Live From New York - James H. Miller [237]
The second audition was to be like five minutes of what you want to do on the first show. Okay, does that mean stuff that I had done on the first audition that seemed to work, or do you want new stuff? He essentially wanted to see all brand-new stuff, so meanwhile I’m thinking, “Oh my God.” So I walked out and they kind of took me through the paces — no, I wouldn’t do that, they conveyed to me that they’d seen me do this one thing in the audition and wanted to see if I could cover this other area, and Steve is just looking at me and it’s like, “Steve, do you have anything you want to ask Will?” And Steve’s like, “Nice briefcase.”
So then I walked out, never having opened it, and did the second audition. Then a couple of weeks later Lorne came out to see the Groundlings, and in the following week I had to meet him at the Paramount lot, not knowing that this was “the” meeting. Marci called and said, “Lorne wants to meet with you again, don’t worry, it’s nothing bad.” But I didn’t put it together that he was going to be hiring me. I just thought, “Oh, he wants to get to know me.”
So here I am at the Paramount lot. I was like, “Damn, I got a second chance, I’m going to bring my briefcase, I’m going to do the money bit here if I’m ever going to do it.” And then, “Lorne’s ready to see you — oh, you can just set your briefcase down, don’t worry about it.” We talked for twenty minutes and he told me I was hired. And then I walked out and I just quickly explained to the people outside, “Can you guys just give him some of this fake money? It was this idea I had a long time ago and I never got to do it. That’s why I always had this briefcase with me.” And then I guess he laughed really hard when he heard the whole thing. I still have the briefcase, yeah.
STEVE HIGGINS:
Around here you brave the storm. That’s the only way I can think of it. You just brave it. When it’s a sunny day you can frolic on deck, and when it’s stormy you cling to the mast. An interesting election year is good for us. This last one with Downey and the cold openings on the debates, that’s what really swung everything. People loved the show again. When it’s the political stuff, the best is when somebody who’s a Democrat goes, “Oh, you really gave it to Bush,” and somebody who’s a Republican will go, “Oh, you really laid into Gore.” That’s the reaction we should be getting.
RALPH NADER:
The whole thing in 2000 was bizarre. Here you have this serious presidential campaign, and all of us had to go on these comedy shows like Saturday Night Live, because that was the only way we could have more than a sound bite and reach a large audience. This is the land of the free, the home of the brave, 285 million people with endless numbers of channels, and they’re all closed off.
JAMES DOWNEY:
Someone did a survey of college students on where they got their political views and information, and television comedy was number one, ahead of newspapers or discussions on campus or even TV news. I don’t think it’s a crazy thing to say that SNL was one of the things that influenced voters in the 2000 election. Certainly after the first debate followed up by the first debate sketch, there was an awful lot of talk. I know that because I was taping the talk-show commentaries. I happened to be watching the Brit Hume show on Fox after the first debate sketch, and something made me think, “Hey, they’re going to show a clip from the debate sketch,” and that was I think the very first use of it. I kept hearing reports from people that they did it on CNN or there was something on the Today show, that sort of thing, and then it became a standard thing that I would keep tabs on. Nowadays they practically have a regular slot. There’s a fair-use doctrine or something,