Live From New York - James H. Miller [170]
JAN HOOKS:
The show changed my life, obviously. But I have horrible stage fright. And with all these, you know, stand-up comics who I love — you know, Dana and Dennis and Kevin and all these people — you know they wanted their shot, they wanted to get in there and do it, but I was one of the ones that between dress and air was sitting in the corner going, “Please cut everything I’m in!”
VICTORIA JACKSON:
The first live show of my life, my ex-husband had a hemorrhoidectomy performed in the hospital on the day of my show and he’s like, “Why aren’t you here visiting me?” I’m like, “I’m on Saturday Night Live! For my first time! Are you kidding?”
JAN HOOKS:
Victoria Jackson? I thought she had a pretty good gig. I just have a particular repulsion to grown women who talk like little girls. It’s like, “You’re a grown woman! Use your lower register!” And she’s a born-again Christian. I don’t know, she was like from Mars to me. I never really got her.
DANA CARVEY:
I’m too passive-aggressive to have ever had a fight with Lorne. But we had little snippets. You’re working under conditions where you’re exhausted. If I’d been assigned an impression that I didn’t get and I just tanked at dress, he’d say, “Dana, are you ever going to get John Travolta?” or whoever. “No, I’m never going to get it, Lorne, you should just cut it.” “Really???” My thing was like, “Church Lady’s not happening tonight.” And I would just say, “Well, maybe we should just cut it.”
“Rrrrrrright. So you’re saying we’re going to cut the thing that’s going to make the show.”
“Well, that’s my suggestion.”
“Dana, no no no no no no, don’t misunderstand me.” Lorne is so brilliant at getting in your head. “No no no no no no, don’t misunderstand me, I think it’s fabulous, if you want to go that route, that burlesque route, um, it’s fine, but I think you’ll find if you keep it smart, it’s where all the good stuff is.”
See, I had to learn all that, because I thought a laugh is a laugh. And then Lorne and those guys were kind of like, well no, there’s different levels, there’s smart laughs and there’s dumb laughs. Being a stand-up comedian to me, it was just, “Get the fucking laugh at all costs.”
VICTORIA JACKSON:
I brought the writers food. They were all very intensely writing. Their goal wasn’t to make me a star; most of them wrote themselves into the show to become stars. If you want to get in the show more, you could always bring the writers some food. Well, I tried that.
I asked Robert Smigel, “Robert, how come I never get to do any impressions? I never get to do any characters.” And he says, “Because you’re nasal.” And I said, “There must be someone nasal I can do an impression of.” He goes, “Roseanne Barr is kind of nasal.” And I said, “Let me do her. She’s hot now. She’s nasal, can I do her?” And he’s like, “Hmm.” And so he wrote a sketch, and I was thrilled.
Jon Lovitz always tried to help me get in the show too. Dana and Kevin and Lovitz — they helped a little. Kevin and Dana wrote me into “Hans and Franz” as Roseanne getting liposuction.
KEVIN NEALON:
I think Hans and Franz made Dana and me laugh more than any other characters when we were writing them. It’s funny how something like that will permeate the culture and become pop culture. It seems audiences are like parrots, they like to repeat phrases that either have some kind of cadence to them or are silly. Whether it’s “Isn’t that con-veeen-ient?” or “We want to pump — you up,” or whatever it is — “Cheeseburger, cheeseburger.” It’s something that everybody can relate to, when they get around at the office on Monday morning and just kind of laugh, because everybody kind of recognizes it. They can all be in on the laugh. And they can use it as their own little personal joke. I mean I do that too, with other people’s stuff. If I hear a lot of Mike Myers stuff,