Almost Interesting (11 page)

The next night, Rob and I were back in the club. We were celebrating because we have gotten the call to be hired as writer/performers. Rob was so ecstatic. I was not. I said, “What are you talking about? I don’t want to be a writer. I want to be on the show.” He said, “Well, you start off as a writer like Chevy Chase did, like all those guys did. It’s great news.” I tried to be excited but honestly, I was just scared. I had no idea how to write a sketch. I barely knew how to write stand-up at this point. The scenario I had pictured if I somehow got on
SNL
involved their brilliant writers giving me funny things to do in sketches. I had no idea how hard the job I was about to get would be. But through that fear fog I finally shook myself and said, Holy fuck, I’m gonna be on
SNL
.

I flew back to Arizona and was chilling in my Motel 6 room when I got the official offer and terms of my job at
Saturday Night Live.
I was hired as a writer for the last four shows of the 1990 season, for $900 a week and a $1,500 bump if I happened to land in a sketch on the show. I remember writing all of this out on the Motel 6 stationery and hoping I would never have to stay at that Motel 6 again.

CHAPTER NINE

GETTING ON
SNL

I
t was mid-April of 1990 and I was flying out to
Saturday Night Live
to start my new job. It was a scary flight mostly because I’m scared of everything, but I was in first class, so that made it a little better. I’m such a first-class whore. After years of flying shitty Southwest flights for stand-up gigs, I couldn’t believe that now I was getting the royal treatment, flying to my fancy new job in Rockefeller Center. It was back in the days where they had a curtain up between first and coach and the stewardess would make sure you couldn’t even
see
the people in first class. She would tug that curtain shut and whisper a condescending “no peekingggggg” to the panhandlers in coach.

Now all I had to do was come up with ideas for funny sketches. For the past five years, I had spent every waking moment—when I wasn’t staring at girls or freaking about cash—coming up with jokes for my stand-up. But sketch is a completely different animal. I spent the whole flight going through all the characters I did in stand-up, deciding which ones I could put on the table as “my own” before I officially started writing sketches. When you work at
Saturday Night Live,
you get one free swing when you start to tell them the characters you have and want to own, because the second you walk into the writers’ room, they own everything you come up with from that moment on. This is how it was when I was at
SNL,
anyway. It may have changed since then, but as I’ve already shared, my strongest characters involved a weak Tom Petty impression with a stolen valet hat. It isn’t my strong suit.

So, on this plane trip, I didn’t have a ton of great ideas, though I felt like this was my golden opportunity to claim an Opera Man or Wayne and Garth or something that might hit big. Skateboard Pizza guy . . . Drunk Astronaut . . . I was grasping at straws, just trying to get something down on paper. When we landed, I headed right for the Omni Berkshire, where they had the great soup and expensive room service. There’s nothing better than having everything paid for. All my life I had been counting nickels, wearing crappy clothes, pushing my car when it ran out of gas. And here I was, living in a hotel for four weeks, for free, after my first-class flight. All I had to do was write something funny, or else this shit would end really quickly.

The first night after I arrived happened to be a Saturday, and Rob and I were invited to come see the show before we officially started working on it. Hanging out backstage was really exciting but it was also overwhelming and chaotic. I had no idea how I would fit in. I knew Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon from staying at their houses when I was coming up, and of course Dennis Miller was there, so it wasn’t like it was a sea of new faces. But everyone was running around busy, with a lot on their minds. I met a few other cast members on the fly and a few writers. I remember talking to Jon Lovitz for a few minutes. He seemed depressed so I asked him what was wrong. He said, “I am just kind of bummed. I’m only in two things this week.” I was taken aback. “Wow, that’s crazy,” I said. “I would never think you guys count sketches. I just think you’re funny and I’m glad when I see you.” He said, “Yeah, well, Dana is in five things.” That surprised me. I told myself to remember that conversation, because I never wanted to feel like that. Lovitz was such a big star to me and had such a great job, I couldn’t believe he felt bad about having a light week on the show. Later I would learn just how hard it was to avoid obsessing over those very details.

On Monday, Rob and I went down to work together. I wanted to get there at noon, because I didn’t want anyone saying I was late. Of course, no one gets there before one, which is one of the pluses of working at
SNL
. The problem is that I’m not a late-night person, and regardless of when I hit the hay I’m getting up at 9
A
.
M
. Staying up all night was the worst part for me, but everyone else on staff totally got off on that. It was total crickets at the office until around 4
P
.
M
., when the important people started to trickle in. I met Jim Downey, the head writer on the show, who was very cool but always had a ton of work on his plate and so didn’t have time to baby the new guys like me. Rob and I were escorted to a tiny room and told, “Here’s a wooden desk and a chair, and this is your office.” There were no computers around back then, so we were told to write out our brilliant sketch ideas on yellow legal pads and then give them to one of four assistants whenever we needed them typed up. (So
Mad Men,
right?) I met Conan O’Brien, Bob Odenkirk, and Robert Smigel . . . all as nice as they could be for as busy as they were. Eventually I started to meet the cast, and before I knew it, it was the Monday meeting with the host. The host that week was Corbin Bernsen from the then hit show
L.A. Law
. After that Monday meeting, everyone sort of drifted off to write sketches.

I had been told it was Corbin ahead of time, so I had a little jump-start on my sketch idea . . . and that would never happen again. I went back to my tiny office and started trying to write sketches. My first sketch was not for Corbin at all, because I could not think of a good idea for him. (See what I mean? Stand-up comedians only write for themselves. You don’t know the other person’s comedic rhythm, you only know yours. So it was a hard switch to make at first.) I wound up putting all my eggs in the Jan Hooks basket that week. I had an idea for a sketch about Life Alert, where Jan would play an old lady who was so lonely she kept calling Life Alert just to hang out with the paramedics. As the sketch went on, her reasons for calling would become more and more absurd. “Life Alert . . . I stuck my hand in the toaster, and it’s on dark! HURRY!” Life Alert was a big commercial back then so it seemed timely.

That sketch was read fourth out of forty-three at the table read on Wednesday. I later learned that being read early was a good sign. Mike Shoemaker, one of the talent coordinators, would create the order of the sketches in read-through. It became clear to me later that the first ten in the read-through had the best shot of making it onto the show, because everyone was ears open, high energy at that point. The read-through room probably had fifty people packed in it from every department—all the writers, the cast, the host, and of course Lorne. Having the fourth sketch up in read-through was great in my first week. Not having the host in it was not. Having the host in the sketch is key. Sometimes the host will choose to drop out of a sketch if they feel they are in too many and replace themselves with a cast member, but really, the goal is to make the host look good, so you are better off writing sketches that include them if you want your sketch to go.

So, my sketch came up fourth, and as it was read I started to sweat and freak out more than I thought I would. It is such a tense, hot, sweaty, and intimidating room that your heart starts pounding long before your turn comes up. When you write a sketch you get to walk around before read-through and coach people on how you want them to play their parts . . . even the host. It is a fun micro-power trip to give direction to the host, I have to be honest. But with more than forty sketches every week, the coaching doesn’t always sink in, and suddenly you hear the host reading your sketch with an unexplainable Irish accent and you realize you’re dead in the water. It is common for a host to want to “try” things as an actor with your characters. “I thought I’d play that character gay.” Or some such. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it really bombs.

But I was in the clear, because I had gone with a cast member for my sketch, and Jan Hooks is about as good as it gets. I was so desperate for her to really nail it, because I knew it was my first chance to score as a writer. When we finally get to the sketch, I was drenched in sweat. All the other writers are secretly wanting it to die. Jan read and did a great job, and I got some laughs, and then it was on to the next one. Mine was actually decently written because I had so much time with it and it blended in nicely. No heads turning like, “Who wrote this piece of shit?” After about twenty-two more sketches there was a break.

The second half of the table read is rough. The sketches aren’t as good, the host is usually getting tired, and you see Lorne start yawning, which as you can imagine is the nail in the coffin. After read-through, Lorne, Robert Smigel, Jim Downey, Al Franken, and all the head honchos go into Lorne’s office and lock the door to make their decisions. They write every sketch’s name on a large index card and put it up on a corkboard. The corkboard has the beats of the show written out. First there’s the cold opening, then the monologue. (This usually doesn’t get written until Saturday, scaring the shit out of every
SNL
host. On a side note, it’s a sneaky way for a writer to get on the show if you put a monologue in read-through. Because if it works, the higher-ups will be relieved they don’t have to worry about it that week and will maybe even help you—but you will still get the credit! Bonus! It took me a bit to figure this out.) Because it usually took about two hours for the bosses to pick the sketches, it became our ritual to head down to Wally’s & Joseph’s, an old-school steakhouse nearby, for dinner. That place had been there for ages, deep in the Theater District and not far from the studio. My pals and I would all go sweat it out over our Caesar salads, hoping that our cards would land on the right part of the corkboard this week.

The game starts with all the cards on one side of the corkboard, and as the decisions are made, the cards get plugged into the show in the places that seem right. Back in my time, that might have meant a Wayne’s World cold opening card followed by the monologue (always “to come”), then a sketch or two, followed by Weekend Update, a few more sketches, even cards for commercials. At the very end of the show there is room for one more sketch, which is known around the shop as the 5-to-1 sketch, because it airs at five minutes before 1
A
.
M
. Those are sometimes the most interesting on the show because they are the weirdest, and the riskiest; that is when the show has the fewest viewers.

That first night, I was sitting at dinner obsessing over my Jan Hooks Life Alert sketch, feeling like I had a decent shot of getting something on air my first week. Dennis Miller had already told me that Rob and I had four shows to prove we were good and to get a sketch on air. If that didn’t happen, chances are we wouldn’t be asked back. So that was rattling around in my head, too, as I walked back to the studio. We drifted around aimlessly until we finally heard, “Okay, the door is open!” We all gathered around the corkboard, ready to meet our fate. Lorne and the rest of the big dogs had already skedaddled because they didn’t want to hear the bitching (a tactic they used every week I was there). I looked up at the board, searching for my sketch. I started at the end of the show and moved toward the front. My heart sank. My sketch wasn’t there. But what I did notice was that it was pinned on the right next to the sketches around Weekend Update. When I asked what that meant, Shoemaker told me, “It’s because they liked it and it almost got on. You can tell the ones that stayed on the left side where we put all the sketches weren’t even considered. If it has been moved it means they thought about it, but yours got outvoted.” Sometimes you are in the show for two solid hours, and then in the last minute before they open the door, a switch is made and you’re out.

The worst thing is when you realize that not only did you not get any sketches on, but you aren’t
in
any sketches, either. In that case your week is basically over on Wednesday at 10
P
.
M
. That was my fate my first week at
SNL
. I headed back to the Omni Berkshire knowing that now I only had three shows to prove myself. I was tired, beat up, and, frankly, scared. As I walked out I saw all the writers who had landed sketches, and they were excitedly talking to the set designers. It just sucked. The amazing thing about
Saturday Night Live
(and I rarely say “amazing,” unlike L.A. girls who use it five times in every sentence, mostly to describe a salad) the show isn’t even planned until Wednesday at 10
P
.
M
., and the live show is seventy-two hours away. Also, once the sketches are chosen, the process for how the show unfolds is amazing. The writers immediately go into action talking to set designers, then to wardrobe to pick out clothes, then to the wig department to discuss hair and whether each character should wear a wig or use their real hair. It was way more work than I thought, with a million decisions to be made. It looked like fun, but I just kept walking, because I wasn’t a part of it.

Thursday is rehearsal day for the cast on whichever set is ready, which usually just means tape on the ground where the walls will go after the set designers are done building them. The writers spend Thursdays rewriting sketches. I was under the impression (because no one will actually tell you what to do at
SNL
, you have to figure this shit out on your own) that you only came to rewrite day if you had a sketch that got on. So I had planned to spend my Thursday night dining alone with a notepad, instead of in the mandatory fifteen-hour day in the writers’ room. I was at the Omni, just about to leave for dinner solo because I had no friends outside of the show, when Rob Schneider and Jim Downey called me from the writers’ room. “Where the fuck are you?” Since I was in the dark, I said, “I didn’t get anything on, I’m just hanging out.” Downey said, “Get up here. You have to be in these meetings and help with jokes.” I was so pissed off at Rob. He had known about this meeting for more than a week but never mentioned a word. To be honest, this was the beginning of the friction between us. I had totally missed another meeting he was in, too, so I wondered why he didn’t share that with me. So from Thursday on, I was always in that goddamn, sweaty writers’ room, which happened to be the same room where we had the read-throughs. Those Thursdays were torture, especially back then, when there was no Instagram to check every eight minutes. It was fifteen hours of trying to add jokes to someone else’s sketch to make them score, to make them look good. It was very humbling and a tough adjustment for me. I had only ever written jokes for myself. Now I was handing over one-liners to a host or cast member because I was at the bottom of the totem pole. I got used to it, but honestly it took me longer than it should have.