by Mohr, Jay
“Plush” by Eric Kretz, Robert Emile DeLeo, Dean DeLeo and Scott Richard Weiland. Copyright © 1992 Universal Music Corp. on behalf of Milsongs. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
“Ultra Violet (Light My Way)” by Paul Hewson, Dave Evans, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen. Copyright © 1991 Universal—Polygram International Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
“Cherub Rock,” by Billy Corgan. © 1992 Cinderful Music/Chrysalis Songs (BMI). All Rights administered by Chrysalis Songs. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. WARNER BROS. PUBLICATIONS U.S. INC., Miami, FL 33014.
“You Don’t Know How It Feels,” by Tom Petty. © 1994 Gone Gator Music (ASCAP). All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. WARNER BROS. PUBLICATIONS U.S. INC., Miami, FL 33014.
Copyright © 2004 Giraffe Productions, Inc. f/s/o Jay Mohr
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher. For information address Hyperion, 77 West 66th Street, New York, New York 10023-6298.
ISBN 1-4013-9984-3
First eBook Edition: June 2004
Please Visit our Web site at
www.HyperionBooks.com
FOR JACKSON
May you one day see how truly beautiful your mother is.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Happy Hour
Chapter One
Comedy is Truth the Moment Before Anticipation
Chapter Two
Dude, How Did You Get on SNL?
Chapter Three
A Knee in the Groin
Chapter Four
Monday, Wednesday, Tuesday
Chapter Five
Swimming with Sharks
Chapter Six
Playing Well with Others
Chapter Seven
Fight or Flight?
Chapter Eight
The Motivational Speaker
Chapter Nine
Music for the Soul
Chapter Ten
Fake Pitches
Chapter Eleven
From the Cradle
Chapter Twelve
Dressing Down
Chapter Thirteen
“Good Morning, Brooklyn”
Chapter Fourteen
Lorne
Chapter Fifteen
Weekend Update
Chapter Sixteen
Give Me Little Bits of More Than I Can Take
Epilogue
Phil Hartman, U.S.A.
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge everyone at Hyperion for believing in my vision. Jennifer Lang was incredibly supportive early on in the manuscript. She always offered positive reinforcement at a time I could have been easily spooked and scared away, seeing as I had never done this before.
Josh Young is the reason you are reading this book at all. He worked tirelessly to formulate my stream-of-consciousness writing/rambling into a suitable format for mass consumption.
My manager, Barry Katz, was always very encouraging and touching with his input. Thank you, Barry.
Without Lorne Michaels there would be no book. For that matter, there would be a very different me. Thank you, Lorne, for deciding to hire me for the show. When I was last on The Tonight Show, I was introduced as a “former cast member on Saturday Night Live.” I have done almost twenty movies and a dozen television projects, but Saturday Night Live, for better or for worse, is the stick by which I am measured. I have zero regrets whatsoever.
The biggest thank-you on earth wouldn’t be sufficient for my wife, Nicole. We dated throughout my SNL career, and Nicole, you stuck by me in my darkest, craziest times. I’m sorry I didn’t call after the earthquake. I was drowning and should have realized that you were land. Thank you for our son. Because of you, I live forever.
—JM
Prologue
Happy Hour
IT WAS glorious. I was sitting in the back of a restaurant at 2:00 A.M. with Lorne Michaels on my left, Patti Reagan on my right, and the entire cast and crew of Saturday Night Live spread out before us. Patti’s tits were pushed up to her chin and she was dripping with diamonds. I couldn’t help noticing that she had a piece of spinach stuck to her two front teeth, making it appear as if they had been knocked out in a bar fight. She was really drunk and she wasn’t saying much, so she was easy to ignore. Lorne, however, was looking typically regal and totally relaxed, and he was treating me like I was his new neighbor in the Hamptons who dropped in for an afternoon cocktail. It was all very pleasant.
I had been off Saturday Night Live for nearly a year, and I certainly hadn’t expected to be in this place at this time. But because the show is always the best party in town, I had returned to watch a taping and then dropped by the traditional wrap party. From the moment I walked into 30 Rock earlier that evening, I felt like the prodigal featured player returning home. Access was easier than when I was on the show. Heads nodded, velvet ropes were unhinged, checkpoints were passed. No one had asked for my ID or my special night badge. The feeling was: He’s one of us. He’s with the show.
John Goodman was the host. Though he had cohosted with Dan Aykroyd during my second season, I had no idea that he knew me from the wallpaper until that night. As he barreled past me in full costume ninety seconds before one of his sketches aired, Goodman stopped in his tracks, did a 180, and faced me. “Jay, how you doing?” he asked. He offered me his giant hand for a quick handshake and then continued his dash to the stage. Man, did I feel like a big shot.
Even the wrap party felt familiar. There were the same three layers of defense. At the bar in the front of the room were the electricians, grips, cue card holders, and interns knocking back drinks. These were the people who worked the hardest during the week. They deserved the bar to themselves. Past the bar were the tables where the cast members sat eating dinner. And in the back of the room were the tables reserved for the producers, the musical guests, the host, and of course, Lorne. But as I drifted through the restaurant, a strange sensation came over me. I felt as if I didn’t know anyone, even though I recognized nearly everyone.
I did say hello to a few of the performers who had been on during my two years, like David Spade, Norm Macdonald, and Tim Meadows, but I wasn’t about to sit down with them and swap war stories. I wouldn’t have known what to say because nothing on the outside ever had any relevance to what happened inside Saturday Night Live. Norm was a guy who wouldn’t be able to talk his way out of a mental hospital. If most people were committed, they would eventually convince the doctor that a terrible mistake had been made. Not Norm. He would be there the rest of his life, saying things like “I notice I’m wearing a gown” and “So you really want me to pee in that bedpan.” Spade was only on the show so he could sleep with models, and what could I possibly say to Tim Meadows? The guy had been on the show so long that his nickname should’ve been “grandfather clause.”
Just as I was feeling as though it might be time to leave, I realized that I had somehow made my way through the restaurant to the producer’s corner and was standing directly in front of Lorne’s table. My initial thought was to shake his hand, say hello, and be done with the niceties, but Lorne gave me a disarmingly warm greeting and motioned for me to sit down next to him.
Usually Lorne’s table was like a receiving line, yet over the next hour almost no one interrupted because we were so obviously deep in conversation. When someone did stop by to offer the proverbial “great show,” Lorne would give them a politely dismissive handshake like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. He made it clear that he was talking to me. And we were deep in conversation.
“How are you? How are things?” he was asking me. He seemed to mean
it, because he waited to hear my answer and then pressed me for details. I filled him in on my life as Wayne Foxworthy on The Jeff Foxworthy Show and talked about auditioning for movies. “That’s great,” he affirmed. “Movies would be great for you.” At one point, he asked me if I was hungry. “You should eat,” he said paternally. “You know what’s really good here is the penne pasta with rock shrimp.”
At first I had felt like I had intruded on Lorne and Patti Reagan. But I soon realized that she was really hammered and Lorne was more interested in talking to me than President Reagan’s sloshed daughter. At some point she left.
My conversation with Lorne drifted into relationships and life lessons. “How’s Nicole?” Lorne asked, naming my girlfriend without prompting. He told me that every man should have three wives—“one in his twenties, one in his thirties and forties, and one in his fifties, when he knows what he really wants.” Lorne had followed that path, and had a son with his third wife.
We were talking as equals—equals of sorts, anyway—because I no longer worked for him. I liked the man more than I ever had—even more than when I was sitting in his office and he told me that I was the future of Saturday Night Live.
At 3:00 A.M. we both picked up our coats and walked out together. Just before Lorne stepped into his limo, he turned to me. “It was really good to see you again, Jay,” he said. I assured him the feeling was mutual.
As Lorne’s car drove away, I began to hail a cab but was stopped by Max, the show’s transportation captain. Max had just witnessed Lorne and me parting company. He asked if I was going home, and I told him I was. He motioned for a black Lincoln Town Car to move forward and take me home.
It was the first time I truly felt like I belonged to one of the greatest traditions in television history.
One
Comedy is Truth
the Moment
Before Anticipation
I WAS sitting on a couch all alone in the writers’ room feeling like an idiot.
It was my first day at work on Saturday Night Live and I was told to arrive at 11:00 A.M. for a meeting with Marci Klein and Michael Shoemaker. Marci was the show’s talent booker who functioned like a producer at large, and she had basically hired me. “Shoe” was a longtime producer of the show. The previous night I had gone to bed early in mortal terror of being late. Imagine, here is the greatest job you will ever have, and you’re the asshole who shows up late. Not me, baby.
My alarm was set for six in the morning. The plan was to get up early, take a steambath, work out, rough out some sketches for the show, and then head uptown to the office. I had a dream that night that all my sketches sucked and I got fired. When my alarm went off at the crack of dawn, I was so grateful to still have the job that I hadn’t started that I kneeled next to my bed and thanked God. I spent the rest of my morning racking my brain for better ideas. I went back over my sketches and reassured myself they were fine. Needless to say, the gym and the steam were out. It’s probably a bad idea to take a steam while you’re hyperventilating anyway.
From the time I left my St. Mark’s Place apartment in the East Village, I never touched the ground. Didn’t these people on the street know where I was going? If they knew, they would all be looking at me differently. Buying coffee on the way to the subway, I had to fight the urge to blurt out, “I’m on my way to Saturday Night Live! I’m the new guy!” I swear I came really close. I figured there would be some jerk who wouldn’t believe me. I would have to stand there and explain everything to him and convince him that I wasn’t lying, I really was the luckiest guy on earth. After all that, I would be running a little behind, so I kept my mouth shut.
I bought a newspaper to read on the train but I couldn’t even see straight, let alone read the New York Post. I kept checking my watch to make sure I wasn’t running late. With each stop along the way, my breath grew a little shorter. This is a joke, right? Who am I kidding? There is absolutely no conceivable way I belong on SNL. They are all going to find me out. I’m a fraud. Someone made a mistake here. Me? “Forty-ninth Street!” Uh-oh. Here we go. I walked up the stairs from the train, and when I reached the top, I first saw it.
Rockefeller Plaza is an impressive piece of architecture. It almost looks like a missile the way it juts defiantly into a menacing skyline. The ice skating rink is directly in front of the main entrance of the building, but it’s a story below street level so you can lean over the railing and watch couples skate, which is a nice touch. When you enter the building, the paint on the wall is covered with beautiful yet imposing drawings of Greek gods. These gigantic, muscular men holding entire planets are staring down at you. For some reason, I noticed that they all looked sort of bummed out.
I had arrived at the security desk just before 10:30 A.M. Plenty of time to spare. I gave the security guard my name and told him that I was a new cast member on Saturday Night Live. The guard had a thick Caribbean accent, and it was obvious that he didn’t really give a shit who I was. He asked me who my contact was. I had never heard that expression before. I had heard, “Who are you going to see?”—but never “Who’s your contact?” I muttered the unthinkable: “I don’t know.” That’s one way to get yourself to the back of the line. Tell the guard that you don’t even know who your contact is. He told me, the dummy with the backpack and no contact, to wait, and he began chatting up a young lady.
Three minutes later, the guard asked me again who my contact was. I told him Lorne Michaels. Why fuck around, right? The guard called the receptionist on the seventeenth floor to tell her that I had arrived. She wasn’t there.
The guard cradled the phone against his ear for about ten minutes while he checked in about fifty more people. He put the phone down and walked away to help someone else. He didn’t say anything to me. At this point, I was becoming panic-stricken. I couldn’t remember a single name to give this guy and it was clear I was going nowhere until this guy connected with somebody upstairs. I looked at my watch: 11:05. Later, pal.
I slinked through “Checkpoint Charlie” with the next group of suits. Damn, why didn’t I wear a suit? I tried to blend in as best I could, walk-strolling onto the elevator. My backpack was sticking out about a foot behind me, so I leaned up against the railing. I was still about two feet from the door. I was officially in everyone’s way. I prayed for the doors to close before the guard arrested me.
The elevator doors whooshed closed, and we began our ascent—the eight suits and the jackass in the back with a two-foot backpack taking up all the room. All the suits were blue. They would stay blue the remainder of my stay on the show. I felt really cool pushing the elevator button for seventeen. I figured they all knew what floor that was and would wonder why I was going there. No one even flinched. I stepped off the elevator at 11:07 A.M. The carpet on the seventeenth floor was also blue. This was where the writers’ offices, the writers’ room, reception, and executive producer Lorne Michaels’s office were located.
After getting my bearings, I noticed what looked like a reception desk to my right. I walked over to introduce myself to everyone, but found that everyone was no one. I was hit with the funny feeling that I was the only person on the floor. To the best of my knowledge, I was right. So I took a seat on a flower-print couch that looked like it had been flown in from Miami and waited.
At one o’clock, the receptionist arrived. She began setting up her desk and checking her voice mails. I had to pee. I asked her where the bathrooms were and prayed she didn’t ask me who my contact was.
Walking down the hallways of the seventeenth floor is impressive and intimidating. The walls are lined with photos from past episodes of the show. Every photo, no matter how tall you are, is at eye level. As I walked toward the bathroom I passed Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd, Mick Jagger, Bill Murray, Martin Short, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, Dennis Miller—everyone. They were all frozen in time, each a piece of history, a part of the heritage of the show. I walked too far and found myself in an office covered in Christmas decorations�
��in August. Very decorated and very empty. Good God, I had to pee!
On my way back from the toilet, I backtracked through John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Paul McCartney, and Madonna. I reached the reception area and sat alone on the flowery couch for another half hour. When the receptionist returned, I told her who I was and that I was supposed to meet with Marci Klein and Michael Shoemaker. She told me that neither one of them would be in until at least three o’clock.
Three?! It’s one-thirty, for Christ’s sake! I was told that if I liked, I could wait for them on the couch. So I waited.
At around two-thirty, people started trickling in. I recognized a few. Adam Sandler came over and said hi and then went somewhere. Marci Klein never came in that day. Michael Shoemaker came in around four.
Shoemaker introduced himself to me. An Ivy League–looking guy in his forties, he was very pleasant, but as he spoke, I couldn’t help but notice that he had a nervous tic. It was really distracting. This guy is giving me the rundown, and I’m staring at his face like an idiot.
