Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers (2 page)

Saturday Night Live
has employed hundreds of comedy writers in its four decades on the air, but no writer has been associated with the show longer—or had more of a lasting impact—than James Woodward Downey. If Lorne Michaels is the face of
Saturday Night Live
, Downey is its behind-the-scenes creative force.

Downey first began to consider the possibility of making a living as a writer while at Harvard, where he served as president of the
Harvard
Lampoon
. There he caught the attention of writers Michael O’Donoghue and Doug Kenney (both already stars at
The National Lampoon
), who suggested he come work with them in New York. But after graduating in 1974, with a major in Russian studies, he decided instead to accept a fellowship to tour Eastern Europe by way of ship and train. After a few run-ins with the KGB, and after meeting a Hungarian who partly inspired the “Wild and Crazy Guys” sketches he would later co-write with Marilyn Miller and Dan Aykroyd, Downey headed back to the U.S. and saw, for the first time, a new televised comedy show that he had only heard about through friends. “As soon as I saw it, I thought, ‘Oh, this is hilarious,’” Downey says. “I would love to be a part of that.”

After submitting a ten-page packet to Michaels that included a short piece about his pet peeves—“I guess my biggest pet peeve is when you’re just sitting there, waiting for a bus, and a guy runs up with one of those fileting knives and opens up your intestines and takes one end of it and runs down the street screaming, ‘Ha ha! Got your entrails!’”—Downey was hired by Lorne “more based on instinct, I have to believe, than on the packet itself.” He became one of the first
Harvard
Lampoon
writers to break into TV comedy writing, setting a precedent that would change comedy-writing rooms thereafter. “Jim Downey is Patient Zero,” said Mike Reiss, a former
Harvard Lampoon
er and long-time
Simpsons
show-runner.

After finding his feet, Downey—the show’s youngest writer—began to make a deep impact on
Saturday Night Live
, working closely with, among others, Bill Murray (with whom he shared an office for four years), Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, and Laraine Newman. For the last four decades, Downey has worked with and written for every star the show has produced, including Martin Short, Jon Lovitz, Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Chris Farley, Norm Macdonald, Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, Jan Hooks, Rob Schneider, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Bill Hader, Amy Poehler, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Fred Armisen, Kenan Thompson, and dozens of others. Downey is one consistent on a show that has experienced an untold amount of changes, and has throughout earned a reputation as being a kind, patient mentor to countless young writers (most of whom he personally hired), including Jack Handey, George Meyer, Robert Smigel, and Conan O’Brien. “If anyone taught all of the young writers how to properly write a sketch,” Smigel says, “it was Jim Downey.”

Called by Michaels the best political humorist alive, Downey has been responsible for most of the political-centered pieces during
Saturday Night Live
’s run (many of which he co-wrote with now Senator Al Franken), starting with Jimmy Carter in the mid-’70s and ending, five administrations later, with Barack Obama. The power of Downey’s political comedy extends beyond laughs; more impressively, his work has influenced the actual political landscape. In 2008—during a live, televised debate seen by millions—Hillary Clinton referred to one of Downey’s recent sketches to make her point that perhaps the press was going just a bit too easy on her opponent. “I just find it curious,” she said, “if anybody saw
Saturday Night Live
 . . . maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow?”

In 2013, after working on
SNL
off and on for thirty-three of its thirty-eight seasons—and serving as head writer for
Late Night with David Letterman
in 1982 for two years (where he created the Top Ten List)—Downey retired from the show, and now divides his time between New York City and rural upstate New York, where he hopes to achieve his goal of “harmless eccentric.”

Do you have any comedy pet peeves?

What has bothered me most for the last few years is that kind of lazy, political comedy, very safe but always pretending to be brave, that usually gets what my colleague Seth Meyers calls “clapter.” Clapter is that earnest applause, with a few “whoops” thrown in, that lets you know the audience agrees with you, but what you just said wasn’t funny enough to actually make them laugh.

Bill Maher is a funny guy, but he seems to prefer clapter instead of laughs. A lot of his material runs to the “white people are lame and stupid and racist” trope. It congratulates itself on its edginess, but it’s just the ass-kissiest kind of comedy going, reassuring his status-anxious audience that there are some people they’re smarter than.

My own politics are sort of all over the place in terms of issues, but as far as the writing goes, the only important thing is that it’s funny, and that it’s an original comment. That the audience agrees with me isn’t necessary and probably isn’t even a good thing. It’s so easy to coast by, just hitting the same familiar notes you know are popular and have been pretested for effectiveness. The audience will always at least applaud, so you never have to risk silence.

How about pet-peeves specific to
Saturday Night Live
?

Celebrity walk-ons bother me. I remember there was a piece from the final show in 2009—Will Ferrell was hosting—and he’s sitting in a restaurant with a few buddies, one was Bill Hader, and they were talking about Will’s experience in Vietnam. And Will starts singing the Billy Joel song “Goodnight Saigon.” It ends with the lyrics, “And we’d all go down together. And we’d all go down together.” What started out as a comedy sketch quickly became a vehicle for name-droppy celebrity walk-ons. And by airtime there were about thirty-five celebrities in that piece. It became a massive wankathon, star-fucking extravaganza. Some of the other writers had predicted the piece wouldn’t survive dress, and I would have said the same thing after read-through, but when I learned that Anne Hathaway, Tom Hanks, Paul Rudd, and so on were going to appear, I knew it would be the
least
likely piece to go. “I absolutely flat guarantee you the piece will make air, and if the show starts to spread, that piece will be protected. It is a pure display of star-fucking power.”

And sure enough it ran, even though funnier pieces were cut to make room for it, including a great sketch by the same writer. I suppose it’s all part of the business, but, to me, that seemed almost like a commercial. But, hey, it pays the bills.

How about appearances by such quasi-celebrities as Monica Lewinsky or Paris Hilton?

I found it especially embarrassing when Paris Hilton hosted the show [in 2005]. What was really humiliating was that, on that very same week,
South Park
was doing that brilliant “Stupid Spoiled Whore-Off” piece that just annihilated her. The contrast was dramatic and not to our advantage.

And then when Monica Lewinsky was on the show in May 1999, that was the week poor Cuba Gooding Jr. was hosting, and apparently he became increasingly annoyed as the shape of the show became more of a cohosting thing: “With Cuba Gooding
and
Monica Lewinsky.” And I don’t blame the guy at all.

I wrote something for Monica Lewinsky that week that she refused to do. It was hardly a savage piece, just one of those C-Span histories about presidential inaugurations; in this case, the history of the presidential knee pads. How during the Andrew Jackson administration there were knee pads made of hickory and leather, forged by harness makers and so on. And we were working our way through history up to Monica. In the piece, all she had to do was stand there, and Kenny G —played by Jimmy Fallon—was going to serenade Monica with a creepy saxophone solo. I watched her read the piece and she was like, “No, not interested,” rather contemptuously, as if it weren’t up to her standard. You know, the
Monica Lewinsky
standard.

I thought the piece was funny in and of itself, but I’d also add that it would have helped her, and us, by letting her do some penance, by acknowledging that we booked her for her scandal value.

This, to me, was a real indicator that the show was well past the days when we could book strange types of hosts and music acts like [old-timey guitarist and singer] Leon Redbone or [’70s punk group] Fear, just because we thought it might be interesting. When the show was coming to its last year of the original cast and writers, in 1980, as sort of a graduation present Lorne said that each of us could pick either a musical or a guest host. Just imagine that. I chose Strother Martin, a character actor I’d been obsessed with since
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
[in which he played a boss at a Bolivian mine]. He was also in Sam Peckinpah westerns, and was the prison warden in [1967’s]
Cool Hand Luke
. He was a great, great host.

The notion that we could ever in the modern era book anyone like Strother Martin again is unthinkable. These were just people we liked and wanted to present to the public. The issue of ratings never came up, and the episodes that did get smash ratings at the time were sort of unpredictable.

Over the years, have you noticed any specific traits that a performer must have in order to successfully host the show?

When the hosts come in, they can either be walking premises—certain hosts can just bring certain ideas to audiences, like [NFL quarterback] Tom Brady or Senator John McCain—or they can be just really funny people who are not necessarily great actors but have great comedic minds—Conan O’Brien or Jon Stewart. Or they can be really brilliant actors who aren’t necessarily known for being funny but can be wonderful with the right script.

One host, in particular, I just loved was Nicolas Cage, who was there in 1992. He played this kind of passion, this innocence, so beautifully. He was great in everything he did. Jeff Goldblum was like that, too. He was a brilliant comic performer—perhaps not the funniest guy to hang out with—but he approached it as an actor. “What’s my motivation? How do I do this?” And then he goes out and he’s perfect. Justin Timberlake is another favorite. He started off as mainly a cool presence, but as he’s matured, he’s become a very funny actor and performer. And he brings that straight line with him, the lady killer.

But of course some of them turn out to be better live performers than others. As a host, you do have to surrender control to us [the writers], which is why we always feel a sense of responsibility for anyone willing to put himself in such a vulnerable position. We have a thing about not bad-mouthing them, although some people have occasionally broken that rule here and there. It’s like Alcoholics Anonymous. What goes on in private, when you’re here, stays here.

With that said, there have been some terrible hosts over the years, including an infamously bad 1991 show with actor Steven Seagal at the helm.

Yes, that was a case where it was all we could do not to talk about what a douchebag he was.

What was his specific problem? Did he refuse to do what was necessary to put on a good show?

Well, I guess now it can be told. He was just so fucking stupid. Rob Schneider had the funniest idea for a monologue. It was Seagal coming out and doing the “You know, I’ve obviously made my career with action pictures, like
Hard to Kill
and
Out for Justice
and so on.” Applause, applause. “I don’t want to apologize for them, I think they were good. But the fact is I’ve moved past that. To me, it’s all about the music now.” Then he was going to pick up a guitar and perform a very moving version of [the 1974 hit song by Carl Douglas] “Kung Fu Fighting.” Not a rockin’ one, but playing it like it was “Amazing Grace” or something. Real slowly: “Everybody was . . . kung fu fighting. Those cats . . . those cats were fast . . . as fast as lightning.” And I thought it was a really hilarious idea. So of course, Seagal steps out on stage and decides to go with his “instincts,” which were to play it loud and badass, like a Hollywood actor with his own band. It’s like when you go to a barbecue joint and realize, “Oh fuck, we came on blues night? Damn!” And you can’t have a conversation because the fifty-five-year-old guy is really rocking out.