Live From New York - James H. Miller [163]
I was just sitting in the corner, thinking, “I’m sorry. I supplied the bullets.” And then I was going to disappear at one o’clock forever. I remember Tom Davis, who I guess was also a guest writer or was just hanging out there, saying, “I’ll bet anyone in this room that within three years, we will all be standing in line to see a Damon Wayans movie. This is not the end of his career.” And he was right. That was the start of his career.
DAMON WAYANS:
What was I supposed to do? I was supposed to just be a cop. But I was frustrated, because I think Lorne Michaels thought he was protecting me by not putting me out there, letting me do my thing. So I started walking around wearing dark shades. When they asked me what was wrong, I said, “It’s too white in here, it hurts my eyes.” I was really on the verge of a nervous breakdown, or just taking a gun and killing everybody. The night in question, the “Mr. Monopoly” sketch, I didn’t think the sketch was that funny. I thought it was a one-joke premise. I was supposed to play a cop and we were doing a takeoff on like Miami Vice — this was the hot show at the time — and I was supposed to be Tubbs and Randy Quaid was playing the other guy. So between dress and air, they pushed that button. I wore a suit, so I thought, “At least I’ll look good in the sketch.” And then between dress and air Lorne Michaels comes to me and goes, “The sketch is not working. You look like a pimp.” It was because of me the sketch wasn’t working! He wanted me to wear a uniform.
So I just got angry. Because I didn’t think the sketch was funny. I had a bunch of straight-man lines. It was the fact that Lorne blamed me for the sketch not being funny when I had told him before that it was a one-joke premise. The guy’s waiting to get out of jail and Mr. Monopoly comes in and gives him a “get out of jail free” card — that was the big joke. It’s like twelve minutes until Mr. Monopoly finally walks in. And then they say the reason it wasn’t working was that I looked like a pimp at dress rehearsal. And I just said, “Fuck it.”
I was like, okay, I’ll be a cop in uniform but I’m going to find a character. And it would’ve been funny if I had not done it with such anger. I was so angry, I basically wanted them to fire me. I wanted to quit, but I thought they would sue me. It was the Brillstein-Grey management company trying to manage everything at one time as opposed to getting on with my needs. They were representing Lorne. Lorne was the big dog.
LORNE MICHAELS:
Damon broke the big rule. I went berserk. The whole business of trust when you’re in an ensemble — the whole deal with the network, in my mind, is that we operate on the level of trust. We have live air, we’re not just going to go up there and say, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.” And I think Damon, in his defense, he didn’t get a big enough laugh with what he was doing. And he went back to a character that he’d done in Beverly Hills Cop.
DAMON WAYANS:
I’d never seen Lorne lose his cool. He had always been very logical and reasonable and we could talk about anything. But he came backstage and he was like, “Get the fuck out of here, who the fuck, what the fuck” — it was like talking to friends up in Harlem. He was cussing. He was like, “John Belushi never did anything like that.” “You’ll never work in show business” — he said that one to me. Or never work again in New York, whatever.
I didn’t even say good-bye. I went home, gladly. It was the same management, so they were basically telling me, “You fucked up, this is it, word is going to spread,” and all that. In hindsight I understand that, but I was a young kid. I didn’t understand politics or how tough it was for Lorne Michaels coming back for his first year and how he wanted to be right and be the guru of comedy. I didn’t understand any of that. All I understood was I wasn’t funny and they wanted me to hold