Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [74]
As airtime neared, I blocked out the threat of letters from the Sons of Italy papering the hallway outside Lorne’s office and tried to focus on the sketch. It was a big break for me to have the first sketch of the night, and I didn’t want to experience anything but satisfaction.
“Good Morning, Brooklyn” got huge laughs on the live show, but something was gnawing at me. In the wee hours of the morning, after the wrap party, I was home in my bed when I had a troubling thought. The “Canteen Boy” sketch was protested by the Boy Scouts after it aired. “Good Morning, Brooklyn” was being protested before it left the building. How could people object to a sketch if they hadn’t seen it? It was just words on pieces of paper that went from my office to the read-through table to the eighth floor for rehearsal. Did the Sons of Italy have the writers’ room bugged? Did they watch rehearsals? Or was it all a prank?
I still don’t know, but when Courteney Cox hosted later that season, I brought back “Good Morning, Brooklyn.” Again, it was the lead sketch. I obediently wrote “Angela Evans” into the sketch to avoid any pre-show controversy. I also resolved not to be pushed around by a dubious-sounding organization named the Sons of Italy—and to emerge with my legs intact.
As we were coming back from commercial break during the live show, I leaned over to Courteney Cox. “There’s been a rewrite,” I whispered. “No matter what it says on the cue card, make sure you say Angela Tucci, not Angela Evans.” She introduced herself as Angela Tucci, and the audience burst out laughing.
The Sons of Italy didn’t show up at the wrap party to take me for a drive into the weeds in Secaucus. I checked the wall for the next few weeks to see if there were any letters complaining about the sketch being too Italian. If there were, no one took the time to post them. For the rest of my time on the show, I was really bothered by the whole situation. However, after the sketch had worked twice, I decided that I no longer wanted to strangle Marisa Tomei.
After Sarah Jessica Parker hosted, I was on a bit of a roll. I brought back Christopher Walken with John Turturro—at his request. Turturro also did a Christopher Walken impression, and in the pitch meeting, he brought up that he wanted to do a Walken sketch. He said this in front of everyone, and it made me feel needed. I also played Harvey Keitel in the John Turturro show, so I had two fun impressions to do that week, and neither of them were cut.
In the Walken sketch, John Turturro played Christopher Walken’s brother, Eugene. His impression was so funny that when he first spoke, I laughed directly into camera. The audience laughed when I laughed and I was never reprimanded for it. For one show, I was on fire, and I was having the greatest time of my life. Then they sent me back to the bench. In baseball, when you’re hitting, you expect to stay in the lineup. Not on Saturday Night Live.
After John Turturro said his Good-nights, I had done three good sketches in two weeks; two of them I had written myself and one was the lead-off sketch. I anticipated that I would get more and better parts in read-through since I had shown what I could do in the last few shows. I didn’t. If the sketch that I wrote myself didn’t get picked to be on the show, my only shot of being on camera was if Tim Herlihy or Fred Wolf looked out for me. They always did, and in each show, I would have a few lines in someone else’s sketch.
But after John Turturro left, I went five weeks straight with virtually no airtime. Nothing I wrote was picked to be on the show. Out of eleven shows that had come and