Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [11]
At the time of my second showcase for Saturday Night Live, my monitor was about ten. I thought about all the other comics on the show, about how they were all wearing their “funny” shirts and had groomed themselves to near perfection for their sets. I figured I would be the guy that didn’t primp and iron; I wanted them to see what I looked like before the shower. I went to the gym that night around 8:00 P.M. and showed up at Stand-Up New York around 9:30 P.M. I was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants and I was still sweating. Sure enough, every other guy there looked like it was class picture day. I ordered a beer and joked around with my roommate Mike DeNicola, a comic from Brooklyn by way of Wisconsin. Mike and I drank beer and hit on girls until I was in the on-deck circle.
My approach was simple. The last time they saw me, I was doing my act. This time I figured I would be less structured and show them a lot of different impressions. I can either do an impression right away or can’t do it at all. If I have to work on it, it ain’t comin’. I also can’t look at myself in the mirror and do an impression. Some guys who do impressions will rehearse them in front of a mirror. They contort their faces and examine the changes they’ve made. If I look in the mirror to watch one of my own impressions, I can’t really see myself. It’s useless. I’ve tried it, and for me, it just complicates everything. I can never figure out how you can tell if you’re doing a good impression if you’re watching it as someone else.
I took the stage with my three-beer buzz and had one of the best times in my life. I truly did not give a shit. I did Andrew McCarthy, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, Arsenio Hall, and Harvey Keitel. When I ran out of impressions, I simply had them all talking to each other. I was improvising nearly everything and the crowd, thankfully, was with me.
The entire time I directed all my energy to the back right-hand side of the room, where I thought I saw Marci Klein and the SNL people sitting. I stared them down with all my power. As important as it was for me to show them how funny I was, for some reason it was equally important to me to demonstrate that I wasn’t afraid of them. After practically every sentence I would look to the back right-hand corner with an expression that said I found them mildly intriguing. It wasn’t until I had been offstage for a few minutes that I discovered that half of the SNL cast, along with executive producer Lorne Michaels, was sitting with Marci Klein in the back left-hand corner of the room. Nice going. I had just spent the most important twenty minutes of my life staring down a real estate agent from Long Island.
I returned to the bar, perched myself on a stool, and figured that was that. Either they liked me or they didn’t. I had a few more beers with the gang and decided to call it a night. When I stepped out onto the sidewalk, there was an enormous white stretch limousine parked at the curb. Marci Klein stood next to it talking to the man, Lorne Michaels. Not wanting to look like a guy hanging around and begging for some validation, I looked away. As I began walking toward Broadway for a cab, Marci called me over. Oh, shit, I thought, I’m drunk!
I walked very carefully toward the two of them. When I was still about ten feet away from them, Lorne extended his hand and said, “That was really excellent.” I reached for his hand, thanked him, and tried