Live From New York Part 20

TERRY TURNER, Writer: When I got onto the show, there was a sense that this show is over. I remember sitting in a restaurant with my father-in-law in New York, and he said, "My son-in-law here works on Sat.u.r.day Night." And the waiter said, "G.o.d, I thought that thing was off the air. It's been bad for so long."

VICTORIA JACKSON, Cast Member: I lived in L.A., had my own house, and I had already been on a canceled series, and let me see, I remember I was pregnant in '85 with my first baby. I was twenty-six years old. I was doing a commercial in the desert for a truck company, and I was nauseous and everything and I didn't want them to know I was pregnant, because they might fire me, but I wanted the money 'cause I was the breadwinner since my husband never worked. And so I came back to L.A. from that commercial, and I heard someone say my name was on a list at the Improv to audition for Sat.u.r.day Night Live and why wasn't I there? And I was like, "Huh?!" n.o.body told me about that. William Morris was my agent, but n.o.body told me that there was even an audition.

Here's the cut to the chase: I had the baby. I did The Pick-Up Artist. And all of a sudden the phone rings in the summer of '86. And my baby's three months old and it was someone from Sat.u.r.day Night Live, and they said, "Do you want to audition for Sat.u.r.day Night Live tomorrow?" And it didn't even go through my agent. It didn't go through anyone I knew. It was like they called my home directly. I have no idea how they got my phone number. It's really mysterious. And I said, "Oh. Sure." And then they said, "There'll be a plane ticket waiting for you at LAX tomorrow morning at eight A.M. to come to New York and audition." And they said to be sure and bring all your characters. And I said okay. So I hung up. And I was like, "I don't have any characters!" I never was in the Groundlings and I never took improv and, you know, basically the way I got on Johnny Carson was I had a six-minute stand-up comedy act that was mostly doing a hand-stand while reciting poetry.

So I hung up the phone. I told my husband, "I'm going to New York tomorrow to audition for SNL and they said bring your characters." And I looked at him like bewildered, you know. I knew about SNL and Belus.h.i.+ just 'cause you know it as part of culture, but when I grew up we didn't have a TV, and then I was in college and I didn't have one, and then I was trying to get on TV so I was always busy. So then I flew to New York. I brought my ukulele and my handstand; the handstand traveled with me. And I got on the plane and I thought, "Now if they lose my ukulele, I have no audition," because, you know, I don't have characters. And they lost my ukulele.

So then I got picked up and they took me to a hotel where the other girls who were against me were staying. There were about ten other girls from Canada and Chicago. The next day they marched us all down the street in a row, like ducks, past that big guy Atlas holding the world. I wore my French maid costume from when I was a cigarette girl, because that's when I started doing the stand-up thing. I was really nervous.

We were all in the hallway waiting and then everyone was whispering that one of the girls had done a strip routine for her audition. And that's a really dumb idea, I think, because you can't really be naked on NBC, you know? Even if you look good naked, it's not going to help a comedy program. So then I did my little stand-up comedy act. I guess I had about ten minutes. I sang my songs and did my handstand poetry, and Lorne was watching with about three Lornettes. You know, they're called the Lornettes, the girls who work for Lorne and make sure he has plenty of popcorn. The bravest cast members would eat some of Lorne's popcorn but I was scared to. But one time I did and like one kernel fell on the floor and one of the Lornettes gave me a dirty look. They're not supposed to let any of them fall on the floor, you see.

So I did my audition and then they said, "Oh, spend the night. Lorne wants to see you tomorrow, but he doesn't come in until four P.M. because he wakes up late and starts the workday at three P.M."

Then he met with me and he said, "Well, you - um - I loved your audition. It was really funny, but I don't know if you're really strong in character." And I said, "Oh - well, I could talk like this and be British." And he goes, "Uh-huh, yeah." I go, "I could talk like this and that's a character." And he goes, "Uh, yeah." And he goes, "Well, like if I wanted you to be Annie Hall, you know?" And I said, "Well, then I would just wear men's clothing and kind of look at the ground a lot." And he goes, "Well, what if I wanted you to be - a housewife in the Midwest?" And I said, "Well, I am a housewife." So then I went home and I thought, "Oh man, I was so close, but he's not going to pick me."

So I was supposed to be on Carson again in two weeks, and I thought, "Hey, what if I continue my audition on national TV? That would really impress Lorne." So I asked The Tonight Show and they said, "Sure, but just don't say the name of the show." So I got all these tapes of people and tried to imitate them - like Tina Turner and Teri Garr and stuff. But it wasn't my strong point, you know. So I thought, well, if I just try to do the impression and people know who I'm doing and they laugh - well, all your goal is, is to make laughter, so it doesn't matter how you get there. So I sat next to Johnny Carson and I told him I was auditioning for a show and I had to do characters and I said, "Let me do them for you, and if you can guess who I'm doing, then I'm doing it good, right?" He goes, okay. So I went, "Oh, oh, Archie! I'm sor-ree!" And he goes, "Edith Bunker." And I go, yeah. And the audience claps. And I go, "I don't know why I'm here. Just go to a commercial. I don't have anything to say. I don't know why I'm here." And Johnny says, "Teri Garr!" And I go, yeah. And then I went, "What's love got to do, got to do with it." And I danced, you know. And he goes, "Tina Turner." And I go, yeah. And so then I was smoking a cigarette. And he goes, "I don't know, Bette Davis?" And I go, no. And he goes, "Who is it?" And I go, "I made her up." And then Johnny laughed so hard. The audience laughed too. And then he goes, "If you made it up, how am I supposed to guess who it is?" And I go, "Oh, I don't know. I'm supposed to make up characters in this show, you know."

So then my manager at the time took the video of that show to Lorne's L.A. hotel in case he wasn't watching that night. And then, about a week later, they called me at home again. It was ten o'clock on a Sunday night. And she goes, "Congratulations. You're in the cast of Sat.u.r.day Night Live." And I was like, "Oh, thank you." And she goes, "There will be a ticket waiting for you at LAX in the morning, and we're putting you in a hotel until we find you an apartment." I was like, "Oh, thank you." So I hung up the phone and then I screamed really loud. Because I had been trying to act real cool in front of her. And then my baby woke up and started crying, and then my ex-husband - he doesn't handle pressure very well - he threw up. On the bed.

TERRY TURNER:.

When we got there, Bonnie and I had been married for a bit. One thing good about us is we've always worked together, and she could sh.o.r.e me up and I could sh.o.r.e her up, and we could yell at each other too. We both went in for therapy during the show. So that might have helped. Wait - I can't believe I just said that, that Sat.u.r.day Night drove us both to therapy. I'd never thought about it until now.

BOB ODENKIRK, Writer: They hired Robert Smigel as writer, and then while Robert wrote I would sort of work with him on the phone every week and pitch him ideas and help him with his ideas. And meanwhile I was continuing to write sketches in Chicago, and I would mail those in to Robert and he'd pa.s.s them around the office, and sometimes they would do a joke of mine on "Weekend Update." I think there was maybe even one sketch that I might have written that was done. And so people were kind of familiar with my work and I came in and did an interview the following year, which was Robert's second year, and then I was hired a few months later. I interviewed with Lorne, which was extremely weird. I basically had a huge chip on my shoulder, and mix that in with Lorne's traditional intimidation and it's not good. I didn't respond to the way he likes to approach young performers and set himself up as some kind of very distant, strange Comedy G.o.d.

KEVIN NEALON, Cast Member: When Aykroyd and those guys were on - the original years - I moved out to California to do stand-up, so I was always out there in the clubs when the show was on and didn't get to see it that much. I never really thought that was my gig. I didn't do characters or impressions. My stand-up was basically off-the-wall, absurd. I was influenced by Andy Kaufman and Albert Brooks and Steve Martin, you know.

The clubs in 1975 were really tough. Audiences were really brash and heckling, and they're all crammed in these little rooms, and the comics were just tough New York guys, and there was a lot of profanity and heckling going on. And I remember seeing Larry David on stage one night follow some heckler right out into the street and slug it out with him. So I thought California would be a good place.

VICTORIA JACKSON:.

Oh, another thing - in my audition, when Lorne said I think you're weak in characters, I said, oh, well, you know who's the greatest female character actress in America? Jan Hooks. And I didn't even know if he knew her, but I had already worked with her on The Half-Hour Comedy Hour, which was trying to be like SNL, and I was like a baby at the time. It was like my first TV show. a.r.s.enio Hall was the star of it. And I had seen Jan be brilliant - like backstage when the cameras weren't even on, she would do a lesbian gas station attendant in Atlanta. And she would just go into these people and I thought she was like great. I mean, personally she pretty much hates my guts, but professionally I thought she was like a genius, so I told Lorne. And I told her later, "I told Lorne to hire you."

KEVIN NEALON:.

I was renting a house in the Hollywood Hills and Dana was living in an apartment over the garage, temporarily, and there was another comedian I was living with and a writer, and I was dating Jan Hooks at the time.

JAN HOOKS, Cast Member: Kevin was great. We were really, really good friends. And my mom got sick. My mom had cancer. And I just grabbed on to Kevin and he went down to Atlanta where my mom was. And we just started this relations.h.i.+p - it was a relations.h.i.+p out of a kind of trauma. And the only problem was that we both got Sat.u.r.day Night Live in the middle of it.

He was hired as a featured player and Lorne wasn't quite sure what I was. He thought the year before I was too old, and then I heard through the grapevine that he thought I had a weird mouth and he didn't want to hire me because of my mouth.

TERRY TURNER:.

Dana and Bonnie and I wrote a lot of the Church Ladys together, but it was Dana's creation. We sort of played support. We were the only people - because we were from the South and there was a cable industry in the South that hadn't quite reached into New York - we were the first people who really knew, next to Jan, who Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were, and all of the nuances of who they were, which is sort of how we got into the Church Lady, because it became a target of that character. And we were sort of the people who could access it quickly.

JAN HOOKS:.

I knew Tammy Faye Bakker from the seventies. She had a show in Atlanta - when I worked in Atlanta. I would just religiously, pardon the pun, watch. It was just unbelievable. And I turned my friends on to Tammy Faye. And I actually went in to Lorne and said that there's a woman that's on cable, Tammy Faye Bakker, and I would really love to do her. He said, "I've never heard of her." I said, "Yeah, but she's such a great character." And then, lo and behold, the scandal happened.

ROSIE SHUSTER, Writer: Dana's audition tape was the most amazing audition tape I've ever seen, because he nailed impressions and pushed them to this surreal place but he also did these amazingly absurd, highly original characters like the chopping broccoli guy. I especially responded to this rudimentary version of the Church Lady. The smug superior att.i.tude was there. And the consummately couchy "Isn't that special?" I think that character reminded me of a Waspy, repressed side of Toronto that was very big on shaming. So I mentioned that to Lorne and he teamed me up with Dana, who at the time was this sketch-comedy virgin, and together we anch.o.r.ed this character in a "Church Chat" talk-show format. And we added all this t.i.tillating talk of engorged naughty bits and all that kind of stuff.

"Church Chat" stole the rehearsal and it got moved up to open the show, the first show of the new season. So it was pretty prominent, pretty scary. But it struck a main vein pretty instantly, instant franchise time, and they were very fun to write. The Church Lady would project her filthy erotomaniac imagination all over the poor hapless guest, whoever they were. She would basically verbally slime them with her own repressed garbage and then she'd go to town shaming them. She had a black belt in shaming. And then she'd coyly suggest their behavior was the work of Satan.

Thinking back, I think the Church Lady was the forerunner of what Kenneth Starr did to Bill Clinton.

DANA CARVEY:.

The very first night was a crisis. The Church Lady - which no one knew if it would work - was going to be the last sketch on in the dress rehearsal, right before the good-nights - in other words, the dumping ground. But then it killed in dress and they moved it up to be the very first sketch. And then I had this chopping broccoli thing, and then the show was sort of on my shoulders for some reason, and I felt just intense pressure. I would essentially cry in my dressing room. I'm emotional. And then I was swearing at myself in the mirror. There was so much pressure, because there I was, thirty-one, I never thought I would get on Sat.u.r.day Night Live, and here was this first show, I was unknown, I had never done sketch comedy, the red light was going to come on, twenty million people, the pressure was so extreme, at least the way I felt - and then it came off great. So that was a huge moment.

JAN HOOKS:.

The show changed my life, obviously. But I have horrible stage fright. And with all these, you know, stand-up comics who I love - you know, Dana and Dennis and Kevin and all these people - you know they wanted their shot, they wanted to get in there and do it, but I was one of the ones that between dress and air was sitting in the corner going, "Please cut everything I'm in!"

VICTORIA JACKSON:.

The first live show of my life, my ex-husband had a hemorrhoidectomy performed in the hospital on the day of my show and he's like, "Why aren't you here visiting me?" I'm like, "I'm on Sat.u.r.day Night Live! For my first time! Are you kidding?"

JAN HOOKS:.

Victoria Jackson? I thought she had a pretty good gig. I just have a particular repulsion to grown women who talk like little girls. It's like, "You're a grown woman! Use your lower register!" And she's a born-again Christian. I don't know, she was like from Mars to me. I never really got her.

DANA CARVEY:.

I'm too pa.s.sive-aggressive to have ever had a fight with Lorne. But we had little snippets. You're working under conditions where you're exhausted. If I'd been a.s.signed an impression that I didn't get and I just tanked at dress, he'd say, "Dana, are you ever going to get John Travolta?" or whoever. "No, I'm never going to get it, Lorne, you should just cut it." "Really???" My thing was like, "Church Lady's not happening tonight." And I would just say, "Well, maybe we should just cut it."

"Rrrrrrright. So you're saying we're going to cut the thing that's going to make the show."

"Well, that's my suggestion."

"Dana, no no no no no no, don't misunderstand me." Lorne is so brilliant at getting in your head. "No no no no no no, don't misunderstand me, I think it's fabulous, if you want to go that route, that burlesque route, um, it's fine, but I think you'll find if you keep it smart, it's where all the good stuff is."

See, I had to learn all that, because I thought a laugh is a laugh. And then Lorne and those guys were kind of like, well no, there's different levels, there's smart laughs and there's dumb laughs. Being a stand-up comedian to me, it was just, "Get the f.u.c.king laugh at all costs."

VICTORIA JACKSON:.

I brought the writers food. They were all very intensely writing. Their goal wasn't to make me a star; most of them wrote themselves into the show to become stars. If you want to get in the show more, you could always bring the writers some food. Well, I tried that.

I asked Robert Smigel, "Robert, how come I never get to do any impressions? I never get to do any characters." And he says, "Because you're nasal." And I said, "There must be someone nasal I can do an impression of." He goes, "Roseanne Barr is kind of nasal." And I said, "Let me do her. She's hot now. She's nasal, can I do her?" And he's like, "Hmm." And so he wrote a sketch, and I was thrilled.

Jon Lovitz always tried to help me get in the show too. Dana and Kevin and Lovitz - they helped a little. Kevin and Dana wrote me into "Hans and Franz" as Roseanne getting liposuction.

KEVIN NEALON:.

I think Hans and Franz made Dana and me laugh more than any other characters when we were writing them. It's funny how something like that will permeate the culture and become pop culture. It seems audiences are like parrots, they like to repeat phrases that either have some kind of cadence to them or are silly. Whether it's "Isn't that con-veeen-ient?" or "We want to pump - you up," or whatever it is - "Cheeseburger, cheeseburger." It's something that everybody can relate to, when they get around at the office on Monday morning and just kind of laugh, because everybody kind of recognizes it. They can all be in on the laugh. And they can use it as their own little personal joke. I mean I do that too, with other people's stuff. If I hear a lot of Mike Myers stuff, like "Yeah, baby," I find myself doing that. People need that occasional catchphrase in their life. The coolest thing for Dana and me is that on the s.p.a.ce shuttle they were doing Hans and Franz, which was fun.

JON LOVITZ:.

You're always competing. I mean, it's not like you want the other people to do bad, but it's just the way it's set up because, you know, you write all Tuesday night and then they pick like three of the forty sketches at read-through, and then they whittle that down to fourteen of them, then six would get cut. Only about eight or nine make it to air. It was compet.i.tive. I mean, it just was the way it worked. And when I was there anyway, it was almost like the writers against the cast, and if you got a lot of stuff on one week, the next week there'd hardly be anything written for you. I also think that the writers would just write for themselves really a lot of times. And just whatever they happened to think of, that's what they thought of. So certain writers you ended up hooking up with because, you know, your humor was more like theirs. I worked a lot with A.Whitney Brown doing the Liar character the first year. And then Al Franken would write for me a lot.

When I was on the show, like just say from '86 to '90, that group stayed the same for four years. You know, the eight of us. And it was very compet.i.tive but everybody was working really, really hard and really wanted the sketches to be great. And also I think our group was into saying let's do this sketch but also try to do great acting, like the best as actors. And play it really, you know, funny, but also trying to make it really real and believable.

My first year, I was doing well, so they pushed me a lot. And I got everything on. And then my second year, I got less. Lorne said, "You're going to have a lot of compet.i.tion this year." And then, I don't know, I was supposed to do a Liar movie and it didn't work out. And so that caused problems between Lorne and me. So I would say stuff about him and it would get back to him, because I was angry about it. So it would get tougher for me to get pieces on. And then, you know, he was mad at me. I mean he just was. He was mad at me for the next four years. And then he was mad at me for leaving the show for six or seven years. Because I left. What happened was, he was mad. I mean, everybody would talk about him, but for some reason, everything I said got back to him. I wasn't saying anything different than anybody else. I would never say it in public and I still won't, because - because the guy hired me, you know, and he gave me the opportunity of a lifetime. So my beef with him was more about, I thought we were friends and I heard he said stuff about me. So I was hurt by that.

I was supposed to do two movies that summer and then come back to the show. So I was just thrilled, you know. And then one of the movies didn't happen. And the other movie, I would've had to miss two shows to do it, and Lorne said you can't miss shows. So I had to choose. Personally, I didn't think it was fair, because my contract was up and I thought, you know, I did a really good job for five years and I just asked him to miss the first two shows. But his opinion was, well, you know, this show is really important. If I let you miss shows, I have to let everybody else miss shows. And, you know, Belus.h.i.+ and Aykroyd do movies and fly back and forth. And so I asked the producer could I do that, and he said we can't - you can't do that. It wouldn't work out. Lorne was getting a lot of pressure too, from NBC executives who didn't like - especially Ohlmeyer - didn't like the idea of people running off to make movies, which to me was stupid. I'd say, "Look, I'll miss the first two shows and then you don't have to pay me, of course, or I'll make 'em up." If he'd said, "You can do the show, but if you get movies, you can do those too," I would've said, "Fine. Sign me up for the next five years." Because then what you would've had, from my point of view, is a cast full of movie stars. Wouldn't that have been something?

Of course Lorne later admitted it was a mistake and he should've done it that way. And then the following year, he let people miss shows. So, you know, for me personally, it's kind of upsetting, because I really wanted to stay. And then, of course, the movie I did came out for a week. It was a colossal bomb. It was called Mom and Dad Save the World. What happened was, they reedited the movie for kids, so if it had any edgy humor, they took it out, you know.

After the fifth year, when my manager said, "Why don't you just clear the air with him?" he was very angry. I went in there to do that with him, and he was very angry with me. He was shaking. He was furious. Not yelling but just shaking, you know. But after that, we cleared it and I said okay.

I think a lot of the problem that people have with Lorne is that they just know him as the genius from Sat.u.r.day Night Live, right? Oh, he's picked you to be in his show. So it's the opportunity of a lifetime. So you're so grateful to the guy, you know, like here's this guy giving you the chance of a lifetime. So you're automatically like, "Thank you," and he's the boss and you have strong feelings for him and you want to please your boss. And, you know, he's not really demonstrative that way. But actors are.

Many writers got their starts, or their first major professional gigs, on Sat.u.r.day Night Live and then went on to write sitcoms or movies, hits and flops. The show truly was a talent processing plant and the most influential comedy academy in TV history. Among those who went through the process was a young, tall Irish American with skin as fair as Snow White's.

CONAN O'BRIEN, Writer: I was always a nervous Sat.u.r.day Night Live writer. I found being a writer on Sat.u.r.day Night Live more nerve-wracking than being the host of Late Night and replacing Letterman.

GREG DANIELS, Writer: Conan O'Brien and I were a writing team at one point on this HBO show called Not Necessarily the News. And we did a packet of material for Sat.u.r.day Night Live and then we didn't really hear anything for about a year. And in the intervening time we had gone on to a different show and then that show had failed.

We had an interview with Lorne. I remember when we went into the interview, he offered us wine and we said no and then he asked us some question, like, "How do I know you'll succeed here at the show?" And we said, "You don't, we might not." So we left the interview and Jim Downey, who was the guy that had brought us in, came up to us and said, "How can you answer questions like that? It was terrible." Eventually, I don't know why, we ended up getting the job. I think that they had said about ten minutes later that it was okay.

This was more like big-time s...o...b..z stuff, and we didn't really know the rules of that kind of behavior. So we were still kind of rubes. I think we should've accepted the wine at least.

CONAN O'BRIEN: Lorne kind of throws you into the pool. I remember, very early on, him bringing me into a room and - not that my view of him has changed at all - but when I was twenty-six years old, which I was then, and you put a gun to my head and said, "Who's the funniest person ever in the world?" I would probably say Woody Allen, Steve Martin, Peter Sellers, one of those three. But definitely Steve Martin was like a towering figure in my comic worldview. And I remember Lorne pulling me into a room early on. Like, "Conan, what do you think? Steve and I are trying to figure out this thing. What do you think?" He's not afraid to just throw you in there with those people. And he's not afraid like, "I don't know, this kid might embarra.s.s me," or "This kid might be an idiot." He's not afraid to go, "Let's get Conan in here and maybe he'll have an idea."

GREG DANIELS:.

Carl Weathers was the host the first week we got there. And he'd just been doing this movie, Action Jackson. And so our introduction to everybody was they had a screening of Action Jackson and we went and all the cast sat in the back and made cracks. I remember Kevin Nealon being very funny, sitting in the back.

It was intimidating, because we were the new guys and we were younger than most of the writers. And we did this thing where we'd close the door and go, "Okay, on three, we're going to laugh like crazy." Then - one, two, three, HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!! And people would hear out in the hall and they'd come by and say, "You got something good?" We'd go, "Oh yeah, oh yeah." So that kept our spirits up.

CONAN O'BRIEN: I think my favorite host, other than like a Steve Martin, is Tom Hanks. I remember he'd stay up all night and he'd write with you. I mean, literally there was the walk-through that some hosts did where they clearly were just being paraded around and pretending to listen to your ideas but they just couldn't wait to get back to the hotel room and let these idiots hash it out. But Tom Hanks would actually roll up his sleeves. Sometimes you'd pa.s.s him and it's like four in the morning, and he's in the corner scribbling away on something, just constantly trying to make it better. That's what always impressed me, people who looked upon it as, "I can make this better right up until the moment we go on the air."

A really difficult guy was George Steinbrenner. There was some idea that Lorne wanted him to do and he sent Odenkirk and me in there to talk to him. So Odenkirk and I go into this room and it's George Steinbrenner. He's got like the giant World Series rings and he's in a bad mood. He had just been banned from ever setting foot in Yankee Stadium, so he was really gruff. So these two nerds come in the room. I remember, like, "Mr. Steinbrenner, we just think, you know, this sketch is funny," and, "Yeah, yeah, I don't know, I don't know, I don't think I'm going to do that sketch." And we were like not taking no for an answer. And he just wheeled on us. He was like, "Hey, not happening! Out!" And he just threw us out of the room.

GREG DANIELS:.

I met my wife, because she was one of Lorne's a.s.sistants, at the first party there. She was very briefly a Lornette and then she moved over and became a development exec at Broadway Video. So Lorne was very happy in kind of a weird way that we had this office romance. And I don't remember exactly when he realized it was going on, but he was saying that there hadn't been a real good office romance since Gilda Radner and G. E. Smith.

CONAN O'BRIEN: I think one of the reasons Sat.u.r.day Night Live has been so successful is that it's almost brutally unsentimental about its past. It just keeps trying to find who's the next person. Let's get him in here. What's the new thing? Let's do it. You always get the sense that the show is almost like a shark that's constantly on a mission to find what's new, what's hot, what are people into now? And chomp its teeth into it.

GREG DANIELS:.

I remember one time Conan and I had a sketch that was supposed to be the cold opening and it was cut between the dress and the air. And we were kind of moping around, and then about twelve-fifteen they realized that the show was running long and they didn't have time for this other big sketch. So they came to us and said, all right, your sketch is back in. And we were so excited and then we realized that it ended with "Live from New York, it's Sat.u.r.day Night!" from being the cold opening. And so we ran down there and the music was on, the musical guest was playing, and then right after the musical guest the sketch was going to start. And we ran down to the cue cards and we wrote a new ending directly onto the cue cards. And basically it was like from Broadcast News, we just kind of gave the cue card to the cue card guy and he ran out and the music ended and they started the sketch. But it was really one of the most exciting s...o...b..z experiences I ever had.

CONAN O'BRIEN: It definitely for me has a "my favorite year" quality to it. I'll never be that young and naive again. There's something about it; it's like going off to war. Sat.u.r.day Night Live tends to get you when you're real young, you haven't seen a lot, and it throws you into this world of lots of pressure, big-name stars, crazy situations - and you can't get that combination again.

No matter what happens to me now - I've just been through so much and I am still thrilled by many things that happened in my career - when I think back to that big Art Deco lobby and the first time being in 30 Rockefeller Center and the first time you hear that "Live from New York, it's Sat.u.r.day Night," and you're standing there and your sketch is about to come up and your heart's going, I can see why it affects people so much.

The magic to me is, it's show business. It's ostrich costumes, people dressed as Civil War soldiers smoking cigarettes out in the hall, dance numbers. I want to be in show business. I want there to be a crowd. I want there to be high highs and low lows. That's supposed to be what it's all about, and Sat.u.r.day Night Live - it's not going to get more intense than that.

KEVIN NEALON:.

I didn't know Dennis Miller was leaving, and then Dennis left, and Lorne offered the "Update" spot to me. I said, "Let me think about it over the weekend." I was kidding. Because, you know, it had always been something I felt that I could do pretty well.

I'd been on the show for I think five years at that point, and so it was a welcome change, a different kind of job description. But it wasn't going to work well, and it took me more out of the sketches and into writing for myself. It was just more of a workload. Tuesday night was rewrite and then Wednesday is the table read and then Thursday I started reading like five or six different newspapers every day.

My approach to it was more like Chevy Chase - you know, keep it dry and more of a straight newscaster, and as far as the audience laughing, I think everybody wants the audience to laugh, but if you think it's funny yourself - even if it doesn't get a laugh at dress - you leave it in there because to people at home it's funny. I'm not from the school of like broad comedy, throw-it-in-your-face stuff. I think the broadest thing I ever did was "Hans and Franz." You know, mine is just put it on the plate; if they want it, they'll take it.

Many SNL cast members were discovered while working with a satirical improv group called the Groundlings. In the late eighties, one of the greatest Groundlings of all joined the cast: Phil Hartman, the man of a thousand characters - or so. In his eight seasons on the show, he played virtually every type, impersonated innumerable celebrities, and endeared himself to Michaels with his unflappable versatility.

JON LOVITZ:.

I'll tell you a story about Phil. You know, we do that sketch Jim Downey wrote, "Tarzan, Tonto, and Frankenstein." So they did it once where it was like a talk show and Nora Dunn was doing the "Pat Stevens Show" with Tarzan, Tonto, and Frankenstein. And Phil is Frankenstein and all of a sudden he starts laughing, right, like he just completely broke up - ha, ha, you know, he laughed out loud. And then he stopped.

And then about fifteen seconds later, he just completely lost it. So then of course we all started laughing, because he's just losing it. And I'm thinking, "What is he doing? We're on live television. It's not the Groundlings." And he's just laughing. And so I had like my face in my arms, trying to hide it, trying not to laugh, but I was laughing, of course. I was just laughing hysterically. I mean, he just completely lost it. And it was just hysterically laughing. So afterward I asked him, I said, "What happened? What was so funny?" So he said, well, he was thinking of himself sitting there as Frankenstein and something happened, and thinking about how silly the sketch was, you know, just the idea of it made him laugh all of a sudden. So he started laughing. And then he stopped, right? And then, he said, he was sitting there thinking how funny it must have looked to see Frankenstein laugh like that. And then that just made him like lose it.

VICTORIA JACKSON:.

I was married. Phil was married. Lovitz was single. Dana was married. Nora was married. Dennis Miller was married the second half, and no, I never got the impression they were having a wild time. I think our job took up like everything - like 200 percent of our being. And I don't know, maybe they were having fun. I think the Belus.h.i.+ era was way different than ours, because in ours, n.o.body was doing - well, okay, I know one person who was doing drugs. But I mean, in our era, it was the "Just Say No" thing, and our cast was not full of drugs or drinking or anything.

JACK HANDEY:.

Phil was a guy that I really loved to write for. I wrote so many pieces for him - like "Frozen Caveman Lawyer." I think that the show tended to become more performance-oriented than idea-oriented. And maybe that annoyed Phil.

JOE PISCOPO, Cast Member: The Sinatra family was not happy with the impression Phil was doing at all, again rest his soul. To this day I'll go out and do these Sinatra tributes with a seventeen-piece band - which is a riot, by the way. It's all tongue-in-cheek, because they know me from the SNL thing. But I always check with Tina and the family to make sure it's okay. When we did the Brisk Lipton Iced Tea campaign, they had me do the voice.

There was a meanness there to the Hartman thing. That was Lorne too, man. And I think there's some kind of law: Don't even attempt to do Sinatra unless you're Italian.

BOB ODENKIRK:.

Phil Hartman was amazing. He just delivered every time. He had amazing timing and great power and just - I don't know what to say about Phil, because he was a very genial guy and he seemed to have a great work ethic. He was an older guy when he got the show, which might have helped him, you know, be more of a steady personality while he did it. But when I got there, he'd been on the show I think for like two years or maybe three, and he just came in every day and it was like an office job for him, and he was very good at it. I don't think he ever again got caught up in the whole stay-up-all-night routine or worrying about status all the time. He was more sure of himself and he just came in, did his work, and churned out the sketches, and if they didn't get on, he didn't get too upset - he just delivered. And he seemed to have a good time doing it.

JAN HOOKS:.

We were doing "Beauty and the Beast" with Demi Moore and Jon Lovitz, a sketch about the two beasts, you know, going out on a blind date. Phil and I were in the backseat of a car making out; he was the Beast, I was the Beauty. I just have to tell you this about Phil. At the end of it, they cut to the commercial, and Phil had to rush off and be, you know, whoever. But first Phil said to me, "You gave me a huge b.o.n.e.r. Oh G.o.d. I've got to run!" So there's like this mountain of manhood, and he had to go on and, you know, make a quick change with a big old b.o.n.e.r.

KEVIN NEALON:.

I got a death-threat letter once from some crazy person, just saying he didn't like what I did on "Update." He said, "How you became so unfunny, I'll never know, but your days are numbered. I'm going to put a bullet in your big fat head." Well, for about a week after that, I went around asking people if they thought I had a big fat head.

VICTORIA JACKSON:.

I was always trying to figure out a way to make fun of the news, but I just never fit into the news. Then Christine Zander came by and laid this People magazine on my desk, and it said, "I am not a bimbo," with Jessica Hahn's picture. And Christine goes, "Hey, this would be perfect for you." And then she walked away, and I thought, "Write me the thing - you're the writer." But I went to my typewriter, because we all had our own offices, you know, but mine was mostly just empty all the time - I had pink and blue tulle stapled to the ceiling to look like clouds and I used the phone a lot to call long distance because it was free - but I thought, "I am not a bimbo," and in like ten minutes, I typed up the whole song.

But Lorne didn't put it in the show. And I met with him and said, "Lorne, everybody loved it." And he goes, "I don't know. It shouldn't be the blues." I asked him, "Could it be in if I changed the melody?" And he said, "Uhhh, go talk to Cheryl." So I went to see Cheryl, who was the piano player in the band. I told her Lorne wanted more of a pop sound, and she changed the melody.

Then I did it and everyone loved it. It was the StingSteve Martin show. I couldn't believe that a song I wrote was actually not only on national TV but that Sting and Steve were watching me, and it was perfect. At the party afterwards I could tell everyone was like loving it. And then it was in the paper the next day. The Wall Street Journal had an article called "1987 - The Year of the Bimbo," and they talked about all the bimbos in the news that year, like Donna Rice and Jessica Hahn, and they mentioned my song. So I framed it and it's on the wall.

CAROL LEIFER:.