Live From New York - James H. Miller [197]
I made sure that nobody pushed the applause button so we went out on a quiet studio. I gave the order.
LENNY PICKETT, Band Leader:
Things like the Sinead O’Connor incident have happened from time to time, somebody’s done something outrageous, and I hate to say this, but it’s kind of more delightful than anything else — to see something that amazing on live television. It’s what everybody secretly is waiting for. That’s why it’s still an interesting show after all these years, because people know anything might go down. And when it does, it’s exhilarating as much as anything else. I mean, it’s not like you want to see those sorts of things, but at the same time, when they do happen, you’re aware that you were just participating in an event.
And to know that there’s always a potential for that to occur is sort of wonderful.
Once that uproar subsided, Saturday Night Live returned to its version of normal, concentrating on comedy. Michaels was coming under increasing pressure from the network to churn out recurring characters that would bring the audience back week after week and maybe, potentially, be spun off into NBC sitcoms of their own. That turned out to be only a bean counter’s pipe dream — though some SNL cast members have wandered off into prime-time sitcoms after leaving the show.
JULIA SWEENEY:
I did the character Pat at the Groundlings, and it was part of my audition for Saturday Night Live. I’d been an accountant for like five years, and there was one person I worked with in particular who had a lot of mannerisms like Pat. This person sort of drooled and had the kind of body language of Pat. I started trying to do him. I was testing it out on my friends and they were just like, “Yeah, it’s good, but it doesn’t seem like a guy that much.” Like I couldn’t quite pull off being in drag convincingly enough. So then I thought, maybe that’s the joke. I’ll just have one joke in here about we don’t know if that’s a man or a woman just to sort of cover up for my lack of ability to really play a guy convincingly.
I think it was like the Christmas show or something — a John Goodman show. I put it up with Kevin Nealon in it. Just showing how humble I was about that sketch, I didn’t even cast the host opposite me. I just thought, “Well, maybe the host needs a break.” And they put it on as the very last sketch of the show. And I didn’t think it got that great a response. I felt it was just okay. I felt happy with it, but it wasn’t like, “Oh, new recurring character,” even. And the audience responded, but I think they were also really confused by it, or creeped out by it.
A couple weeks later, though, Roseanne hosted, and she had seen that show and she said, “Oh my God, we’ve got to do that character.” And I said, “Oh, okay.” So Christine and I wrote a Pat sketch for Roseanne and I to do, and when I came on during the sketch, I got like this fabulous entrance applause, as if the audience knew the character. That was actually one of the most beautiful moments in my life. And it was completely unexpected. I knew there was never going to be a moment like that again.
People would always ask about Pat’s sex, and I didn’t have an answer. To me, Pat by that point had sort of taken on its own personality. It’s almost like I was — this sounds really actor-y, but I felt like I was just playing Pat — Pat was this other person. And I didn’t know Pat’s gender either. It was more like I had channeled this person than created it.
DANA CARVEY, Cast Member:
Most of the writers want to be performers. But I was naive, I didn’t know that. So there was this creative tension between writers and performers. But you made alliances. It had all the resident political machinations of any large bureaucracy. You found writers who were sort of symbiotic with what your sensibilities were and you worked with them. It was good to write with people who had Lorne’s ear and could go into the special meeting where the sketches were picked.
Toward the last couple