Pod Insights Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso Live From New York: 50 Years of ‘Saturday Night Live’ About this episode A celebration of 50 years of Saturday Night Live, featuring stories from Bill Hader, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Jason Reitman.
Find links to hear each of these full episodes https://talkeasypod.com/snl-turns-50/. Visit Peacock to watch The SNL Anniversary Special https://www.peacocktv.com/watch-online/tv/saturday-night-live/8885992813767211112/seasons/50/episodes/snl50-the-anniversary-special-episode-13/912dc1df-b191-3a99-ad54-8759800c92a0, The Homecoming Concert https://www.peacocktv.com/stream-tv/snl-50-the-homecoming-concert, and the four-part docuseries Beyond Saturday Night https://www.peacocktv.com/stream-tv/snl-50-beyond-saturday-night.
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Transcript 8,399 words · 11 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Speaker 00 Lemonada.
0:21 Sam Fragoso? This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to the show.
0:40 Sam Fragoso? Today, a celebration of Saturday Night Live. By now, you've probably seen something online or on television marking the 50th anniversary of the show. There's been a few new documentaries chronicling the hallowed halls of 30 Rock, a lengthy profile of its creator and showrunner, Lorne Michaels and The New Yorker, along with a homecoming concert at Radio City Music Hall, which featured everyone from Lorne Hill to David Byrne. And then, of course, there was the main event, a three-and-a-half-hour jam-packed special featuring cast members, new and old, including two of my favorites, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, moderating an audience Q and A onstage.
1:28 Speaker 02 Okay. Well, John, I know the seating chart was really hard to figure out, and you were going to be seated in the studio, but then Julia Louis-Dreyfus asked to bring her service dog, so...
1:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, sorry. John, it's a medical thing. You really need that dog, right, Julia?
1:47 Speaker 03 Oh, no, no, no. I'm here for him. He's blind.
1:53 Speaker 03 So Ricky, the blond woman who you just talked, that's Amy Poehler. And the older woman next to her is Tina Fey.
2:05 Speaker 03 And the intense energy that you're feeling to your left is Adam Driver. He is...
2:15 Speaker 03 He's an absolutely incredible actor. And right now, he's acting like he's not attracted to me.
2:24 Speaker 03 How you doing? This is my puppy here. Yeah, all right.
2:30 Sam Fragoso? If you haven't seen the anniversary special in full, we've included a link in our show notes of this episode. But as many pointed out, one key person missing from the festivities was actor Bill Hader. He was a cast member on the show from 2005 to 2013, beloved for his eccentric impressions and original creations like Stefan, the flamboyant New York tour guide with a seemingly endless supply of off-kilter recommendations. But before Hader received four primetime Emmy nominations for his work on SNL, he was just a kid from Oklahoma, living in Los Angeles, trying to find his way.
3:15 Sam Fragoso? And so that's where we pick up the story, with Bill in his early 20s, working as a production assistant in Hollywood, not knowing that the phone call that would change his life was right around the corner.
3:41 Sam Fragoso? So you're peeing across a bunch of different kinds of film sets, some big, some small. I think you find a lot of this work on the back page of The Hollywood Reporter.
3:51 Speaker 04 Yeah.
3:52 Sam Fragoso? One of the first jobs you have is on a film called Final Payback.
3:56 Speaker 04 Yes, with Richard Grieco.
3:57 Sam Fragoso? What was your job on that movie?
3:59 Speaker 04 So there's a guy named John Saxon. Do you know who he is?
4:02 Sam Fragoso? No.
4:02 Speaker 04 Okay, so John Saxon, he's the sheriff in Nightmare on Elm Street. He was in Enter the Dragon. He's in a great, very bad movie called Mitchell. I was a big John Saxon fan, and I got to run lines with him. So I got to sit there as a P A. And I thought I had made it, because I was just being like, "Sir, your wife is dead." And he was like, "What do you mean, she is dead? What are you saying?" You know? And I was like, "Sir, I don't know what to tell you." And I was like, "This is the coolest thing ever." And I think it was a scene where he pulls up in a really nice car and hops out and they go, so your, your wife's been murdered. And he's like, no, you know, and, and so I got to run lines with him and then I had to back the car up. It's like a super nice Rolls Royce
4:44 Speaker 04 that the producer owned. And I went, okay. And I had to back it up. He drives up like a super windy driveway. So I just would sit and just very slowly back this thing up. I would just start to hit something and then it would be like, and now I just hear a John Saxon go, no.
5:03 Sam Fragoso? It went on like this for a few years, doing all these kinds of
5:05 Speaker 04 Yes.
5:06 Sam Fragoso? jobs.
5:06 Speaker 04 Yes, I did that. I was on, me and Nick Jasanovic worked on a, a kids movie called Two Little Heroes. There was a stunt coordinator on there named Solly Marx that Nick and I were just obsessed with and we would talk to him a lot. I feel like, I think he was from Russia and he like smoked a pipe and he was the stunt coordinator, but he looked like, like an academic kinda.
5:26 Sam Fragoso? These experiences, at some point, you reach the end of the road and you don't want to P A anymore. You start working as an assistant editor at places and then doing all this work. Eventually you start performing at Second City, Los Angeles. From there, Megan Mullally comes to watch Matt Offerman, loves your performance, says, I'm gonna call Lorne Michaels. When you get the call to go audition, do you remember that day?
5:52 Speaker 04 So I was in a edit bay. It was a company called Triage and I was working on Iron Chef America and a editor had come in frustrated because I had put his project together wrong. As the assistant editor, you stay up all night and you're kind of prepping what that editor has to do the next day. And as he was talking to me, I saw a phone call, a number from, I didn't recognize. It was Megan Mullally and she said, hey, it's Megan. And she said, I told Lorne Michaels about you and he, he'd like to meet you. I hope that's okay. And I don't really know what she said after that. I kind of just, well, and then there was a line on the, someone beeping in on the other line and I was like, hello? And it was like, hi, my name is Lindsay Shukas. I work at the talent department at SNL and
6:35 Speaker 04 Lorne Michaels would like to meet you. Um, who do I call? Like, who's your manager? And I was like, I don't have a manager. And she's like, well, he'd like to meet you. Can you fly out next week? And it was a whirlwind.
6:48 Sam Fragoso? The night of your audition happens, I think, a few weeks later at the UCB on 26th Street in New York.
6:55 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, we had done a show in LA first.
6:58 Sam Fragoso? Right, but you had packed it with all your friends.
7:00 Speaker 04 Yeah, and, and, and he was like, this is all your friends. Justin Novick was at that show, actually. He was cheering really loud and then it was like.
7:07 Sam Fragoso? You gotta sell the bits.
7:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, it was like, he was like, oh, these are all his friends. So now you gotta come to New York and do it for a New York crowd. And in the front row was Seth Meyers, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Mike Shoemaker, Lorne Michaels, Marcy Klein. Terrifying, but you know what? At the time, though, I had nothing to lose and my sister flew out from Oklahoma. So I just remember like hanging with her and like the guys in the sketch group I was in, Matt Offerman and Mel Cowan and Eric Filipkowski. And, and what's gonna happen? Like, well, this, this is something I'll tell my grandkids, you know?
7:40 Sam Fragoso? Lauren said that one of the impressions that pushed you over the edge was of Peter Falk.
7:47 Speaker 04 What the heck was the bit? He does do a thing where he says, uh, this is a Jawa. Now, listen over here, look at me. What we're gonna do here is we're gonna play a Jawa. These are, these are from the sand, the tattooing, okay? I mean, that kind of show, it kind of like where I was at at that time. It was real nerd humor, stuff now that would drive me crazy. I'm like, oh, stop it with a Star Wars reference, you know?
8:12 Sam Fragoso? Well, your tastes change.
8:13 Speaker 04 Yeah, you become like a withering snob.
8:16 Sam Fragoso? Is that what, how you describe yourself now?
8:18 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, that's my license plate.
8:20 Sam Fragoso? Withering snob? They really, they, they put that all on there.
8:23 Speaker 04 Yeah, they put it all on there. I have two license plates, actually. Just stuck them together.
8:27 Sam Fragoso? On SNL, once, once you're on the show in 2005, you said that there's this thing with funny people where you think that if you're not good at this, you're not good at anything. So with SNL, I was like, if this doesn't work, I'm fucked because I'm bad at everything else.
8:43 Speaker 04 That is kind of true. It was like, the only two things I, growing up, that I had confidence in was I'm funny and I, I really think I could make a movie. I really think I could be a good director.
8:55 Sam Fragoso? You said that to your father after a basketball game?
8:57 Speaker 04 Yes, after a basketball game, I said, Dad, I think the only two things I'm good at are this. And it was in reference to, I suck at basketball. So it was like, I can make a movie and I'm funny. That's it. Everything else, like, don't count on me. And then the funny thing is it never really changed.
9:15 Speaker 04 You know, when you get to SNL and your whole worth, do you know what I mean? Is being funny. You get there and then you're doing stuff and you're not, it's not funny. And then you can get in your head and then go, oh my God, maybe I'm not good at this stuff. I'm not funny, you know?
9:28 Sam Fragoso? Did you feel like that in the early days where you didn't think you were funny?
9:32 Speaker 04 Yes. And a lot of that was just getting confidence and kind of realizing like, oh, everybody has ups and downs. And it was kind of helpful for me to see people that I did find funny, like Fred Armisen or Will Forte bomb. You know, or you would see Steve Martin come back and host and do a thing that didn't work and go, huh? And I would, so I got to study that and go, okay, this is just part of the process is failing. And, and then it became a little easier. I think I just got to a place where I go, well, how do I alleviate my anxiety here? And I was like, oh, you know what? Like, I could just make it where, what are the things I can control? What I can control are bring two good pieces to the table read every Wednesday. And I'm good in everybody else's sketches.
10:16 Speaker 04 And that's it. And then it was just kind of like, whatever people put me in, I would just do the best job I could.
10:22 Sam Fragoso? This anxiety you've mentioned a few times, it's, as you've said, pervasive in those SNL years. And I have to say, there's such a stunning disconnect between the joy you're bringing people at home versus the kind of pain it seemed to be causing you.
10:40 Speaker 04 You know, a lot of it's like the anticipation of it, the anticipation of going out, the anticipation of five minutes to air. Yeah. I just would go to the place where I'm like, I'm going to pass out. But the whole week that clock starts. So starting Monday, when I walk in, I would always have this feeling like, okay, the, the clock started. And getting you to that point where you're on air on Saturday. And it was just, uh, the first four seasons especially was just crippling. It was really hard. I can see it in some of my performances where I put my hand in front of my face or I will grab onto things. I just, it's like, I'm literally trying to hide or steady myself. Vanessa Bayer and I just were talking and we talked about a time where we were in a sketch and I grabbed onto her arm midway through the sketch.
11:25 Speaker 04 And she kind of was like, oh, why, why are you doing this? And then she kind of looked at me and saw in my eyes that I was.
11:30 Sam Fragoso? Going through it.
11:31 Speaker 04 Yeah, going through it and just like, we just went through the thing. And then after, at good nights, when, you know, we're all waving goodbye and stuff, we hugged. She said, hey, are you okay? And I was like, oh, no, sorry about that. You know, I just had a moment. I think as the season, as the show went on and everything, I got a little bit better with it, but Julian Assange cold open. I mean, if you watch that, I can tell I'm trying to hide myself into this wine glass that they gave me. Cause that cold open was given to me like that day and Seth Meyers, it was a thing. You would show up and Seth Meyers would go, hey, you're Julian Assange in the cold open. And I would just full on spin out. The thing that would calm me down is just read it over and over and over again. To the point where I really get it and I would know what I was supposed to do and I would get the rhythms right and everything.
12:16 Speaker 04 And then between dress and air, they change it all.
12:22 Speaker 04 So yeah, I just would have a panic attack.
12:24 Sam Fragoso? They were torturing you.
12:25 Speaker 04 Yeah, but you know what? I think to everybody else is that they just made us, saw me being dramatic or, you know, calling jost. If he had to make changes to a sketch before air, I would be following him around being like, okay, just give them to me the minute they get out of the copier. And he'd be like, will you please relax? You know?
12:42 Sam Fragoso? You said, I'd wake up Saturday morning crying, hitting my head against the shower, saying, I don't want to go, I don't want to go. That does sound like a kid who doesn't want to go to school.
12:53 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, it's, it's that feeling. Yeah. And I, and I had that, you know? I remember being a kid and just being very, the social anxiety of walking into school and. It being very big and especially when I got into like sixth grade and you're around like freshmen in high school and people like that, you know, walking around, it was all very intimidating. So it was like, oh, this would be so much better if I didn't have to go. And, and yeah, yeah, I would get really worked up and Maggie Carey would come down, who was married to at the time, would come down and calm me down. And it was, you know, very lovely of her. And, you know, she would do like breathing that she had learned in
13:32 Speaker 04 like a Lamaze type breathing stuff, you know, to try to calm my nerves down. And, and it was really sweet. But yeah, man, it was, it was rough. It was a rough go.
13:42 Sam Fragoso? It seemed like one person that made it a little bit easier, in addition to Maggie, was John Mulaney coming on the show.
13:49 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent.
13:50 Sam Fragoso? Now, usually in interviews, people want to replay and talk about all these sketches and characters you've done. The truth is, SNL is extremely litigious and there's no chance we're going to be able to get that clip. So there is one sketch that I'd like to have on record because it's so good and it never made the air. It's a Samurai film, directed by James L. Brooks.
14:16 Speaker 04 And John and I wrote it.
14:18 Sam Fragoso? The title was called, But What If You're Wrong?
14:20 Speaker 04 Yeah. But What If You're Wrong? It was like a Samurai film and you see them fighting and it's like honor, you know, uh, family, blah, blah, blah. They're fighting. And it's like dating after 40. And it was me and Fred as two guys. And I was like, uh, gave her the keys to my house. Now I have a Netflix subscription.
14:44 Speaker 04 And then like really violent fighting. And then that song, Walking on Sunshine kicks in. And then it was us as samurais. But it was all like, uh, look, in the book of life, I just want to be in the acknowledgements. Yeah. I think Abby Elliott and the scene Brad were two geishas, but speed walking in Central Park. And then one of them like runs into a light pole and goes like, whoa, and falls down.
15:08 Sam Fragoso? When you pitched this to Lorne Michaels, do you remember what he said?
15:14 Speaker 04 No.
15:16 Sam Fragoso? He said, Samurai's James L. Brooks? I don't understand.
15:27 Speaker 04 Well, we always liked James L. Brooks and I think in a Stefan, we put in a that a club was written and directed by James L. Brooks.
15:36 Sam Fragoso? He probably sounded different than I just did.
15:38 Speaker 04 Yeah, you, yeah, yeah, you know, uh, I like this, but why now? But yeah, that was one we wrote. We also wrote one that was like, we did a Mr. Belvedere sketch because there's like a velvet, you know, there's like the thing with the guy played Mr. Belvedere. Uh, a table read sat on his balls and had to go to the hospital. So we did that scene. It was me playing Mr. Belvedere and I was standing up. And then I was like, I just want to say before I sit down, how much I love all of you.
16:11 Speaker 04 And being on the show is just one of the greatest delights of my life. And I want you all to know that I just love you. And then I start to sit down and right before I sit down, I go, another thing real quick. I just want you to know that
16:27 Speaker 04 these scripts are some of the most fantastic scripts I've ever seen in my life.
16:31 Sam Fragoso? It's almost a little Alan Alda like.
16:33 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. And then like the thing was that it was urban legend theater and it was Mick Jagger playing himself hosting urban legend theater. So he's like, I'm Mick Jagger.
16:44 Speaker 04 And then he says, uh, it's called, so when you sit on your balls, it's called pulling a bell, Belvedere. And then Will Forte gave us our final line because we were like, yeah, we don't know how to end this sketch. He goes, oh, you should have him sit down and not scream or anything, just sit down and stare for a bit. And then go, I just myselfed myself.
17:07 Speaker 04 Yeah, that didn't make it on either. It was just kind of like, guys, come on. It was like, come on, that's hilarious.
17:13 Sam Fragoso? You know, it didn't make it on SNL, but it made it on here.
17:17 Speaker 04 It made it on here, and I think John will be happy that it's out there, the Mr. Belvedere sketch.
17:22 Sam Fragoso? John will be happy to talk easy.
17:23 Speaker 04 Talk easy. Now he knows Mr. Belvedere's sketch, which no one found funny.
17:30 Sam Fragoso? Look, I liked it. I liked it.
17:31 Speaker 04 Thanks.
17:34 Sam Fragoso? That was Bill Hader. He was a cast member on SNL from 2005 through 2013. If you'd like to hear our full conversation with Bill, it's one of my favorites. You can find the link in the show notes of this episode. After the break, more SNL stories from the inimitable Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
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19:26 Sam Fragoso? That yearning to be taken seriously, to grow up and become an adult. One of the subjects that you often come back to on your podcast, Wiser Than Me, which if you haven't listened to it, is very good.
19:39 Speaker 03 Thank you.
19:40 Sam Fragoso? One of the subjects you come back to again and again is ambition, which for women in 2024 is a thorny subject.
19:50 Speaker 03 Is it still?
19:51 Sam Fragoso? I think so.
19:53 Speaker 03 Yes, it's such a shame. Okay.
19:55 Sam Fragoso? I can imagine in the 80s, you know, when you're first starting out on SNL, it was even more challenging.
20:03 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:03 Sam Fragoso? How did you understand your relationship to ambition at that age?
20:08 Speaker 03 I didn't understand it. I felt it. I felt maybe shy about it, but it didn't keep me from it. And...
20:18 Sam Fragoso? What do you mean by that?
20:19 Speaker 03 I didn't want to articulate it. I almost didn't want people to know. It was my secret, but I had it.
20:27 Sam Fragoso? Right.
20:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:28 Sam Fragoso? And you were on this show at 21. I mean, you were like the youngest castmate at the time, right? Were you able to hold the creative person you wanted to be and the ambitious person? Like, how did you think of yourself in that moment?
20:41 Speaker 03 Well, it was really rough. It was very hard to be... This was Saturday Night Live, and I was very... I was really naive and green as green could be. I'd only done... I was in college. I was doing theater in Chicago while I was in college. But then I left school to do SNL. But you have to understand that I grew up, I was in junior high and high school and stuff, in the 70s, right? So that's when SNL first came on the scene. There was nothing like that on television. It was speaking to my generation.
21:18 Sam Fragoso? With Bill Murray and folks like that?
21:20 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah. And Chevy and Gilda and, you know, Jane Curtin, all those people. And they were irreverent. They were... It was like nothing.
21:30 Speaker 03 Like that on television. I felt like they were my people. I remember I had a, I was just thinking about this the other day. I had a picture of Gilda Radner in my bedroom, growing up. It was on my bulletin board and I, you know, I just, I, I, I, these were my people. So that when I got hired to do it, it was not what I expected it to be. And by the way, it was also a very different atmosphere then. It was a, a different cast. It was not, it was not being run by the, you know, Lorne Michaels and his group at, at that time. So it was very different and it was very dog eat dog. And I had no understanding of that.
22:13 Speaker 03 I thought it would be an ensemble and we would all get along perfectly. And it was, and I was very misguided.
22:20 Sam Fragoso? You were on the show from 1982 to 1985.
22:22 Speaker 03 Yes.
22:23 Sam Fragoso? And you've called it a grad school in entertainment in which I learned a lot.
22:27 Speaker 03 Yes.
22:28 Sam Fragoso? If we're sticking with the collegiate analogy.
22:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:31 Sam Fragoso? What would some of the courses be named? And what did you take away from them?
22:39 Speaker 03 Well, let's see, one course is called Cocaine Does Not Make You Funnier.
22:51 Sam Fragoso? That's just entry level, so that's right at the top.
22:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:55 Sam Fragoso? It's a good, good life lesson.
22:56 Speaker 03 It is a good life lesson. I've, that, I remember these, these sketches would come to the table read. They're like 18 pages long and there's one writer in the corner who wrote it. And as it's being read, he's like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And you're like, I, I remember thinking, what is up with him? Anyway, yeah. So I passed that course.
23:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
23:19 Sam Fragoso? You passed that course. Were there any other classes you want to shout out?
23:22 Speaker 03 Oh, boy.
23:23 Sam Fragoso? In terms of, in terms of lessons that actually mattered to you and, and how you move forward from this.
23:29 Speaker 03 Yes, well, the, the big takeaway for me, as simplistic as it sounds, was I'm not going to do this anymore if it's not fun. Because it wasn't fun. I did not have a good time. I mean, there were moments of bonding with certain people, including Larry David. By the way, he was there my third year and he and I bonded over being miserable. But the-
23:54 Speaker 03 But really, truly, the takeaway for me was if I can't get back to a place where I'm having fun, like I was in Chicago, doing theater at Northwestern and theater on the stage in Chicago, then I think I'm just not going to do this, because it's not what I thought it was.
24:12 Sam Fragoso? And did you have an idea of what you would do if not that?
24:16 Speaker 03 No, I had no skills.
24:18 Sam Fragoso? Right.
24:19 Speaker 03 I still don't. I mean, I hadn't thought it through beyond that. It wasn't like I was saying to myself, "I'm going to give up." I just considered, "I'm going to pound at this and see if I can find a way to feel good and find joy." That's going to be what I'm reaching for.
24:39 Sam Fragoso? So the one bit of joy, the only silver lining of SNL, seems to be Larry David. Is that fair?
24:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, although I didn't know it at the time. But, yes. And by the way, I made friends there, so I don't want to make it sound like it was all shit, but...
24:56 Sam Fragoso? But you bonded over misery?
24:58 Speaker 03 We did, indeed, yeah.
24:59 Sam Fragoso? Okay. He's pretty well-known for airing his grievances.
25:02 Speaker 03 Yes. Yes. He based a Seinfeld episode on that, called "Festivus."
25:08 Sam Fragoso? For the rest of us, yeah.
25:09 Speaker 03 Right.
25:10 Sam Fragoso? I forgot my pole at home, sadly. He is like... That was a deep, bad Seinfeld bit.
25:17 Speaker 03 That was a great episode, by the way.
25:19 Sam Fragoso? Jerry Stiller.
25:20 Speaker 03 Oh, please.
25:21 Sam Fragoso? Rest in peace.
25:22 Speaker 03 Rest in peace. God love him to death.
25:23 Sam Fragoso? But he really is like the Michael Jordan of expressing discontent. And so, I want to know, did the two of you complain about the same things?
25:32 Speaker 03 Sure.
25:33 Sam Fragoso? And what were they?
25:35 Speaker 03 "Nobody knows what's funny here. Nobody gets what we're doing. They're not putting my sketches on the air. They're not putting me on the air." In that general vicinity.
25:48 Sam Fragoso? Stuff like that.
25:49 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:50 Sam Fragoso? To talk about Seinfeld, we'd need like a whole nother Aspen Ideas Festival to do that.
25:55 Speaker 03 That's fine. I'll come back. It's fine.
25:58 Sam Fragoso? Wow.
26:02 Sam Fragoso? What a nice offer.
26:05 Sam Fragoso? That's not what I thought you were gonna say.
26:07 Speaker 03 It's relaxed. It feels very chill here. I like it.
26:10 Sam Fragoso? Yeah, what we're doing. Has it been good so far?
26:13 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think. You?
26:14 Sam Fragoso? No, I'll list my complaints later. No. The lights, have they gotten brighter, though?
26:20 Speaker 03 Yeah, they are very bright.
26:22 Sam Fragoso? Okay, but since we're here, can we talk about it a little bit? Because I want to talk about the collaboration between Larry and Jerry Seinfeld. Because as the years have gone on, the reputation is that it's a show about nothing and it's, you know, and because it's about nothing and moves so seamlessly, I think some people conflate effortlessness with ease. And I bring that up because when you accepted the Mark Twain Prize, you thanked Jerry in that speech. And you said, "I learned a lot from Jer over the years, principally the importance of hard work. Jerry killed himself to make Seinfeld good.
27:03 Sam Fragoso? He and Larry David worked so hard, it is actually impossible to describe. It was very emotionally charged, the way you said it."
27:12 Speaker 03 Yeah.
27:13 Sam Fragoso? Which for Seinfeld is such a no-hugging, unsentimental show.
27:17 Speaker 03 Yeah. No-hugging, no-learning was the...
27:19 Sam Fragoso? Exactly.
27:19 Speaker 03 The edict. Yeah.
27:21 Sam Fragoso? That was gonna be the title of this talk, too. But six years removed, where does that quote land with you? And how do you, and how have you come to understand their collaboration?
27:34 Speaker 03 Oh, well, it was...
27:38 Speaker 03 It was obviously unique. It was, you know, lightning in a bottle, I would say. They're actually very different people in a lot of ways, but they had a shared comedic brain. But they came at moments from a slightly different angle, but they came at the same moment.
28:00 Sam Fragoso? How would you describe each person's angle?
28:04 Speaker 03 Oh, God, this is impossible to answer.
28:09 Speaker 03 I have to think about that. I'm so sorry, you guys.
28:11 Sam Fragoso? It's okay.
28:11 Speaker 03 Because it's like, it's in my, practically in my body. It's hard to sort of articulate it.
28:16 Sam Fragoso? Yeah.
28:17 Speaker 03 Larry was a hand wringer. That's no surprise. Jerry was more open. And the combo, I wonder if they would agree with me on that. And the combo of those things, they would not give up. They were a dog with a bone. They were two dogs with the same bone.
28:37 Sam Fragoso? Right.
28:38 Speaker 03 Yeah. There you go. That took forever to get out. Sorry.
28:42 Sam Fragoso? You know, the beautiful thing is, we're grateful for everyone here, but people will listen to this later. It will be edited. We're gonna sound great.
28:53 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, thank you. Oh, I appreciate that. Just go straight to the dog and the bone thing.
28:57 Sam Fragoso? That was from a live taping we did at last year's Aspen Ideas Festival with actor, comedian, and now podcast host, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. She was a cast member on SNL from 1982 to 1985, which was also the year its creator, Lorne Michaels, returned to the program after a five-year absence. The season that followed, season 11, has recently been reexamined in a documentary called The Weird Year, which is available to stream on Peacock. But before there was a weird year, or either of the eras Bill and Julia came up in, there was
29:41 Sam Fragoso? October 11, 1975, which is when the first episode of SNL aired, the first time a cast, which featured John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, amongst many others, performed in front of a live studio audience at 30 Rockefeller. It's a day that has recently been immortalized in a new film called Saturday Night, from director Jason Reitman. We spoke last fall around the release of the film to talk about the origins of the project, the legacy of Saturday Night Live, and the enduring comedic influence of his late father, the great Ivan Reitman. Here we are.
30:23 Sam Fragoso? So let's start with the new movie. It captures the night leading up to the first episode of SNL, which aired October 11, 1975.
30:32 Speaker 05 Right.
30:33 Sam Fragoso? But before you started making this movie, you spent a week at SNL writing and directing, which was always a dream of yours. This was the week of April 7, 2008, right after you had just made your first two films, Thank You for Smoking and Juno. The host was Ashton Kutcher. The musical guest was Narls Barkley. And I'm not sure which of those two people aged worse since then. But what happened in that week at 30 Rockefeller that planted the idea, the seed of this movie?
31:06 Speaker 05 Well, the first thing that happened was I got to experience everything I'd ever dreamed of. And, you know, I, like everyone, discovered SNL around seven or eight years old. And the thing that I couldn't believe at the time was, they do this every week. It felt so special that there was a 90-minute show of all sketch comedy that was just bonkers and abstract and weird and had music. That when I found out they do this every single week and they write one of these shows and build it in a matter of days, that felt unreal. And in my later teens, I got to go see a show live. And then I realized this other thing, that, yes, there's the ensemble that's on camera that we kind of associate the show with, the cast.
31:50 Speaker 05 But there's a whole other ensemble that is actually making the show. And that's actually the most thrilling part to me. When you sit in the audience and you watch the show made, you're watching this ballet of camera operators and sound people and stagehands, and they're moving everything in a matter of seconds to get from sketch to sketch in between commercial breaks. And it's better than the Joffrey Ballet. I mean, it's like choreography at the highest level. And when you're sitting in the audience at Saturday Night Live, you feel attention the way you feel watching
32:21 Speaker 05 A free throw in overtime during the NBA Finals, or you know, like, you know, a full count in the World Series. It's just so tense.
32:28 Sam Fragoso? I'm anxious just hearing those two examples.
32:31 Speaker 05 It really is. And when I got the chance to write there for a week, the cool part was living out all the stuff I'd ever read about what it's like to be at SNL. You know, staying up till five in the morning on the 17th floor, writing a sketch, hearing your sketch read out at a table read, being there when they put up the piece of paper that says, here's the stuff that's going to be in this week, and you made it. And then having three days to create something, you know. It takes years to make a movie. Here, it's like, you get three days, go. And then finally, what it's like to be on the floor when the show goes live. And it's a, it's just a moving freight train. There's nothing you can do about it. And, and you actually sit, when your sketch comes up, you sit with Lorne underneath the bleachers.
33:13 Speaker 05 And you listen to the audience above you, whether they react or not. It's crazy.
33:17 Sam Fragoso? How was that?
33:18 Speaker 05 I mean, nerve wracking, but I had less on the line. I felt more for that. I mean, there's writers who are there year round, who are hoping that this is going to launch the rest of their career. I didn't have to worry about that. I was at space camp. Like, I just got to have a good time.
33:31 Sam Fragoso? You had just made Juno?
33:33 Speaker 05 Yeah, like, I like, like, I was gonna go make another movie. It was gonna be fine. And it was total wish fulfillment. So I think the, the piece of the idea that formed there was, what is it like to actually be in those halls when a show is coming together? But then, frankly, like, I went off and I made some movies. And I became progressively more obsessed with the idea of making a movie that takes place in real time. There's a few examples of movies that take place in real time.
34:01 Sam Fragoso? Sounds like you loved the film The Candidate.
34:02 Speaker 05 I love The Candidate.
34:04 Sam Fragoso? Now, we're upon the 50th season of SNL, which Lorne Michaels still runs, as he did in 1975. In your film, he's played by Gabriel LaBelle. But I've heard you say that people too often mistake your plot for what your movie is actually about. So I've explained the plot of Saturday Night. What is the film actually about to you?
34:27 Speaker 05 Yeah, what I like to say is that people often confuse the plot for the location. And the location of this movie is Saturday Night Live. Yeah, this is a story that my dad, uh, years ago, where he asked me to come over his house one day to watch the show 24 with Kiefer Sutherland. And I started watching it with him. It was great. It was a kind of undeniable how good this television show is. And my dad was really into it. We watched a bunch of episodes together. And I finally said, why is this show so good? And I said, there's tons of shows about terrorism. And my dad said, Jason, this isn't a show about terrorism. Terrorism is a location.
35:01 Sam Fragoso? Did it get serious like that?
35:02 Speaker 05 Yeah. This is a show about a man trying to keep his family together. And it just, like, everything clicked in my head right there in that moment. Never mistake your location for your story. So Saturday Night Live is the location for a story about one generation ripping television out of the hands of another. It's a location for a story about what does it feel like when a show comes together in real time? And it's an opportunity for a storytelling experience where you are following 20 or 30 characters in real time for 90 straight minutes.
35:35 Sam Fragoso? It definitely had the kind of Altman quality to it.
35:38 Speaker 05 Totally. And which is funny, because that's why I keep on, I'm always referencing Michael Ritchie. You know, this guy directed The Candidate and he directed Smile and directed Downhill Racer. And would go on to direct Bad News Bears and Fletch. Because I feel like he was doing Altman movies on amphetamines. Like, that's kind of what I dug about him. It was like, fast Altman.
35:58 Sam Fragoso? The lore around Lorne and SNL, I feel like continues to grow each year. There's the James Andrew Miller and Tom Shail book, Live from New York. There are seemingly a never-ending stream of podcasts hosted by former cast members recounting the glory days of their time there. There's no shortage of, like, SNL discourse.
36:20 Speaker 05 Right.
36:21 Sam Fragoso? But to make the film, you interviewed over 30 people, right? These people have presumably been interviewed about SNL before.
36:29 Speaker 05 Right.
36:30 Sam Fragoso? What were you after that you couldn't find elsewhere?
36:33 Speaker 05 No one's ever told the story of opening night. People are always curious about the history of the show, as though you were making a biopic about, you know, tell me the 10-year history of like, how this whole thing came together. But that's not what interested me. I wanted to tell a story about what it felt like in the room in that hour and a half leading up. Now, inevitably, people start talking about all kinds of memories from all the weeks surrounding that date. But what Gil and I, my writing partner and I, were always trying to direct them to was to somehow capture what it felt like that weekend, that day, that night of, as the clock was ticking.
37:07 Sam Fragoso? Were you surprised by what people told you?
37:09 Speaker 05 Yes and no. We had already done a lot of research, so we had a certain amount of expectation. You and I are sitting here, half the things I'm about to say, you already know I'm going to say. You're just prompting me, right? Because you have a sense of what's going to happen in an interview.
37:22 Sam Fragoso? I'd say, I know a lot of things you're going to say.
37:26 Speaker 05 Right.
37:26 Sam Fragoso? But the goal of doing research and knowing what you have said is to maybe say something different today.
37:31 Speaker 05 1,000%. And I think that's kind of the approach that we took as we were interviewing everybody is we knew what their canned answers were. We knew what their three or four stories that they loved to tell were. And it was looking for a way to crack open by hitting them with different memories from that night, trying to get them to give us something else that wasn't part of their arsenal and find those details. Because the end of the day, the movie is all about those details. It's about the production design and the costume and the movement, and it's about not only the original seven actors, but really the whole crew going deep. So if we start asking about Joe Dix, the stage manager, it all of a sudden, it starts to conjure different memories.
38:13 Speaker 05 Because instead of an actor talking about Gil de Radner, who he's probably been asked about a million times, now he's thinking about someone on the crew that he knew for years, how they talked, what they ate, what was their mannerisms on the set. And that was the kind of stuff we were looking for.
38:27 Sam Fragoso? Was there anyone that you wanted to talk to that you couldn't or didn't?
38:31 Speaker 05 It took a while to get ahold of Janice Ian. We finally spoke to Janice Ian right before we started shooting. But otherwise, we were really lucky. It was COVID, and it was that moment when you could just kind of get anybody on Zoom. Everyone was just sitting at home.
38:45 Sam Fragoso? Chevy Chase is signing on to Zoom?
38:47 Speaker 05 Chevy Chase signed to Zoom. I have a recording of our Zoom conversation.
38:51 Sam Fragoso? Was he like, this is my first time on Zoom?
38:54 Speaker 05 His daughter helped us, but I remember asking him, "How you doing?" And he just went, "Well, I'm Cooper Kippy, Jason." And immediately he was like, "All right, well, that's going in the script."
39:04 Sam Fragoso? Yeah, that's in there.
39:05 Speaker 05 Yeah. It was kind of an interesting process because, you know, I went to Gil Cannon and I said, "You know, I have this idea. It's 90 minutes till showtime. We'll open with Lauren out on the street, and we'll end the last line of the movie will be live from New York. It's Saturday night."
39:19 Sam Fragoso? Mm-hmm.
39:20 Speaker 05 And my idea at the time was, "And we'll do it all in one shot." Like, no stitches, 90-minute actual shot. And, "Well, every piece of walking will be an opportunity to tell story." And I was like, "All right, well, who should we interview first?"
39:33 Speaker 05 And pretty quickly got Lauren on the phone, and we just kept on going. And everyone would point us towards another person, and we created the most detailed treatment that I've ever had for a script. Because usually I just start writing. I just start writing dialogue. But this time, we were asking ourselves whether we had permission to write this script. And when we finally had a really detailed outline that had everything down to dialogue in it, it was like, "All right, I think we're allowed to write this." And then we wrote it in three days, because everything had already been figured out.
40:03 Sam Fragoso? What do you mean by permission?
40:05 Speaker 05 I remember when we were writing Ghostbusters, and it didn't feel like we had permission to write Ghostbusters. It felt wrong.
40:12 Sam Fragoso? Even though it's your father's?
40:15 Speaker 05 Honestly, even more so. There were words that were difficult to write, and we would get nervous about writing them. Like, it took a long time to write the word "ecto-1" down, or "proton-packed" down, or "Peter Venkman" down.
40:25 Sam Fragoso? You're saying even more so because it's your father's?
40:27 Speaker 05 Yeah. I mean, look, it's one thing to be presumptuous enough to take an iconic franchise and say, "I have a story that deserves to be part of that canon, but I'm well aware that if you're the son of a famous filmmaker, then people really don't want you to take that story, or frankly, any story." If you're the son of a famous filmmaker, the presumption is that you're some talentless spoiled brat with an alcohol and drug problem that should never be let near a film camera.
40:59 Sam Fragoso? That's what my next question was about, yeah.
41:01 Speaker 05 Yeah, exactly. Did you have a bingo card of how many of those adjectives I fulfilled?
41:06 Sam Fragoso? You said it all in one sentence.
41:07 Speaker 05 There you go.
41:08 Sam Fragoso? Yes, yes, yes.
41:08 Speaker 05 It's almost as though I've said it before.
41:10 Sam Fragoso? Yeah, a couple times. I want to talk about Lauren for a second, which is,
41:13 Speaker 05 Yeah.
41:14 Sam Fragoso? You've said that the relationship between Lauren and your father was an intensely competitive one, especially when they were young.
41:20 Speaker 05 Yeah.
41:20 Sam Fragoso? What did your dad tell you about him in the process of writing this movie?
41:26 Speaker 05 I told my dad I'm gonna write a movie about Lorne on opening night. And he said, "Why are you gonna write a movie about Lorne?" And I said, "I just made you a Ghostbusters movie. You gotta give me this one." And he said, "Okay, all right, fair enough." I then wrote the script, and it's the last script of mine that he ever read, and he loved it. And I know that was a big deal for him. I don't think he wanted to like it.
41:51 Sam Fragoso? Why do you say that?
41:54 Speaker 05 I think comedy is really competitive. I think comedy is competitive in a different way than other art forms, because it's like a sport and because it's aggressive, you know? I think part of comedy is doing some damage. It comes from people who became funny because they were trying to defend themselves. And that moment in the 1970s, when this group of young people were defining a new form of comedy, and they were working out their material in Chicago and in Toronto and, you know, downtown in New York, those people were highly competitive with each other. And I think my father and Lorne both felt like they'd discovered this group, and they had a thumb on the pulse.
42:37 Speaker 05 And what my father did for film, Lorne did for television.
42:40 Sam Fragoso? And now, a clip from the film "Saturday Night", between Lorne Michaels, played by Gabriel LaBelle, and his boss, David Tebbit, played by the great Willem Dafoe.
42:52 Speaker 06 I can only imagine what must be running through your mind, the thought, no matter how improbable, that you might not make it to air. That didn't even occur to me. Really? I heard that you were having some technical difficulties. Not that I know of. What the fuck? I just heard that your writers were stoned, your actors were physically assaulting each other. The sound system was down. What the hell is happening? And a fire broke out earlier.
43:21 Speaker 06 I've been doing this job a long time. I've seen it all.
43:26 Speaker 06 I'm sure you have it all under control.
43:29 Speaker 07 Minor issues are addressed.
43:32 Speaker 06 That's for sure.
43:33 Speaker 07 Oh, this whole conversation is a soothing shower of relief.
43:35 Speaker 06 Good, good. Look, if for some reason you can't block your script
43:41 Speaker 06 or commit your cast to legally binding contracts, that's for sure. The country will be happy to watch Johnny Carson.
43:50 Sam Fragoso? That Johnny Carson rerun never did make it to air that night, but SNL did and would and probably continue to for the next half century. It returns to finish out its 50th season in a couple of weeks on Saturday, March 1st, 11:30 Eastern Time, live from New York.
44:40 Sam Fragoso? And that's our show.
44:45 Sam Fragoso? If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you like to listen. If you really want to help us out, share the program on social media, especially Instagram and Twitter. Tag us at Talk Easy Pod. All of this really does help us continue making the program each and every Sunday. To find each of the full episodes you heard passages from today with Bill Hader, Julie Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Reitman, visit our website at TalkEasyPod.com. To hear those and more Pushkin podcasts, listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you like to listen. You can also subscribe to Lemonada Premium for bonus content. Just hit the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or head to lemonadapremium.com.
45:32 Sam Fragoso? Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janix Bravo. Today's talk was edited by Adam Jamal and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Chris Shaschinoi. Special thanks to Pierce Harvey for making today's celebration of SNL possible. This episode, of course, was made in partnership with the good people at Lemonada Media, and I'm Sam Fragosa. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. We'll be back this Sunday with a brand new episode. Until then, stay safe and so long.
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48:08 Speaker 09 I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long haul truck together.
48:16 Speaker 10 We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.
48:20 Speaker 09 I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?
48:22 Speaker 10 There were 32,000 pounds of them.
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48:31 Speaker 09 Find out what it's like to be a long haul trucker, a couple therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast, What It's Like to Be.
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