Live From New York - James H. Miller [257]
If I were producing the show, I would have said no to Monica coming on, but I wouldn’t say no to Bill Clinton, because he was the president of the United States. But it’s something that could never happen. He might agree to do something taped — although if I were him I would like to think that if we called, he would go, “After the shit you assholes have done about me, you have a lot of nerve asking me to do something for you.”
I registered my dissent about Monica coming on by writing a couple of sketches, neither of which got on the air. One was about Monica winning “the presidential kneepads,” and the history of the kneepads and that kind of thing. I wrote it and called Lorne and said, “Let me try this, it’s like painless,” because it involved nothing live other than Jimmy Fallon playing Kenny G and Monica Lewinsky standing there and a little bit of voice-over.
Anyway, Monica Lewinsky’s publicist read the sketch — I actually watched the guy read it — and after he flipped through it he just went, “Uh-uh. Not interested.” And it was like, “Oh, I’m sorry, does she have some long glorious resumé of achievement — or did she blow the president?” There was this attitude like, “Monica Lewinsky does not do kneepad stuff.” I thought if I were Monica Lewinsky, I would have a little more sense of humor. I don’t remember people forcing her out onstage at gunpoint. It seemed to me she enjoyed the celebrity.
When Gore and Bush did that special, it was different. I don’t think by agreeing to appear they were betraying weakness or humiliating themselves or anything, because I think we’d stuck to basically fair commentary on them. I didn’t think they’d do it, though, just because I assumed they’d have teams of advisers who would say, “You’re nuts to go on a comedy show when you’re running for president. It just makes you look altogether too unserious.” But I’m glad they did.
Bill Clinton, I think, would be a whole other thing, because a lot of the nature of what we’ve done about Clinton was about his personal life. And I would like to think that he was really offended by it. Not that the show shouldn’t have done it, because he was president and it was all fair game. And I think down the road they will ask him to do something. I would think he wouldn’t do it. I’m sure he’ll come to a party, though. That’s a different thing. Clinton still makes me laugh — though not in a way that I think he would appreciate.
I’m sure there were times especially in the past few years when someone called up and said, “I saw you guys took a shot at me on the show, I’ll come on.” For the most part, whether they’d put them on is entirely a matter of would it help the show. It can’t be a ratings thing in the sense that people heard a rumor that Alex Trebek’s going to do a walk-on so everybody tunes in. I guess it’s the idea that you have to watch the show every week, because you never know which TV or movie personality is going to show up. I have no way of quantifying it, but I know there’s just been an awful lot more in recent years than in the years I was producing.
DARRELL HAMMOND:
I’m probably on less than anyone else in the cast. I don’t know. I would like to be able to fit in more, but I sit out entire shows sometimes. If I’m in the show usually it’s in the opening. It’s my understanding that Lorne hired me to be able to learn voices fast and to do topical material, and it turned out when it came time to pull material, the big story for weeks and weeks and weeks was Clinton, so I ended up doing mostly him. I had to follow Phil Hartman’s Clinton, yeah, but I wonder if mine is actually an impression. I wonder if mine isn’t just a characterization.
You know, sometimes when you get out there you become aware that you’ll be funnier if you let the voice slip a little bit and cheat. For instance in “Jeopardy,” when I first did Sean Connery, I had a really accurate Sean