 1: were done in New York. In this building was all
Speaker 1: in everything with the Angeles. Yeah, exactly for me, live
Speaker 1: meant this no pilot, having done three pilots that everybody
Speaker 1: thought were great. But then somewhere in the process of
Speaker 1: making a pilot, all your most conservative instincts come out
Speaker 1: and you find yourself doing the thing that you think
Speaker 1: is going to be It's like a college essay. Is
Speaker 1: what you really think or feel, it's what you think
Speaker 1: will get you in or get you on the air.
Speaker 1: So the idea that I could do a show in
Speaker 1: which the audience would see it at the same time
Speaker 1: as the network was truly and also I was at
Speaker 1: a point in my career where I really thought I
Speaker 1: had nothing to lose, so I was gonna take one
Speaker 1: more shot at television. I was gonna see if I
Speaker 1: could do it the way I wanted to do it,
Speaker 1: and I pretty much did. The very first broadcast of
Speaker 1: the show live was when in September. October oct is
Speaker 1: the first broadcast of the show, and was the structure
Speaker 1: virtually the same it is now. Yeah, the yeah, that
Speaker 1: part was all the same, although I think for the
Speaker 1: first show we did address rehearsal with the audience on
Speaker 1: Friday night just so that we'd have an extra one
Speaker 1: because we've never actually done anything. And the crew was
Speaker 1: very funny. The crew was like an original Old New
Speaker 1: York crew. They were all mildly overweight, they had donuts.
Speaker 1: We had crew to tay because we were from California,
Speaker 1: Jets jackets on. Yeah, and until we saw the move
Speaker 1: the cameras around in the way that they could because
Speaker 1: they knew that that world. I once did a show
Speaker 1: at CBS in their big studio and they have no
Speaker 1: tradition of this over at CBS, and I realized when
Speaker 1: I had taken the tour that all the cameras had
Speaker 1: stools beside them. It was only later when I realized
Speaker 1: the show was a complete mess. Right, They haven't moved
Speaker 1: cameras there. They just sort of aimed it at Cronkite
Speaker 1: for the last forty years. It was that they set
Speaker 1: up their camera and then they sit on their stool.
Speaker 1: The eight ah crew that crane flew around the studio.
Speaker 1: They learned that we knew what we were doing in
Speaker 1: terms of the content, and this is gonna be interesting
Speaker 1: for them as well. Wasn't a desk and what was
Speaker 1: coming back to New York. There's a wonderful story when
Speaker 1: Eugene Lee, who's the designer I hired, who had just
Speaker 1: done Candy It on Broadway. We did the very first set,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was like a two dollar set.
Speaker 1: I couldn't get approval, like they wouldn't authorize the budget
Speaker 1: for it. I went up to Herb Schlauster's office. I
Speaker 1: just assumed, being Canadian, that I was just supposed to
Speaker 1: do the right thing and make a show that he
Speaker 1: would be proud of since he had authorized it. So
Speaker 1: we took it to his office, you know, very high
Speaker 1: up in the building, and it was a little modeled,
Speaker 1: and I don't think you've ever seen a model, And
Speaker 1: suddenly we're moving little cameras around and all that, and
Speaker 1: he said, well, what's the problem. I said, well, they
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's expensive, and they, oh fine, And
Speaker 1: we got the approval and it was very paternal in
Speaker 1: the best sense of it. But Eugene had a very
Speaker 1: clear sense of what he wanted. We were showing New
Speaker 1: York City as it then was, which was kind of
Speaker 1: in decay and crumblings. So forward to New York drop
Speaker 1: dead exactly. Yes. So when Herb came down to the
Speaker 1: studio the first time to see it and looked at
Speaker 1: the cracked paint, you know, the thing which was where
Speaker 1: all the money was. Of course, in terms of getting
Speaker 1: that exactly right, he said, I can't I don't know why,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know what I was thinking that.
Speaker 1: I just thought the shop did this, you know, because
Speaker 1: he just said it was a really bad and yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it was just that nobody knew whether production could gear
Speaker 1: up again in New York, and of course it did
Speaker 1: and still does. So when you do the show October eleven,
Speaker 1: the first show is broadcast live at Years, and when
Speaker 1: it's over, describe how you feel after the very first show.
Speaker 1: I was the same way then that I am now.
Speaker 1: I only see the mistakes, and I tend to wear
Speaker 1: that up until about the second drink at the party.
Speaker 1: Even last week's show. It takes me really through midway
Speaker 1: through Sunday. You just take me a couple of days.
Speaker 1: I can get over it now in a day. Because
Speaker 1: you're always hoping that everything's gonna work the way you
Speaker 1: were hoping it was gonna work. You know, what you
Speaker 1: see of something? Yeah, and you see somebody you know
Speaker 1: on the left foot instead of the right foot, or
Speaker 1: the camera cut is late, or that Q gets screwed up,
Speaker 1: or that or somebody stuck guy right before the slate
Speaker 1: was looking at things. Yeah. Never, he's still here. He's
Speaker 1: not going anywhere. Yeah, more from my conversation with Lauren
Speaker 1: Michael's is coming up in a minute. You're listening to.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. We're in your office here at NBC, Yes,
Speaker 1: which has been your office from day one, from day one,
Speaker 1: from day one, and most of the furniture is exactly
Speaker 1: most of the first exactly the same. The joke is
Speaker 1: we hope that the people who run the network never
Speaker 1: really find out that where your this office is, and
Speaker 1: how could you have it here? You know this desk.
Speaker 1: We didn't have budget for that, so we there was
Speaker 1: a maintenance guy here who said, well, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of furniture you know that's in storage. So we said,
Speaker 1: can we see it? So it was all the stuff
Speaker 1: in the thirties and forties, and this box at the
Speaker 1: tons to the then head of programming, and in the
Speaker 1: desk was a couple of copies of like the Racing
Speaker 1: Form and Jelly Sill and Maylox, and I thought, what
Speaker 1: am I getting myself into? It was so it was
Speaker 1: the reverse of kind of holistic view of California which
Speaker 1: I'd come here with you. Now you look at the board.
Speaker 1: For those people who don't know the arc of the
Speaker 1: whole season is on this infamous but corkboard on the wall,
Speaker 1: and they are the dates of each broadcast, the names
Speaker 1: of the confirmed hosts, some prospective hosts and their music,
Speaker 1: old guests and so forth, and the names of the
Speaker 1: people are still not all of them, but many of them.
Speaker 1: The biggest names in the business, The biggest names in
Speaker 1: the business are coming here thirty something years later to
Speaker 1: host the show. I mean, you have Ben Stiller and
Speaker 1: Melissa McCarthy won the uh the Emmy Award, and Katie
Speaker 1: Perry's coming, and Jimmy Fallon who's obviously double dipping on
Speaker 1: your pay room, Jonah Hill, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: ruin any other names. Bieber is confirmed and he's the
Speaker 1: music and that thing. I mean, the people that are
Speaker 1: the biggest names in the business are still coming here
Speaker 1: to host the show. Why do you think that that
Speaker 1: stayed that way? What? Well? I think, first of all,
Speaker 1: the best part is host. You get the best parts
Speaker 1: in most scenes, and we work really really hard tonight
Speaker 1: because it's Tuesday. I will leave here probably around three.
Speaker 1: I used to do what the younger ones do, which
Speaker 1: was pretty much go through the night, but I don't anymore.
Speaker 1: You know, and and I see it with smiggle till
Speaker 1: three in the morning exactly with those guys and you
Speaker 1: and I go work okay, and I look at my
Speaker 1: go are you good. They're like yeah, I'm like I'm good,
Speaker 1: and I'll go home. And that's the commitment to it
Speaker 1: being the best it possibly can be. But I think
Speaker 1: also to inject my own perspective, having done it many times,
Speaker 1: many many times, many many times too many times the
Speaker 1: past year, there is that's out there people. People do
Speaker 1: feel that well, but it was just tweeting. This replaces
Speaker 1: a live component that is missing in most people's careers.
Speaker 1: They don't do theater out of them. This is a
Speaker 1: chance for them to have a kind of a it's
Speaker 1: it's much more loose and kind of deconstructed, and it
Speaker 1: can get a little sloppy if they're not like spot
Speaker 1: On and it doesn't have the it doesn't have the
Speaker 1: kind of the gleaming perfection of movie making. And also
Speaker 1: Seth Meyers Norm McDonald was at the show on Saturday,
Speaker 1: and so we were sitting at the party and and
Speaker 1: Seth pointed out that Norman would given an interview somewhere recently.
Speaker 1: We're he's talking about the show, and he said, in
Speaker 1: what I thought was a nice way, it's now the
Speaker 1: only place left where you can be bad. You know,
Speaker 1: there's no lap track. When something doesn't work, it's such
Speaker 1: a clear silence. And whereas you walk out of the
Speaker 1: situation comedy in front of a live audience, they're already cheering.
Speaker 1: You know, even the theater. The theater people stand the
Speaker 1: audience thinks they're supposed to do with standing incovation, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for a stand up comic talent like Norm. I think
Speaker 1: one thing he might be reacting to is it gives people,
Speaker 1: the hosts, whether they are comic performance or not, it
Speaker 1: gives them the recreation of like a club being at
Speaker 1: a club, and it's stripped down so that it's only
Speaker 1: at the end talent writing into the lens. There's no spectacle.
Speaker 1: We don't have, you know, much of a wide shot.
Speaker 1: You're watching pure performance and for people to be able
Speaker 1: to soar like that, and when you see it happen,
Speaker 1: it is always amazing, you know, amazing to be standing
Speaker 1: there being me having seen it as many times I have,
Speaker 1: and the fact that every week we don't know how
Speaker 1: it's going to turn out, and the fact that I
Speaker 1: am still as scared as I am every dress rehearsal,
Speaker 1: And honestly, I don't mean like we'll be drummed out
Speaker 1: of the business. I just mean that it is part
Speaker 1: of the process that people have to be bad before
Speaker 1: they can be good. When we have a great dress rehearsal,
Speaker 1: when the audience is way too hot, invariably something gets
Speaker 1: lost on air when you come and do the show. Um,
Speaker 1: I've never felt more raped and more violated. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I've come on here, you know, seemingly weeks after
Speaker 1: I got divorced, and Bill Clinton a k a. Darryl
Speaker 1: Hammond is walking out telling me to put my oars
Speaker 1: in the water and set sailf for the island of
Speaker 1: Poonani with him. Yes, and yeah. So I'm just wondering,
Speaker 1: I mean, do you do you find that that's a
Speaker 1: big part of their creative successes there is You're complete? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's something they expect us to be honest,
Speaker 1: they expected us to say what what's actually happening? There's
Speaker 1: very little protection. Have you always been this year reverence
Speaker 1: your whole life? Yeah? That this was really just meant
Speaker 1: to be. What's the first movie you made post I
Speaker 1: guess Wayne's World, you know, wasn't the first. Sorry, three
Speaker 1: am goes. I wrote with Randy Newman and Steve Martin.
Speaker 1: I have a copy of your IMDb if you'd like
Speaker 1: to consult at the Yeah, yeah, no, no, but I
Speaker 1: uh that you wrote. Yes. We'd go to Steve's house
Speaker 1: every day, Randy and we'd meet for lunch, talk it down,
Speaker 1: and then we'd spend the afternoon writing and it was
Speaker 1: a very happy time for me. And what about after
Speaker 1: that was the next time a man. Then I came
Speaker 1: back to the show. I had left sl in and
Speaker 1: then Brandon was threatening to cancel it and he called me,
Speaker 1: how many years were you gone? Five years? You were
Speaker 1: gone for five years, eight five. I left with the
Speaker 1: original group, designers, the musicians, the cast, the writers listen.
Speaker 1: In the first five years, I didn't fire one person.
Speaker 1: So when I came back, I was sort of more
Speaker 1: psychologically built for that, but that it wasn't family in
Speaker 1: that sense, that the what William Shawn once called my
Speaker 1: pseudo egalitarianism was not healthy. I had to accept that
Speaker 1: some people were not going to make it and that
Speaker 1: I had better deal with that. When it happened as
Speaker 1: opposed to just pretending yes, And so I learned how
Speaker 1: to be a boss, which I I think I'd learned
Speaker 1: how to how to lead on some level, but I
Speaker 1: never learned how to be a boss. And I think
Speaker 1: when I came back, um where you know, less of
Speaker 1: a peer and more of a boss. Yes, And at
Speaker 1: some point are you tempted to stop again and just
Speaker 1: go make films? It is what I do. It's the
Speaker 1: thing that but it also became and I don't mean
Speaker 1: to be, you know, glibber about it, but it also
Speaker 1: became like the aircraft carrier that you launched many planes off.
Speaker 1: This is a power base for you as an entertainment
Speaker 1: produce question. Wayne's World was the first of those. With
Speaker 1: Wayne's World, I think what I wanted to prove was
Speaker 1: that I could do a movie in the same way
Speaker 1: that sort of the Marks Brothers used to do their movies.
Speaker 1: They tour them first so they knew where all the
Speaker 1: laughs were, and then they could go film them quickly
Speaker 1: to test. Yeah. No one believes that we do what
Speaker 1: we do here in six days because there's not much
Speaker 1: of an approval process. It just heads to eleven thirty,
Speaker 1: whereas in l that was my experience when I first
Speaker 1: did the show. Yeah, yeah, there's so much money and
Speaker 1: habitat for humanity building a house exactly, but the movie
Speaker 1: business because it's way better run as his prime time television.
Speaker 1: Every paragraph is scrutinized and reviewed. And I said, every week,
Speaker 1: we don't go on because we're ready, We go on
Speaker 1: because it's even And that's just it's somehow focuses people,
Speaker 1: and I trust that process. And so with Wayne's World,
Speaker 1: I think we had I can't remember how many days
Speaker 1: when it was like twenty seven or something like that.
Speaker 1: But towards the end there was a plot with a
Speaker 1: father son which Robl was to be the son, and
Speaker 1: I was hoping for Dennis Hopper to be the father.
Speaker 1: And as we got close to shooting, which we were
Speaker 1: like three weeks away, we went, oh, so we just
Speaker 1: made it one person. We just made it Rob. You
Speaker 1: could make that kind of decision quickly. The pace of
Speaker 1: SNL was like, think of it, do it, and then
Speaker 1: think of something else. Tina's is the same thing about
Speaker 1: thirty rock television conditions, those muscles where you have to
Speaker 1: make fast decisions, and that puts the creative people in charge.
Speaker 1: I did a movie with Mick Jagger, based on a
Speaker 1: book we both liked called Enigma, which is about code
Speaker 1: breaking in World War Two, and Michael Lapped had directed
Speaker 1: it and it was an independent film. It took us
Speaker 1: six years to get it made, which was longer than
Speaker 1: World War Two, and I and I realized worked on
Speaker 1: pretty hard. But when I finally saw it, because there
Speaker 1: was German money in it and there was I think Japanese.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the start of the movie with the premiere,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, there's like, all these names
Speaker 1: are there as producers, you know, and I go, well, hey,
Speaker 1: excuse me. I was like, And then I realized, in movies,
Speaker 1: the person who does what I do isn't at the center.
Speaker 1: Here I am, and that's fulfilling. In movies. What I
Speaker 1: like doing is the script, which I get obsessive about, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then casting, and then editing, and then how to
Speaker 1: present it to the public in the sense of marketing.
Speaker 1: Now you have this great success in you have the
Speaker 1: great success in late night television, and then you have
Speaker 1: excess in prime time television. You produce TV shows particularly
Speaker 1: now that have done how and you have great success
Speaker 1: in film, but you never worked in cable and with
Speaker 1: your career, I mean you never worked well with I
Speaker 1: did with Kids in the Hall and I did with
Speaker 1: now with Fred in PORTLANDA which is on I f C.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that you haven't been as aggressive and
Speaker 1: cable as you might have been. I think that at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, you know they're more comfortable
Speaker 1: with network because I've grown to prefer I have network,
Speaker 1: because you've got to walk that tight up and you
Speaker 1: can't just go blue. To me, there's no creativity without boundaries.
Speaker 1: If you're going to write a sonnet, it's fourteen lines,
Speaker 1: so it's solving the problem within the container. And I
Speaker 1: think for me, commercial television and those boundaries, I like it.
Speaker 1: I like that you can't use a certain language. I
Speaker 1: like that you have to be bright enough to figure
Speaker 1: out how to get your ideas across in that amount
Speaker 1: of time, with intelligence being the thing that you're you
Speaker 1: hope is showing, not officially, but you wanted to be Oh,
Speaker 1: that was kind of bright. We have really good writers here.
Speaker 1: I think I can safely say that a lot of
Speaker 1: people in comedy did their best work here, even though
Speaker 1: there might be more successful in the things they did.
Speaker 1: Apple more commercially successful. And also I really believe that
Speaker 1: if you're going to stay chap, you have to take fights.
Speaker 1: And that means there's always young people. There's always people
Speaker 1: who are hungrier and more ambitious coming in. And you're
Speaker 1: working with people at the point of their career when
Speaker 1: nothing matters but the work, how they live, how they perceived.
Speaker 1: Most of the people arrive here, their office is nicer
Speaker 1: than their apartment, you know, and that's sort of what
Speaker 1: it's always been. And people just completely devote themselves to
Speaker 1: the show. And I think you can't do that past
Speaker 1: a certain age. You know, you have become someone who
Speaker 1: when you genuine when they talk to people about what
Speaker 1: a producer does in a constructive sense and you're not
Speaker 1: trying to be a pejorative about, you know, meddlesome and
Speaker 1: kind of attention seeking and credit seeking producers. You have become,
Speaker 1: you know, like one of the most important producers in
Speaker 1: the history of television. And a lot of that comes
Speaker 1: from history in all other universes and all other galaxies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: wherever wherever product is consumed around the cameracy. But you
Speaker 1: have become, uh, you just ruined my whole I was
Speaker 1: trying to be so heartfelt here, but you know it's okay,
Speaker 1: you're not um well, but you have become someone who
Speaker 1: embodies to me what a great producer really really is,
Speaker 1: and that is someone who you know everyone's job and
Speaker 1: you know when what they're doing, even in the smallest detail,
Speaker 1: when it's working and when it's not working. I think
Speaker 1: that what I liked, and maybe it's growing up in Canada,
Speaker 1: but the actor manager, you know, I know with Shakespeare
Speaker 1: not to put myself in the same category, and that's
Speaker 1: really for others to do. But the I know that
Speaker 1: he had to have a guy like Farley and Blushi
Speaker 1: that the audience loved, and Falstaff ends up in a
Speaker 1: play that really did doesn't. But you know, he was
Speaker 1: brought back by popular demand, and I think that when
Speaker 1: you're dealing with actors and writing and costume people and
Speaker 1: an audience and how you're going to get people into
Speaker 1: the globe theater, it's not much different. And the fact
Speaker 1: that there's the greatest poetry probably ever written in the
Speaker 1: English language is also in there. That wasn't what he
Speaker 1: was advertising. Producing for me anyway, is like an invisible art.
Speaker 1: If you're any good at it, you leave no fingerprints.
Speaker 1: The writer wrote it. You always say that was so
Speaker 1: and so script, the director directed it. The star had
Speaker 1: the idea in high school, and that's kind of what
Speaker 1: it is. And the only way you prove your worth
Speaker 1: is you leave a body of work and people go, oh,
Speaker 1: that accident happened there again that oh, I see. So
Speaker 1: you know, you try and get the best out of people.
Speaker 1: If you look around the room and you're the smartest
Speaker 1: person in the room, then you're in the wrong room.
Speaker 1: You know, you want to get the most talented people
Speaker 1: you can find and then m bring out the best
Speaker 1: of them. But you also have, if I may say so,
Speaker 1: a kind of Darwinnian approach to this. In the years
Speaker 1: I've been here, where you're not someone who's sitting down.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've had close personal relationships and you've developed
Speaker 1: lifelong or career long friendships with some of the most
Speaker 1: important people you've worked with. But as a rule, I
Speaker 1: don't see you sitting down like a father figure to
Speaker 1: the people here. You tend to let them slug it
Speaker 1: out and let the cream rise to the top. Correct.
Speaker 1: Competitive is in trouble there? Yeah, But I'm talking about
Speaker 1: in the creative process. I think that you kind of
Speaker 1: guide it, you don't make it. Yeah, the only way
Speaker 1: you can manage creative people's a very loose reigns. I
Speaker 1: think if you're all over everything between dress and air,
Speaker 1: you know what that meeting is like, and it's just
Speaker 1: there's no more appeal. Then this is what we're doing,
Speaker 1: this is how we're doing it, and and everyone falls
Speaker 1: into place. But up to that point, it's kind of fractious,
Speaker 1: and everybody's got an opinion and nobody likes anybody else's work.
Speaker 1: The idea that it's a variety show. By that, I
Speaker 1: mean that there's a variety of styles and tastes, that
Speaker 1: there's the lowest comedy and and the brightest comedy, and
Speaker 1: that they all coexist. Or that this group doesn't like
Speaker 1: that musical act and that group thinks that the joke's
Speaker 1: on updated they don't agree with the politics of it.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the community of it, and that's Lord Michaels.
Speaker 1: He says he picked up his value system at Summer Camp.
Speaker 1: I wanted to make fair. What is never a fair
Speaker 1: thing show business? We were a community was just set up.
Speaker 1: What was a value system? Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: It was not driven by economics. It was driven by
Speaker 1: if it's successful, they'll be more than enough money. Uh.
Speaker 1: Are you saying you're disappointed in how you've done No,
Speaker 1: I'm saying I would do it exactly the same way. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would do it exactly the same I'm Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Oddly enough, the
Speaker 1: title of my show comes from a phrase that Laurence
Speaker 1: says about thirty times a day. Here's the Thing.