Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [82]
As I focused on revisiting Walken, most of the ideas people had were funny but not funny enough to be on the show until Steve Lookner approached me one Tuesday night with an idea that I knew would make the cut. Lookner was one of the Harvard guys that Dave Attell and I had run out of the office, and I didn’t see much of him anymore, since guys stayed with the writing groups where they felt most comfortable. My group consisted mainly of me. I was staring at the walls waiting for something to enter my brain when Lookner stuck his head in the doorway and asked to show me something, which turned out to be a finished sketch of Christopher Walken doing a commercial for Skittles. It was certainly different, and it was definitely hilarious.
However, the Skittles sketch had a few things going against it. First and foremost, I was the only one in the sketch. Further down the list, the host wasn’t in it and neither were any of the women. I felt in my gut that there was no way a solo sketch with just me in it would make its way onto air, but Lookner and I stayed up until five in the morning rewriting it, and we submitted it for read-through.
At the table read on Wednesday, Lookner and I were both excited. Even if the sketch wasn’t picked to be on the air, it was going to be a lot of fun reading it in front of everybody. “Skittles” got many more laughs than I had anticipated at the read-through, and Lookner and I waited around afterward to see if it would be picked.
When the door to Lorne’s office swung open, we were afraid to go in and look. We felt that if it was picked, we would have pulled off a coup of sorts. We took our time walking down the hallway toward the corkboard, giggling nervously the whole way. By the time we made it to Lorne’s, people were already filing out. Some looked pissed off, some looked happy. As we made our way closer and closer, a few people passed us and offered congratulations.
They had to be pulling our legs, right? When Fred Wolf walked by and offered his congratulations, we knew we had done it. Fred was the type of guy who would never lie about a sketch being picked for air. By the time Lookner and I reached the inside of Lorne’s office, no one else was there. We just stood alone staring at the corkboard. Thumbtacked at the bottom was a blue index card that read “Skittles.” We high-fived each other, and I came darn close to hugging him. With two versions of “Good Morning, Brooklyn” under my belt and now Walken doing a Skittles commercial, I really felt like I was finally showing my stuff.
The sketch went well at dress rehearsal, but not so great that it was uncuttable. After dress rehearsal, not only was “Skittles” still in the lineup, but a few sketches ahead of it were cut, so I had actually moved up in the show. I was ecstatic. I tried not to smile while Lorne gave us all notes. The last thing someone whose sketch just got cut wanted to see was me gloating from across the room.
As was customary, the sketch had been timed during dress rehearsal. (All sketches were timed so the show would fill ninety minutes, and the time allotted the sketch was written on the index card under the title.) Under the word Skittles was the notation “:50.” Who knew I could be so happy with less than sixty seconds of airtime? But happy I was.
Christopher Walken pitching Skittles was the only sketch I was in that week, but I was thrilled. It was strange enough and funny enough to inspire some watercooler conversations when people went to work on Monday.
I took my place on the stage, which was a basic green backdrop. There were no props other than a bag of Skittles that I would hold up halfway through the sketch. I stood there during commercial break, ready to rock and roll. We came back from the commercial break, the lights went up, and I started my impression. I looked into the camera and said, as Walken, “I would like to talk to you for a moment…about…Skittles.”
The audience went batshit. They laughed much harder then they had during