Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [61]
When I was hired for the show, I came on board with Dave Attell, Sarah Silverman, and Norm Macdonald. When Spade, Schneider, and Sandler were hired for the show, they all came on board together. They had been through all the bullshit with one another as a group. Whenever I spent time with them, I felt like a freshman walking home with a group of seniors. You’re in the conversation, but not really.
While I was growing up, all my friends were two years older than me. We were really tight until they went to high school and I stayed in middle school. They entered a new world of different sports practices and new friends. Consequently, we didn’t have much in common. As my relationships with the older kids faded, a new kid who was two years younger than me moved in next door. I befriended him, as well as all of his friends. Then I had clout with a whole new group of kids because I was older. I was the one who had been there and done that.
My second season on Saturday Night Live, I employed a similar strategy. The show had hired Chris Elliott, Morwenna Banks, Janeane Garofalo, and Mark McKinney as new cast members, Molly Shannon and Laura Kightlinger as featured performers, and a few new writers. For all they knew, I was a normal guy. Michael McKean had come aboard near the end of my first season, so he wasn’t part of my initial traumatic adjustment experience either. The two of us hit it off particularly well, and he was a sliver of sanity for me at SNL.
Michael McKean’s pedigree was almost as impressive as he was personally. He had played Lenny on Laverne & Shirley and starred in the cult film This Is Spinal Tap. Mike was one of the good guys. He had a real warm, easygoing vibe about him; he was always approachable. With him, everything was simple. He would invite me to lunch on a Sunday by saying, “Hey, me and my fiancée are going to lunch. Meet us on the corner of Bleecker and Tenth near the sandwich place at noon, and we’ll have a great time.” I would arrive at the appointed time; he would be there, and we would have a great time, eating, laughing, and talking about everything except the show.
Most important, for whatever reason, he always listened to me. I would sit in his office and bitch about something, and he’d agree that it sucked. Then he would either pick up his guitar and sing some songs or tell me a horror story of his own that had absolutely nothing to do with Saturday Night Live, and we’d laugh our asses off for an hour. I finally had someone I could complain to, and he was a godsend. In hindsight, he must have been a saint because I spent a lot of time whining on the couch in his office, while he just listened.
Either because he liked me or because I complained about my lack of airtime, McKean threw me a nice bone when Damon Wayans hosted, and he did it right in the middle of rehearsal. The sketch involved Wayans as Babyface, Sandler as Tom Jones, and McKean as Tony Bennett. Halfway through rehearsal, Mike walked off the set and over to me. “Can you do Tony Bennett?” he asked. I had never tried a Tony Bennett impression, so I did one on the spot for him. “You should do it in this sketch because I’m not really nailing the impression,” he said. I told him I was fine with that. McKean then walked over to Lorne and simply said, “Jay’s gonna do Tony Bennett. He does the impression better than me.” Lorne nodded, and Mike headed for his dressing room.
On one day that I was feeling particularly down, Mike lifted my spirits with a story about the time he ate a brick of hash. It happened during the European press tour for This Is Spinal Tap. On this particular day, Mike related, the cast was flying from Hamburg to London and one of them was holding a brick of hash. Not wanting to waste it or risk being busted at customs, McKean ate the whole thing.
When the cast arrived in London, it was madness. There was a three-hour line for media to get into the press room