Live From New York - James H. Miller [168]
So then my manager at the time took the video of that show to Lorne’s L.A. hotel in case he wasn’t watching that night. And then, about a week later, they called me at home again. It was ten o’clock on a Sunday night. And she goes, “Congratulations. You’re in the cast of Saturday Night Live.” And I was like, “Oh, thank you.” And she goes, “There will be a ticket waiting for you at LAX in the morning, and we’re putting you in a hotel until we find you an apartment.” I was like, “Oh, thank you.” So I hung up the phone and then I screamed really loud. Because I had been trying to act real cool in front of her. And then my baby woke up and started crying, and then my ex-husband — he doesn’t handle pressure very well — he threw up. On the bed.
TERRY TURNER:
When we got there, Bonnie and I had been married for a bit. One thing good about us is we’ve always worked together, and she could shore me up and I could shore her up, and we could yell at each other too. We both went in for therapy during the show. So that might have helped. Wait — I can’t believe I just said that, that Saturday Night drove us both to therapy. I’d never thought about it until now.
BOB ODENKIRK, Writer:
They hired Robert Smigel as writer, and then while Robert wrote I would sort of work with him on the phone every week and pitch him ideas and help him with his ideas. And meanwhile I was continuing to write sketches in Chicago, and I would mail those in to Robert and he’d pass them around the office, and sometimes they would do a joke of mine on “Weekend Update.” I think there was maybe even one sketch that I might have written that was done. And so people were kind of familiar with my work and I came in and did an interview the following year, which was Robert’s second year, and then I was hired a few months later. I interviewed with Lorne, which was extremely weird. I basically had a huge chip on my shoulder, and mix that in with Lorne’s traditional intimidation and it’s not good. I didn’t respond to the way he likes to approach young performers and set himself up as some kind of very distant, strange Comedy God.
KEVIN NEALON, Cast Member:
When Aykroyd and those guys were on — the original years — I moved out to California to do stand-up, so I was always out there in the clubs when the show was on and didn’t get to see it that much. I never really thought that was my gig. I didn’t do characters or impressions. My stand-up was basically off-the-wall, absurd. I was influenced by Andy Kaufman and Albert Brooks and Steve Martin, you know.
The clubs in 1975 were really tough. Audiences were really brash and heckling, and they’re all crammed in these little rooms, and the comics were just tough New York guys, and there was a lot of profanity and heckling going on. And I remember seeing Larry David on stage one night follow some heckler right out into the street and slug it out with him. So I thought California would be a good place.
VICTORIA JACKSON:
Oh, another thing — in my audition, when Lorne said I think you’re weak in characters, I said, oh, well, you know who’s the greatest female character actress in America? Jan Hooks. And I didn’t even know if he knew her, but I had already worked with her on The Half-Hour Comedy Hour, which was trying to be like SNL, and I was like a baby at the time. It was like my first TV show. Arsenio Hall was the star of it. And I had seen Jan be brilliant — like backstage when the cameras weren’t even on, she would do a lesbian gas station attendant in Atlanta. And she would just go into these people and I thought she was like great. I mean, personally she pretty much hates my guts, but professionally I thought she was like a genius, so I told Lorne. And I told her later,