Live From New York - James H. Miller [75]
Now this is 1977, okay? We do it in the dress rehearsal and the place goes nuts because “bitch” on television was groundbreaking. But Jane Crowley, who was this five-hundred-pound censor and an ex-nun or would-be nun or something, she comes around and says, “You can’t do that.” “Can’t do what?” “You can’t say ‘bitch’ on television.” And I said, “Jane, listen to me. What Gilda is calling Jane Curtin, when she’s saying ‘bitch,’ she is effectively using the adverb form of the word. In effect she is saying, ‘You are acting bitchy toward me,’ which I have heard on television before. She’s not saying, ‘Jane, you are a bitch,’ which is a noun, which I agree should never be in television nor even in streets. She’s using the adverb form.” And would you believe it, she bought this crock of shit. She goes, “All right, all right, the adverb then,” and went on.
BUCK HENRY:
I remember there was a really odd argument between me and Lorne and the Standards and Practices woman in a bit where I played a censor. There’s a moment when, in trying to describe something, I poke my forefinger through a hole made by my other forefinger and thumb, if you see what I mean. And the argument was, how many times I could do that and whether, having once poked the finger into the hole, could I move it around, or must I withdraw it immediately? It got pretty silly. It’s easy to be dirty, but hard to be incisive.
TOM DAVIS:
When we did the “Franken and Davis Show” sketches, our theme was usually that we were breaking up. Once we had Al’s real parents in town, coming to the show, so we dressed up in SS uniforms and we dressed his parents in these death-camp stripes. It was going to be something. In the sketch, Al’s father would say, “You know, Al, your mother and I are very uncomfortable with this piece. We think it’s tasteless.” And Al would say, “Oh come on, Dad, you wanted to be on TV. This is funny.” Elliott Gould was the host and Elliott was going to go along with it. But Standards and Practices was really sweating. And Lorne and Bernie Brillstein were like, “Oh God!” And then Lorne finally decided, “No, no, you can’t do it.” And Joe and Phoebe, Al’s parents, were really dejected. They were excited about being in the piece and being on TV.
So there we are up in Lorne’s office in our SS uniforms, black skulls on the hat and everything, and Joe and Phoebe, this old feeble Jewish couple, are dressed in the prison outfits. And we got cut. And Al’s parents walked out of the room. And Lorne said, “Don’t ever do that to me again. I don’t want to ever cut your parents like that.”
NEIL LEVY:
There was a time in the third season when the writers all thought they were being cheated out of their paychecks and there was an insurrection. Everybody got paranoid at one point that they weren’t getting paid enough. They discovered there was a certain amount of money in the writers budget, but when they divided what all the writers were making, where was all this extra money? It was going into sets and other things, and it wasn’t their business what was happening to it. But there was an insurrection, really. Somebody kicked a hole in a wall and then Lorne came in and said, “What’s going on here?” And he was confronted by this mob. And he didn’t say a word — he just turned and walked away and went back into his office and closed the door. And then there was dead silence, and then en masse, all the writers stood in front of Lorne’s door begging his forgiveness, banging on the door and pleading, and he wouldn’t talk to them — ’til later.