Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [93]
On July 1, the NBC lawyers called my agent. Instead of begging to have me back, they were asking for an extension on the option until July 6, just as they had done the previous year. I told Ruthanne that I wanted an answer now instead of later. Again, she reminded me that it probably wasn’t best to push their hand if they were asking for an extension, so again I agreed to the five-day extension. I pacified myself by polishing the complaints on my list.
On July 6, the show called and asked for another extension. This time they told my agent they needed until July 14. Again, I agreed to the extension and the power of my list slowly disintegrated. On July 14, the show called my agent and asked for another extension. They now needed until July 24 to decide if they wanted me back. My lists were useless. Like the previous summer, I had been stripped down naked and made to wait by the phone. Just like last year, I was hoping the phone would ring and praying that I was still welcome on the seventeenth floor of 30 Rock. Then, on July 24, the show called my agent and asked for another extension.
When Ruthanne called me to relay the news, I didn’t shout or complain. I didn’t ask her advice on how to proceed. I remained calm. I took a breath and told her, using a single word, that I was finished with it all. I told her to go back to the show and tell them that I didn’t accept their option. I told her no. She explained to me that by doing so, I might be helping them make their decision. I no longer cared what their decision was. I was done.
This was the biggest professional decision I had ever made, but I was never so sure of anything in my life. It was over. How could I go back? If I decided I wanted to go back, I had a list of demands that I wanted met. But now I was on the fifth extension of the option, and with each extension I had been stripped of negotiating power. I don’t know what was said behind closed doors or what considerations were involved in rehiring me. I didn’t care. It was over.
I tried for twenty weeks to put a square peg into a round hole. I took a summer off and tried it again for twenty more weeks. I was defeated. I no longer wanted to swim upstream. I was tired of dressing rooms and Marisa Tomei and sketches getting cut after dress rehearsal. I was tired of waiting for Jim Downey to finish watching high school basketball games. I was tired of getting fall-down drunk at the after-parties. I was tired of Rob Schneider looking at sushi through a jeweler’s loupe. I was tired of hearing “you can’t say get laid” at 12:15 A.M. on Saturday Night Live. I was tired of complaining, and most of all, I was tired of being a phony.
Like many performers, when I was first hired for Saturday Night Live, I had a constant feeling of “What am I doing here?” Now, two years and forty shows later, I was still asking the same question. How bad do I want to go to work for a group of people that need five extensions to decide whether they wanted me back? In regards to Saturday Night Live, I would never ask myself that question again. I was empty. I had no fight left in me. They had won. I was tired.
I needed a nap.
Epilogue
Phil Hartman, U.S.A.
WHEN I think back on Saturday Night Live, I see the show in a series of snapshots. Three types of shots play out in my head. The first