by Breuer, Jim
Back at SNL, after our big Italian meal, we motored through the rest of the week with both Pesci and the Shut-up Guy in the lineup. Tracy had a part in the Pesci sketch as D.C. mayor Marion Barry, trying to sell Mayor Giuliani old garbage trucks for cash. In the dress rehearsal, both sketches killed. And after that response, I was pretty sure it would be the first time I had two characters in one episode. That didn’t last.
Shortly before the main show started, one of the writers came up to me and said, “Hey, Jim, sorry to do this to you, man, but you’ve gotta pick one of the two sketches. It’s such a big week here, we gotta be fair to everyone.”
“That sucks,” I said. To me, it was bullshit. Plenty of people were in multiple sketches every single week. With Steve Koren and Fred Wolf gone, I had no real backers on the writing staff who could swing their weight around. I felt like I was being frozen out. If I could hit a home run, let me hit a home run, don’t put me on the bench just so everyone can bat.
“I know,” he said. “Can you just decide quickly between Pesci and the Shut-up Guy?”
So of course I picked the Pesci sketch, because that was the one the mayor wanted to do. I was very happy with it, and most important, so was the mayor. Well, our mayor. The next week Marion Barry from D.C. was in The New York Times demanding an apology from the show for our portrayal of him.
Chapter 14
Chris Kattan, Heavy Metal Man, and the End of SNL Days
Life on SNL gradually became miserable for me. Don’t get me wrong; my overall experience on SNL is irreplaceable. It’s just that political tiffs and ego blows had accumulated over the years and by the summer of 1998, things had come to a boil. I had enemies on the writing staff who wanted me fired, and I didn’t really care to stick around.
The only way I found out things were that bad for me was that this high-level NBC exec, who was the grand pooh-bah of all of the channel’s late-night programming, called me during the summer of 1998. He was a huge fan of mine and I was a huge fan of his.
“What happened last season?” he said.
“What do you mean?” I asked. He made it sound like I’d walked through the studio with a running chain saw and no pants on.
“We just had our end-of-the-year meeting for SNL and I learned that some people are trying to get you off the show. Did something happen between you and any of the writers?”
“Something happened, but I thought we worked it out,” I said. I went on to explain a situation with a couple of the show’s top writers that transpired earlier in the spring when Matthew Broderick was the host. I explained to the exec that we patched it up but that there might still have been some hard feelings there.
“Maybe you should talk to Lorne,” he said. “Or go have dinner with these guys.”
“I offered,” I said. “But no one’s taken me up on it.”
The situation that got me in trouble occurred when the Godzilla remake starring Matthew Broderick was coming out, and he was scheduled to host the show. Tracy and I sat down and started talking about Godzilla, wondering if it was going to be like the old versions, and we started riffing on old monster movies. Pretty soon we were like two little kids, just going off making all these airplane, air raid, and machine gun noises. We were like, “Why don’t we do this for the monologue?”
Our plan was when the show opened, we were going to come out and bombard Matthew with a spastic barrage of questions about the movie, like: “Is it gonna be like the old Godzilla?” And he’d say, “How do you mean?” And we’d start doing loud sound effects with our mouths, like the old prop airplanes shooting at Godzilla, and muffled voices from loudspeakers saying stuff like, “People of Tokyo, run for your lives!” Then Tracy would say, “Are the twins from the movie Mothra gonna be in there? Remember the twins, they be singing that song? ‘Oooh-wah, do-do-wah!’?”
We wrote it up and it really came to life as a performance piece in the read-through. Matthew loved it. He was cracking up. And the way it was written made it really easy for him. He wouldn’t have to do a lot of work—he could just come on stage, do his shtick, and we’d take the ball and run with it. However, one of the head writers had his own monologue sketch. It was a spoof on all the Godzilla advertisements, like, “His tail is four blocks long. His teeth are two stories high. His testicles are like two overstuffed bags of leaves....” And after a few of them, it was like, “I get it!” It was funny . . . for about thirty seconds.
Tracy and I learned on Thursday that our monologue wasn’t going. We weren’t happy, but that’s life. I still had a sketch involving my character the Shut-up Guy in the mix, so to me that was a decent consolation. Matthew and I rehearsed that later on Thursday, and during a break he asked, “Are we going to do your monologue, too?” He seemed pretty excited about it.
“It didn’t get picked,” I said, and shrugged. I let him know that this stuff always happens and didn’t bother me anymore. Later that night in the hallway, two of the show’s producers stopped me and wanted to get some answers about why the monologue wasn’t happening.
“Are we really not doing it?” one of them asked. “I know for a fact Matthew loved it. Does Lorne know about this?”
That was the first time I’d ever heard that question. I had always just assumed Lorne was present during the decision-making process, and offered his opinion one way or another. So I said to them, “Jeez, I really don’t know. I’m just a cast member. You guys are the producers! Don’t you know?”
They wandered off, presumably in search of the truth. I figured nothing would come of it. Friday night I was at home when my phone rang with a call from one of the producers.
“We need you to come in as fast as you can,” he said excitedly. The rehearsals for the monologue usually happened on Friday nights. “We’re now going to camera block your monologue. We called Tracy and he’s already on his way in.”
When I arrived, I saw that they were testing out camera angles for not only our monologue, but the head writer’s monologue, too. The head writer was in charge of the situation, and I could tell he was aggravated by even the sight of us.
“Let’s see your monologue,” he sighed, and very shortly after we started, he looked at us and the cameramen, and nodded. “Okay, we’re good! We got it!” And that was that.
Doing a camera block usually takes a good hour, but when it came to blocking Tracy and me, it only took five minutes. I looked at Tracy, and said, “You know they had us come in and do this just to shut someone up.”
“That was the shortest camera blocking in history,” Tracy agreed.
On Saturday afternoon, we found out again that, yes, our monologue had been cut. Tracy and I went down to eat dinner in the cafeteria. On show nights, everyone ate between five P.M. and seven P.M. I was just going to take a bite of my BLT when the head writer’s sidekick showed up and insisted that Tracy and I had to go back upstairs because Lorne wanted to see our monologue.
I put my sandwich down slowly, and he said, “Listen, if you’re not ready, that’s okay, but it’s now or never. Otherwise, we’ll just forget it.” I told him we’d be happy to come do it. Tracy and I left our dinners and went back upstairs, only to see the head writer in the middle of a tantrum. He was trying to explain to Matthew Broderick how to perform his monologue, and it wasn’t working at all. I looked up to see Lorne pacing back and forth, scratching his head as if to say, “Oh, Lord, I’ve got a problem child.”
Then the head writer started pacing behind Lorne, step by step. “It’s going to work!” he insisted. “I’m telling you.”
“Can we just see Jim and Tracy’s monologue?” Lorne finally replied, sounding fatigued. This was when I knew Lorne just wanted, ultimately, whatever was the funniest thing for the show. When we finished, Matthew said, “I love this sketch, why can’t we just do it?”
Satisfied, I went back to my dressing room and shortly thereafter the head writer’s sidekick wandered in and said no decisions had been made—which monologue they were going to choo
se was all still up in the air. And that’s when it really hit me that they didn’t care about the funny. All they cared about were their own egos.
“We’re going to do yours for dress rehearsal,” he said. “And we’ll film it in front of the crowd. And then we’ll see what happens.”
So Tracy and I went out to do the monologue with Matthew. It crushed. The audience loved it. We improv-ed most of it. Then it came time to do my Shut-up Guy sketch in dress rehearsal, Matthew started cracking up in the middle of the sketch. When the crowd started laughing, he had a hard time getting through the sketch. As I came off the stage, the head writer grabbed me and said, “It’s too bad that Matthew laughed so much during the sketch, because, honestly we don’t know if it works.”
I wanted to punch him. I went back to my dressing room, disillusioned. There was a knock and the head writer’s sidekick came in.
“Well,” he said. “We’ve got yours on tape, but for the live show we’re going to do the other monologue. But the good thing is we have yours filmed, so we can use it on reruns if we want to.”
“Why would you do that?” I asked.
“To be honest with you,” he fudged, “it’s because the second sketch is ‘The View’ and Tracy has to get through hair and makeup. Lorne’s worried there’s not going to be enough time between the monologue and that sketch.”
I ran to Tracy’s dressing room and said, “They’re all going to come around here and ask if you think you can get your makeup on in time to do the monologue and the sketch. Don’t cave in. Tell ’em you can do it.”
“Of course,” Tracy said. And his insistence helped pave the way. In the end, we got to do the monologue and it crushed. But things wouldn’t be the same anymore.
Another thing that might have set the stage earlier to drive a wedge between a clique on the show and me were some flare-ups I had with Chris Kattan. Around Christmastime 1996, Rosie O’Donnell was going to host the show. I’m a big fan, so I was excited to have her on. She was really popular at the time, and I knew the ratings would be huge. I purposely saved a Pesci sketch especially for that episode, but I was going to do it as something different from the usual Pesci show. On the chalkboard in my office, I wrote down, “Pesci doing Christmas stories in front of a classroom.” I was thinking it would be Pesci in a school talking to kids, saying stuff like, “Hey, you guys know about Rudolph and his red nose? Why do you think his nose was red? Because he was a rat. A snitch. His whole family was rats, he’s not even a reindeer.”
Chris came into my office shortly afterward, studied the chalkboard, and asked, “Pesci Christmas stories, what’s that?”
“Instead of doing the normal ‘Joe Pesci Show,’” I said, “I’m gonna have Pesci doing classic Christmas stories in a classroom, in front of kids. I’m saving it for when Rosie O’Donnell comes on.”
“Oh, that’s a great idea,” he said.
Well, the week before Rosie arrived, all I remember is being in a meeting and hearing Chris’s voice announce, “Al Pacino’s Christmas stories,” to assorted laughs. I looked up from my stack of papers in utter disbelief. My head started sweating. Lasers were shooting out of my eyes. He had snagged my idea and repurposed it as an Al Pacino sketch. Everyone was like, “Oh my God, this is a great idea.” And it was picked it up—though it died in dress rehearsal and never made it to air.
I didn’t confront Chris about it right away, which was probably the wrong approach. Instead, when we were rehearsing a couple days later, just before a take, I gave him a serious look, like I was really disappointed with him.
“What’s the matter?” he whined. “God. What’s going on?”
“Oh, nothing,” I said.
Then he had to start all over. Just before the take, he looked at me and stopped again.
“Are you mad at me? Jeez.”
“We should have a talk, actually,” I said. “Let’s sit down after rehearsal.”
“What’s bothering you?”
“Let’s sit down after rehearsal.”
“You’re upset,” he squealed. “Why are you upset?”
“We’ll talk after rehearsal.”
“Tell me now,” he whined. “This is so distracting.”
“Nah,” I said. “Just rehearse and we can sit down afterward.”
I kept it up for about twenty minutes and it nearly drove him insane. I wanted to see him dangle. I wanted to see the guilt come out in him. After rehearsal, when I asked Chris about it, he played dumb. “Oh, I totally forgot about that!” he said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think of yours! Mine’s a bit different anyway, because it’s Al Pacino, not Pesci.” I knew he was full of crap.
Looking back, I get what happened. I understand the pressure of that place. And every time I reflect on it now, I don’t find any bad feelings anymore. But at that time, we were both fighting for our lives to stay on the show. Chris annoyed me sometimes, but he was hilarious. And I loved playing his jerky older brother in the “Goth Talk” sketches. I was always really envious of what he did with that sketch. When we first started rehearsing, he told me, “Feel free to really hit me. The harder you hit me, the funnier it will be.”
Then when I’d hit him, he’d stop and say, “No, you gotta really smack me in the head. They’ve got to hear it,” pointing out toward where the audience would sit. I loved how seriously he took that. I guess that perfectionist attitude manifested itself in different ways for all of us. With Chris, it made him vulnerable to pranks from some of the more jaded cast members. Norm, specifically.
Whenever Norm was in a sketch, he wouldn’t rehearse it properly at all. He warned us of that early on. I remember when I first got on the show, he told all of the new cast members, “Don’t put me in any of your gay sketches!” So how he wound up in them, I have no idea. He had the “Update,” and that’s where he seemed to be happiest. So, if he did somehow wind up in your sketch—when Pamela Anderson was on in the spring of 1997, he mysteriously wound up in two or three sketches—he wouldn’t bother to nail it until it was on the air.
The three of us did a Twilight Zone sketch where Norm had to play Rod Serling, the show’s creator and emcee, who began each episode with that distinctive voice: “Imagine if you will ...” It was Chris’s only sketch that week, and he was as eager to share the stage with Pamela Anderson as Norm was.
During rehearsal all week, and into the dress rehearsal Saturday night, Chris was riding Norm about not doing the proper Rod Serling voice. “Oh my God, Norm, you’re so terrible,” he’d say bitchily. “Is that the way you’re going to do the voice? The sketch is going to get cut! C’mon! Why don’t you rehearse it the way it’s going to be?” And whenever Chris was not bitching at Norm, he was flirting big-time with Pamela Anderson. “How come Jim gets to kiss you in the ‘Goat Boy’ sketch? I want to be able to kiss you! God, you’re so hot. You’re so sexy. If Tommy Lee ever breaks up with you ...” Then he’d pause and look at Norm and start yelling at Norm again. “God, get the voice right!”
The whole time this was going on, I was shocked that Norm wasn’t saying anything back. If you went after Norm, he would generally crush you with a barrage of insults. But it was almost like he was tuning Chris out.
Finally, we made it to the dress show. “Oh my God,” Chris squealed. “If this sketch doesn’t get picked up, I’m going to freak out!” Again, Norm completely half-assed his lines. He knew that it would get on the air. It was a good sketch. Still, Chris didn’t relax. Right before we went to air, he was still bitching at Norm. “Are you really going to use that voice, Norm? It’s so terrible! I should have gotten someone else. Why are you even doing this?”
Over the PA, we heard: “One minute to airtime.” Chris was still bitching at Norm, and also still trying to flirt with Pamela. He was alternating back and forth, like he was completely unhinged.
“Thirty seconds to airtime.” Norm was completely oblivious and immune to Chris’s scolding. I was looking over at him, as if to say, “Are you really going
to let him keep badgering you? This has gone on for days!” Norm was my hero, and I couldn’t stand to see him just take the abuse from whiny little Chris Kattan.
“Fifteen seconds to airtime.” Just as everyone in the sketch was trying to concentrate, Norm finally spoke up, unleashing a brutal tirade. “Hey, ah, Chris, Pamela knows you’re gay!” he yelled. “We all know you’re gay. So why don’t you just come out of the closet and then you wouldn’t be such an angry little gay guy. Christ, you’re always in everyone’s business! Stop hitting on chicks!”
As soon as he finished, we all immediately heard, “Action!”
Then from out of nowhere, Norm perfectly captured Rod Serling’s voice and began the sketch: “Imagine if you will ...” He just nailed it. If you watch the sketch, all you see is my shoulders heaving up and down because I was laughing so hard. I couldn’t get my lines out. Chris was furious. He couldn’t get his lines out. It was one of the greatest things ever.
As I said, toward the end at SNL I often felt like I had no way to get anything on the show regularly, even if something killed in dress rehearsal. Things just got way too political. One of the producers, Michael Shoemaker, noticed, and one day he stopped by my office. He listened to me complain for a few minutes before he stopped me and said, “Why are you busting your ass with sketches?”
“’Cause I’d like to get on the show.”
“Sure,” he said. “But notice how there’s an entirely different set of writers for the monologues and the ‘Update’? When Sandler was here, he just completely took over the ‘Update’ with characters. They couldn’t get him off. So, if you want to get on the show, start there. They can’t touch you.”
So that’s where I retreated. I had great luck getting on monologues, and I found I could be creative without getting my material compromised. One of my favorites was playing Mickey the trainer from Rocky.
In the end, after the call from the NBC exec, I called my agent and Lorne, and I asked for my release. From my viewpoint, it wasn’t going to magically get better. “You have too big a heart, Jim,” Lorne said. I thought that was a little over the top. You didn’t need a big heart to not want to put up with people trashing your work. But even when it was rocky, I’d gotten some irreplaceable experiences, worked with the best of the best, and created some of the show’s finest moments. All in all, it was a great run while it lasted.