Live From New York - James H. Miller [183]
AL FRANKEN:
When there’s a Beatle up in the office, nothing gets done. Because everybody is just following the Beatle around, you know? So here’s my George Harrison story. I think it was the second season Lorne was back, so ’86 or something like that. George went out to dinner with Lorne, and it was on a Tuesday night — Tuesday night as you know by now is writing night, right? So it’s about eleven at night or something and George comes back to the show, comes up to seventeen, and he’s really drunk.
And he hung around until like two o’clock in the morning, and nothing had gotten done. He was just really drunk. He’s at the piano in the read-through room playing and playing, and my office was the office closest to the piano. And he plays the piano for like a real long time, and again he’s really drunk, so I take Phil Hartman aside and I go, “Phil, watch this.” Phil stands outside my office, I go into my office, and I SLAM the door as hard as I can. And Harrison jumped about three feet off the bench — and finally left.
So that’s my George Harrison story.
GREG DANIELS:
Judge Reinhold wasn’t one of my favorites. The thing is, you get a lot of these guys right when they’re at their maximumly famous, most fame-going-to-their-head moments. And they come in. They’re in New York City. And they’re hosting the show and they kind of give you like a couple of minutes and they want to run out and just have fun. That was definitely how Judge was that week. But I’m sure he’s a nice guy now.
Even if all other attempts at livening up the show failed, it was almost guaranteed a new burst of energy every four years when election time came around. During the Ebersol years, SNL dabbled only lightly and mildly in political humor, but once Michaels returned, the show began to build a stronger and flintier political profile. In time it became an integral if impudent part of the process. The line between observing and participating was sometimes blurred. Politicians who were roasted over a spit on Saturday Night Live would nevertheless appear on the program themselves if given the opportunity — everyone, over the years, from Gerald Ford to Janet Reno (Bill Clinton was a notorious bad-sport holdout). George H. W. Bush was so enamored of Dana Carvey’s presidential portrayal that he invited Carvey to the White House and eventually taped a cold open for the show.
Jim Downey was the best political satirist among the writers, though Al Franken wrote some great political sketches too. Among the all-time best was a 1988 primary “debate” by Downey and Franken and Davis which starred Franken as Pat Robertson, who then fancied himself a candidate, Dana Carvey as George Bush (Carvey then in the fetal stage of what would later become a classic Bush impression), and Dan Aykroyd making a gala return to the show as a hilariously petty Bob Dole.
DANA CARVEY:
I was just assigned George Bush, and I couldn’t do him at all. It was just a weird voice and weird rhythm. It’s one of those things where you go, “There’s nothing to do.” Reagan was so easy because you just go, “Well, everybody.” But then over time, after Bush won the election, one night I just sort of hooked it, and it was that phrase “that thing out there, that guy out there doin’ that thing,” and that sort of hooked it for me, and from there on I kind of refined it.
He enjoyed it. I give him credit. He was just incredibly friendly. Lorne and I had done a benefit for Pamela Harriman and the Democratic Party in Washington, D.C., where I played George Bush, and he heard about that and invited