Live From New York - James H. Miller [214]
I went to Dan the prop guy and told him I took two pair of jeans. I was willing to pay for them, I just didn’t want to spend the time shopping.
CHRIS ELLIOTT:
Joey Buttafuco, that was the lowest point for me at SNL, walking back to my dressing room and seeing this guy just walk by me and go, “Hi, Chris,” and I just said, “Hi, Joe.” And then I had to be in a sketch with him.
It literally was the worst year of my life. I went there too late after I had a career. I had already done my own TV show and had eight years with Dave, and then I got there and it was a huge cast. I kept thinking every show, “Okay, I’ll do something next week that’s better,” you know. And I never did. And the year got away from me. And it was devastating, because I think for everybody who’s like my age and in comedy, SNL was probably the reason that we tried to get into it. For the first few years at Letterman, I thought, you know, it was a stepping-stone — to Saturday Night Live. And to fail that miserably there for me was a big deal.
DAVID SPADE:
They say that if you go with the flow it’s always better, and that would be my recommendation to anyone going on the show: If you’re going to go on, then just make fun of yourself and have a great time. It is always endearing to watch someone make fun of themselves. You can’t hate someone that actually says, “I’m an idiot. I’m admitting I know you think so, and I’m okay with it,” and it kind of goes away, and it’s funny. But to fight every possible sketch and everything that makes you look not cool and all that is exhausting.
TOM HANKS:
“The Five-Timers Club” is still one of my favorite sketches. By that time I had figured that the secret of being the host of the show is to concern yourself only with the monologue. Because if you have a good monologue, everybody thinks the entire show was great. If you have a poor monologue, it means you have to go and win back the favor of the people who are watching at home. So by the fifth time, I was like pushing for something slam dunk. We must have a magnificent monologue. And I think Lorne said, “Well, why don’t we do something like, you get to join a select club?” And that was that.
I think that was the first time I met Paul Simon. He did a cameo. So there was definitely truth to the idea that I felt I was entering a pantheon of Saturday Night legends. The other great thing about that “Five-Timers Club” was, they had Ralph Nader outside the door trying to get in, because he had hosted the show once. So it’s a heady atmosphere, man. Suddenly you’re like goofing with Ralph Nader and Paul Simon.
ALEC BALDWIN, Host:
I did a sketch once in the early days when we did this really silly send-up of Brando in The Wild One. We did “The Environmentally Sensitive One.” I do my Brando impersonation and I roll into town, and Victoria Jackson is the girl I pick up in town, and she’s got the tight sweater and the huge boobs sticking in your face. Phil Hartman plays her father, who’s the head of a chemical manufacturing company that’s dumping waste into the local lake and killing everybody. It was this incredibly silly, silly sketch.
In the end, when the chemical factory is exploding and killing everybody in town, I’m offering Victoria a chance to ride off on my motorcycle with me. Phil Hartman beseeches me, he says the line “Take me with you,” and it was just the way he said the line, I always remember that as one of the times I almost cracked up on-camera. He just grabbed me and with this incredible yearning, this incredible panic, said, “Take me with you.” I thought I was going to piss in my pants in the middle of the show.
I can be sitting there in one of those NPR sketches saying “wiener” and “balls” and “lick my balls” and “sweaty