I said fuck on Saturday Night Live and I thought I'd be fired for it. I wasn't really embarrassed about it but I'm surprised I didn't say it a million times since it's live TV.
Related posts tagged 'Being on TV'
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Related posts tagged 'Being on TV'
Oh yeah. The thing is, you’re so scared, but every day you’re just dreaming of doing Conan or doing a special on Comedy Central, so when it comes, it’s terrifying but great. You know, as a guy you’re scared to have sex but you want it so bad, you do it. Also, as a comic, you realize how hard getting on TV is, that you’re not going to pass it up out of fear. When you’re at Conan behind the curtain waiting to go out, and they pull it open and say ‘you ready?’ you see the lights, the crowd—it’s crazy.
The tricky part about answering this, is that it is a bit of both. It was totally not set up. And was I mad, yes and no. I was mad that he wrecked my desk, but I was happy that he gave me an excuse to get mad at my guest on TV. I am always nice to my guests. But I love it when things go wrong on television. So I was kind of playing the character of the angry TV host. Because it is funny watching somebody get mad. People don't understand what happened there and give me some grief about it, saying that I should have just let him cut the desk and smiled. But the thing is, that would not have been nearly as funny.
I am ridiculously lucky to be included in Breaking Bad, a truly amazing show. I'm just glad I'm not fucking it up for everyone. When people think my presence actually helps the show, well, that's just "honey on a walnut" to me...is that the phrase?...no, wait, now I got it, that's just "an altoid on a pretzel" to me. It's a good thing.
It was! Bob and Dave both worked on The Ben Stiller Show and we were all so excited to come watch when they created Mr. Show, a true work of genius.
Hardwick is amazing. He is down to earth and cool and funny and has well coiffed hair. It's cool there. We sort of hang out and joke around and do makeup and then go on and try and get some laughs. It definitely does not feel like you are on tv. Which I like.
Who was it that said: If nominated, I will not run, if Elected, I will not serve? Whoever it was, they were an idiot. If nominated, I will run, and if elected, I will serve.
But as we know, television is not a democracy but an oligarchy. They don't hire a lot of guys who run around saying oligarchy. Many times a boss will call me and say "I'll have to let you go" and I'll say "Why" and they'll say "Well you sell more than everybody else at the plant, but you've been saying Oligarchy in the break room too much at lunch. In fact the suggestion box is filled with pieces of paper that complain about that." And I'll say "well sir, Oligarchy, holy fuck" and then I know it's time to pack up my duf...
The first time I did it when I was 20 was sweet because I got to leave college and miss a week of school. And I met a lot of comedians of whom I was a huge fan because I was competing against them. Which is ridiculous because I had been doing it for less than a year and a half. But i had fun and became good friends with a lot of comedians I still know today like Tig and Doug Benson and Brendan Walsh.
I like animated shows better because I hate living people who act. They always make fun of my crooked teeth.
Oh. Well I thought a Minute with Stan Hooper was the best thing I ever did outside of stand up comedy. But Fox didn't stay with the show. It was a show that was intended to turn very dark, like at the end of the first season, it was set up like a homespun show, and then at the end of the first season my wife was going to be slaughtered by the town barber that we'd come to love as a kind of a funny old fella. Anyways, turned out he was a psychosexual sadist. but they never let us get to the end. So you never got to see my plan.
And I'm not saying anything against psychosexual sadists. I just think oftentimes you know, they'll slaughter innocents and I'm no fan of that.
Related posts tagged 'Saturday Night Live'
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Related posts tagged 'Saturday Night Live'
Oh...
My favorite memory is Gilda eating EVERY KNOWN candy you could buy in a candy store - she LOVED that. And she also, I have to say, was a great, great physical comedian. one of the funniest things i ever saw was a scene with her and Belushi, they had known each other before at Second City, and in this particular sketch, he's directing her and a man in a movie, and something goes wrong with the man, his lines or something, John would yell "CUT!" and he'd go talk to the guy, but if anything went wrong with Gilda, he'd slap her as hard as he could, and she'd go plunging to the wall, and she'd make it look like she was hit with a brick...She was SO good at making you believe in Gilda, as a...
It was my first sketch I did on SNL. It was mind-boggling because you had two conversations going at the same time and it was SNL and it was live and oh, please don't remind me...
Not being good at getting sketches didn't mean I was all of sudden a horrible stand up. My confidence was never broken. I immediately started writing at 30 rock right after SNL. Smooth transition.
One of the few times I almost broke character is when Chris Farley got hung up on the Weekend Update letters behind us as he was supposed to be hoisted up on a cable and flown over the audience. Too funny!
He returned to host the show when I was a cast member. And I did a character that pinched girls's asses, and said "YOU LOVE IT." And he's a great fan of it and thought it was going to be a huge character. And then it didn't get past dress rehearsal. And he said, "That's showbiz."
Well, here's what I did, Victoria. Any sketch I would write, I would call my character "Stan Hooper" and he didn't really do anything, you know? And I would be very careful to name him Stan Hooper, and then have someone in the sketch say "Hey Stan Hooper" and one time I read a list of recurring characters and Stan Hooper was way up there. And of all the characters he had no real qualities of any kind. Just a bland empty vessel of a man.
The craziest moment was walking out to do Weekend Update and my first joke was about the Patriots and Deflategate and the one person I passed walking to the desk was Robert Kraft. He was just hanging out and watching the show in our studio. I was like, "Hey.... Ear muffs?"
It was the first sketch I ever did. I got confused with stage direction, and literally did not know what color I was on the cue cards, so I just froze! Hey people, it's live TV, and the experience has made me a better performer. AND took away the fear of being in sketches!
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