Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [73]
After the Marisa Tomei show, I was on camera in only bit parts for the next two weeks. That brought the grand total of sketches of mine that had gotten on the air in my second season to zero. Mohr: 0–4. Nothing had changed from my first year. I was still a bit player. I grew more and more nervous as the weeks ticked by. I could no longer place the blame on the fact that I was new.
But in the fifth week, I had a reversal of fortune. “Good Morning, Brooklyn” was back on the corkboard as the lead sketch, with Sarah Jessica Parker hosting. Suddenly I was walking on air. The sketch was slotted first, so it must have had universal approval. I figured that “Good Morning, Brooklyn” was my “Wayne’s World,” my “Church Lady,” my “Hans and Franz.” It was going to be the sketch that broke me.
Rehearsals went off without any glitches. The sketch was practically uncuttable. The host was getting big laughs, as were Farley, Sandler, and Janeane Garofalo. But during the Saturday afternoon rehearsals, a new storm began brewing. One of the producers pulled me aside and told me we had a big problem: A group called the Sons of Italy were going to protest the show if my sketch aired. The Sons of Italy apparently thought my sketch portrayed Italians in a negative light. It was further explained that unless I toned down some of the Eye-Tal-Yan jokes, the sketch would be yanked from the show.
I pleaded my case. The entire sketch was about Italians, and toning it down was the equivalent of making it less funny. A one-sided compromise was reached: I could probably keep the sketch on the air if I made it less Italian. Were they kidding me? How was I supposed to make a sketch about Italians less Italian? Mike Shoemaker asked me about the names of the two hosts: Did they have to be so stereotypical? Stereotypical? I had named the lead character after someone I knew. Go tell the Barone family in Verona, New Jersey, that they’re too stereotypical! There was no way I was changing the name James Barone. Instead, I changed Angela Tucci to Angela Evans. My legs were fractured but not broken.
It was a move that bothers me to this day. In the original version, when we both said our names, the audience knew right away what we were doing. We were doing a sketch about Italians hosting a morning talk show. Now, with Sarah introducing herself as Angela Evans, the audience wasn’t sure what they were about to watch.
The sketch remained atop the corkboard between dress rehearsal and air, but murmurs of protests from the Sons of Italy made their way to my ears. I remembered when Adam Sandler had done a Canteen Boy sketch that the Boy Scouts of America objected to.
A popular character of Adam’s, the Canteen Boy was slow, if not slightly retarded. Whenever you wrote a character that was an audience favorite, the trick was to ride that character as long as possible. This particular week, Canteen Boy was going to take place at a Boy Scout camp (with cohost Alec Baldwin playing the troop leader). In the sketch, Alec would eventually wind up sharing a sleeping bag with Canteen Boy and begin fondling him. We all thought it was hysterical. The Boy Scouts of America did not.
After the “Boy Scouts Canteen Boy” sketch aired, the wall outside of Lorne’s office where the letters to the show were posted was covered in letters of outrage. The most prominent letter had the Boys Scouts of America letterhead on it. The brass at Boy Scout headquarters were less than thrilled that a troop leader was portrayed as a pedophile. What made the situation worse was that the wardrobe department had outfitted those of us in the sketch in actual Boy Scout uniforms. They weren’t replicas, and there was no possible substitute for Boy Scouts in the piece. We called ourselves Boy Scouts, we dressed as Boy Scouts, and Alec Baldwin played a Boy Scout