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right?” And he goes, “I’ve got an idea for a sketch for you. How about we say you have AIDS and we weigh you every week?” It was out of place. So then he ended up having to apologize and actually coming to my office. He was really furious that he had to apologize to me. He was just beside himself. And it was just awful. He acted horribly to me. He acted horribly to everyone. When he got on the elevator at the end of the night — you know, we all go to the party afterwards — and everybody saw him coming, we hid. We wouldn’t be on the elevator with him. We were all hiding. We were plastered against the wall going, “Oh, he’s getting on the elevator, he’s almost gone. Oh, he’s gone.” No one wanted to be near him. I don’t know what he was on or what was happening to him mentally, but he was just crazy.

JON LOVITZ:

When Chevy Chase was hosting, there was a meeting of the writers and staff. So Chevy looks at Terry Sweeney and goes, “You’re gay, right?” Terry goes, “Yes, what would you like me to do for you?” Chevy goes, “Well, you can start by licking my balls.”

ANTHONY MICHAEL HALL

I never knew that side of Chevy. Then again, to Chevy I was probably always the kid who played his fourteen-year-old son in National Lampoon’s Vacation. He was always nice to me. I really had a good experience.

RON REAGAN, Host:

I went and saw Lorne at the Chateau Marmont, where he was staying. He was getting ready to go to some award show. We sat and talked for about a half an hour or so about me hosting the show. Initially, I was really just doing him a courtesy of telling him no to his face. They’d called before to ask if I wanted to host the show and I’d said no. And then he was going to be in L.A., and he said, “Why don’t you come over and talk?” I said, “Well okay, fine.” I just expressed my concern about I didn’t want to be taken advantage of in some way and didn’t want to see my family hurt because of my stupidity — going onto a show where it was really an opportunity to make fun of them — and in a cruel way, not a fun way. And Lorne just said, “We don’t want to do that. That’s not what we’re about,” and he promised I’d have final say over things. Nothing too awful was going to get by me. And that pretty much addressed my concern. Once I’d realized I’d have control, that was it. I said okay. It just seemed like a fun thing to do. Who at that age wouldn’t want to host Saturday Night Live?

ANTHONY MICHAEL HALL

People were pretty impressed by the job Ron Reagan did hosting the show. He was very willing to throw it up there to see what stuck, you know. He was quite fearless as an actor, I thought. And he really had a good sense of humor about his upbringing and his family and everything. I thought it was really cool.

RON REAGAN:

I think that once they got to know me a little bit, everybody was being fairly careful about not being cruel. To have family members sitting there, it takes a little bit of the edge off. You can’t be too mean. I’m probably as far or farther left than anybody on that cast. So in terms of personal politics, nobody was going to out-left me. There’s always a little bit of weirdness. I’ve discovered in my life, having been my father’s son for years and years, that people have preconceptions about you. And you try to disabuse them of those pretty soon.

We actually rehearsed one sketch that had been my idea. When we were sitting around the table earlier in the week, I said to everybody that I thought it would be funny if Terry Sweeney and I did a kind of screaming-queen sketch. And we wrote one up and kind of put it together and did it in the dress rehearsal. And you could kind of see the audience was really just sort of confused by it, didn’t really see the point.

TERRY SWEENEY:

In one sketch, Ron and I played these gay guys who were house-sitting for Nora Dunn in her apartment — and we just change everything around and redecorate, and do all this stuff. And he played the really flamingest queen in the world. But they cut the sketch. His manager made him cut it. But he was still a great host.

RON REAGAN:

The