Live From New York - James H. Miller [211]
I think it’s the same with SNL. You have a collection of twenty-five sort of damaged people — thirteen writers, you know, twelve performers — and they’re all trying to get on the air. And the best way to do it is to be competitive and to work really hard and stay up all night and just make sure that you’re in the right sketches and trying to get writers to write for you or write for yourself and figure out how to suck up to the host and do whatever it takes to get on the air.
And the people who lost that sort of battle are sort of bitter about it, because it really is one of the greatest showcases on TV. When I was going out to Saturday Night Live the first time, when I got hired, I had like a couple months to prepare for it. And I ran into an old cast member who was there from the original season and, I shouldn’t tell you who it was, but she says to me, “I heard you’re going out to Saturday Night Live.” And I said, yeah. And she said, “I just want to tell you: That place is evil.” And you know, her experience wasn’t that great. But she was one of the few cast members that never went on to do anything beyond that show.
DAVID MANDEL:
If a guy comes out to Los Angeles and becomes a writer, let’s say he becomes a staff writer, and has never worked at a show before or anything, he can rise up, you know, from staff writer probably to like practically coexecutive producer or maybe an executive producer of a show and conceivably not ever talk much to the director, wardrobe people, lighting people, and never have been in an editing room. By the end of my three years at Saturday Night Live, don’t tell the union, but they used to let me call my own edit session. I could film things. I could do small film shoots. I had had three years of experience talking to Dave Wilson about how to turn my comedy notes into notes that would work for him as the director. You learn how to talk to stars. You learn how to calm egos. You learn how to play to egos. You learn that the key to everything is the wardrobe people — get on their good side and everything gets smoother. And you learn how to make sure that you can talk to the design people.
I cannot tell you how important that was — getting to a show and having just some of these skills that (a) no one expects you to have and (b) no one teaches you to have. I can remember being in my first edit session on my first episode of Seinfeld, and you were sort of invited into the editing room to come in and take a look. And I was able to say things and solve some problems that helped cut some time out of the episode, because we were always long on Seinfeld.
DAVID SPADE:
It’s kind of like surgery — Saturday Night Live — where you’re glad afterwards, but it’s hard during. And you say you would never do it again. But it was the reason I got everything else, it’s what started me, and it was really the best thing that I could have done.
DANA CARVEY:
It’s terrifying, and I can still be scared thinking about it. It’s just when you’re sitting there at eleven-fifteen and you’re getting your makeup and, man, you’re so tired you can’t even possibly imagine having the strength to do the show. Just very, very, very stimulating. And nothing will ever be quite the same. So you do create sort of a bond, almost like war buddies, with people who were on the show with you. Kind of an instant bond.
CHRIS ROCK:
Saturday Night Live brands you as professional. No matter what is written about me to this day, SNL comes up. It’s the Harvard of Comedy, you know. Everybody passed through it. You bump into people. I saw Randy Quaid the other day; he’s like a frat brother. I never met him before, but we’re frat brothers. I did a movie one time, it was an