Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [34]
I grew to resent Jim Downey’s precious high school. I mulled over the idea of bringing in some home movies to show everyone. Sometimes as late as two in the morning, Downey would put a high school basketball game tape in his VCR, which meant you were gonna be there a while. With Harvard-educated guys arguing over the name of a high school, we had an uncanny ability to always be way behind schedule. Downey would raise his voice a little and say, “C’mon, guys, we have eleven sketches to rewrite!” to rally us. We would all focus long enough to finish one sketch—and then Downey would put another tape in the VCR.
It wasn’t until my second season that I realized that Downey was going through a divorce. He lived by himself and was lonely. His whole M.O. of making us watch those high school basketball tapes and arguing over the name of a meaningless fictitious high school was so that he could have some company during the early morning hours between the time that the writers left and when the other staff came in the next morning.
At one point during the debate over the name of the high school, I had to make a quick decision: leave or kill. I couldn’t leave the building because all of my belongings were in my office on the opposite end of the writers’ room. There was no way to collect my things and discreetly exit. So I began doing some deep breathing at the table to catch my breath. I looked around to see who was in the room. I wanted to see who was there. I needed to know who was there. I needed to see how many people were going to watch me have a heart attack.
During my first year on Saturday Night Live, I worked pretty regularly doing stand-up on the college circuit. Just getting the show made me an easier sell, but even those trips were fraught with peril.
On one trip, I was sitting in Newark Airport waiting to catch a flight when I felt a surge of fear flow through my body. I looked around the terminal and saw everyone living their lives. None of them had any idea mine was about to end. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t want to die around these people. I tried to make eye contact so I could judge by their reaction if I looked as if I were dying. No one flinched. They all acted normal. The flight number was announced and people began boarding the plane. I looked at the tunnel that led to the plane and all the people lined up and huddled together in it as if they were in a meat grinder. It seemed preposterous to follow them. I thought of what it would be like to feel this way while climbing through 30,000 feet. Boarding the plane was the equivalent of a death sentence. I picked up my bags and walked outside to catch a cab back to my apartment.
To say the least, this made my agent’s job difficult. I freaked out at the last second and ditched a few gigs in a row. The shows I managed to make it to, I was so scared of panicking while I was there that I couldn’t speak to anybody.
I was late a lot, too. I had a show at Millikin University in Illinois. I flew from Newark Airport into Chicago’s O’Hare for a connecting flight to somewhere else. The plane was not a puddle jumper or a prop, it was just smaller than the one before it. I stared at the shiny side of the plane and pictured the tube inside that waited to suffocate me. I wasn’t getting on. I walked to the rental car counters and asked them how far it was to Millikin. They all told me it was a five-hour drive. No problem, I thought. If I rent a car and leave now, I’ll be only an hour late to the show.
However, I had another problem. I wasn’t old enough to rent a car. Hertz, Avis, Budget, Dollar—I begged them one by one to rent me a car. I told them that I was on Saturday Night Live