by Sam Wasson
195 “I do all the orchestral music”: Eugene Levy to author.
195 “It’s hard to just flip”: Ibid.
196 “Her personality could bail her”: Ibid.
196 “Stall!”: Martin Short to author.
196 “I’m almost 32 years old”: Diane Rosen, “Gilda!,” TV Guide, July 29, 1978.
196 “She played a woman with a talking shoe”: Eugene Levy to author.
197 “If you think about it”: Sweet, Something Wonderful Right Away, 370.
197 “What a gift,” O’Hara said: Catherine O’Hara to author.
197 “Because I knew Candy the best”: Ibid.
197 “I was flying blind”: Ibid.
197 “a great theater arts teacher”: Ibid.
197 “Getting the job at Second City”: Ibid.
198 “When Catherine played a character”: Eugene Levy to author.
198 “Maybe because everyone”: Catherine O’Hara to author.
198 “at the core of every great comedy character”: “Catherine O’Hara on the Art of Playing Stupid and Cocky,” GQ, June 1999.
198 “I swear,” O’Hara said: Catherine O’Hara to author.
199 In came Sheldon Kahn: Sheldon Kahn to author.
199 Elaine had memorized: Ibid.
199 “Elaine was so fast”: Ibid.
199 “She thinks so fast”: Ibid.
199 “I was willing to try anything”: Ibid.
199 “purposely badly”: Ibid.
200 “When you’ve got a million feet”: Ibid.
200 “I was learning so much”: Ibid.
200 “Pardon us,” Elaine said: Ibid.
201 “She had printed the outtakes”: Victor Kemper to author.
201 “I thought her choices”: Ibid.
202 “I think she worked”: Sheldon Kahn to author.
202 “Vic,” she asked Kemper: Victor Kemper to author.
11. 1974–1975
203 “had greasy hair”: Marcus O’Hara to author.
204 raced Marcus through the moving subway: Ibid.
204 “I’ll give you this money”: Ibid.
205 “Dan greeted the cops”: Bob Dolman to author.
205 “We had tremendous evenings”: Aykroyd, from Bob Dolman’s notes.
205 “We took one look at each other”: Ned Zeman, “Soul Men: The Making of The Blues Brothers,” Vanity Fair, January 2013.
206 “That guy’s voice. Who is that guy?”: Brad Wheeler, “Dan Aykroyd’s Got the Blues,” Globe and Mail, November 9, 2009, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/dan-aykroyds-got-the-blues/.
206 “The real power and innovation”: Ken Burns and Geoffrey C. Ward, Jazz: A History of America’s Music (New York: Knopf, 2000), 16.
207 “Put quite simply”: Steve Balkin, “The Roar of Irony Is Deafening: Statement on Preservation Conference on UIC Campus,” Roosevelt University Blogs, February 9, 2012, http://blogs.roosevelt.edu/sbalkin/uic-preservation/.
207 “Well, I’m not into blues”: Judith Belushi to author.
207 “You guys should start a band”: Ibid.
207 “The contrast with Second City”: Belushi and Colby, Belushi, 62.
208 “We used humor as a weapon”: Ellin Stein, That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick: The National Lampoon and the Comedy Insurgents Who Captured the Mainstream (New York: Norton, 2013), 161.
208 character began with the voice: F. X. Feeney, “Christopher Guest’s Tender Follies,” Los Angeles Weekly, February 14, 1997.
208 “My first remembrance”: Ian Daly, “Wiseguy: Christopher Guest,” Details, October 2009.
208 “If you’re playing a gay character”: Feeney, “Christopher Guest’s Tender Follies.”
209 “When Brian moved to town”: Belushi and Colby, Belushi, 80.
209 “John,” Ramis said, “lifted us all”: Martin, “Harold Ramis Gets the Last Laugh.”
209 “a fusion of the Second City working style”: Stein, That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick, 194.
209 “just by participating”: Belushi and Colby, Belushi, 85.
209 “Like Second City”: Stein, That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick, 194.
210 “We’re going to tell the audience”: Joe Flaherty to author.
211 “Harold and I would kinda look”: Ibid.
211 “It wasn’t like we were exploring”: Ibid.
211 “It had no real shape”: Sacks, And Here’s the Kicker.
211 “We got dirty looks”: Joe Flaherty to author.
211 “That’s when I really started”: Ibid.
211 “I was getting tired of it”: Ibid.
212 “Cannibal Girls was a hundred percent improvised”: Ivan Reitman to author.
212 “I thought these Harvard guys”: Ibid.
212 “Hey, I’ve got this hit”: Ibid.
212 “The great skill of the people”: Ibid.
213 “let’s do the same show over again”: Ibid.
213 “the greatest example of comedic”: Ibid.
213 “If you weren’t drunk”: Ibid.
213 “It just opened my eyes”: Ibid.
213 “There didn’t seem to be anyone”: Ibid.
213 “secret weapon”: Ibid.
214 “That was the closest it ever got”: Gene Siskel, “Bill Murray Earns His Stripes,” New York Daily News, June 17, 1984.
214 “[Belushi] wanted to see”: Judy Stone, “A Serious Bill Murray’s Quest for Meaning of Existence,” Datebook, October 14, 1984.
214 “Talk about an explosion”: Siskel, “Bill Murray Earns His Stripes.”
214 “It’s the show I’ve always wanted”: Valri Bromfield to author.
214 “a good place to give up”: Julie Miller, “40 Years of Improv Comedy: An Oral History of the Groundlings,” Vanity Fair, June 5, 2014, http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/06/groundlings-oral-history.
214 “Everything we ever performed”: Gary Austin to author.
215 “Nichols and May, Severn Darden”: Ibid.
215 “All right, Laraine,” Austin said: Ibid.
215 “I felt that American kids”: William K. Knoedelseder Jr., “The No Longer Interested in Prime Time Players,” Los Angeles Times, November 18, 1979.
215 “They proved you could be smart and funny”: Evelyn Reynold, “Nichols and May—Together Again at Last,” New York Daily News, May 19, 1985.
216 “It should be young and bright”: Woodward, Wired, 69.
216 “NBC doesn’t expect it to work”: Gary Austin to author.
216 “Look,” Michaels continued: Ibid.
216 “They’re like soldiers”: Ivan Reitman to author.
217 “Ivan, is this your coat?”: Ibid.
217 “Finally, they realized I wasn’t doing any harm”: Ibid.
217 “Watching the process”: Ibid.
217 “He lives his life to his standard”: Ibid.
217 “He was always doing characters”: Dick Blasucci to author.
217 “He would play with anyone”: Douglas Steckler to author.
217 “He had such an influence”: Dan Aykroyd to “J.J.,” interview, April 2015, As Little As Possible (blog), http://aslittleaspossible.blogspot.com/2008/10/ghostbusters-25-and-lost-dan-aykroyd.html.
218 “There’s a lobster loose!”: Gavin Edwards, “Being Bill Murray,” Rolling Stone, October 28, 2014, http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/features/being-bill-murray-20141028.
218 “Your college experience was so funny”: Frank Lovece, “Ramis’ Realm: Comedy Creator Surveys Career from Second City to ‘Year One,’” Film Journal International, February 25, 2014.
12. 1975–1976
219 Recalled one who: Anonymous to author.
219 tiny rented Pinto: Abramowitz, Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?, 67.
220 “I can’t get this to work”: Victor Kemper to author.
220 “in the spirit”: Sheldon Patinkin to author.
220 “Here were two of the funniest”: Ibid.
220 “subconsciously afraid”: Martin S
hort to author.
220 “I should have been wanting it”: Ibid.
220 “I didn’t see myself”: Ibid.
220 “one of the funniest we had ever had”: Sheldon Patinkin to author.
220 Martin owned none of it: Andrea Martin to author.
220 “I was bouncing checks”: Andrew Alexander to author.
221 Bob Sprot: Bob Dolman to author.
221 “Is there any point”: Dave Thomas to author.
221 “We tried every plausible”: Andrew Alexander to author.
221 “there was, almost in unison”: Ibid.
221 “I’ll never forget the sight of paramedics”: Ibid.
221 “Second City Chicago grew”: Dave Thomas to author.
221 “He brought that tradition”: Ibid.
222 “I just wanted to get away”: Joe Flaherty to author.
222 “Whenever we did a commercial”: Ibid.
222 Andrea Martin’s Edith Prickley: Andrea Martin to author.
222 “The posture, the voice”: Andrea Martin, Andrea Martin’s Lady Parts (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2014), 305.
223 indomitable feeling of freedom: Andrea Martin to author.
223 “We offered her all of the support”: “Par, Elaine May Sue Each Other; Film Over-Budget and Incomplete,” Variety, October 29, 1975.
223 $90,000 interest in Mikey and Nicky: Abramowitz, Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?, 67.
224 “In total bad faith”: Jim Harwood, “Suits Fly as Par, Elaine May Bicker Over ‘Mikey’ Pic,” Variety, October 22, 1975.
224 “We had no idea how long”: Lorne Michaels on Charlie Rose, 1992.
224 Friday rehearsal had been awful: Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad, Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live (New York: Beech Tree, 1986), 86.
224 “There was a spirit very much”: Lorne Michaels on Charlie Rose, 1992.
225 “I think Saturday Night is about the closest”: Sweet, Something Wonderful Right Away, 371.
225 “I think ‘Saturday Night Live’”: Morgan Gendel, “Lorne Michaels: Live From New York—Again,” Los Angeles Times, September 7, 1985.
225 “he was the embodiment”: Jules Feiffer, Jules Feiffer’s America: From Eisenhower to Reagan, edited by Steven Heller (New York: Knopf, 1982), 169.
225 covered in spit: Charles M. Young,“John Belushi: Son of Samurai,r Rolling Stone, August 10, 1978, http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/john-belushi-son-of-samurai-19780810.
225 “He had people who trusted”: William K. Knoedelseder Jr., “Trying to Resurrect ‘Saturday Night Live,’” Los Angeles Times, March 29, 1981.
225 “I had much less of that Second City experience”: Stein, That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick, 239.
225 “Garrett didn’t do improv”: Archive of American Television Interview with Jane Curtin, conducted by Jenni Matz, New York City, May 28, 2015.
226 “What’s that group you’re from?”: Laraine Newman, Kevin Pollack’s Chat Show, no. 105, March 20, 2011.
226 “Nobody really knew”: Archive of American Television Interview with Jane Curtin.
226 a rose for each: Valri Bromfield to author.
226 “Wow!” she exclaimed: Ibid.
226 Carlin coolly interrupted: Ibid.
226 she missed the freedom Second City had granted: Sweet, Something Wonderful Right Away, 371.
226 “And you can’t change lines”: Ibid., 369.
226 “When you look in their eyes onstage”: Ibid.
227 “Everybody was pooing”: Valri Bromfield to author.
227 “He insists I sign this contract”: Bernie Brillstein, Where Did I Go Right? (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Phoenix, 1999), 139.
227 “I was the dad to this group of loonies”: Archive of American Television Interview with Bernie Brillstein, conducted by Dan Pasternack, Beverly Hills, CA, November 14, 2001.
227 “a ninety-minute race in your brain”: Valri Bromfield to author.
228 Joe Flaherty, in the strip mall: Joe Flaherty to author.
228 Warren Beatty and Peter Bogdanovich: Peter Bogdanovich to author.
228 “She is a brilliant woman”: Tobias, “Elaine May: A New Film.”
228 criminal contempt: “Par Charges Criminal Conduct in ‘Mikey’ Suit Vs. Elaine May,” Variety, September 15, 1976.
228 Carter studio in New York: Ibid.
228 “from a person claiming to be speaking”: Cameron Stauth, “Hollywood Law,” California Magazine, November 1987.
228 Dr. Andrew Canzonetti: “Par Charges Criminal Conduct in ‘Mikey’ Suit,” Variety.
229 he “might have said it”: Ibid.
229 Alyce Films, by the way, had been traced to Falk: Abramowitz, Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?, 67.
229 “Can you help us with Elaine?”: David Picker to author.
229 “We talked in ‘what-ifs’”: Ibid.
229 “Are they cheering?”: Elaine May, “Elaine May in Conversation with Mike Nichols,” Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, 2006, published in Film Comment July/August 2006, https://www.filmcomment.com/article/elaine-may-in-conversation-with-mike-nichols/.
13. 1977–1982
230 “I was thinking, What?”: Joe Flaherty to author.
230 “ We’regoing to go up against Saturday Night Live?”: NBC officially changed the name to Saturday Night Live in March 1977.
230 “Who do you want to work with?”: Ibid.
231 “Our generation had broken into television”: Martin, “Harold Ramis Gets the Last Laugh.”
231 “Okay, but let’s try to get Harold”: Joe Flaherty to author.
231 “Has it occurred to you”: Martin, “Harold Ramis Gets the Last Laugh.”
231 “I want to do television parodies”: Joe Flaherty to author.
232 “How soon,” he asked the room: Andrew Alexander to author.
232 “That was going to be Harold”: Joe Flaherty to author.
232 “We were talking about an Orson Welles type”: Ibid.
233 “my five-hundred-dollar face”: Ibid.
233 “I could see Candy”: Ibid.
233 “Johnny,” Flaherty said: Ibid.
233 “an inferiority complex”: Dave Thomas to author.
233 “Johnny LaRue really reflected that”: Ibid.
234 “I set the table”: Andrew Alexander, interview, ADD Comedy with Dave Razowsky, January 9, 2013, audio recording, http://podbay.fm/show/572391530/e/1357707600?autostart=1.
234 “It was sort of a non-power structure”: Joe Flaherty to author.
235 “a man at peace in a storm”: Andrew Alexander to author.
235 “A lot of items that didn’t make it”: Thomas, SCTV: Behind the Scenes, 35.
235 “We wanted to keep the Second City tradition going”: Joe Flaherty to author.
235 “For somebody as smart as Harold”: Eugene Levy to author.
235 “that sophomoric phase when you’re young”: Joe Flaherty to author.
235 “When we wrote the parody of Ben-Hur”: Thomas, SCTV: Behind the Scenes, 59.
235 “We had a twenty-five-minute Ben-Hur”: 1999 Aspen Comedy Festival, SCTV Tribute, SCTV, Vol. 1: Network 90 (Los Angeles: Shout Factory), DVD.
236 “It was like this big breakthrough”: Eugene Levy to author.
236 “The cast’s idea of funny”: Sheldon Patinkin to author.
236 “There’s a better take than that”: Dave Thomas to author.
236 undersized office assigned to Bill Murray: Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, 49.
236 “The writers made the show”: Timothy Crouse, “The Rolling Stone Interview: Bill Murray,” Rolling Stone, August 16, 1984.
236 only Aykroyd lobbied: Lewis Grossberger, “Bill Murray: Making It Up as He Goes,” Rolling Stone, August 20, 1981.
236 “People think that working”: Stephen Farber, Moviegoer, June 1984.
237 “If you blew a joke in somebody’s sketch”: Crouse, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”
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br /> 237 “If you say something to him he doesn’t like”: Christopher Connelly, “The Man You Are Looking for Is Not Here,” Premiere, August 1990.
237 “He would give me shit”: Jim Downey, Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, 252.
237 “I became attached to this soap on a rope”: Rich Cohen, “What’s So Funny,” Rolling Stone, October 2, 2003.
238 “Oh,” he said, “I have one more”: James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests (New York: Little, Brown, 2014), 143.
238 “[Improvisational actors] can solve it”: “Bill Murray Here: OK, I’ll Talk! I’ll Talk!” Reddit, archived post, https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1vhjag/bill_murray_here_ok_ill_talk_ill_talk/.
238 “That’s what that group could do”: Edward Douglas, “Interview: Bill Murray Checks into the Grand Budapest Hotel,” ComingSoon.net, February 14, 2014, http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=114604.
238 “he’s the guy who writes the stuff”: Miller and Shales, Live From New York, 304.
239 “this was the best group of people”: Harold Ramis, in SCTV Remembers, Volume 1, Network 90 (Los Angeles: Shout Factory), DVD.
239 around breakfast: Eugene Levy to author.
239 “We wrote for each other”: Joe Flaherty to author.
239 “It was one of the happiest times of my life”: Richard Christiansen, “All Herald Ramis,” Chicago Tribune, January 31, 1993.
239 “The thing about Second City”: 1999 Aspen Comedy Festival, SCTV Tribute, SCTV.
239 “opening it up to our imaginations”: Tomorrow, Tom Snyder with SCTV cast Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrnVIr635bU.
240 “Far too intelligent”: Andrew Alexander to author.
240 “I used to feel”: Martin Short to author.
240 “What’s going on?” Nancy asked: Martin Short, I Must Say, 13.
241 Short threw himself into the work: Martin Short to author.
241 “and I quickly understood”: Ibid.
241 “For me, it was very liberating”: Ibid.
241 “My work,” he said: Ibid.
241 “were more interested in show business”: Joe Flaherty to author.
242 “Get the fuck out of here”: Dave Thomas to author.
