Girl Walks Into a Bar . . .: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle

by Rachel Dratch

  The SNL writing process is a completely different method from Second City’s. At Second City, you would have a funny idea, share it with your cast mates, and then improvise in front of the audience. The scenes were videotaped so you could go back and watch and see what lines really killed and what parts needed to go. For me, improvising always came more naturally, and I could come up with stuff I never would have thought of writing SNL-style while staring at a computer screen. I certainly wasn’t able to just show up at the SNL office, sit at my desk, and think, “Hmm. Let me think up a character that will really resonate with people! It will also resonate enough with Lorne to be picked for the show. Oh, and the host will also love it and want to pick it for the show. And how about a catchphrase that all of America will love to say? This character will recur again and again and again and become a beloved part of SNL history! And I’m going to think this up while I’m staring at a blank computer screen and oh-god-I-better-think-of-something-because-I-haven’t-been-in-the-show-for-the-past-three-weeks-except-to-play-a-waiter-and-holy-shit-I-have-no-talent-everyone-else-knows-what-they’re-doing-AGHHHHH!” Annnd cue peals of laughter coming from the office next door, where people are writing what surely must be the funniest scene ever in the history of comedy. That’s what writing night often felt like on a regular basis.

  You always knew you were in deep trouble on writing night when you started looking around the room for inspiration. “Hmm. How about a scene about a lamp!? Or what about a plant!?” You were officially toast.

  For me, if I was lucky, an idea would pop into my head at a random time and I would save it for the next show. For exam-ple, I was once at a party where we were playing the game Celebrity and one of the guests was getting really testy because there was someone on his team who really sucked. So I saved the idea and then the writer Emily Spivey and I wrote a scene based on that, where Eric McCormack was my partner and I got so mad I ended up trashing the whole room and running through the wall Looney Tunes—style. Sometimes a simple joke you are doing with a friend gives you an idea on which to base a whole scene. When Seth Meyers and I were sitting next to each other at read-through, I was using old showbiz terms to joke around about whether a scene would work. I was saying in an old-man Hollywood voice, “Does this scene got legs? Does it got legs?!” Seth started saying, “Have you met my agent, Abe Scheinwald?” And we ended up writing it as a scene in which I played old-man Hollywood producer Abe Scheinwald. The best way for me to think up scenes was organically like that.

  There were also the characters we actors tried to put up again and again and just never got on. At this point, I’d like to pour one out for the brothas who never made it, specifically a child star by the name of David Mack Wilson. (I definitely had a thing about wanting to play a child star!) David Mack Wilson is a joke among me and my fellow cast members because, damnit, I tried to get this character on the air again and again, to no avail. He was an obnoxious kid who would go on and on about all his gigs, saying, “Maybe you recognize me from my macaroni ’n’ cheese commercial! OK! OK! I’ll say it! ‘IT’S THE CHEESIEST!’” He’d drive the host crazy with his showbiz tales, saying, “Hey! Ever worked with Hanks? Great guy! How ’bout Hanks and De Niro!? Can you say DREAM PROJECT?!” Anyway, I thought this kid was my next big character but could never get him on. Eventually, he had a walk-on in one episode but didn’t turn into the franchise I had imagined. As we would say at SNL, David Mack Wilson died of Comedy AIDS. OK, I know that sounds bad, but Comedy AIDS was the disease that claimed the characters who never made it on the air. Hey, I’m just the messenger here.

  In many ways, SNL is still the greatest job you could ever imagine having as a comedian—just the history, the amazement we all had to be part of this iconic show, the very thought of the comedians who had paved the way there before us, the excitement of the live show, never knowing who might be dropping in that week to do a bit. (Mick Jagger? Martin Short? The Dalai Lama?) The thrill of watching the musical guests rehearse in a semi-empty studio on Thursday afternoons at my own private Bruce Springsteen or U2 concert was surreal. Even if I had only one line in the show that week, I still had the coolest job in the world.

  Here I am back in the day with my SNL ladies!

  I had some successful recurring characters over the years—the Boston teens Sully and Denise, and one of my personal faves, the Lovers with Will Ferrell—but in my fifth year there, I did the scene that got me the most recognition (cue important-sounding James Lipton voice): I’m talking about Debbie Downer.

  KENAN THOMPSON: Good morning! Welcome to the Mickey’s Breakfast Jamboree! My name is Billiam, and I’ll be serving you today…. Let me tell you Mickey’s specials today. We’ve got steak and eggs, served with some home fries and Mickey waffles…

  JIMMY FALLON: Ooh! I love me some steak and eggs!

  ME: Ever since they found mad cow disease in the U.S., I’m not taking any chances. It can live in your body for years before it ravages your brain.

  TROMBONE: WAAAAH WAAAAAAH!

  CUE THEME SONG: You’re enjoying your day, everything’s going your way, then along comes Debbie Downer…

  Oh, to have a hit character on SNL: the inexact science, the alignment of the planets to be just so, every cog in the wheel having to spin precisely right so that the germ of an idea in your brain can be crafted well enough to make it through the elaborate process to become reality and be seen by millions, which propels you into the status of cultural icon for the rest of history … or at least for that week.

  The first time we put Debbie Downer on the show, I had a giggle fit that I couldn’t control, and the whole cast ended up breaking so hard we could never quite recover…

  HORATIO SANZ: I’m gonna ride that haunted elevator thingy. It drops you straight down! …

  HOST (LINDSAY LOHAN): I want to go to every country in Epcot and greet them in their own native language: Hola! Konnichiwa! Hi!

  ME: Did you guys hear about that train explosion in North Korea?

  All pause and look at me, annoyed.

  ME: The media is so sensitive there…(oops that wasn’t the right word) so secretive…

  I try to stifle a giggle over my flub.

  ME, FIGHTING A LAUGH: That they may never know how many people perished.

  TROMBONE: WAAAAH WAAAAAAH!

  Aaaand I break. Accidentally start laughing while camera is in close-up on my face. We all start laughing, never quite regaining control. Audience goes nuts.

  People often ask me if Debbie Downer is based on a real person. Well, not really. Although after her creation, I started to notice my mom shares some of her tendencies. I told my mom I was thinking of going to the Dominican Republic for vacation, and she said, “Well, don’t wander into Haiti.” Oh, believe me, I have repeated the phrase “Don’t wander into Haiti” many a time in my family when someone is giving unnecessary safety advice.

  In truth, Debbie Downer actually has a rather mystical and personal origin story. The character came about because I took a trip by myself.

  I was seeing a therapist who kept insisting that I take a trip alone. (Even though I am a huge fan of therapy to begin with—remember, I originally wanted to be a therapist—I will tell you that if you are going to be on SNL, you should get a therapist immediately. It’s either that or a drinking problem, so take your pick.) Taking a trip by myself was her answer to every problem you could imagine, and most of my problems revolved around relationships. If I was afraid I would never meet a guy—“take a trip by yourself.” I was dating a jerk—“take a trip by yourself.” I’m worried because I don’t think I’ll ever have kids—“take a trip by yourself.” She was an older woman who, in her younger days, had met her husband while traveling alone. Is that what she thought would happen for me? Or would it just force me out of my usual routines and serve as some sort of psychological reset button? I didn’t know. It made no sense to me. I really liked to travel, and I had a little gang of ladies to travel with. So why the hell would I want to g
o somewhere by myself? I was not interested.

  Finally, for some reason, she got through to me. I looked at her advice as some sort of “doctor’s orders,” like taking a pill: I don’t know why I’m doing this, I thought, but I’ll give it a shot. Even the night before the trip, I was packing, thinking, “What the hell am I doing? This is ridiculous.” But I was going. Instead of saying no again and giving the reasons why a trip alone was a bad idea, without consciously realizing it, I had “Yes And”-ed my therapist.

  I had picked Costa Rica as my destination because there would be stuff to do there and it wouldn’t be me on some beach with a bunch of honeymooning couples. I went to a lodge in the middle of the rain forest. And except for the fact that one night I woke up to find a large beetle halfway up my pajama leg, it was a great trip. I had no idea that I would also get a character out of the deal.

  There weren’t many people at this lodge, but for meals we sat at communal tables, which was nice because I didn’t feel strange being there alone, and it forced me to talk to people. The surroundings were beautiful: mountains, ocean, monkeys howling in the morning, and scarlet macaws flying overhead. One morning at breakfast, we were just making chitchat and someone asked where I was from. I said, “New York City.” And someone else said, “So were you there for 9/11?” The question hung awkwardly in the jungle air and sort of screeched things to a halt. I answered that I was, but sort of tried to get the conversation off the shoulder of the road and back onto the highway. For a week, that moment stayed in my mind just sort of batting around, me thinking nothing of it. When I was back home in New York, I was out listening to a band, something I don’t go do very often, and there it was! That bolt from the blue that you hope for—the muses decided to pay me their once-yearly visit. The name Debbie Downer popped into my head, someone who just has to go to the negative stuff that’s in all of our heads but that we edit out during a fun moment. I wrote it up that week with the writer Paula Pell. At first we tried to set it in an office, but something just wasn’t clicking. Then we realized it needed to be somewhere really happy. And so we set it in Disney World. We started joking around, making that “Waaaah Waaaaaah!” sound while we were writing, and then we thought, “What if we actually put these goofy trombone noises into the scene?” The over-the-top “waaaah waaaaaah”s were making us laugh, so we said, “What the hell, let’s include them.” The scene did well at the read-through table and was picked for the show that week. During rehearsal on Saturday, Jimmy and Horatio were cracking up. “Those guys better knock it off!” I thought. I didn’t want them messing with this scene that I felt could actually go pretty well. Of course, on the live show, it was I who ended up cracking up on air, flubbing that one line at the beginning and simply not getting back on track. It was the ultimate “church laugh,” where you know you should not be laughing but you can’t help yourself. I knew the camera was coming in for a close-up—there was no escaping it by hiding behind another actor or keeping my head down. “GET IT TOGETHER, DRATCH!” I was thinking. “Lorne. Lorne. Lorne. Lorne,” I thought. But it was to no avail.

  People ask me if Lorne got mad over my giggle fit, and the answer as far as I know is no. The audience eats it up when the actors break during a scene, but I would always try not to break. It can become a cheap tool to get the audience on your side since they dig it so much. I think Lorne knows it’s going to happen from time to time, and it’s not a big crime on the show. Ironically, although I was being highly unprofessional by laughing so hard through my scene, I think that was my favorite moment of my time on SNL. The subsequent Debbie Downer scenes could never hit the heights of that first one with the genuine laughing breakdown. But for me, that first scene was just unbridled joy—we were all having fun and clearly it showed. It also shows just how live the show really is: There are no do-overs, and whatever happens during showtime is out there for all to see. Whether it’s because we started laughing in what would become the biggest break-fest in SNL history, or because the character resonated with people in an “I know that person!” type of way, I had a hit scene. And it was all because I said yes.

  any more questions?

  I said this book wasn’t about showbiz and so far I’ve only talked about showbiz. But you have to see where I was coming from before you see where I ended up. So that pretty much wraps up the showbiz section. Oh. Wait … no. I see a few hands up in the imaginary crowd of people in my head, wondering about a few things I left out. There are several questions I am asked again and again, so I will close out by answering them. I have to interject that you would be surprised at how often I am asked this stuff by strangers, and that’s the only reason I’m going into it here. I know that there are far more important issues going on in the world, and that people in France have no idea who I am. Except the Brulés, the French family I lived with for a semester during college. So here are the answers to the last few questions I’m asked a lot. Um, let’s see. … I see a lot of hands…. Yes, you!? Doorman from a few buildings down from my apartment?

  “So why aren’t you doing those little parts on 30 Rock? Why aren’t you on 30 Rock anymore?”

  Well, Manny, my character spots ended up happening less frequently as that first season went on, until the idea was faded off completely when the show returned for its second season. Much as I thought playing the different characters was a cool idea, I could understand the fade-out. New sitcoms are ever-changing beasts, and as the show evolved and the sketch section of the show disappeared, the “Where’s Waldo?” thing of me popping up as various characters didn’t quite fit in. Also, though Tina made many self-deprecating jokes about low ratings when the show was starting out, 30 Rock received a great deal of critical acclaim and was developing a reputation as being The Little Cool Show That Could. Big movie stars were starting to do guest spots in the types of parts I would have been playing, movie stars who could bring in more viewers than I to a show that initially was struggling in the ratings. It was kind of a “Well, that’s showbiz!” situation.

  Tina did have me back to appear on the show a few times as the years went by, for the 100th episode as well as the live episode they did. I liked going back to the set and being able to hang with my old friends and cast mates, well out of the awkward period of the replacement and all the hoopla.

  Ok, next question, … uh … you! My mom’s friend from book club? I wanna say your name is Lois?

  “Yes. Lois Karshbaum. Weren’t you and Tina friends from your Chicago days? Was that weird?”

  Well, yes, Lois, Tina and I were friends from back in our Chicago days, and we are still friends now. I have a hunch that my friendship with Tina is one of the reasons my replacement on the pilot got so much publicity. Dozens of actors are replaced on pilots every season, and it’s usually a little footnote in a trade paper. Tina and I have been friends for many years, and when you throw in the casting changeup, it makes people wonder—what was that like?

  Tina and I met in 1996, back in our Second City days in Chicago. I worked with her closely, since we were in two shows on the mainstage together. We did one of my favorite Second City scenes together, a scene called “Wicked” that featured the two of us with thick Boston accents as a mother and daughter shopping at the mall. (It was the precursor to the Boston teens scene we wrote for me and Jimmy Fallon when I landed at SNL.) A classic Tina line from “Wicked”:

  ME: Ma, you’re gonna give me a negative body image. You know eight out of ten teenage girls have a negative body image.

  TINA: Yeah? Well, six of ’em are right.

  We would hang out after the shows, often ending up with her then-boyfriend, now-husband, Jeff, and fellow cast member Scott Adsit at a diner called the Golden Apple. These were the glorious days of one’s youth, when you could down a milk shake and French fries at two A.M. without ever gaining weight. Throughout all our time improvising together, up there in front of the Second City audience without a script, Tina and I developed a certain chemistry with each other, a shorthand that has s
erved us over the years. And never did it come in more handy than the time she saved me from exposing myself to an audience of Hollywood bigwigs. I’m not talking about exposing my soul or inner thoughts, I’m talking vaginas here, people.

  It all started with the sound of RRRIIIP, the loud sound of tearing fabric. I knew that sound could be only one thing … ’twas my pants splitting, and as luck would have it, this was the one night of my life that I wasn’t wearing underwear. I was standing onstage in front of an audience filled with Hollywood bigwigs, agents, and studio executives at the now- defunct HBO workspace in Los Angeles. Tina Fey and I were performing our two-person sketch show Dratch and Fey. We had written and performed the show in Chicago the summer after I moved to LA and she was writing on SNL. The following summer, we performed it in New York at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, and it was getting a lot of attention, so we were in LA to show it to industry people there. After I heard the deafening RRRIIIP (deafening to me, anyway), I glanced down to see that my pants had split up the front, starting at the fly and heading downward. A shot of adrenaline went through my body as a prickly feeling took over the back of my neck. At this point in the show, I was sitting on the floor onstage—that’s when my pants had split, when I went to sit on the floor. How bad was it? I looked down again. I saw my own humanity.

  Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God. This was a two-person show. There were no breaks. I couldn’t run off the stage and somehow fix the problem. Yet how was I going to continue on, with my jive there for the world to see? Prior to the show, in the dressing room with Tina, I had noticed that the pants I was wearing showed panty lines. In New York, doing our show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, I could have flown with the panty lines. But this was LA! I couldn’t have panty lines in LA! So I happened to say to Tina, “I’m just not going to wear underwear.” It was a throwaway line. We thought nothing of it.