Live From New York - James H. Miller [166]
BRAD GREY, Manager:
I thought Dana Carvey was really special, and I wanted Lorne to see him. We all went to the Comedy Store — Bernie, myself, Cher, and Lorne. It turned out to be one of those silly circumstances where the moment Dana went onstage, Lorne had to go to the men’s room. So I was sitting there and I knew that Dana would just kill, which he did. And just as he was finishing, Lorne returned from the men’s room. So Dana didn’t get the show then; we waited until the next go-round.
DANA CARVEY, Cast Member:
I’d auditioned twice before. This time, I went on at midnight at the Comedy Store, after Sam Kinison. I always had my own equivalency of the dumb blonde in my career, especially back then. I really looked like an innocent midwestern guy with blonde bangs, I just didn’t look like a comedian, and it kind of threw people sometimes. But this guy had a little club on the West Side and Lorne saw me there. Rosie O’Donnell was headlining, and she let me come in and do forty minutes before her. And Lorne showed up with Brandon Tartikoff and Cher — just so we would be a little more nervous. And that’s where I got the show.
My wife didn’t even move out to New York. I said, “This will probably fail.” I went out there early because Lorne said, “You could come out and, you know, just hang.” So I came out in August and Lorne turns to me and says, “Paul and Linda are coming over tonight.” I said, “Excuse me?” “Oh — Paul. McCartney. Over here.” And literally the blood drained from my face. And I went into a room that Lorne called “Jack’s Room” because it’s where Nicholson would stay, and I called my friends back in the Bay Area and said, “I’m going to meet Paul McCartney tonight.” And Paul and Linda came over for four nights in a row and we listened to demo tracks, we heard all about them. Being a Beatle fanatic, that experience was just absolutely mind-blowing.
TERRY TURNER, Writer:
When I got onto the show, there was a sense that this show is over. I remember sitting in a restaurant with my father-in-law in New York, and he said, “My son-in-law here works on Saturday Night.” And the waiter said, “God, I thought that thing was off the air. It’s been bad for so long.”
VICTORIA JACKSON, Cast Member:
I lived in L.A., had my own house, and I had already been on a canceled series, and let me see, I remember I was pregnant in ’85 with my first baby. I was twenty-six years old. I was doing a commercial in the desert for a truck company, and I was nauseous and everything and I didn’t want them to know I was pregnant, because they might fire me, but I wanted the money ’cause I was the breadwinner since my husband never worked. And so I came back to L.A. from that commercial, and I heard someone say my name was on a list at the Improv to audition for Saturday Night Live and why wasn’t I there? And I was like, “Huh?!” Nobody told me about that. William Morris was my agent, but nobody told me that there was even an audition.
Here’s the cut to the chase: I had the baby. I did The Pick-Up Artist. And all of a sudden the phone rings in the summer of ’86. And my baby’s three months old and it was someone from Saturday Night Live, and they said, “Do you want to audition for Saturday Night Live tomorrow?” And it didn’t even go through my agent. It didn’t go through anyone I knew. It was like they called my home directly. I have no idea how they got my phone number. It’s really mysterious. And I said, “Oh. Sure.” And then they said, “There’ll be a plane ticket waiting for you at LAX tomorrow morning at eight A.M. to come to New York and audition.” And they said to be sure and bring all your characters. And I said okay. So I hung up. And I was like, “I don’t have any characters!” I never was in the Groundlings and I never took improv and, you know, basically the way I got on Johnny Carson was I had a six-minute stand-up comedy act that was