Live From New York - James H. Miller [267]
When you’re a producer your job is talking to people and getting them to do things you want them to do and yet having them feel that it’s their choice and that they’re not being forced. The plan of the show is that everyone — cast, writers, performers — they’re all doing what they want to do and it’s theirs and they own it, and at the same time it’s also what we want to do, but we have in some ways to make them feel that it’s theirs.
We don’t dictate things. The show’s like a stampede, and I feel that my job is kind of to keep it going. When someone falls and is about to be trampled, you pick them up and dust them off and kind of send them on their way. You can’t really effect change but you can try to avert catastrophes.
JIMMY FALLON:
Mike Shoemaker is a producer, a writer, a therapist. He’s the guy people complain to about not being in the show, or “Hey, can you get someone to write something for me?” They’ll go to Shoemaker, because they’re afraid to embarrass themselves and ask the writers. When you first get the show, he’s the orientation guy. He helps all the new people get acquainted with the place.
Sometimes he forces new writers to sit with a cast member and write something. He does it a lot. That’s how I came up with “Jarret’s Room,” actually, the Internet talk show. I had this idea, he goes, “I’ll put you with this new writer, Matt Murray; you sit in the room until you write it.” We sat there for four hours and we wrote it.
The show needs Mike. Definitely. I don’t know who else I would talk to. He’s also a ghost writer, definitely, for “Update.” He writes jokes, he punches stuff up. He’s been there since Dennis Miller, I think. It’s like going to school. His comedy mind is great. I always go to him to bounce stuff off of him. He says, “Oh that’s funny” or blah, blah, blah. Saturday mornings, he’s always up there with me and Tina writing the jokes, picking what’s funny and how to punch it up.
Lorne will come out and say, “You milked it a little bit too long.” Like I asked him about the Ian McKellen thing, my reaction after he kissed me. I thought I milked it one beat too long. Lorne goes, “Yes, you did.” Ian was more aggressive on the air than at dress, by the way. If you watch it in slow motion, you’ll see a little tongue action. He really went for it, man. Anyway, I knew Lorne would tell me the truth, but Shoemaker said, “That was fine. It really worked.” He’s just always very positive.
All previous mishaps and calamities that had befallen Saturday Night Live since it was founded were rendered insignificant when, on September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorists flew passenger jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Center — jolting New York, shocking the world. For the producers, writers, and cast of the show, there was a subtext to the tragedy: The twenty-seventh season premiere was eighteen days away. Or was it? Should the fall season be delayed under the circumstances? How much news of the day could decently be satirized by a comedy troupe? Was any attempt to wring laughs out of current events automatically in poor taste?
On the major decision — whether to air the season premiere in its scheduled time slot — Michaels had to do little deliberation. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, soon to be named Time magazine’s Man of the Year, asked Michaels to go ahead with the show as a signal that life in New York was going ahead as well. Since first taking office, Giuliani had been a semifrequent visitor to the show, dropping by occasionally during the live telecast as he made his rounds on a Saturday night and having hosted on November 22, 1997. This time, on September 29, he would deliver the first punch line