Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [41]
In fact the entire cast was in the sketch. Phil Hartman played the warden who told Meadows, Spade, Sandler, Schneider, and me that he was going to introduce us to his hardest inmates. First Martin came onstage wearing a cornrow wig and flashing an enormous gold tooth. Martin delivered the speech and then told us he was going to bring out the baddest homeboy he knew, a man named Matt Foley who was in jail for failure to pay child support (Farley).
In dress rehearsal, Chris played it pretty close to the script. He never touched Martin Lawrence’s wig and he stuck to the cue cards. I wondered to myself what adjustments he would make between dress rehearsal and airtime to make us all laugh. At the end of the sketch, Chris was supposed to dance around to make a point and accidentally crash through the wall of the jail. After Chris made the hole in the wall, all of us were to get up from our seats and escape through the hole. Then Chris would reenter and deliver his final line.
But Sandler came up with an idea to give Chris a taste of his own medicine. For all the times Chris made us laugh during a sketch, we would get him back at the end of this one. Instead of all of us running out through the hole in the wall, Sandler decided that we should all fall down on top of Chris so he wouldn’t be able to get back up to reenter and say his final line. Though everyone signed off on the plan, I secretly wondered if we would actually go through with it.
The dress rehearsal of the sketch went off as scripted. There was a large gymnastics mat on the other side of the wall for Chris to fall on. We all sat on the mat after escaping from the jail and peeked back through the hole at Chris delivering his line. We laughed offstage, knowing that what Chris was saying wouldn’t be said again on the live show.
Martin Lawrence provided enough of a distraction so that no one was focusing on what high jinks Farley might toss in. Knowing that the dress rehearsal wasn’t being aired on TV, Martin delivered an X-rated monologue. It lasted four minutes long, and most of it was about going down on a woman who tastes nasty. When he finished, we all waited for Lorne to say something to Martin about making sure he toned down the monologue for the live show. Lorne droned on and on to every conceivable technical employee. People whom I never noticed worked on the show were getting notes about the sound being too high or the lights being a bit low. Camera angles were dissected and re-dissected. At one point, the wardrobe people were asked to make sure the costume changes were timely. After thirty minutes, Lorne told us all to have a great show. As we got up to leave and prepare for the show, Lorne looked across his office at Martin and said, “Martin? Are we okay?” Martin nodded his head and that was that. I couldn’t decide if Lorne was afraid to confront Martin, or if Lorne was being classy by not confronting Martin with the cast in the room.
The live show started and Don Pardo shouted, “Ladies and gentlemen…Martin Lawrence!” We all held our breath. Some of the cast had gathered in the studio to watch Martin and listen to what was going to come out of his mouth. That was the beauty of live television: Whatever was said was said, and there were no second takes.
Amazingly, Martin’s opening monologue was very similar to the one in the dress rehearsal. He talked about women being funky down there and suggested that they might want to insert a Tic Tac in their ass. He never actually swore, but the content of the monologue all but ensured that the show would never be reaired or shown as a repeat. Considering it was a show I was actually a part of, I found