Gasping for Airtime (12 page)

The previous August, I was shoved headfirst into a tunnel and began the struggle. The more I struggled, the more everything tightened up around me. The walls, the elevators, my rib cage, my arteries—they all constricted with each passing week. But on the night of May 14, I came out the other end of the tunnel and saw the sun.

I breathed deep on my way to the final wrap party of the year. A few of my friends had attended the final show, and I decided to bring them along. One by one, they put their arms around me and said things like, “You made it!” Not “Congratulations” or “Great job,” just you made it—like a soldier returning from war. In fact, there was nothing to congratulate me on. I hadn’t really done anything except survive.

I spent that summer with my girlfriend, Nicole, who is now my wife. I spent day after day on the beaches and night after night in the bars. I was renting a nice house in the Hollywood Hills and bought myself a Mustang convertible. I would drive for hours with the radio blasting louder than Joe Dicso could talk, and I slipped into a calm midsummer languor.

I did more stand-up than I ever had in my life. I would perform at a Laundromat if there was a microphone. Onstage, I found no politics. I would say something and the audience would either laugh or they wouldn’t. I finally had the mike back in my hand. At
SNL,
I couldn’t get the mike, and when I did, it was pinned to my suit jacket and I was allowed to speak only one line. After my shows, I would sit with the other comics and get bombed. No matter what city I was in or who I was around, the conversation always turned to
Saturday Night Live.

Comics would ask me what it was like and I didn’t know what to say. I would plaster on a fake smile and tell them it was fantastic. That’s what they wanted to hear. I couldn’t possibly tell them everything. And if I started to tell them anything other than that it was fantastic, I found myself rambling on and on until they were sorry they asked.

That summer I also heard stories about myself and the things I had done at 30 Rock, many of which I had long since blocked out. People would ask me if it was true that I threw my phone out the window. I would have to stop and think before I answered. Yes, I did throw my phone out the window, but how did they know?

It had happened on a Tuesday night and I couldn’t get anyone to help me with a sketch. I felt a surge of panic but couldn’t leave my office because I would have had to run past the rest of the staff in the writers’ room. So I picked up the phone on my desk and threw it through a window, which was unfortunately closed. Glass flew all over the place, and Mike Shoemaker dashed into my office to see what caused the shattering noise.

An hour later the police arrived. The telephone had landed with a good crash seventeen stories below on the street in the middle of Rockefeller Center, and the good citizens of New York had reported it. I stood in front of the phone-shaped hole in the window and told the cops someone must have broken into my office and thrown the phone out the window. I remember telling them, “I wouldn’t do something like that! I talk on the phone all the time.” I peered out through the window down onto the street. “Who the fuck would do something like this?!” I said. “We’re just lucky nobody got hurt down there.”

The cops looked out the window, too, and the three of us stood there with our heads out the window. Eventually they thanked me for the help with their investigation and left. I asked them if there was anything I could do to help them with the case. Both officers shot me a look that could only be interpreted as “Yeah, don’t throw your phone out the window anymore.”

No one asked me about sketches I had performed or the segments I had written. If my contribution to the show came up in conversation, it was always because I was the one who brought it up. But the people out in California asked me about Farley. They wanted to know if it was true that we wrestled in front of Alec Baldwin and the rest of the cast. Yes, we did, but how did they find out?

I didn’t bring these memories to California with me, but the more conversations I had, the more they came back to me. I remembered the great stories that Alec Baldwin told, like how he stopped eating meat. He and Kim had been in Paris and he contracted food poisoning from steak. He said that he was sick for so long that he decided eating meat wasn’t worth it. His story about being with Kim Basinger in Paris led me to ask what it was like to be married to the hottest woman alive. Though he assured me it was great, Alec said, “If I had to do it all over again, I would have fucked every single woman I ever came into contact with.” He detailed who that crop would have been: “To all the girls Stephen and Billy brought home, I would have said, ‘Come over here,’ and I would have had my way with them because I was famous and I could have. Even second cousins. I would have had no morals because once you’re married, it’s done.”

I thought about when Nancy Kerrigan hosted and how she had a mouth like John Elway’s. She had this enormous set of choppers that made her look like a whale when her mouth was open. If you held her in the ocean by her feet, she could probably filter brine shrimp from the water using her teeth. She was nice, but I don’t think she was the sharpest knife in the cutting block because she gleefully signed the
Sports Illustrated
cover with the picture of her crying and clutching her knee and the headline reading “‘Why? Why? Why?’”

They wanted to know about when Rosie O’Donnell hosted because she was a fellow comic. Rosie came to have some fun, and she wanted to please. Unlike, say, Shannen Doherty, she was someone you
wanted
at the rewrite table throwing out ideas. I was in a “Malibu Fires” sketch with her in which she played Penny Marshall and I played Sean Penn. I rented old Sean Penn movies to master his walk. I couldn’t do a great Sean Penn impression, but I had the walk down cold. Still, my line got a laugh: “Be nice to strangers because you never know when you are going to be a stranger, too.”

When I retold these stories, people looked at me with big grins on their faces. They were smiling because it all sounded like so much fun. It all should have been fun, but it wasn’t. With the telling of each story, I realized how many wonderful things I had experienced. But that didn’t make them any more enjoyable. At least not yet. All they did was make me dread going back.

I went to New York twice that summer, both times to visit my parents. I still couldn’t rent a car, so I borrowed a friend’s. My friend was in the FBI, and he told me that if I was ever pulled over, I should say he was my brother. I asked him, “What if they ask why we don’t have the same last name?” And he repeated, “Just tell them you’re my brother.” I was pulled over twice in two days speeding down Route 80. Both times the cop handed me back my driver’s license and told me to tell my “brother” hello.

Sometimes I would sleep at my parents’ house, but mostly I made the commute from my apartment in New York to the suburbs of New Jersey. I made sure I never got stuck in the Lincoln Tunnel during rush hour. If there was the slightest congestion on my way to the tunnel, I would turn uptown and drive the half hour out of my way to the George Washington Bridge. At my parents’, I cut the grass and trimmed the hedges. I signed autographs for the neighbors. I played Wiffle ball in the driveway. Everything was fine. People had driveways and mailboxes and screen doors. There were property lines and curbs, and dinner was at six o’clock. I talked a lot with my parents about not wanting to go back, but they never voiced an opinion; they just listened.

I went to a Yankee game with a close friend of mine who had season tickets. When we sat down at the stadium, he introduced me to most of the people in his section. During the game one of the people sitting behind us asked him if I was on television. He told them, “Yes. He’s a bit player on
Saturday Night Live
.” The words stung. I know he wasn’t belittling me, but his statement hurt—probably because he was right. I knew right then and there that I had to go back. I had to make a difference. I never wanted to be called a bit player again. At home that night I read a quotation in the
New York Post
sports section from Penn State football coach Joe Paterno that hit home: “The will to win is important. But the will to prepare to win is vital.”

I started preparing to win. I kept a notebook with sketch ideas and carried it everywhere I went. I even had pages full of fake pitches. Whether I was on a plane, at the beach, or at home, I scribbled in the notebook. The slightest kernels of ideas were written down. I had to go back.

There would be things working in my favor. I wasn’t going to be the new guy anymore. I knew where the pencils were. I knew that Al Franken put them in his mouth. I had learned how to set my alarm to “you’re paid to be here.” I knew rewrites took all night for no reason. I knew not to give away any jokes until Wednesday. I knew that if you wanted to talk to Jim Downey, you were going to wait a long time. None of the new people knew anything about me. With ten new people, I could start a clean slate. They would all be asking me for help, and I would befriend them and get them to write with me.

But first the show needed to officially pick up the option on my contract.

On June 13, the show contacted my agent, Ruthanne Secunda, and asked for an extension on the option. They wanted until July 6 to make their decision to bring me back, and they required it in writing. When Ruthanne asked me what I wanted to do, I told her I wanted to tell them to make up their minds on or before July 1, just like it said in
their
contract. She warned me that we might not want to force their hand. If they were asking for an extension, then they obviously hadn’t made up their minds yet, so why be combative? I agreed to the extension and felt even more inspired.

I would show them. If they would just let me return, I would hand in sketches every week and walk out onstage for Good-nights. I desperately wanted to go back. If everything was terrible again, at least I would know what to expect. I would deal with it. I was medicated.

On the afternoon of July 6,
Saturday Night Live
exercised my option. It was afternoon in Los Angeles and nighttime in New York. I woke up that morning knowing that I would receive an answer, but I hadn’t anticipated the show taking until after dinner to give it to me. It was an already long day that seemed longer. By the time the news came, I was terrified. I knew that I didn’t want to be on
Saturday Night Live
for only one year—certainly not for the year I had just gone through.

E
RIC
C
LAPTON
kept hugging me.

It was the first show of my second season. Clapton had an album coming out called
From the Cradle.
It was a great blues album. On it, he covered some Willie Dixon songs and other blues songs that had inspired him throughout his career. He was onstage on a Thursday afternoon doing a sound rehearsal. I walked into studio 8-H just in time to watch him play “Five Long Years.” A week earlier I had seen Buddy Guy in concert in Central Park. “Five Long Years” was on Buddy’s new album as well. When Clapton walked offstage after the song finished, I approached him, introduced myself to him, and shook his hand. He took my hand as if we were friends from college and it had been years since we last saw each other.

“I saw Buddy Guy play that song last week and I didn’t think it could be played any better, but you did it,” I said.

Clapton put his arm around my neck and started laughing. “Aw, thanks, man,” he said.

“Buddy doesn’t look at the chords, though,” I added.

Clapton went bananas. He started laughing so loud that people across the studio were looking over to see what on earth was making Eric Clapton crack up. The guy was doubled over. He kept laughing and barely squeaking out, “You’re right! You’re right!”

I started to become self-conscious. Everybody was looking at us, and he just kept laughing. I didn’t think what I said was as funny as he did, but he kept hugging me and telling me how right I was. I wanted to tell him that he really shouldn’t find me this interesting. I wanted to say, “Dude, relax. You’re Clapton!”

Eventually Eric Clapton and I broke off our embrace long enough for him to walk to his dressing room. I stood there for a moment, letting what just happened sink in.

I was woken up by a tap on the shoulder from Marci Klein. “What were you two just talking about?” she asked.

I didn’t want to explain to her who Buddy Guy was or who wrote the song “Five Long Years” and how I didn’t expect Clapton to react the way he did. Instead, I played it cool. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Nothing. We were just rappin’.”

I figured that if I could make Marci believe that Eric Clapton thought I was cool and that sometimes Clapton and I just talk and make each other laugh, that she might tell Lorne what a hot property I was—and that would lead to my being in more sketches. No such luck.

Marci jabbed her finger at me. “You are not allowed to ask the musical guest to be in a sketch,” she chastised in her Smashing Pumpkins concert tone.

Though I assured her that wasn’t the case, I don’t think she believed me. Even after my summer writing binge, I was light-years from having enough sketch ideas that I could work Eric Clapton into any of them.

It was evident early on during production that Joe, James, and I had a great chemistry for comedy, or at least I thought we did. I had the time of my life as I acted across from an Academy Award nominee and a seasoned pro. Almost every day we shot, I thought about how when the film became a blockbuster hit, people all over the country would watch
Saturday Night Live
with renewed interest because “that guy Jay Mohr is on it.”

But it wasn’t long before my big hit movie evaporated. The movie was edited by early fall, and I was invited to a screening at the Galaxy Theater in Hollywood. My agent warned me that the studio’s holding a pre-release screening and not a premiere wasn’t a good sign. The entire night was steeped in foreshadowing—beginning with my running out of gas on the way to the theater in the pouring rain.

But when Jason Alexander took the stage to introduce the film, I knew the fix was in. He was wearing a red sweater the exact color of the curtain behind him. With all the spotlights shining on him, all you could see was his head and his jeans. I leaned over to Nicole and said, “Who told him to wear the red sweater? Maybe there should have been a change of clothes in the car in case there’s a red curtain in the theater. What are the odds? Maybe fifty-fifty.”

Then the lights went down and the film started. Three minutes into the movie I knew it was going to be a disaster. The tone was all wrong. The music was all literally in
Seinfeld
instrumental tones. Jason and Lolita had this long courting scene in which they skirted the issue of their relationship. It lasted so long it became torturous to watch.

I had returned from summer to 30 Rock with a real swagger about the movie. Just wait until this baby hits the theaters, I thought to myself. I spent three months telling my coworkers and anyone else who would listen to keep their eyes peeled for
Stranger Things.
But even if they had their eyes peeled, it would have been difficult for them to find the film. The title was changed from
Stranger Things
to
For Better or Worse,
and the film went straight to video.

At the first table read, I had two sketches. One of them didn’t get any laughs. It was funny in my head the night before when I had written it down and handed it in, but at the table it was dying. Lorne narrated as he always did and everyone read their parts well, but the sketch just wasn’t funny. When my sketch ended, the room was quiet and everyone reached for the next sketch to read. From the table Adam Sandler shouted in a Joe Dicso impression, “Cast for Good-nights! Cast for Good-nights!” Everyone laughed, and for the first time I felt a part of everything.

By Adam’s teasing me, I felt a little more accepted. To the new people, it probably looked like we were all old friends. To the old people, it was Sandler mocking one of the guys. I wasn’t imagining it. Everyone was treating me a little differently. I had earned a modicum of respect. I worked hard. I was no longer on the writing staff. I had asked Ruthanne to negotiate me out of the writer’s contract, and the show happily obliged. I never had to sit through rewrites again—though I did anyway. I contributed for as long as I could, which was normally until around three in the morning.

The first show of my second season was hosted by Steve Martin (and the musical guest was Eric Clapton). Neither one of my sketches was on the air, but I had a few lines in three others. The funniest was a pitch meeting at a marketing firm for a new candy bar named Nutriffic! In the sketch, Chris Elliott unveiled to the candy bar makers the new jingle that his marketing firm had written for Nutriffic! Steve Martin (playing a marketing exec) sat at a table and listened patiently as Chris brought out a barbershop quartet to sing the jingle: “Nutriffic!…Nutriffic! It’s NUT very good!”

As one of the members of the barbershop quartet, my contribution was to sing the Nutriffic! jingle six times that night, four times during rehearsal and twice during the live show. I was supposed to sing it four times like everyone else during the show. However, I became distracted and forgot my last two “Nutriffics!” How in the hell could I forget a line that’s written on cue cards, repeated several times, and has three other people singing it at the same time as me?

Simple. At the very end of the sketch rehearsal, as we were walking offstage to the applause of the rehearsal audience, Chris Elliott leaned into me and asked, “Did you check out Steve Martin’s piece? He has the best hairpiece in show business.”

No, I hadn’t seen Steve Martin’s hairpiece. I had seen his head with what appeared to be real hair on top, but I hadn’t noticed a wig of any sort. It wasn’t like Steve had put on a baseball cap for the sketch and then had the cap with the hair in it fall at my feet. Was Chris messing with me? It couldn’t be a hairpiece, could it?

This burning question gnawed at me throughout the meeting in Lorne’s office between dress rehearsal and air. Then I asked other cast members if Steve Martin wore a wig. No one would commit one way or the other, but the tension was heightened by several who asked if I had ever seen his hair a different style or length. No, in fact, I hadn’t.

When the live show aired, I stood to the side of Steve Martin as I sang the Nutriffic! song. Steve never looked at me during the sketch, so I had free rein to stare at his head for as long as we were on the stage together. I stared at Steve Martin’s head so hard I could have burned a hole into his skull. Under the hot stage lights Steve began to perspire slightly, and a few beads of sweat trickled down the side of his neck. I continued to examine his head for any sign of a wig. I looked for creases and seams, staples and netting, or traces of glue. I stared until I heard the applause signaling that the sketch was over—which meant that I had stared right through two of my four lines of the week.

To this day, I have no idea if Steve Martin wears a wig, but I still have never seen his hair a different length or style.

The funnest one to visit was Sandler, Spade, Farley, and Herlihy, who gathered in Sandler’s office. They would all sit around and make phone calls to the girls who had written them asking them to go the senior prom. Sandler would dial the phone and ask, “Is Lucy there?” Lucy would get on the line and Sandler would say, “Lucy, it’s Adam Sandler,” which was followed by screaming. Sandler would then explain kindly and diplomatically that he couldn’t accept her invitation to the prom because of the workload at
Saturday Night Live.
These conversations would end with something along the lines of “Oh, I appreciate that a lot. Well, we’re working hard. Okay, talk to you later.”

When I was hired for the show, I came on board with Dave Attell, Sarah Silverman, and Norm Macdonald. When Spade, Schneider, and Sandler were hired for the show, they all came on board together. They had been through all the bullshit with one another as a group. Whenever I spent time with them, I felt like a freshman walking home with a group of seniors. You’re in the conversation, but not really.

While I was growing up, all my friends were two years older than me. We were really tight until they went to high school and I stayed in middle school. They entered a new world of different sports practices and new friends. Consequently, we didn’t have much in common. As my relationships with the older kids faded, a new kid who was two years younger than me moved in next door. I befriended him, as well as all of his friends. Then I had clout with a whole new group of kids because I was older. I was the one who had been there and done that.

My second season on
Saturday Night Live,
I employed a similar strategy. The show had hired Chris Elliott, Morwenna Banks, Janeane Garofalo, and Mark McKinney as new cast members, Molly Shannon and Laura Kightlinger as featured performers, and a few new writers. For all they knew, I was a normal guy. Michael McKean had come aboard near the end of my first season, so he wasn’t part of my initial traumatic adjustment experience either. The two of us hit it off particularly well, and he was a sliver of sanity for me at
SNL.

Michael McKean’s pedigree was almost as impressive as he was personally. He had played Lenny on
Laverne & Shirley
and starred in the cult film
This Is Spinal Tap.
Mike was one of the good guys. He had a real warm, easygoing vibe about him; he was always approachable. With him, everything was simple. He would invite me to lunch on a Sunday by saying, “Hey, me and my fiancée are going to lunch. Meet us on the corner of Bleecker and Tenth near the sandwich place at noon, and we’ll have a great time.” I would arrive at the appointed time; he would be there, and we would have a great time, eating, laughing, and talking about everything except the show.

Most important, for whatever reason, he always listened to me. I would sit in his office and bitch about something, and he’d agree that it sucked. Then he would either pick up his guitar and sing some songs or tell me a horror story of his own that had absolutely nothing to do with
Saturday Night Live
, and we’d laugh our asses off for an hour. I finally had someone I could complain to, and he was a godsend. In hindsight, he must have been a saint because I spent a lot of time whining on the couch in his office, while he just listened.

Either because he liked me or because I complained about my lack of airtime, McKean threw me a nice bone when Damon Wayans hosted, and he did it right in the middle of rehearsal. The sketch involved Wayans as Babyface, Sandler as Tom Jones, and McKean as Tony Bennett. Halfway through rehearsal, Mike walked off the set and over to me. “Can you do Tony Bennett?” he asked. I had never tried a Tony Bennett impression, so I did one on the spot for him. “You should do it in this sketch because I’m not really nailing the impression,” he said. I told him I was fine with that. McKean then walked over to Lorne and simply said, “Jay’s gonna do Tony Bennett. He does the impression better than me.” Lorne nodded, and Mike headed for his dressing room.