Almost Interesting (15 page)

First, a stocking cap is placed over your hair to make it smooth. Then this white crap that looks like Bisquick gets spread all over your face. Two straws get stuck up your nose so you can breathe, because your mouth gets covered with this junk, too. I had been warned that the worst part was when your ears were covered. I said, “Hey, guys I’m not a pussy.” (I am.) “I get what’s going on.” When the time came I said, “Just go slowly . . . I’m not freaking out.” I realized what was happening, and I started taking deep breaths to get ready. I was okay when they covered my eyes, but then again, as if the makeup artists were talking to a child, they’d say, “We’re just covering your ears, don’t freak out.” I said, “Guys, I get it, I get it. I don’t care. Just do it.” About five seconds into it, I got a rush of anxiety and started screaming. I demanded some Valium, which of course someone had because clearly this was a common occurrence (and everyone involved in showbiz is a drug addict). They stuffed it down my gullet before they closed it up with plaster. It took everything I had to calm myself down enough to let them finish and then wait the fifteen minutes it takes for the plaster to harden. It is hard to explain why the freak-out happens so often, but I think it is because your body goes into panic mode thinking you are being buried alive. That’s all I can figure. Well, poor me.

Anyway, for some sketch we needed a Jeff Daniels doll. He was told to show up at 7
P
.
M
. in the makeup room for the face mask process. As the story goes, the makeup artists put the straws up Jeff’s nose and slowly applied the pancake batter as per usual. He was very cool about it all, even when they covered the eyes, ears, and mouth . . . knowing he didn’t have a big choice in the matter. I guess he wasn’t a total pussy like me. After waiting fifteen minutes for it to harden, the makeup artists started to try to peel it off. Usually the mask comes off in one sticky piece. It feels pretty gross, like your skin is being removed. Well, not this time. After a few minutes of struggling, it became clear there was a MAJOR problem. This wasn’t makeup on Jeff’s face. It was some kind of actual plaster.

Everyone immediately went into panic mode. This shit was not coming off his face. Everyone started yelling at him so he could hear beneath the plaster, “Don’t worry, Jeff! Just a few more minutes, Jeff!” even though they knew this was not true at all. Some folks snuck off to call Lorne at dinner and ask something to the effect of “WHAT THE FUCK DO WE DO, BOSS?!” Lorne called a plastic surgeon to come to 30 Rock to suss out the situation. By the way, it had been about a half hour at this point, and Jeff Daniels now realized that something had gone terribly wrong. He wrote on a piece of paper, “I’m feeling sick.” In return, he got this little nugget: “Don’t throw up or you’ll die! The puke has nowhere to go!” Thanks, that’s COMFORTING!!

Two hours later, the plastic surgeon comes in. They peel the plaster off Jeff’s forehead as far as it will go, but his eyebrows and eyelashes are stuck in it. Doing the grimmest move possible, but the only option, the surgeon sticks an X-Acto knife down the front of the mask and carefully cuts off Jeff’s eyebrows and eyelashes so the doctor can get the plaster off the rest of his face. I can’t imagine the relief and the pain Jeff must have felt at that point. Everyone was worried that the show might get canceled the next day. Daniels was traumatized. They fixed him up medically and sent him home. To his credit, and the reason I love Jeff Daniels to this day, is that he showed up the next day and did the whole show without being a drama queen (which is called for when there’s actual drama), and he didn’t sue or bitch or talk about it incessantly like I’m sure I would have. He just showed up, busted his ass through every sketch like nothing happened, and did a great job. If you watch that old show, you can see his eyebrows were painted on. To this day, it is still a mystery how that mix-up happened in the makeup department. I have my theories (they involve aliens and 9/11).

That season, I had another chance to trot out one of my impressions—my old standby from the suitcase days. Tom Petty. I was pretty excited to meet the dude in person. I even thought he might be excited to meet me, since I had been doing him for years. I forgot that sometimes impressions aren’t 100 percent flattering, so the person being imitated might not be head over heels in love when they see it. Being the genius sketch writer I am, I couldn’t think of a sketch that would include an impression of him. Here I had a chance to do one of the three killer impressions in my arsenal, and I was blowing it. I say three because that’s a pretty low number. I should have had at least ten, but I was a little light in that department. Luckily I made up for it with snarkiness! (Said like a used car salesman.) So, on Wednesday night after read-through, in a shocking turn of events, I realized I had nothing in the show. I spent the next two days wandering around the halls watching everyone else work on their sketches like little elves, while I took my place as the resident loser. During the dress rehearsal, I had a bit of a brainstorm while sipping on an Amstel Light. I ran into Tom Petty’s dressing room with my beer balls and said, “Can I talk to Tom?” Unlike Patrick Swayze, his people let me right in. I said, “Tom, here’s my pitch . . . I have been a fan of yours forever and I actually do an impression of you. I’ve done it on the show. Is there any way when they go to commercial on the live show, you and I can sing together? They always cut to that boring G. E. Smith playing guitar for thirty seconds or however long they need to kill time before a commercial. I think that should be us.” He stared at me for a second and then leaned over to pick up his guitar and said, “Sure, what song?” I was like,
Holy fuck. He’s going along with it!
I said, “Well, I can’t really sing. I just make noises.” And he goes, “What about ‘Breakdown’?” And I said, “I love it but it’s got too long of an intro. We only have about thirty seconds. How about ‘I Need to Know’?” And he said, “Let me see how it goes again.” And he starts strumming his guitar, which of course put me in fan-girl mode because it was so cool. He says, “There’s sixteen bars and then you come in.” I said, “Well, I don’t know how that works because I don’t know music, so, can I just start at the words and then you jump in?” And there was a pause and he goes, “Sure, we’ll figure it out. I’ll just follow you.” And then to make things even cooler, Ben, his keyboard player, said, “Can I play, too?”

Meanwhile, in my drunken haze I have not run this by ONE PERSON from Lorne’s office. This is fully unauthorized, but put an Amstel Light and a half in me and look the fuck out! I’m on a mission! My only snag, aside from breaking all the rules, was one mercy line that was thrown to me in a sketch after read-through. I guess someone felt sorry for me. Depending on where the sketch fell, my master Tom Petty plan should have gone off no problem. And, in pure Spade fashion, it turned out to be a problem.

The “band shot,” as they call it, is usually scheduled before a commercial. The camera pans from the actors at the end of a sketch over to the band jamming until commercial break. These are strategically placed throughout the show. On this particular evening there was only one and it happened to be right after the sketch I was in. When I drunkenly bombarded Tom Petty with this idea, I had forgotten I had one line in the show. Now I realized when timing it out, I had probably sixty seconds to do my line, run around the corner, throw on my Tom Petty hat, glasses, sideburns, and fringed leather jacket and get settled before the live band shot started. I had to run around during the live show and tell the actual band what was going on, then tell Tom Petty where to stand, basically tell everyone what was happening BUT LORNE. Tom and I decided that I would start right at the beginning of “I Need to Know” right when the red light went on on the camera, meaning we were live. I informed the cameraman that instead of panning over to me, to just cut to me when the sketch was over.

So I did my sketch and nailed my line (debatable) and sprinted over by the band as soon as I was off camera. I quickly threw on my gear with my heart pounding because I am terrified to sing . . . and more terrified that Lorne is going to rip me a new one. Tom Petty walked out, holding his guitar. He looked over at me with a cocked eyebrow that said, “You ready?” I realized we probably should have run this in rehearsal because I had no idea what to do next. Before I knew it, the camera turned to me and the red light went on. I instantly screamed, “WELL THE TALK ON THE STREET SAYS YOU MIGHT GO SOLO . . .” in my best Tom Petty voice. Then I heard Petty kick in with the guitar that I’m so familiar with and I jumped on the second line, “A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE SAW YOU LEAVING THROUGH THE BACK DOOR . . .” More guitar, adrenaline going, crazy . . . Now the chorus, “I NEED TO KNOW . . .” And bless Tom Petty’s heart he threw in a background vocal, “I NEED TO KNOW . . .” And we went back and forth for another ten seconds until the red light went off and we were clearly at a commercial. I stepped back from the mic and Tom quickly pointed to me and said, “Keep going!” I leaned forward and we belted out the rest of the song for the audience. We did the whole thing; I was horrible but had such a blast. I felt like I was really in the band for a minute. I see why guys like to be in bands. It was ridiculously fun. At the end of the show, I even scurried up for the “good night” curtain call because I felt like I added something to the show that night. Surprisingly, Lorne never said a word about it.

A few shows after that, Macaulay Culkin was the host. This is when I finally developed my encounter with Patrick Swayze’s publicist into a sketch. The germ of the idea was that the assistant to the celebrity is always more important than the celebrity in Hollywood. The assistant has the keys to the kingdom. If you want to talk to the famous person, you have to get through them first. (I made my editor work with my assistant on this book. I’ve never even spoken to her!) I didn’t know how to frame the sketch or who I was going to play yet—publicist, agent? I finally landed on personal assistant. Then I needed a setting. I decided on a waiting room of an office where the assistant would be alone with the people waiting to meet a “very important person,” and where he could privately pull his power trip. I didn’t know who to make the star but I thought it was funnier to make them someone less obvious. For some reason I chose Dick Clark . . . and I still don’t know why. I must have just seen him on
New Year’s Rockin’ Eve
or some bullshit that year and decided that he was a guy not as powerful as say, Jeffrey Katzenberg or some studio head, so it would be that much more frustrating if his assistant was talking down to someone.

This is the week I made my move to do my own sketch, writing myself into the lead. To give myself an even better shot, I decided to try to use the musical guest. David Bowie was appearing on the show that week with his band Tin Machine (remember them?). I knew Bowie had acted before and I figured he’d be perfect because . . . well, he’s DAVID BOWIE and therefore unbelievably famous. It would be a hilarious scenario if Bowie couldn’t get in to see Dick Clark because of some asshole assistant. I wrote something up where David Bowie comes into the office and I, as the receptionist, stop him and make him explain to me who he is, why I should know him, list his credits . . . and ultimately not let him in. I would even make him sing. I typed this up (well, the typing girls did) and gave it to the talent department and they told me, “We will try to get this to David Bowie . . .” And I waited. And waited. The next day I came in and there was a lone message in my tiny little mailbox written on yellow NBC letterhead that said, “You missed a call from: David Bowie.” My heart stopped. I missed a call from my musical hero. The return number was a Boston hotel with a fake name.

I remember I didn’t call him until I was alone in my apartment and I had all my balls up. I couldn’t do it in the office for fear of saying the wrong thing and having Farley or Sandler bust my chops or, worse yet, interrupt me. I nervously poked at the keys on the old-school push-button phone in my house (beep . . . boop . . . beep beep . . .). I asked for his room and . . . David Bowie answered. I hadn’t planned what to say. I was just winging it. Luckily, he was very nice. “David, I read your sketch, it’s hilarious. I have to do this.” I got an instant shot of adrenaline. He said, “I come back tomorrow so let’s rehearse this and get it going.” “Great! This will be really fun!” In my head I am thinking, I can’t believe I am going to have a sketch, that I wrote, on
Saturday Night Live
WITH DAVID BOWIE. Then came the bombshell. “Just one thing . . . I want to play the receptionist, so who do we get to play me?” My heart stopped . . . Oh fuck, what? . . . Wait . . . what? Shit, what was I going to do? I was hoping to get a sketch on that I felt could help me finally gain some footing. What do I do? I can get a sketch on right now and gain some ground at work or keep waiting and try to get it going with a future host. I took the latter. I explained to DAVID BOWIE that the receptionist was a character I wanted to own, like Wayne from
Wayne’s World,
and that I wanted to build him over multiple shows—and therefore I couldn’t just hand it over. He then said, “Well, it’s not fun playing myself.” I could tell he was a bit annoyed, and I knew he was when he told me he had to go and hung up the phone. I was stunned. I couldn’t believe that I had been able to talk to David Bowie, and then within four minutes piss him off enough to hang up so fast. And so much for my sketch idea. I spent another week getting paid by
SNL
for doing jack shit, basically. But this is life in the big city, like my dad had told me. (This was rich, of course, coming from the same guy who had skipped town all those years ago on my mom. It is hard to take advice from a guy who can’t handle life in a small city.)

With the receptionist sketch already written, I just needed someone to plug into it. The next week’s musical guest was M. C. Hammer, so I decided to roll the dice with him. To be honest, he wasn’t exactly who I had in mind, but he was very famous at the time, so it made some sense. I reworked it from the David Bowie setup, but there were the same basic jokes—the receptionist (me) was to embarrass the star by asking them to recite their résumé, act out scenes from movies, and sing their songs or whatever to jog my memory. These are all things that actually happen in Los Angeles, and as such, the sketch got big laughs at read-through. I was so close to the finish line. The sketch just had to play well in front of the audience at dress, and then it would make the cut to get on air.