by Sam Wasson
317 “There’s this old hipster”: Adam McKay, WTF with Marc Maron, no. 119, November 1, 2010, http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/episode_119_-_adam_mckay.
318 “Your job is to lead the audience”: Adam McKay to author.
318 “Adam’s belief is you have to”: Charna Halpern to author.
318 “They were real smart and real fast”: Ibid.
318 “We wanted to write sketches”: Adam McKay to author.
318 “Money”: Alex McLevy, “Big Short director Adam McKay on Political Comedy in ‘Fucked-Up Times,’” A.V. Club, December 18, 2015, http://www.avclub.com/article/big-short-director-adam-mckay-political-comedy-fuc-229832.
319 “We just started hanging out”: Improv Resource Center Forums, https://improvresourcecenter.com/forums/index.php?threads/improv-interviews.43043/page-3.
319 “really insane shit”: Adam McKay to author.
319 “Adam was so poor”: Charna Halpern to author.
319 “We were maniacs”: Adam McKay to author.
319 “We had no respect for any other comedy”: Brian Raftery, “And . . . Scene,” New York, September 26, 2011, http://nymag.com/arts/comics/features/upright-citizens-brigade-2011-10/.
319 “They put [Sanz] in cuffs”: Brianna Wellen, “Matt Besser Discusses the Good Old Days of Chicago Comedy,” Chicago Reader, January 7, 2016, http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2016/01/07/matt-besser-discusses-the-good-old-days-of-chicago-comedy.
320 “There was just this freedom”: Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today’s Top Comedy Writers (New York: Penguin, 2014), 121.
320 financial investment from Mike Nichols: Adam McKay to author.
320 “My God,” McKay sighed: Ibid.
320 “They were the ultimate aspirational”: Tina Fey to author.
321 “I want to be like them”: Amy Poehler, WTF with Marc Maron, no. 183, June 13, 2011, http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/episode_183_-_amy_poehler.
321 “so silly and so broad and yet so serious?”: Richard Christiansen, “Harold Ramis at the Forefront of Comedy,” Chicago Tribune, March 9, 1993, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/279786/HAROLD-RAMIS-AT-THE-FOREFRONT-OF-COMEDY.html.
321 “I think we both felt like we had something”: Trevor Albert to author.
321 “You could improvise on Caddyshack”: Ibid.
322“I can’t make Bill do the script”: Steve Weinstein, “Happily Living on the Cranky Comic Edge,” Los Angeles Times, February 12, 1993.
322“There were big changes in his personal life happening at that time”: David Rensin, “Dr. Jokes,” Playboy, September 9, 2000.
322“Harold, you see, felt that it would work best”: Clark DeLeon, “Punxsutawney Paparazzi: Hollywood Comes to Dubois,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 3, 1993.
322“This was the first we had heard that Bill”: Trevor Albert to author.
323 “He will get it in his head”: Oral History of C. O. “Doc” Erickson, AMPAS Margaret Herrick Library.
323 “If I had been on my first movie”: Stephen Tobolowsky to author.
324 “When we did Groundhog Day”: Bill Murray to John Walsh, interview, Grantland Podcasts, November 13, 2014, http://www.espn.com/espnradio/grantland/player?id=11869899.
324 “Bill knew Harold as his fellow improv”: Trevor Albert to author.
324 “I don’t call him, he doesn’t call”: Bill Murray to John Walsh, interview, Grantland Podcasts.
324 “Oh, she’s really good”: Brad Balfour, “Tina Fey and Amy Poehler Team Up to Make a Baby Mama,” PopEntertainment.com, April 23, 2008, http://www.popentertainment.com/feypoehler.htm.
324 “I was all about you gotta”: Adam McKay to author.
324 “I remember Tina Fey wrote a play”: Nina Metz, “Welcome to the Renaissance of Chicago Comedy,” Newcity Stage, August 8, 2005, http://www.newcitystage.com/2005/08/25/welcome-to-the-renaissance-of-chicago-comedy/.
324 “The first time I went”: Fey to Spitznagel, Believer, November 2003.
325 My Mother’s Fleabag: Amy Poehler, WTF with Marc Maron, no. 183.
325 “He’s a fucking old man”: Ibid.
325 “[Tina] was very judgmental”: Kevin Reome, Improv Nerd with Jimmy Carrane, no. 119.
325 “What do you think that scene’s about?”: Ed Zareh, “Godfather of Improv,” Studio 360, August 14, 2009, http://www.wnyc.org/story/108204-godfather-of-improv/.
325 “You have really good characters”: Tina Fey to author.
325 “The main thing you learned from Del”: Ibid.
325 “It was a funny sort of pattern in the improv world”: Maureen Ryan, “Tina Fey’s Climb to the Top of the Comedy Heap,” Chicago Tribune, September 30, 2007, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2007-09-30/news/0709290408_1_comedy-show-tina-fey-lorne-michaels/3.
325 “They were not the typical women”: Reed Tucker, “The Girlie Show!,” New York Post, October 17, 2012, http://nypost.com/2012/10/17/the-girlie-show/.
326 “Some people are more fully in it”: Tina Fey to Howard Stern, interview, March 1, 2016, audio recording.
326 “The thing that interested”: Joe Bill, Improv Resource Center Forums, https://improvresourcecenter.com/forums/index.php?threads/improv-interviews.43043/page-2.
326 “You enter a scene and decide”: Fey to Spitznagel, Believer, November 2003.
326 “It’s the attack out of nowhere”: Maureen Dowd, “What Tina Fey Wants,” Vanity Fair, December 1, 2008, http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2009/01/tina-fey200901.
327 “Once they got Amy”: Adam McKay to author.
327 “Once you [improvise] with someone”: Amy Poehler to Howard Stern, interview, October 27, 2014, audio recording.
327 “It was all-encompassing work at the time”: Tina Fey, full interview from The Second City: First Family of Comedy (Acorn Media, 2007), DVD.
327 “I made, like, $7 an hour”: Kelly Tracy, “Funny Girl,” Seventeen, January 24, 2008, http://www.seventeen.com/celebrity/advice/a9037/tina-fey-feb08/.
327 “She was quite round”: Ibid.
327 “because I didn’t want it to affect”: Tina Fey to author.
327 On Paul and Carol Sills’s suggestion: Viola Spolin Papers, Northwestern University, Box 24, Correspondence—Shepherd, David to Paul Sills, 1965, 1993, 2003.
328 “I must tell you it was a very moving experience”: Ibid.
328 “‘I want kids’”: Stephen Colbert to Howard Stern, interview, August 18, 2015, audio recording, https://soundcloud.com/user-959658576-310443415/colbert-on-stern.
328 “He would lie down backstage”: Anne Libera to author.
328 “I want to do a scene where I play Maya Angelou”: Maureen Dowd, “Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert: America’s Anchors,” Rolling Stone, November 16, 2006, http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/americas-anchors-20061116.
328 “I’m going to do this as small as I can”: Friend, “First Banana.”
329 “When that scene debuted”: “He Brought . . . a Sense of Class and a Sense of Intelligence: A Look at Stephen Colbert’s Time at Second City,” WGN Radio, September 6, 2015, http://wgnradio.com/2015/09/06/he-brought-a-sense-of-class-and-a-sense-of-intelligence-a-look-at-stephen-colberts-time-at-second-city/.
329 “Acceptance [of suffering] is not defeat”: Lovell, “The Late, Great Stephen Colbert.”
330 “Boy,” Colbert said, “did I have a bomb”: Ibid.
330 “Del knew what that meant”: Pat Finn to author.
330 “I want nothing to do with it”: Charna Halpern to author.
330 “Who’s going to buy”: Howard Johnson to author.
331 “By 1994,” Kelly Leonard: Kelly Leonard email to author.
331 “You know what bothers me about God?”: Peter Applebome, “Always Asking, What Is This Really About?,” New York Times, April 25, 1999.
331 “We weren’t invited back”: Marc Caro,“‘Anchorman 2’: The Chicago Roots of Adam McKay,” Sun-Sentinel, December 6, 2013, http://www.sun-sentinel.com/new
s/chi-adam-mckay-anchorman-2-interview-20131206-column.html.
332 “I’m doing a mainstage show”: Adam McKay to author.
332 “the big thing in improv culture”: Tina Fey to author.
332 “If you could open a show”: Adam McKay, WTF with Marc Maron.
333 “We wanted to change all that”: Kelly Leonard to author.
333 “We know we can make them laugh”: Scott Adsit, ADD Comedy with Dave Razowsky, February 17, 2014, https://soundcloud.com/addcomedy-1/scott-adsit-11.
333 “But these packaging differences”: Jack Helbig, “Pinata Full of Bees,” Chicago Reader, July 6, 1995.
333 “You took my work”: Adam McKay to author.
334 People can be awesome:Ibid.
“That breaking of form”: Tina Fey to author.
335 “It would always come up”: Mike Nichols to author.
335 “The next day”: Bernard Weinraub, “‘Birdcage’ Shows Growth in Older Audience’s Power,” New York Times, March 12, 1996.
335 “I never once made a movie”: Mike Nichols to author.
335 “Any small differences between”: Newsweek Staff, “Why Mike Nichols Is Working Without a Net,” Newsweek, May 5, 1996, http://www.newsweek.com/why-mike-nichols-working-without-net-178372.
335 “The old sketches are still as funny for us”: Glenn Collins, “A Double Reunion, 2 Decades Later,” New York Times, May 2, 1992.
335 “Mike was very protective”: Nathan Lane to author.
336 “We’re going to rehearse it like a play”: Will Harris, “Hank Azaria,” A.V. Club, September 14, 2011, http://www.avclub.com/article/hank-azaria-61696.
336 “Can I just make it into a history of dance?”: Nathan Lane to author.
336 “[Robin] was always joking around”: Scott Chiusano, “Hank Azaria on Working with Robin Williams and the Impact ‘The Birdcage’ Has Had on LGBT Progress as the Film Turns 20,” Daily News, March 29, 2016, http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/hank-azaria-working-robin-williams-birdcage-article-1.2581394.
337 “Robin became this pretentious”: Nathan Lane to author.
337 “One day,” Nichols remembered: Mike Nichols to author.
337 “Nathan and Robin were”: Ibid.
337 “Is there a difference”: Tina Fey, Second to None, directed by Matt Hoffman (HMS Media, 2001), DVD.
338 “I was so sure that I was doing”: Fey to Spitznagel, Believer, November 2003.
338 “For many of us”: Tina Fey to author.
338 “If you found anything”: Ibid.
338 “With Ali’s encouragement”: Ibid.
339 “When the show was open”: Tina Fey to Dean Richards, Dean Richards’ Sunday Morning, WGN Radio, aired March 23, 2014, http://wgnradio.com/2014/03/23/tina-fey/.
339 “It was the best job I ever had”: Tina Fey, Second to None.
339 “She was never like crazy confrontational”: Scott Adsit, ADD Comedy with Dave Razowsky.
339 “Oh, I’m not making it”: Jason Gay, “Meet Four-Eyed New Sex Symbol, ‘Weekend Update’ Anchor Tina Fey,” Observer, March 5, 2001, http://observer.com/2001/03/meet-foureyed-new-sex-symbol-weekend-update-anchor-tina-fey/.
343 “She expects as much professionalism”: Scott Adsit, ADD Comedy with Dave Razowsky.
17. 1995–2001
344 “This is Christopher Guest”: Eugene Levy to author.
345 “I suppose I’ve always been interested”: David Eimer, “Pedigree Chums,” Sunday Times, March 4, 2001.
345 “Uncomfortable to the point of poetry”: Feeney, “Christopher Guest’s Tender Follies.”
345 “Chris was very reserved”: Eugene Levy to author.
346 “There’s always been something more interesting”: David Eimer, “Pedigree Chums.”
346 “I think it’s going to be called Waiting for Guffman”: Fred Willard, Archive of American Television Interview, conducted by Amy Harrington.
347 Catherine O’Hara’s preparation: Catherine O’Hara to author.
347 “You kind of need one thing”: Eugene Levy to author.
347 “I think we’re pretty much ready to go”: Eugene Levy to author.
347 “I want a lot of this to be unspoken”: Feeney, “Christopher Guest’s Tender Follies.”
348 “You’re directed by the outline”: Catherine O’Hara to author.
348 “I’m going to go on about”: Ibid.
348 “Fred thought it would be a good”: Ibid.
348 “the most rewarding improvising”: Ibid.
349 “What happened?”: Eugene Levy to author.
351 “It just developed unintentionally”: Improv Resource Center Forums, https://improvresourcecenter.com/forums/index.php?threads/improv-interviews.43043/page-3.
351 “We kept it free because”: Amy Poehler, interview for the Onion, A.V. Club, September 2, 1998, http://www.avclub.com/article/upright-citizens-brigade-13550.
351 “In essence, in improv terminology”: Improv Resource Center Forums, https://improvresourcecenter.com/forums/index.php?threads/improv-interviews.43043/page-3.
351 “The ladies would bring dudes”: Raftery, “And . . . Scene.”
351 “The women’s locker room”: Ibid.
351 “I was like a cousin”: Tina Fey to author.
352 “One night they asked me to do the monologue”: Raftery, “And . . . Scene.”
352 “Me and my boyfriend at the time”: Raftery, High-Status Characters.
352 “I saw someone have sex with a chicken”: Ibid.
352 Peter Pan to the Lost Boys: Matt Walsh and Chris Gethard Share Stories on the Beginnings of the UCB Theater, 92nd Street Y, June 24, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzDxu__xj2o.
353 “I’ve still got sores on my back”: David Rensin, “20 Questions: Chris Farley,” Playboy, September 1997.
353 “Unable to sit still,” one witness: Richard Roeper, “Chris Farley: He Was a Story of Excess,” Chicago Sun-Times, December 23, 1997.
353 “Is that a crack pipe?”: Charna Halpern to author.
353 Del was hallucinating: Johnson, The Funniest One in the Room, 350.
354 “Why the hell does everyone bring”: Jeff Griggs, Guru: My Days with Del Close (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005), 42.
354 “He was crying”: Charna Halpern to author.
354 “Get me a big stack of our books”: Ibid.
354 “like me but younger”: Ibid.
354 “Sorry! I got there first!”: Ibid.
355 “I told Barbara”: Johnson, The Funniest One in the Room, 354.
355 “How do you feel about dying?”: Helbig, “Friends and Coconspirators.”
355 “You know,” he told UCB: Del Close’s Last Birthday Party (Part 1 of 2), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N2GHwPNiVU.
356 “But as I said before”: Ibid.
356 “We invoke you, goddess”: Ibid.
356 “In the words of a wise woman”: Ibid.
356 “No matter what”: Charna Halpern to author.
357 “That’s completely backward”: Gary Austin to author.
357 “We were actors who wrote”: Ibid.
357 “They still produce a lot of good work”: Ibid.
357 “Even if it’s exaggerated”: Ibid.
357 “because I kind of looked straight”: Stephen Colbert to the Onion, interview, A.V. Club, January 22, 2003, http://www.avclub.com/article/the-daily-shows-stephen-colbert-rob-corddry-ed-hel-13795.
357 “I did exactly two reports”: Stephen Colbert to MediaBistro, interview, 2003. Published in Pamela Engel, “Here’s the Only Clip of Stephen Colbert from His Days as a ‘Good Morning America’ Correspondent,” Business Insider, April 10, 2014, http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-colbert-on-good-morning-america-2014-4.
358 “If you have an opportunity to give it right to the audience”: Dave Itzkoff, “Comedy Ahead of Its Time (If That Time Ever Comes),” New York Times, May 7, 2009.
358 “What are you doing now?”: Stephen Colbert to the Onion, interview,
A.V. Club.
358 “My joke is always that Stone Phillips”: Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, “Meet the Woman Who Invented ‘The Daily Show,’” DAME, January 27, 2015, http://www.damemagazine.com/2015/01/27/daily-show-creator-i-cant-believe-cbs-put-another-white-man-late-night.
358 “I did not believe in the show”: “An Interview with Stephen Colbert,” IGN, http://www.ign.com/articles/2003/08/11/an-interview-with-stephen-colbert?page=6.
358 “But then we got there”: YouTube Video, The Daily Show—Carell and Colbert on improv: Paley Center.
359 “You guys should hire this guy named Steve Carell”: Stephen Colbert to Nathan Rabin, interview, The A.V. Club (website), January 25, 2006, http://www.avclub.com/article/stephen-colbert-13970.
359 “The top half of his body was dead straight”: Armstrong, “Meet the Woman Who Invented ‘The Daily Show.’”
359 “In the olden days”: Stephen Colbert to The Onion, January 22, 2003.
359 “You can’t be yourself”: Jenelle Riley, “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” Variety, November 11, 2014.
359 “a failed national news anchor”: Ibid.
359 “And that was also a way to protect yourself”: Steve Carell to Nathan Rabin, interview, The A.V. Club (website), August 23, 2005, http://www.avclub.com/article/steve-carell-13949.
360 “Short of having both a comedic background”: YouTube Video, The Daily Show—Carell and Colbert on improv: Paley Center.
360 when the first plane hit: YouTube Video, Harold Ramis @ Aitz Hayim after Dinner “A,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mMeDhHn86I.
360 “You’ve been here for forty-four years”: Thomas, The Second City Unscripted, 232.
18. 2001–2008
361 “It seems to me what made me a serious”: Mel Gussow, “A Cartoonist’s Chance to Soar,” New York Times, March 4, 2003.
361 “This is an essentially conservative country”: Deborah Solomon, “Playing with History,” New York Times, June 15, 2003.
361 “We were members of a comic underground”: Jules Feiffer to author.
361 “By day fourteen”: Kurt Orzeck, “Stumbling Into Brilliance: An Oral History of ‘The Daily Show’s’ Early Years,” Flood Magazine, June 22, 2016, http://floodmagazine.com/37319/stumbling-into-brilliance-an-oral-history-of-the-daily-shows-early-years/.