Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [87]
I wrote my Weekend Update piece. My sketch was my announcement that I, Jay Mohr, was throwing my hat into the political ring and running for governor of the great state of New York. In the piece I admitted to knowing next to nothing about politics or even the state of New York’s needs or problems. My only platform was that I thought it would be a cool gig, and that if you voted for me, I would get you laid. That was it. Vote for me for governor and I will see to it that you get laid. I explained that I knew that there were a lot of ugly voters out there who weren’t being accounted for. I went on to explain that I knew a lot of hot chicks, and because I worked in television, I could afford a lot of prostitutes.
I also told the voters that I knew they were probably wondering how a twenty-four-year-old New Jersey native could legally become governor of New York. I conceded that inasmuch as these were valid points, the people who enforce such election rules want to get laid, too. I told the voters that if I was elected, they could be assured that crime would be at an all-time low. Who wants to go out and commit crime when you could be staying inside getting laid? I confessed that in four years, when my term was up, the city would be a mess. The streets wouldn’t be paved, taxes would be out of control, and nothing would’ve been accomplished. But no one would care—and we all know why. I finished the segment by saying: “So when you go to the voter’s booth, know one thing, ‘If I vote for Jay Mohr, I’m going to get laid.’ See you at the polls!”
The piece made it to dress rehearsal, where it played well. All day Saturday I never once worried about whether my piece would get on. It had to. It had killed at the table read, and people were coming up to me and talking about it in the hallways on Thursday and Friday. Not once on Saturday did I look in the margin of the show rundown to see what my competition was. I couldn’t be denied this time.
Shortly before the live dress rehearsal the supervisor for Weekend Update, Herb Sargent, said he needed to see me. Seventy years old, Herb had thick white hair and big glasses. He looked as if he should have been on CNN hosting Crossfire. I still don’t know what it is exactly Herb did for a living, though that was due mostly to the autonomy of Weekend Update. Herb told me that we had a problem. My Update piece couldn’t be on the show. I was stunned. When I asked for a reason, he told me that the NBC censors had come down hard on him because of the content of the piece. I asked him to elaborate, and he said that you couldn’t say get laid on television.
I stood there with my mouth hanging open and asked him if he was joking. He assured me that he wasn’t. He repeated that get laid was never going to get past the censors, so the piece had to be pulled from the rundown. I was livid.
“Isn’t this the same show that twenty-four years ago Chevy Chase called Richard Pryor a nigger?” I asked.
“I don’t see what that has to do with this,” he replied.
“It has a lot to do with this!” I interjected. “You want me to believe that you can say nigger on Saturday Night Live, but a quarter of a century later you can’t say get laid!”
My anger didn’t exactly make him want to circle the wagons for me, and I had a feeling that the censors and Herb had never even spoken to each other about my sketch. To this day, I don’t believe you can’t say get laid on television—especially since I’ve probably heard it said more than a hundred times since.
I had put all my eggs in one basket that week and had not written anything else. If I wasn’t going to be on Update, I wasn’t going to be on the show again. For the first time in weeks, I went back to my dressing room and just sat there. I sat there during the live rehearsal and I sat there during the show. I sat there during Good-nights, too. I didn’t scribble on the walls or put my feet up against the door. I just stayed still and wondered long and hard