Live From New York - James H. Miller [247]
It was flattering when Lorne said, “You know, you’re like the new Mike Myers to me.” I was like, “Oh wow.” He meant that in a sense of, “You’re going to take care of yourself and do your own stuff.” And you can see when you watch the old shows that Mike Myers wasn’t there throughout other people’s sketches. It was more like, here’s the Sprockets and here’s “Wayne’s World” and here’s his “Coffee Talk,” and that was his stuff. So it’s a great way to always be on your toes, and you know, it’s good training to only rely on yourself.
JANEANE GAROFALO:
The general attitude over there is that with the Tina Fey regime and the Steve Higgins regime, things started turning around. I think the prevailing attitude had been that women just aren’t quite as funny.
MOLLY SHANNON:
First of all, there aren’t that many slots for girls. There was me, Ana, and Cheri. So the girls that get there are tough girls, you know. Those are strong women, I would say. We all got along well. I think that either way you just sort of have to take care of yourself. It’s not a man-woman thing. They’re not going to put something on because it’s a girl sketch, they’re going to put it on because it’s funny. Maybe before that, women had different experiences than I did, but my experience is they’re going to put it on if it’s funny, not because you’re a girl, that’s just silly. You’re just in competition with yourself.
DARRELL HAMMOND:
I had no idea that people could be so tired and miserable — because of so much pressure — and yet still be good and still be funny.
JACK HANDEY, Writer:
Even today I’ll have dreams where it’s like late Tuesday night and I don’t have an idea for the show. And then Lorne comes into the dream and he’s wearing my pants.
DARRELL HAMMOND:
When I came here Lorne told me, “We don’t go on the air because the show’s ready, we go on because it’s eleven-thirty.” Here, you’re going to be asked to be at your best when you feel your worst. If you’re hoarse, have the flu, didn’t have time to prepare, didn’t sleep well last night, feel depressed — too bad. It’s eleven-thirty and it’s live, so you’ve got to change your mental state. Sometimes, by the time you go on, you’re so tired you don’t even remember why you thought something was ever funny in the first place.
CHERI OTERI:
You get in here and you start doubting yourself. Each week you’re auditioning for a show you already got. Each week you’re proving yourself. You’re starting over week to week. It made me very emotional and unstable. When I did Just Shoot Me, Thursday came around and this feeling came over me, this really great peaceful feeling, because I thought, “Oh my God, no matter what, I’m going to be on the show. I’m not going to get cut.”
Here’s the thing I didn’t know about SNL: I knew that you could write, but I didn’t know that you pretty much have to write if you want to be in the show. There were shows I got cut out of completely! My dad came up from Nashville when we had Garth Brooks, and I was completely cut out of the show.
It was in my third year on the show that I finally stopped being devastated and crying about it. Julia Sweeney said that she had my dressing room, and she told me, “God, how I cried in that room.” And it’s just the way the show works. But there’s no show like it. The good part is that you get to be something different every week. And you get to be seen in front of millions of people. And then I thought, what am I going to do after this? What’s going to be as exciting as this? I’ll feel good about not having the disappointments, though. I’ve gotten better at that. Because I was pretty much known as someone who didn’t take it very good.
CHRIS KATTAN:
Cheri Oteri and I had