Live From New York - James H. Miller [173]
CONAN O’BRIEN:
I think my favorite host, other than like a Steve Martin, is Tom Hanks. I remember he’d stay up all night and he’d write with you. I mean, literally there was the walk-through that some hosts did where they clearly were just being paraded around and pretending to listen to your ideas but they just couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel room and let these idiots hash it out. But Tom Hanks would actually roll up his sleeves. Sometimes you’d pass him and it’s like four in the morning, and he’s in the corner scribbling away on something, just constantly trying to make it better. That’s what always impressed me, people who looked upon it as, “I can make this better right up until the moment we go on the air.”
A really difficult guy was George Steinbrenner. There was some idea that Lorne wanted him to do and he sent Odenkirk and me in there to talk to him. So Odenkirk and I go into this room and it’s George Steinbrenner. He’s got like the giant World Series rings and he’s in a bad mood. He had just been banned from ever setting foot in Yankee Stadium, so he was really gruff. So these two nerds come in the room. I remember, like, “Mr. Steinbrenner, we just think, you know, this sketch is funny,” and, “Yeah, yeah, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t think I’m going to do that sketch.” And we were like not taking no for an answer. And he just wheeled on us. He was like, “Hey, not happening! Out!” And he just threw us out of the room.
GREG DANIELS:
I met my wife, because she was one of Lorne’s assistants, at the first party there. She was very briefly a Lornette and then she moved over and became a development exec at Broadway Video. So Lorne was very happy in kind of a weird way that we had this office romance. And I don’t remember exactly when he realized it was going on, but he was saying that there hadn’t been a real good office romance since Gilda Radner and G. E. Smith.
CONAN O’BRIEN:
I think one of the reasons Saturday Night Live has been so successful is that it’s almost brutally unsentimental about its past. It just keeps trying to find who’s the next person. Let’s get him in here. What’s the new thing? Let’s do it. You always get the sense that the show is almost like a shark that’s constantly on a mission to find what’s new, what’s hot, what are people into now? And chomp its teeth into it.
GREG DANIELS:
I remember one time Conan and I had a sketch that was supposed to be the cold opening and it was cut between the dress and the air. And we were kind of moping around, and then about twelve-fifteen they realized that the show was running long and they didn’t have time for this other big sketch. So they came to us and said, all right, your sketch is back in. And we were so excited and then we realized that it ended with “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” from being the cold opening. And so we ran down there and the music was on, the musical guest was playing, and then right after the musical guest the sketch was going to start. And we ran down to the cue cards and we wrote a new ending directly onto the cue cards. And basically it was like from Broadcast News, we just kind of gave the cue card to the cue card guy and he ran out and the music ended and they started the sketch. But it was really one of the most exciting showbiz experiences I ever had.
CONAN O’BRIEN:
It definitely for me has a “my favorite year” quality to it. I’ll never be that young and naive again. There’s something about it; it’s like going off to war. Saturday Night Live tends to get you when you’re real young, you haven’t seen a lot, and it throws you into this world of lots of pressure, big-name stars, crazy situations — and you can’t get that combination