Live From New York - James H. Miller [215]
TOM HANKS:
I think you figure out after a while that there are some sketches out there that are floating around and they have yet to land on a show and they keep bringing them back again. You realize there’s a reason these sketches are still just floating around and haven’t landed on the show. There’ve been times we’ve been at the read-through and you can tell by everybody’s groans that you’re reading for the fourth time some sketch that somebody just thinks is great, hilarious, and they’re submitting again, hoping that the host will click with it or something will happen like that.
I know there was one sketch that we’d actually put on its feet — I can’t remember what show it was, but it was called “The Penis Song.” It was all about us singing this song called “Penis, Penis, Penis, Penis, Penis, All Day Long. Penis, Penis, Penis, Penis, Penis Song.” It just went on and on and on — and it got cut. And so I thought, “Well, that’ll never be seen again.” But then it showed up about three shows later. Somebody else was hosting. And so somebody else got to sing “The Penis Song” on TV, God bless him. Can’t remember who it was.
On one of the earliest times I did the show, when NBC still had Standards and Practices, we read a hilarious sketch called “Jew, Not a Jew,” which was a game show in which you try to figure out who’s Jewish and who’s not. Standards and Practices wouldn’t let it on the first time but, like when I did the show, I don’t know, either the fourth, fifth, sixth time, by that time there was no Standards and Practices, and so we were trying to figure out something to do. Then Al Franken said, “Well, how about ‘Jew, Not a Jew’?” I said, “You guys haven’t done that yet?” And so we pulled out “Jew, Not a Jew” and it killed. It was hilarious.
But when you’re there for a while, you begin to get — you recognize the patina of a sketch that has yet to be on the air because no one has quite fully committed to it.
VICTORIA JACKSON, Cast Member:
Lorne said I could stay as long as I want, but I was burned out. I was just tired of trying to think of ideas. The only thing I figured out how to write was “Update Handstands.” How many different ways can you do a handstand? They had one with a flag on my butt.
DANA CARVEY:
By ’93 I’d done seven years, George Bush had run its course, “Wayne’s World,” Church Lady had all been done — basically I thought I’d done as much as I could do. My younger friends who were right behind me — David Spade, Chris Farley, and Adam Sandler — were bursting with energy. They’d been on the junior varsity two or three years and it just seemed like a natural time for them to take over the show. Dennis Miller had left, Jon Lovitz had left, and Nora Dunn had left. Bonnie and Terry Turner were leaving right around that time. It was a close call, because Phil Hartman was still there, but it felt like the right time to go. I just didn’t want to stay too long.
Very quickly you feel incredibly old after you leave the show. What happens is that people come in, you’re thirty-one, and then all of a sudden you’re forty in the blink of an eye, and then there’s a cast member who’s twenty-four, looking at you like you’re Chevy Chase or Dan Aykroyd and shaking when they talk to you. And you go, “But I was just the new guy a second ago.”
I know that Lorne didn’t want me to leave, so it was bittersweet that way. He definitely wanted to keep me through the election, which I did until Clinton was sworn in and stuff, and that added a year and a half. I stayed. I definitely felt some sense of loyalty in that sense. I didn’t want to leave him in the lurch.
I had such a lucky run on that show that it felt like the right time. I still feel that way. I have no regrets. If I’d left after five years, I’d have missed out on a lot, but if I