Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (75 page)

Was it the scripts or the cast? Either way, what resulted was a string of shows met with dead silence from the studio audience and shrinking ratings from the television audience. Toward the
season's end, Tartikoff couldn't take it anymore—he decided to put
Saturday Night Live
out of its misery. Michaels flew to Los Angeles to reassure Tartikoff that the show would rebound, that there were bright spots emerging. Tartikoff agreed to give him one more season to turn it around.

The bright spots Michaels was referring to were the only three cast members who would survive that season: Nora Dunn, Jon Lovitz and Dennis Miller.

Having learned his lesson of hiring names over talent, Michaels returned to his 1975 tactics and once again scoured the improv circuit. Now his main goal was to see not only who was funny, but also who worked well with others.

The first new cast member hired for the the 1986 season was stand-up comedian Dana Carvey. Michaels was impressed by Carvey's talent for impressions, as well as his brain full of ideas and characters. Michaels also found Jan Hooks, Victoria Jackson, Kevin Nealon, and a young Canadian comic named Mike Myers. (As a boy in 1972, Myers had starred in a TV commercial—his mother was played by Gilda Radner.)

The cast was completed by Phil Hartman. His versatility in front of the camera is well documented, but what was even more important for the show's renewed success was what he added backstage. “Phil was a rock,” remembers Jan Hooks. Jon Lovits called him a “big brother.” “He was my mentor,” said Mike Myers. Now Studio 8H had something it had sorely been lacking: a family atmosphere—and it showed in front of the camera.

As in the past, memorable recurring characters and political satire propelled the show, and
Saturday Night Live
enjoyed its third golden age. A few standouts:

• Dana Carvey's Church Lady, Garth, and George Bush. On Bush: At first, “I couldn't do him at all…but then one night I just sort of hooked it, and it was that phrase ‘that thing out there, that guy out there, doin' that thing,' and from there on it was easy.”

• Mike Myers's Simon, Sprockets, and
Wayne's World.
Conan O'Brien, a writer for the show from 1988 to 1991, recalls Myers's
first week: “He came to us and said he had this character named Wayne who had a cable show in his basement. We politely told him that we didn't think it was his best idea…I felt sorry for him. I thought, ‘This poor kid is going to have to learn the hard way.'” But Michaels liked the character and later worked with Myers in 1992 to produce a feature film based on it.
Wayne's World
was the only movie derived from an
SNL
sketch to earn over $100 million.

• John Lovitz's compulsive liar Tommy Flannagin and Master Thespian. He created the character when he was 18 but never thought it would work on
SNL.
“I was just goofing around,” he remembers, “saying ‘I'm Master Thespian!' And now they've built an entire set for it.”

• Phil Hartman's Frank Sinatra. Joe Piscopo, who'd done Sinatra on the show 10 years before, says that the Sinatra family hated Hartman's impression. “I think there's some kind of law: Don't even attempt to do Sinatra unless you're Italian.”

In his quest to create stars, Michaels continued packing the stage with featured players. He struck gold in 1990 and 1991 by adding a slew of comics who had grown up watching
SNL
: Tim Meadows, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, David Spade, Chris Rock, Chris Farley, Ellen Cleghorne, and Julia Sweeney. The opening credits in 1991 seemed to go on forever, and there were more people backstage than ever before.

In fact, viewers barely noticed when Carvey, Lovitz, and Hartman left the show because the new, younger performers were catering to a new, even younger audience, taking on subjects such as shopping malls, frat parties, and MTV.

Sandler, Rock, and Farley emerged as the new big stars. In addition to bringing back much of the rebellious anything-can-happen comedy that recalled the early days, the young cast members brought back another backstage tradition: drugs. Especially Farley, who did everything in excess. (Unfortunately for him, his hero was John Belushi. Both died of drug overdoses at the age of 33.)

Most critics called
SNL
in the early-1990s a “juvenile” show, but that was fine by NBC. The 18 to 34 demographic brought in the highest advertising dollars—and the show remained high in the ratings…for a while.

By 1995 the writers were finding it increasingly tough to find new material for overused characters, which resulted in yet another a succession of seemingly endless and pointless skits. Once again, the show had become difficult to watch. The network pressured
SNL
to clean house one more time, and Michaels agreed:

No one anywhere was saying, “
SNL
is doing what it's supposed to be doing,” or “These people are funny.” So we had to let Adam Sandler go with two years on his contract, and Farley with a year. And Chris Rock had gone on to do
In Living Color
.

It was time for a new cast.

The roller-coaster ride continued. To read about SNL's long crawl back to the top, go to page 490.

• The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.”

• “For mad scientists who keep brains in jars, here's a tip: Why not add a slice of lemon to each jar, for freshness.”

• “I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep both Dracula and Superman away.”

• “Can't the Marx Brothers be arrested and maybe even tortured for all the confusion and problems they've caused?”

• “The crows were all calling to him, thought Caw.”

• “Why do the caterpillar and the ant have to be enemies? One eats leaves, and the other eats caterpillars.…Oh, I see now.”

• “Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.”

• “Instead of a Seeing Eye dog, what about a gun? It's cheaper than a dog, plus if you walk around shooting all the time, people are going to get out of the way. Cars, too.”

Uncle John predicts that you won't believe some of the ridiculous things people use to tell fortunes. How does he know? His Ouija board told him.

Scarpomancy:
Predict someone's future by studying their old shoes.

Tiromancy:
Study the shape, holes, mold, and other features on a piece of cheese.

Scatomancy:
Predict your future by studying your own poop. (Not to be confused with
spatulamancy,
the study of “skin, bones, and excrement.”)

Bibliomancy:
Open the Bible and read the first passage you see—that's your fortune. (In some Christian denominations, this is grounds for excommunication.)

Stichomancy:
Read the first passage of
any
book you see.

Pynchonomancy:
Throw darts at a paperback copy of
Gravity's Rainbow,
by Thomas Pynchon, then read the sentence on the deepest page penetrated by the dart.

Uromancy:
Predict someone's future by studying their urine.

Dilitiriomancy:
Feed African
benge
poison to a chicken. Ask the gods a question, being careful to end the question with, “if the chicken dies, the answer is yes,” or “if the chicken dies, the answer is no.” Then wait to see if the chicken dies.

Haruspication:
Study the guts of an animal, preferably a sacred one.

Hepatoscopy:
Study only the animal's liver; ignore the rest of the guts.

Alphitomancy:
Feed a special cake to an alleged wrongdoer. An innocent person will be able to eat and digest the cake, a guilty person will gag on the cake or become ill.

Alepouomancy:
Draw a grid in the dirt outside your village. Each square represents a different question. Sprinkle the grid with peanuts, wait for a fox to eat them, then study the fox's footprints to see how the questions are answered.

Here's a game: a lot of American cities have had other names throughout their histories. Can you guess which are which?

 

Answers

1
. h;
2
. j;
3
. n;
4
. g;
5
. m;
6
. f;
7
. d;
8
. a;
9
. p;
10
. t;
11
. s;
12
. q;
13
. e;
14
. c;
15
. o;
16
. r;
17
. i;
18
. l;
19
. k;
20
. b