Gasping for Airtime

by Mohr, Jay

  Eleven

  From the Cradle

  ERIC CLAPTON kept hugging me.

  It was the first show of my second season. Clapton had an album coming out called From the Cradle. It was a great blues album. On it, he covered some Willie Dixon songs and other blues songs that had inspired him throughout his career. He was onstage on a Thursday afternoon doing a sound rehearsal. I walked into studio 8-H just in time to watch him play “Five Long Years.” A week earlier I had seen Buddy Guy in concert in Central Park. “Five Long Years” was on Buddy’s new album as well. When Clapton walked offstage after the song finished, I approached him, introduced myself to him, and shook his hand. He took my hand as if we were friends from college and it had been years since we last saw each other.

  “I saw Buddy Guy play that song last week and I didn’t think it could be played any better, but you did it,” I said.

  Clapton put his arm around my neck and started laughing. “Aw, thanks, man,” he said.

  “Buddy doesn’t look at the chords, though,” I added.

  Clapton went bananas. He started laughing so loud that people across the studio were looking over to see what on earth was making Eric Clapton crack up. The guy was doubled over. He kept laughing and barely squeaking out, “You’re right! You’re right!”

  I started to become self-conscious. Everybody was looking at us, and he just kept laughing. I didn’t think what I said was as funny as he did, but he kept hugging me and telling me how right I was. I wanted to tell him that he really shouldn’t find me this interesting. I wanted to say, “Dude, relax. You’re Clapton!”

  Eventually Eric Clapton and I broke off our embrace long enough for him to walk to his dressing room. I stood there for a moment, letting what just happened sink in.

  I was woken up by a tap on the shoulder from Marci Klein. “What were you two just talking about?” she asked.

  I didn’t want to explain to her who Buddy Guy was or who wrote the song “Five Long Years” and how I didn’t expect Clapton to react the way he did. Instead, I played it cool. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Nothing. We were just rappin’.”

  I figured that if I could make Marci believe that Eric Clapton thought I was cool and that sometimes Clapton and I just talk and make each other laugh, that she might tell Lorne what a hot property I was—and that would lead to my being in more sketches. No such luck.

  Marci jabbed her finger at me. “You are not allowed to ask the musical guest to be in a sketch,” she chastised in her Smashing Pumpkins concert tone.

  Though I assured her that wasn’t the case, I don’t think she believed me. Even after my summer writing binge, I was light-years from having enough sketch ideas that I could work Eric Clapton into any of them.

  I truly believed that my second year on the show would be different. During our summer hiatus, I had filmed a movie entitled Stranger Things for Castle Rock Entertainment, Rob Reiner’s production company. The movie was directed by Jason Alexander of Seinfeld, and he starred in it along with Joe Mantegna, Lolita Davidovich, and James Woods. By auditioning, I had landed the part of Joe Mantegna’s bumbling nephew. All my scenes had funny stuff in them, and I was thrilled to finally be in my first motion picture.

  It was evident early on during production that Joe, James, and I had a great chemistry for comedy, or at least I thought we did. I had the time of my life as I acted across from an Academy Award nominee and a seasoned pro. Almost every day we shot, I thought about how when the film became a blockbuster hit, people all over the country would watch Saturday Night Live with renewed interest because “that guy Jay Mohr is on it.”

  But it wasn’t long before my big hit movie evaporated. The movie was edited by early fall, and I was invited to a screening at the Galaxy Theater in Hollywood. My agent warned me that the studio’s holding a pre-release screening and not a premiere wasn’t a good sign. The entire night was steeped in foreshadowing—beginning with my running out of gas on the way to the theater in the pouring rain.

  But when Jason Alexander took the stage to introduce the film, I knew the fix was in. He was wearing a red sweater the exact color of the curtain behind him. With all the spotlights shining on him, all you could see was his head and his jeans. I leaned over to Nicole and said, “Who told him to wear the red sweater? Maybe there should have been a change of clothes in the car in case there’s a red curtain in the theater. What are the odds? Maybe fifty-fifty.”

  Then the lights went down and the film started. Three minutes into the movie I knew it was going to be a disaster. The tone was all wrong. The music was all literally in Seinfeld instrumental tones. Jason and Lolita had this long courting scene in which they skirted the issue of their relationship. It lasted so long it became torturous to watch.

  I had returned from summer to 30 Rock with a real swagger about the movie. Just wait until this baby hits the theaters, I thought to myself. I spent three months telling my coworkers and anyone else who would listen to keep their eyes peeled for Stranger Things. But even if they had their eyes peeled, it would have been difficult for them to find the film. The title was changed from Stranger Things to For Better or Worse, and the film went straight to video.

  When I went back to the seventeenth floor for the first time, I felt something there I never had before: familiarity. All the tables were in the same place and all the walls were where I left them. I knew the people around me. I knew what they sounded like. I knew their personalities. I had seen them laugh, and I had seen them scream.

  At the first table read, I had two sketches. One of them didn’t get any laughs. It was funny in my head the night before when I had written it down and handed it in, but at the table it was dying. Lorne narrated as he always did and everyone read their parts well, but the sketch just wasn’t funny. When my sketch ended, the room was quiet and everyone reached for the next sketch to read. From the table Adam Sandler shouted in a Joe Dicso impression, “Cast for Good-nights! Cast for Good-nights!” Everyone laughed, and for the first time I felt a part of everything.

  By Adam’s teasing me, I felt a little more accepted. To the new people, it probably looked like we were all old friends. To the old people, it was Sandler mocking one of the guys. I wasn’t imagining it. Everyone was treating me a little differently. I had earned a modicum of respect. I worked hard. I was no longer on the writing staff. I had asked Ruthanne to negotiate me out of the writer’s contract, and the show happily obliged. I never had to sit through rewrites again—though I did anyway. I contributed for as long as I could, which was normally until around three in the morning.

  The first show of my second season was hosted by Steve Martin (and the musical guest was Eric Clapton). Neither one of my sketches was on the air, but I had a few lines in three others. The funniest was a pitch meeting at a marketing firm for a new candy bar named Nutriffic! In the sketch, Chris Elliott unveiled to the candy bar makers the new jingle that his marketing firm had written for Nutriffic! Steve Martin (playing a marketing exec) sat at a table and listened patiently as Chris brought out a barbershop quartet to sing the jingle: “Nutriffic!…Nutriffic! It’s NUT very good!”

  As one of the members of the barbershop quartet, my contribution was to sing the Nutriffic! jingle six times that night, four times during rehearsal and twice during the live show. I was supposed to sing it four times like everyone else during the show. However, I became distracted and forgot my last two “Nutriffics!” How in the hell could I forget a line that’s written on cue cards, repeated several times, and has three other people singing it at the same time as me?

  Simple. At the very end of the sketch rehearsal, as we were walking offstage to the applause of the rehearsal audience, Chris Elliott leaned into me and asked, “Did you check out Steve Martin’s piece? He has the best hairpiece in show business.”

  No, I hadn’t seen Steve Martin’s hairpiece. I had seen his head with what appeared to be real hair on top, but I hadn’t noticed a wig of any sort. It wasn’t like Steve had put on
a baseball cap for the sketch and then had the cap with the hair in it fall at my feet. Was Chris messing with me? It couldn’t be a hairpiece, could it?

  This burning question gnawed at me throughout the meeting in Lorne’s office between dress rehearsal and air. Then I asked other cast members if Steve Martin wore a wig. No one would commit one way or the other, but the tension was heightened by several who asked if I had ever seen his hair a different style or length. No, in fact, I hadn’t.

  When the live show aired, I stood to the side of Steve Martin as I sang the Nutriffic! song. Steve never looked at me during the sketch, so I had free rein to stare at his head for as long as we were on the stage together. I stared at Steve Martin’s head so hard I could have burned a hole into his skull. Under the hot stage lights Steve began to perspire slightly, and a few beads of sweat trickled down the side of his neck. I continued to examine his head for any sign of a wig. I looked for creases and seams, staples and netting, or traces of glue. I stared until I heard the applause signaling that the sketch was over—which meant that I had stared right through two of my four lines of the week.

  To this day, I have no idea if Steve Martin wears a wig, but I still have never seen his hair a different length or style.

  People always ask me how cutthroat it was on the show, and I always honestly say it really wasn’t. There were many cliques, but they were easygoing and friendly ones. I never fell into one particular clique. I would visit all of them, but I never felt comfortable with any of them for very long. It was a lot like high school for me. Friends with everyone, but not really friends with anyone.

  The funnest one to visit was Sandler, Spade, Farley, and Herlihy, who gathered in Sandler’s office. They would all sit around and make phone calls to the girls who had written them asking them to go the senior prom. Sandler would dial the phone and ask, “Is Lucy there?” Lucy would get on the line and Sandler would say, “Lucy, it’s Adam Sandler,” which was followed by screaming. Sandler would then explain kindly and diplomatically that he couldn’t accept her invitation to the prom because of the workload at Saturday Night Live. These conversations would end with something along the lines of “Oh, I appreciate that a lot. Well, we’re working hard. Okay, talk to you later.”

  When I was hired for the show, I came on board with Dave Attell, Sarah Silverman, and Norm Macdonald. When Spade, Schneider, and Sandler were hired for the show, they all came on board together. They had been through all the bullshit with one another as a group. Whenever I spent time with them, I felt like a freshman walking home with a group of seniors. You’re in the conversation, but not really.

  While I was growing up, all my friends were two years older than me. We were really tight until they went to high school and I stayed in middle school. They entered a new world of different sports practices and new friends. Consequently, we didn’t have much in common. As my relationships with the older kids faded, a new kid who was two years younger than me moved in next door. I befriended him, as well as all of his friends. Then I had clout with a whole new group of kids because I was older. I was the one who had been there and done that.

  My second season on Saturday Night Live, I employed a similar strategy. The show had hired Chris Elliott, Morwenna Banks, Janeane Garofalo, and Mark McKinney as new cast members, Molly Shannon and Laura Kightlinger as featured performers, and a few new writers. For all they knew, I was a normal guy. Michael McKean had come aboard near the end of my first season, so he wasn’t part of my initial traumatic adjustment experience either. The two of us hit it off particularly well, and he was a sliver of sanity for me at SNL.

  Michael McKean’s pedigree was almost as impressive as he was personally. He had played Lenny on Laverne & Shirley and starred in the cult film This Is Spinal Tap. Mike was one of the good guys. He had a real warm, easygoing vibe about him; he was always approachable. With him, everything was simple. He would invite me to lunch on a Sunday by saying, “Hey, me and my fiancée are going to lunch. Meet us on the corner of Bleecker and Tenth near the sandwich place at noon, and we’ll have a great time.” I would arrive at the appointed time; he would be there, and we would have a great time, eating, laughing, and talking about everything except the show.

  Most important, for whatever reason, he always listened to me. I would sit in his office and bitch about something, and he’d agree that it sucked. Then he would either pick up his guitar and sing some songs or tell me a horror story of his own that had absolutely nothing to do with Saturday Night Live, and we’d laugh our asses off for an hour. I finally had someone I could complain to, and he was a godsend. In hindsight, he must have been a saint because I spent a lot of time whining on the couch in his office, while he just listened.

  Either because he liked me or because I complained about my lack of airtime, McKean threw me a nice bone when Damon Wayans hosted, and he did it right in the middle of rehearsal. The sketch involved Wayans as Babyface, Sandler as Tom Jones, and McKean as Tony Bennett. Halfway through rehearsal, Mike walked off the set and over to me. “Can you do Tony Bennett?” he asked. I had never tried a Tony Bennett impression, so I did one on the spot for him. “You should do it in this sketch because I’m not really nailing the impression,” he said. I told him I was fine with that. McKean then walked over to Lorne and simply said, “Jay’s gonna do Tony Bennett. He does the impression better than me.” Lorne nodded, and Mike headed for his dressing room.

  On one day that I was feeling particularly down, Mike lifted my spirits with a story about the time he ate a brick of hash. It happened during the European press tour for This Is Spinal Tap. On this particular day, Mike related, the cast was flying from Hamburg to London and one of them was holding a brick of hash. Not wanting to waste it or risk being busted at customs, McKean ate the whole thing.

  When the cast arrived in London, it was madness. There was a three-hour line for media to get into the press room to interview them. But as he was disembarking from the plane, Mike realized that he could not speak a word of English. “I was speaking gibberish,” he explained to me. Gibberish? “I would say, ‘Abba, bo, bo, gigi, gaga.’ But in my mind, I knew what I was saying, so I sat there for seven hours answering questions in gibberish. They would ask a question, and I would answer, ‘Laka, laka, choo, choo,’ and the entire room would burst into laughter. No one knew I was actually in another dimension.”

  The brilliant part was that Mike was so high that he had an actual language in his head, and he was repeating words that meant the same thing to him as the first time he said them an hour ago, causing the reporters to nod and say, “Oh, the laka, laka thing again.” The whole thing was a parody of a guy who was blotto—but he really was blotto.

  I still can’t eat corn chowder because of McKean. My second season a big bunch of us did a sketch about cops who can’t stop vomiting at a crime scene. It started with Mike and me (dressed as cops) arriving on the scene of a murder. Upon viewing the body, we begin projectile-vomiting all over each other. The crew had rigged tubes that ran up our backs and out the ends of our sleeves. The tubes came out the backs of our coats, across the floor, and into the source of the vomit, which was several giant barrels of corn chowder. The vomit tubes were something of an inexact science. Ideally, whenever we put the tubes up to our mouths, corn chowder would spray out of our sleeves on cue. The problem was that some of the tubes worked and some didn’t.

  Cast members would be in the middle of saying their lines and corn chowder would come rocketing out of their sleeves, which were still at their sides. Thinking fast, we would immediately lift our sleeves alongside our mouths—only to have the “vomit” stop. It was priceless live television. Though the tubes worked on cue a couple of times, for most of the sketch we were at their mercy. By the end of the sketch, there were about ten people onstage stopping in mid-sentence to quickly put their sleeves up to their faces, and the motion of moving our arms from our sides to our faces was inadvertently spraying vomit all over the person next to us.

  Duri
ng the sketch, the smell of corn chowder became so strong that I started to gag. I wasn’t alone. I looked at the others, whose eyes were watering and throats were quivering. The audience could plainly see that the tubes were operating erratically and at the wrong time. The sketch became a backdrop to the fact that we were all laughing in the middle of our lines as corn chowder shot all over the stage and all over us.

  When it was over, we were all covered in what had become the most disgusting substance on earth. Cue cards and protocol went out the window during that sketch. It was such madness that if I had actually vomited, I don’t think anyone would have noticed. That night was an example of how wonderful Saturday Night Live could be, and it was absolutely some of the most fun I had on the show. The audience was being treated to a sketch within a sketch, and the cast was all in the corn chowder together.

  Twelve

  Dressing Down

  IT WAS the first Thursday of the new season and I was on my way to studio 8-H to rehearse a sketch. Since I had some extra time, I figured I would first stop by my dressing room and feng shui the place. But when I reached my previous year’s dressing room, the door said CHRIS ELLIOTT on it.