Live From New York Part 25

I cannot tell you how important that was - getting to a show and having just some of these skills that (a) no one expects you to have and (b) no one teaches you to have. I can remember being in my first edit session on my first episode of Seinfeld, and you were sort of invited into the editing room to come in and take a look. And I was able to say things and solve some problems that helped cut some time out of the episode, because we were always long on Seinfeld.

DAVID SPADE:.

It's kind of like surgery - Sat.u.r.day Night Live - where you're glad afterwards, but it's hard during. And you say you would never do it again. But it was the reason I got everything else, it's what started me, and it was really the best thing that I could have done.

DANA CARVEY:.

It's terrifying, and I can still be scared thinking about it. It's just when you're sitting there at eleven-fifteen and you're getting your makeup and, man, you're so tired you can't even possibly imagine having the strength to do the show. Just very, very, very stimulating. And nothing will ever be quite the same. So you do create sort of a bond, almost like war buddies, with people who were on the show with you. Kind of an instant bond.

CHRIS ROCK:.

Sat.u.r.day Night Live brands you as professional. No matter what is written about me to this day, SNL comes up. It's the Harvard of Comedy, you know. Everybody pa.s.sed through it. You b.u.mp into people. I saw Randy Quaid the other day; he's like a frat brother. I never met him before, but we're frat brothers. I did a movie one time, it was an extra part, d.a.m.n near. It was Sgt. Bilko. I had a little part, man, nothing big at all, but Dan Aykroyd let me use his trailer when he left for the day. Because I'm a frat brother. It was incredible - big-a.s.s TV and a stereo system, a place I could relax. You know, frat brother. It will be with me - the fact that I was on the show and had any success - will be with me forever. And that's an important thing.

FRED WOLF:.

Sat.u.r.day Night Live is the rock and roll of comedy. All comedians envy rock and rollers, and the show has that mystique about it. I've written on a lot of TV shows and never really came close to seeing anything like it. There's something about that show that's phenomenal.

I don't know of anyone who was on Sat.u.r.day Night Live as a performer who clicked - I'm talking about the Lorne Michaels years - and then years later didn't click in another capacity as a performer. If you've been there five years and you're not able to do a movie or star in your own TV show, then I think you probably failed ultimately in your career.

LORNE MICHAELS:.

Very often the least talented people are the very first to declare undying loyalty. Because the other people have more choices. To me it isn't that people shouldn't leave or that it's a betrayal to leave, because I think people have an obligation to their own talent and to express it. The more artistic they are, generally the more restless they are anyway.

When people come up to me at the party at the end of their first year and say, "I can't tell you how much I appreciate this, and I'm so grateful for this opportunity," I always go, "Well, let's talk about this in year six, because that's when it will actually matter. Because now all the power is on my side and you have no power." The test of character is how people behave when they're successful and they have more power. Some people handle it really well.

On Sat.u.r.day Night Live, guest and host are one and the same. Hundreds of celebrities, not all of them from show business, some more notorious than famous, have filled that double role. Some ingratiated themselves with the SNL regulars, and vice versa, while others proved uncomfortable, antagonistic, and even, in one or two cases, s.e.xually predatory.

TIM MEADOWS:.

The biggest problem with Steven Seagal was that he would complain about jokes that he didn't get, so it was like - you can't explain something to somebody in German if they don't speak German. He just wasn't funny and he was very critical of the cast and the writing staff. He didn't realize that you can't tell somebody they're stupid on Wednesday and expect them to continue writing for you on Sat.u.r.day.

DAVID SPADE:.

He didn't want to go along with what the plan was that week, and as a result, I think that was the first week that I heard talk about replacing the host and just doing a cast show.

JULIA SWEENEY:.

When we pitched our ideas for Seagal at our Monday meeting, he gave us some of his own sketch ideas. And some of his sketch ideas were so heinous, but so hilariously awful, it was like we were on Candid Camera.

He had this idea that he's a therapist and he wanted Victoria Jackson to be his patient who's just been raped. And the therapist says, "You're going to have to come to me twice a week for like three years," because, he said, "that's how therapists f.u.c.king are. They're just trying to get your money." And then he says that the psychiatrist tries to have s.e.x with her.

TIM MEADOWS:.

I love Chevy Chase. I do. He rubbed some people the wrong way, but when he was here, it was like just watching a car accident over and over again just watching him deal with people. Because he didn't care about what he said. He has no qualm about telling you you're an idiot, but not just saying it but showing you, you know, treating people really bad and being a real smart-a.s.s. But I actually like him, though. He didn't call me an idiot, he was nice to me.

CHRIS ELLIOTT:.

I remember having dinner with John Travolta and Lorne. He talked to Lorne about Sat.u.r.day Night Live and how it had influenced him and how he had always felt that Welcome Back, Kotter was kind of the prime-time sister show to Sat.u.r.day Night Live. And I remember Lorne just politely sort of nodding and going, "Right, right," and then afterwards walking back to Rockefeller Center with Lorne and how that really bugged him, that Travolta brought that up: "I was surprised to hear that we were the sister show to Welcome Back, Kotter."

DANA CARVEY:.

Keith Richards I remember. There was a horse backstage that week, and I was in my dressing area and I saw Keith Richards go up, hold the horse's face in his hands, and go, "You're a fine horse, aren't you?" I'll never forget that. Working with the athletes was great, like playing catch with Joe Montana, because I had a "Church Chat" where he threw a football to me - playing catch and running patterns with Joe Montana. With Wayne Gretzky we did a "Wayne's World" thing. I had never been on skates or played hockey, so Wayne Gretzky kneeled down and put on my shin guards. Wayne Gretzky showed me how to hold a hockey stick. I mean, that's like unbelievable. He was the most humble superstar I guess I had ever met.

TOM HANKS, Host: The second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth times I did the show were just a blast. It's a one-week performance camp where everybody's operating from a sense of just incredible amounts of glee and manic energy as well as vast amounts of fear and flop sweat. That's Sat.u.r.day Night Live, and there is absolutely nothing else like it.

KEVIN NEALON:.

Musicwise, it was just a dream come true, because I grew up with the Beatles and James Taylor and Paul Simon, and those are people who came through a lot. You know, sitting next to Paul McCartney as he's playing "Hey Jude" during rehearsal. And Mick Jagger came on the show. And Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam, he's doing three songs and he's not sure which three to do, so he's asking during rehearsal, "So, what do you think I should do?" So that's why I loved the show and the only reason I stayed so long, is because I loved doing it, I loved living in New York City, and I loved being able to work with all of these talented people who came through every week. A lot of people just wanted to use that show as a stepping-stone to get out and move on. But I just loved being there.

AL FRANKEN:.

Paul McCartney was the musical guest. The musical guest usually rehea.r.s.es on Thursday afternoon, and if we had someone like Clapton or Paul McCartney, 8H would just fill up with people from 30 Rock to see the rehearsal. The place was just jammed.

Paul does two songs, and Lorne comes up to him and says to him, "Paul, could you do 'Hey Jude'?" And Paul goes like, "Huh. I'm not sure if I remember it really." And I go like, "Hey Jude, don't be afraid -" and he goes, "No, stop! Stop! You'll get it wrong." And then he thinks about it for a second and he goes, "Okay, okay, okay," and he goes to this guy and talks to him and then sits down and they do "Hey Jude." And "Hey Jude" was like the song that when you were sixteen and you were driving and got to your destination and "Hey Jude" was on the radio, you just sat there and listened to it.

He's playing "Hey Jude" and I'm beginning to tear up and think about what's happened to my life since I've been sixteen, where'd my life go, and everybody else in the place is beginning to cry. So Sat.u.r.day, the music rehea.r.s.es after dinner or during dinner and we stop blocking and they do the music rehearsal. So again it's McCartney and again the place is jam-packed with people. He plays "Hey Jude" and the same thing happens. People start crying and I get kind of misty. And then I see a set. We're doing the Gap Girls that week, and every time we do the Gap Girls we have the set that has thousands and thousands of dollars' worth of Gap clothes in it, including a shelving of jeans, and they always put a guard in front of it so n.o.body would take any of the clothes. And I'm looking at the guard and the guard is crying. And, you know, I haven't had any time to shop. So we get to dress and "Hey Jude," and the audience is going like, "Unbelievable! He's playing 'Hey Jude,' I can't believe it." I'm looking at the guard, who's still very moved. I'm thinking I'm not going to have time on Sunday to go shopping and I need some jeans. So on-air, the Gap set was dark and the guard was totally focused on McCartney singing "Hey Jude," so I just started looking for some 3430 jeans and took them.

I went to Dan the prop guy and told him I took two pair of jeans. I was willing to pay for them, I just didn't want to spend the time shopping.

CHRIS ELLIOTT:.

Joey b.u.t.tafuco, that was the lowest point for me at SNL, walking back to my dressing room and seeing this guy just walk by me and go, "Hi, Chris," and I just said, "Hi, Joe." And then I had to be in a sketch with him.

It literally was the worst year of my life. I went there too late after I had a career. I had already done my own TV show and had eight years with Dave, and then I got there and it was a huge cast. I kept thinking every show, "Okay, I'll do something next week that's better," you know. And I never did. And the year got away from me. And it was devastating, because I think for everybody who's like my age and in comedy, SNL was probably the reason that we tried to get into it. For the first few years at Letterman, I thought, you know, it was a stepping-stone - to Sat.u.r.day Night Live. And to fail that miserably there for me was a big deal.

DAVID SPADE:.

They say that if you go with the flow it's always better, and that would be my recommendation to anyone going on the show: If you're going to go on, then just make fun of yourself and have a great time. It is always endearing to watch someone make fun of themselves. You can't hate someone that actually says, "I'm an idiot. I'm admitting I know you think so, and I'm okay with it," and it kind of goes away, and it's funny. But to fight every possible sketch and everything that makes you look not cool and all that is exhausting.

TOM HANKS:.

"The Five-Timers Club" is still one of my favorite sketches. By that time I had figured that the secret of being the host of the show is to concern yourself only with the monologue. Because if you have a good monologue, everybody thinks the entire show was great. If you have a poor monologue, it means you have to go and win back the favor of the people who are watching at home. So by the fifth time, I was like pushing for something slam dunk. We must have a magnificent monologue. And I think Lorne said, "Well, why don't we do something like, you get to join a select club?" And that was that.

I think that was the first time I met Paul Simon. He did a cameo. So there was definitely truth to the idea that I felt I was entering a pantheon of Sat.u.r.day Night legends. The other great thing about that "Five-Timers Club" was, they had Ralph Nader outside the door trying to get in, because he had hosted the show once. So it's a heady atmosphere, man. Suddenly you're like goofing with Ralph Nader and Paul Simon.

ALEC BALDWIN, Host: I did a sketch once in the early days when we did this really silly send-up of Brando in The Wild One. We did "The Environmentally Sensitive One." I do my Brando impersonation and I roll into town, and Victoria Jackson is the girl I pick up in town, and she's got the tight sweater and the huge b.o.o.bs sticking in your face. Phil Hartman plays her father, who's the head of a chemical manufacturing company that's dumping waste into the local lake and killing everybody. It was this incredibly silly, silly sketch.

In the end, when the chemical factory is exploding and killing everybody in town, I'm offering Victoria a chance to ride off on my motorcycle with me. Phil Hartman beseeches me, he says the line "Take me with you," and it was just the way he said the line, I always remember that as one of the times I almost cracked up on-camera. He just grabbed me and with this incredible yearning, this incredible panic, said, "Take me with you." I thought I was going to p.i.s.s in my pants in the middle of the show.

I can be sitting there in one of those NPR sketches saying "wiener" and "b.a.l.l.s" and "lick my b.a.l.l.s" and "sweaty b.a.l.l.s," and I don't think that that's funny; I appreciate that other people do. But Phil Hartman could walk up to me and say, "Take me with you," and he had that little sob inside the line, you know, and I thought I was going to pa.s.s out. It was all I could do to keep from laughing.

TOM HANKS:.

I think you figure out after a while that there are some sketches out there that are floating around and they have yet to land on a show and they keep bringing them back again. You realize there's a reason these sketches are still just floating around and haven't landed on the show. There've been times we've been at the read-through and you can tell by everybody's groans that you're reading for the fourth time some sketch that somebody just thinks is great, hilarious, and they're submitting again, hoping that the host will click with it or something will happen like that.

I know there was one sketch that we'd actually put on its feet - I can't remember what show it was, but it was called "The p.e.n.i.s Song." It was all about us singing this song called "p.e.n.i.s, p.e.n.i.s, p.e.n.i.s, p.e.n.i.s, p.e.n.i.s, All Day Long. p.e.n.i.s, p.e.n.i.s, p.e.n.i.s, p.e.n.i.s, p.e.n.i.s Song." It just went on and on and on - and it got cut. And so I thought, "Well, that'll never be seen again." But then it showed up about three shows later. Somebody else was hosting. And so somebody else got to sing "The p.e.n.i.s Song" on TV, G.o.d bless him. Can't remember who it was.

On one of the earliest times I did the show, when NBC still had Standards and Practices, we read a hilarious sketch called "Jew, Not a Jew," which was a game show in which you try to figure out who's Jewish and who's not. Standards and Practices wouldn't let it on the first time but, like when I did the show, I don't know, either the fourth, fifth, sixth time, by that time there was no Standards and Practices, and so we were trying to figure out something to do. Then Al Franken said, "Well, how about 'Jew, Not a Jew'?" I said, "You guys haven't done that yet?" And so we pulled out "Jew, Not a Jew" and it killed. It was hilarious.

But when you're there for a while, you begin to get - you recognize the patina of a sketch that has yet to be on the air because no one has quite fully committed to it.

VICTORIA JACKSON, Cast Member: Lorne said I could stay as long as I want, but I was burned out. I was just tired of trying to think of ideas. The only thing I figured out how to write was "Update Handstands." How many different ways can you do a handstand? They had one with a flag on my b.u.t.t.

DANA CARVEY:.

By '93 I'd done seven years, George Bush had run its course, "Wayne's World," Church Lady had all been done - basically I thought I'd done as much as I could do. My younger friends who were right behind me - David Spade, Chris Farley, and Adam Sandler - were bursting with energy. They'd been on the junior varsity two or three years and it just seemed like a natural time for them to take over the show. Dennis Miller had left, Jon Lovitz had left, and Nora Dunn had left. Bonnie and Terry Turner were leaving right around that time. It was a close call, because Phil Hartman was still there, but it felt like the right time to go. I just didn't want to stay too long.

Very quickly you feel incredibly old after you leave the show. What happens is that people come in, you're thirty-one, and then all of a sudden you're forty in the blink of an eye, and then there's a cast member who's twenty-four, looking at you like you're Chevy Chase or Dan Aykroyd and shaking when they talk to you. And you go, "But I was just the new guy a second ago."

I know that Lorne didn't want me to leave, so it was bittersweet that way. He definitely wanted to keep me through the election, which I did until Clinton was sworn in and stuff, and that added a year and a half. I stayed. I definitely felt some sense of loyalty in that sense. I didn't want to leave him in the lurch.

I had such a lucky run on that show that it felt like the right time. I still feel that way. I have no regrets. If I'd left after five years, I'd have missed out on a lot, but if I'd stayed two more years, into nine years, I don't think it would have been the right move for me. A lot of people stayed a lot less. Martin Short only did twenty shows. I feel bad for those guys. They didn't get to really explore it.

TOM SCHILLER, Writer: I left for good in 1993. It happened abruptly and without any human contact between me and Lorne, and it kind of threw me. Suddenly I went to the office and guys were putting my things in boxes. They said "management" had asked Lorne to clean house. But Lorne was nowhere to be found when I wanted to ask him why this was happening to me.

And yet it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened, in a way, because I should have left three years earlier.

JULIA SWEENEY:.

I would say my first two years, and even up to my third year, were fabulous. And then my last year was just like one of the worst years of my life. I don't know exactly why. I think that Lorne was feeling a pressure to concentrate more on the younger talent, which wasn't even - particularly in age - years younger than me, but it was like going from like the Dana, Phil, me sort of emphasis, to the Chris Farley, Adam Sandler sort of emphasis. I think I got one sketch out of my whole fourth year.

I complained. I think Lorne really liked me a lot, but I could see in his eyes that I wasn't part of the new order. I don't think anyone cared whether I left or I stayed. And then finally I went to him in March. I had such a difficult time. It's like every week I was writing and writing and nothing was getting on and I hadn't really been the driving comedic force of a sketch like for - like until March, when I went just insane and forced Lorne to put on a sketch that I had written for Patrick Stewart. And the sketch went on last, and it did okay. But I could tell that it was sort of a favor to me to shut me up. Overall, I was over.

In April I went and told Lorne that I wanted to quit. My contract was five years, and it had only been four years. And he would never ever tell you, "Please don't go." I wasn't looking for him to say that. I knew that even if he felt that way a thousand percent, he would never say it. But I knew that he also didn't want me to go, not so much because he wanted me there but because he didn't want to have the drama of me leaving. Not like it would be that big of a drama. But it's almost like I felt like he just wished I would disappear and we didn't even have to have the conversations about me leaving.

But by then I had so made up my mind. My agents would say, "Don't leave a job 'til you get another job." And I had saved up like $70,000, which was like to me a zillion dollars. And I felt like I would have scrubbed toilets with a toothbrush rather than come back to that show. There was no job I could imagine having to do that would have been more difficult than returning to that show the next year.

LORNE MICHAELS:.

Michael Eisner called and said he wanted to make a movie based on her character Pat, and I said I didn't think so. Then Julia came to talk to me. I had the right to stop her, because NBC owned the thing. But I said, "Good luck," and I let her make the movie. And ever since, it's been on my record. They say "Sat.u.r.day Night Live movies like It's Pat." And she's unpleasant about the show! And I go, "What?" Well, why - because her life didn't turn out quite the way she wanted? Now it has, she's done a one-woman show, and she has a baby, and she's defeated cancer.

CHRISTINE ZANDER, Writer: I got to know Phil even better. And this was after I had moved to L.A. and they had moved to L.A., after we worked together. Phil was a wonderful guy, incredibly generous and good-hearted, but I think he was difficult to get to know. I think maybe with his male friends it was easier, but I don't really feel like I knew him completely. I think he became unhappy, because the last two years the new talent started to come in, it got a little bit more cutthroat, because, you know, the old guard wasn't getting written for as much.

DAVID MANDEL:.

The final season for me was really, really exhausting. I started poking around Los Angeles for sitcom writing and got an offer from Seinfeld. If I was 90 percent sure I was leaving before, knowing I had Seinfeld pushed me to about 140 percent.

TIM MEADOWS:.

The worst year from my perspective was the year before the big changeover. The last year with Sandler and Farley and Spade and all those guys was, I think, the most fun backstage, but the least fun on-camera. We had good times and we enjoyed each other's friendships, but there were too many people. The writers and the cast people didn't gel, you know. I think after doing a certain number of years, it seemed like there were thirty people trying to race to the finish line, instead of people sort of like being a relay team and the writers handing out funny pieces for the performers to do.

There were a lot of talented people, and it was weird, because when you looked at the people that left during that big changeover, a lot of those people went over to write and produce for The Simpsons and Seinfeld. Sandler and Farley and Spade and Jay Mohr, and all these talented people that were in the cast, went on to do other things.

ROBERT WRIGHT, NBC Chairman and CEO: When Don Ohlmeyer first came in '93, we had the issue of replacing Letterman, who'd jumped to CBS, and Lorne had cleverly got himself the commission to do that. And so Lorne was going to be the executive producer of the show starring someone. "Someone" didn't exist, and Don was very anxious about this and wanted to partic.i.p.ate in it. This was the first time they were really together. So we had this sort of open audition, and people were submitting tapes and whatever, and they'd gone through a number of people, and I saw the tape on Conan. Lorne already knew Conan was the one he wanted, and I thought it was the best of all the tapes we had seen, and there were lots. It was the beginning of our relationship with Conan. Don didn't particularly like this, but he did agree that he was the best. The fact that he was totally unknown presented some huge problems for us. But Lorne got support from Don and got support from me and was willing to take on the issue that he wasn't well known. Some of the other people were known, so that was a big deal. But it's worked out well for all of us.

AL FRANKEN:.

The last season of the show that I was on, Kevin Nealon had been the "Update" anchor and was going to leave as anchor next season. So the spot was open, and it was something I'd always wanted to do, so we had sort of a test. And I did it and Norm Macdonald did it. And it got sent out to Ohlmeyer. And this is something I'd always wanted. So Lorne and Jim take me out to dinner to give me the bad news, right? I know that's what the dinner is about, but neither of them can kind of get up the courage to tell me. So we're eating dinner. We're talking about everything else. We go through the appetizer, the entree, it's a nice dinner at a nice Italian restaurant, some place downtown. Finally we get to dessert and coffee, and we're having our coffee, and I go like, "Guys - what's going on with the 'Update' thing?" "It's Ohlmeyer, it's Ohlmeyer." And I go, "Well, okay." But I'm heartbroken, and now I know I'm leaving the show. It's this big blow to me. And then the check comes. And neither Lorne nor Jim has brought their credit cards. So I have to pay for the dinner. But I got reimbursed. It has a happy ending.

LORNE MICHAELS:.

The writing was on the wall with Al when he didn't get "Update" and Norm Macdonald did. Which was a very tough decision. I think there was a feeling at that moment, from Ohlmeyer in particular, that Al was too a.s.sociated with the show - the "old" show.

NORM MACDONALD:.

Adam Sandler liked me and he told Jim Downey about me, and then Jim Downey said I could come on the show. I wanted to be a writer and performer. I wasn't a very good writer and I wasn't a very good performer, but I could be a writer-performer. And the one place I could do that was SNL, because Lorne was always good with letting writers perform if they were funny.

I always thought Chevy was the best guy at doing "Update." Most people were not good at it, you know. So I didn't think if I was bad I'd be singled out. Just basically Chevy and Dennis Miller were the only good ones, ever. So I wasn't worried about it.

JAMES DOWNEY:.

Most of my friends liked the Norm "Update." They thought it was better than previous incarnations of "Update." They liked the way we did it - deadpan, just very straight, no frills, and the jokes were smart - and they would say it was the reason they watched the show or the best thing in the show. The prevailing att.i.tude at the show and at the network was that "Update" was the problem of the show, and I know Lorne felt it was really hurting the show. He would never say it to me directly.

When we brought Norm in, Herb was still in charge of it, but because Norm was my protege, I had for the first time a lot of influence, and then I brought other people in. So "Update" was suddenly being group-written again. A lot of writers would kick in things. We liked writing stuff for Norm, because he was great at handling words. He worked with us at editing things down so they could be as tight as possible.

JANEANE GAROFALO:.

I certainly am a big fan of Jim Downey as a person. I really like Jim. But he was not in control when I was there, when he should have been. He should have been looking out for some of the cast's best interests too, and he wasn't. And he was not available for meetings. He is a great guy and an extremely funny guy and, as a person, I would hang out with Jim Downey anytime. But at that time, he was not there for the cast.

NORM MACDONALD:.

Jim Downey is the best. He was producer the first year I did "Update," and then after that he got fired as producer and I got him just to do "Update," which was good for me because I got to work with him full-time and he was great. He was a brilliant guy. He was the funniest guy there and the smartest. He would work as sort of like a great editor. You know, he would take the jokes and figure out ways to sharpen them and improve them and, you know, narrow them and stuff like that. And he knew about politics, which I had no interest in at all. So he could think politically and stuff.

JAMES DOWNEY:.

There'd be some giant hack joke that you knew would destroy but it would be an embarra.s.sing thing to do, and I could always say to Norm, "This thing will kill, but you know it's tacky." And he would not do it. Or I would say, "This is brilliant, but there's not a chance it'll get a laugh from the audience" - and we would do those.

ADAM SANDLER:.

Downey taught us our taste. I'm not sure if Jim would like that, all the bad reviews I get, but I think I'm doing stuff that Downey would like. But if Herlihy and I wrote a skit and we showed it to Downey and he smiled and then said, "What if the Canteen Boy says this," me and Herlihy would b.u.mp chests and go, "Yes! Downey gave us greatness!"

FRED WOLF:.

After Chris Rock left the show, he came back like six or seven months later to visit. And my office, at that time, it was me, Norm Macdonald, Adam Sandler, and David Spade. And we were back there and Chris Rock came to visit all of us. And he said he's been out there in the world, doing some other shows, doing some other comedies, and doing some movies, and working with In Living Color, and all this sort of stuff. And he said that it's really great but the one thing that he has recognized is that there is no one like Jim Downey out there. And that was a sad thing.

DAVID MANDEL:.

Some of the greatest jokes that were ever added to other writers' sketches at the table came from Jim Downey. So even in something he didn't necessarily write, I just - I can't explain it except to say he impacted everything that went through, and this is not to take anything away from the current people at Sat.u.r.day Night Live, who I think are great. But I've sat through the way they rewrite, and they rewrite relatively quickly, and you just know they don't stay until five in the morning. And that's not a bad thing. I'm not sure it was great that we stayed until five in the morning. But Jim Downey added things to sketches that no other human being could, and I've seen Jim like dictate a sketch from his head as if - it must be like the way genius chess players see chess. It's almost as if he's reading from a script in his head that the rest of us can't see, and he's trying to read and dictate it.

I sat in a room with him once when John Malkovich hosted. We did a Menendez brothers sketch, if you can remember, where Rob Schneider and John Malkovich played the brothers, and their testimony was that there were two other Menendez brothers - their twin brothers - who were responsible for the killing and were waiting in the bathroom, and then they would get up and go get the other Menendez brothers and come in. They would switch sides and sit down and pretend to be two other Menendez brothers. They would then be asked where the first two Menendez brothers were and be told that they were in the bathroom.

And this kept going on until then one left and never came back. I sat in the room at like six in the morning with Jim lying on a couch and basically, a couple of us got a few jokes in, but this came fully formed out of Jim's head. And to this day I've never seen anything like that.

JAMES DOWNEY:.

That summer I never heard from Lorne or anybody from the date of the last show in May of 1995. The phone never rang, which I thought was kind of insulting. Finally Dana called me and said, "I can't believe those f.u.c.king a.s.sholes haven't even talked to you." And he said, "Do you want to come to work for my show?" I said, "That's very nice of you." And then like five minutes later Mike Shoemaker called and then Lorne got on the phone and said, "Hey, you want to write for the show?" And that's when I said I would only do it if I could just do "Update."

In the same years that he was getting the most grief from network executives that he'd ever received in his career, Lorne Michaels also got an exquisitely flattering offer. Howard Stringer, the CBS president who had lured David Letterman to the network partly by buying Letterman the Ed Sullivan Theater, and the office building above it, offered to do the same for Michaels. A great admirer, Stringer thought Michaels could put CBS in the Sat.u.r.day late-night business the way Letterman had put CBS in the late-weeknight business for the first time in its history. He had a mock-up photo made of the Lorne Michaels Theater to tempt him.