Gasping for Airtime

by Mohr, Jay

  When the sketch was picked to be on the air, I was officially fucked. Rick Shapiro’s Irish bartender sketch sailed through the Wednesday selection meeting and coasted smoothly through rehearsals on Thursday and Friday. It cleared the dress rehearsal on Saturday and wasn’t cut after the live dress rehearsal that night. The show that had been selected in Lorne’s office between dress rehearsal and air ran as scheduled, and the Irish bartender sketch was broadcast live across America. For a few weeks after the show aired, I avoided going to the comedy clubs for fear of bumping into Rick or any comic who had ever seen him perform, which was all of them.

  Three weeks later, on Saturday night during the live dress rehearsal (the night that Courteney Cox hosted and I did my second “Good Morning, Brooklyn”), the show’s supervising producer, Ken Aymong, called me over. I was on my way to the stage dressed as James Barone when he asked me to follow him. He led me to a room behind the control room that I had never been in before. In the room was a table with a few chairs and a small cabinet. On top of the cabinet was a television and a VCR. Sitting in front of the television was Lorne Michaels.

  Ken asked me if I knew a guy named Rick Shapiro. I told him I did not. Ken then pressed play on the VCR, and in front of me on the monitor was a video of Rick Shapiro doing his act. On the tape in the VCR, he was doing the Irish bartender sketch. He was doing it exactly the way I copied it. Ken let the tape play a while. Finally Lorne asked me, “You’ve never heard of this guy or seen his act?” I replied that I had not. Lorne nodded his head and Ken Aymong turned off the VCR. Lorne looked at me for a second and said, “Okay.” And I walked out of the room.

  Later, I found out that Rick and his manager were suing the show. Why wouldn’t they? I don’t know the particulars but a settlement was reached, and in the settlement the Irish bartender sketch was edited out of all of the reruns. Undoubtedly I should have been fired, but I wasn’t. I never saw Rick Shapiro again, but if I did, I would have acted as if I didn’t see him. What I did was inexcusable, and no apology in the world could ever make up for it.

  Whenever someone would ask me about the sketch and point out that it was in Rick’s act, I would tell them that five different people had written the sketch and I was just put in it. Nobody bought it, and the reputation for being a thief followed me for quite a while in the only place I had ever felt comfortable: the comedy clubs.

  After I stole Rick Shapiro’s act, I didn’t even know if I should bother handing anything in. Would Lorne believe I wrote it? I resubmitted a “Ricki Lake” sketch that had been cut earlier in the season and it didn’t get on.

  The week after Paul Reiser hosted, John Goodman and Dan Aykroyd cohosted and Bill Murray was floating through the hallways on Saturday, too. It was an exciting week for all of us. John Goodman was always a great host, and having the old-timers on the show was incredible. The reason we were all there was standing next to us at the coffee machine. What I noticed most about Aykroyd and Bill Murray was how much bigger they were than I had anticipated. They were both over six feet tall and looked as if they could hold their own in a bar fight if they had to. I wasn’t in any sketches, and I was really disappointed. Nothing would have been cooler than to stand next to Bill Murray or Dan Aykroyd in a sketch.

  Two weeks later, I came up with an original character and a sketch titled “Rock and Roll Real Estate.” In it, I played a real estate agent who used to be the lead singer of an eighties metal band. I screamed all of my lines at the top of my lungs as if I were onstage in a giant arena. I submitted it in week eighteen when Courteney Cox hosted. I had both “Good Morning, Brooklyn” and “Rock and Roll Real Estate” on the board that week, so I was looking really good. I was hoping that two original characters on one show might take the taste of Rick Shapiro’s lawyers out of Lorne’s mouth.

  But “Rock and Roll Real Estate” was cut after dress rehearsal on Saturday afternoon. In the meeting, I was told by Lorne to make sure I resubmitted it the following week, which I did. Again, it was chosen for air. Bob Saget, an incredibly funny guy, was the host. He also had the most disgusting sense of humor of any human being I’ve ever met. He would be talking about raping his mother and having sex with his daughter—no, he’d say, I was having sex with someone’s else daughter and then I brought her home to have sex with my daughter, but first I took a shit on them.

  The only host who came close to Saget’s toilet talk was Emilio Estevez, who was easily one of the coolest people I met during my SNL years. Every joke Emilio told was about his rosebud (which he taught me meant asshole), but he told them in the funniest way with a real quick wit. I’d ask him what he was doing later and he’d launch into a riff like “I don’t know, licking your rosebud. You sleep on your stomach, don’t you? Okay, then, I’ll be over at ten.”

  I thought the sketch worked better with Bob than it had with Courteney Cox because Saget was funny playing the straight man to my screaming metal head, but “Rock and Roll Real Estate” was cut again on Saturday after dress rehearsal. Again, Lorne told me to make sure I resubmitted it the following week. I complied and for the third consecutive week, “Rock and Roll Real Estate” was chosen to be on Saturday Night Live.

  It was the last show of the year and David Duchovny was hosting. Everybody was very loose all week, and the pickup basketball game was particularly competitive that week. Another season was ending. Critically, it had gone much better than my first one. This meant that instead of headlines like “Saturday Night Dead,” the New York Post now wrote nothing. We all knew the show was funnier than it had been the previous year, and it also seemed that everyone definitely had more fun.

  In the “Rock and Roll Real Estate” sketch, I wore a big blond teased-out wig, leather pants, and a Realtor’s jacket. My hair looked just like Rod Stewart’s hair; Rod Stewart was the musical guest on the twentieth and final show. After I rehearsed “Rock and Roll Real Estate” on Saturday, Rod was scheduled to do his rehearsal immediately after me. He was standing off to the side during my rehearsal. I wanted to stop and tell him that despite how I looked, I wasn’t doing an impression of him.

  When Rod Stewart finished his rehearsal, he had to walk past me to get back to his dressing room. He was surrounded by about ten people who walked with him and formed a circle as he passed. One of the people in the circle pointed at me and said, “What’s up, Rod!” I started to worry that Rod Stewart would have my sketch cut again because I was dancing around like a jackass and screaming while wearing a Rod Stewart wig.

  It turned out that Rod Stewart wasn’t too concerned with my possible impersonation, and the sketch made it through dress rehearsal and the meeting in Lorne’s office and onto the show. It was scheduled last in the rundown, just before Good-nights. I stood on the sidelines of everyone else’s sketches and kept checking my watch to make sure the show was running on time. I had to get this sketch on the air. It had already been picked three times, it was original, and it was funny. I knew I had to end the year strong. Finishing up the season with some momentum would help my negotiations over the summer, or so I thought.

  But by the time “Rock and Roll Real Estate” aired on Saturday Night Live, the sketch had been read at three consecutive read-throughs. It had been rehearsed three times on Thursday or Friday night and three more times on Saturday for camera blocking. It had been performed in three live dress rehearsals in front of three different studio audiences. When David Duchovny, Molly Shannon, and I took our places during the second to last commercial break of the season, the sketch was about to be done out loud for the thirteenth time in three weeks.

  The show had run like clockwork and the sketch did not get cut. It bombed horribly, which was made worse by the fact that I was dancing around like a jackass during its demise. Each time the sketch had been cut, I had performed it the next time with a little something extra at the read-throughs and the rehearsals. Twelve times I gave everything I had. My intensity increased incrementally with each performance or rehearsal. When the sketch reached Amer
ica on the thirteenth try, it got no laughs. The sketch, like me, was tired.

  I finished the sketch knowing that it had tanked. I knew the reason it tanked was because I had no more energy. I now hated the sketch. They could have taken it away from me whenever they wanted, which made the actual performing of the sketch more of a fuck-you than the great experience it should have been. When the sketch ended, I pulled my Rod Stewart wig off by myself, ripping out some of my hair that was bobby-pinned to my scalp and the wig. I didn’t care. It was over. Once again, I had survived the madness for twenty weeks.

  The season-ending after-party was held at the skating rink at 30 Rock, and it was an extravagant affair attended by countless celebrities as well as former hosts and cast members. I actually enjoyed myself at the party and didn’t get as drunk as usual. I got home at a decent hour, went straight to bed, and slept until 5:30 P.M. the following day. I woke up to pee and went right back to bed and slept until early Monday morning, at which point I woke up to pack for my afternoon flight back to Los Angeles.

  On the flight, I took out a yellow legal pad and began to make another list. This was a list of things that I would have to be assured would change if I was going to return to the show. I was prepared to walk away. If I was going to be on Saturday Night Live for a third season, things were going to have to change. Never again, I wrote, would Don Pardo scream, “And featuring!” before he announced my name. If I came back, it was going to be as a full cast member. Never again would I have to sit in an elevator shaft on a show night and scribble caveman drawings on the walls in pencil. Never again would someone write me into a sketch as a guy who says nothing, like some extra they dragged off the street.

  Over the summer, I continued to add to my list. I made it abundantly clear to my agent that if I was to return to the show, these changes would have to be implemented. If I remained on Saturday Night Live, I had firmly made up my mind that I was going to be treated better, and I didn’t care if I had to put it in writing. I wanted more money, not as a reward for the great work I had done, but for standing around and eating shit over the last two seasons. I figured that if the show had more of a financial interest in me, they might choose more of my sketches on Wednesday nights. I went over my plans with my agent, Ruthanne, and my manager, Barry. I was ready for battle.

  I learned that summer that you can’t fight someone if he doesn’t show up.

  The show again had a contractual option for my services that they didn’t have to activate until July 1. Unlike the previous summer, I didn’t worry about the option over my summer vacation. Stealing from Rick Shapiro probably hadn’t helped my chances, but the fact that I had come up with James Barone and “Rock and Roll Real Estate” might. I felt that Ricki Lake, Christopher Walken, and Harvey Keitel were icing on the cake. I had not appeared on camera as much as I would have liked, but when I did get on, I showed that I could do an incredibly diverse array of impressions, as well as create some recurring characters. Even “Rock and Roll Real Estate” could be resurrected and saved. I felt confident that the show would call my agent long before the July 1 deadline, but they didn’t.

  On July 1, the NBC lawyers called my agent. Instead of begging to have me back, they were asking for an extension on the option until July 6, just as they had done the previous year. I told Ruthanne that I wanted an answer now instead of later. Again, she reminded me that it probably wasn’t best to push their hand if they were asking for an extension, so again I agreed to the five-day extension. I pacified myself by polishing the complaints on my list.

  On July 6, the show called and asked for another extension. This time they told my agent they needed until July 14. Again, I agreed to the extension and the power of my list slowly disintegrated. On July 14, the show called my agent and asked for another extension. They now needed until July 24 to decide if they wanted me back. My lists were useless. Like the previous summer, I had been stripped down naked and made to wait by the phone. Just like last year, I was hoping the phone would ring and praying that I was still welcome on the seventeenth floor of 30 Rock. Then, on July 24, the show called my agent and asked for another extension.

  When Ruthanne called me to relay the news, I didn’t shout or complain. I didn’t ask her advice on how to proceed. I remained calm. I took a breath and told her, using a single word, that I was finished with it all. I told her to go back to the show and tell them that I didn’t accept their option. I told her no. She explained to me that by doing so, I might be helping them make their decision. I no longer cared what their decision was. I was done.

  This was the biggest professional decision I had ever made, but I was never so sure of anything in my life. It was over. How could I go back? If I decided I wanted to go back, I had a list of demands that I wanted met. But now I was on the fifth extension of the option, and with each extension I had been stripped of negotiating power. I don’t know what was said behind closed doors or what considerations were involved in rehiring me. I didn’t care. It was over.

  I tried for twenty weeks to put a square peg into a round hole. I took a summer off and tried it again for twenty more weeks. I was defeated. I no longer wanted to swim upstream. I was tired of dressing rooms and Marisa Tomei and sketches getting cut after dress rehearsal. I was tired of waiting for Jim Downey to finish watching high school basketball games. I was tired of getting fall-down drunk at the after-parties. I was tired of Rob Schneider looking at sushi through a jeweler’s loupe. I was tired of hearing “you can’t say get laid” at 12:15 A.M. on Saturday Night Live. I was tired of complaining, and most of all, I was tired of being a phony.

  Like many performers, when I was first hired for Saturday Night Live, I had a constant feeling of “What am I doing here?” Now, two years and forty shows later, I was still asking the same question. How bad do I want to go to work for a group of people that need five extensions to decide whether they wanted me back? In regards to Saturday Night Live, I would never ask myself that question again. I was empty. I had no fight left in me. They had won. I was tired.

  I needed a nap.

  Epilogue

  Phil Hartman, U.S.A.

  WHEN I think back on Saturday Night Live, I see the show in a series of snapshots. Three types of shots play out in my head. The first group of photos are very benign. I see the writers’ room with all of the chairs in it, the stage in studio 8-H, the hallways and the pictures on the walls, and the corners and the sides of people’s faces. I have no emotion when I think of these things. I feel as if someone I don’t know is showing me pictures of the inside of their house.

  The next set of snapshots always makes me smile. I see Fred Wolf, who does not smoke, walking around with an unlit cigarette in his mouth all night on Tuesdays; Bob Van Rye and Jane the janitor smiling; Jim Downey walking out of his office and brushing his teeth at the same time; Dave Attell in his denim jacket; Adam Sandler, David Spade, and Tim Meadows all laughing at one of Sandler’s stories; the couch I sat on my first day; Norm Macdonald smiling and lighting up the room; and Don Pardo ready to tell the world who will be on Saturday Night Live that week.

  The final group of snapshots I see in my head are more like little short movies. They are snippets of conversations and pieces of sketches that last a few seconds, but linger with me for days. The longer these scenarios repeat in my head, the more they trigger other memories that I had temporarily forgotten. All of these vignettes are special. I enjoy thinking back on them when I am lying in my bed alone at night. One montage ends in a single image that stands out above all others: May 14, 1994, Phil Hartman and Chris Farley’s last show.

  The final sketch of that show was a musical tribute to Phil, who had received a bronze tube of glue from the cast earlier that day to commemorate the nickname given to him by Sandler. Wearing a double-breasted charcoal suit with a maroon and white polka-dot tie, Phil began the sketch by smiling and addressing the camera: “Ladies and gentlemen, as we close out our nineteenth season, let’s say good-bye to the Saturday Night Live
family singers.” Phil waved his hand toward the stage behind him and we all marched out.

  The entire cast, as well as all the featured performers, filed onto the stage and began to sing “So Long, Farewell” from the movie The Sound of Music. There were fourteen of us onstage, and we were all dressed as our recurring characters. We all belted out: “So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen good night” and waved good-bye.

  Then Adam Sandler and David Spade sang by themselves, as the Gap Girls: “We sell you jeans, like even if they’re too tight.” Then Sandler and Spade giggled like girls and danced off the stage. That left twelve of us. Some of us waved when we should have squatted. Some of us squatted when we were supposed to wave. The entire thing was very poorly rehearsed.