Chevy Chase

Monty Python is another, in my opinion, the greatest of the comedy groups out of England.

Lorne Michaels and I got together and sat around in his hotel room in LA, Los Angeles, and we talked for about an hour, well more than that, maybe the whole afternoon, about what he wanted to do with his new show called Saturday Night Live, SNL.

and how he would like me to be the head writer, because I had been the head writer up to that point in a couple of other shows, culminating in the Smothers Brothers Hour, which was a television show, too, at the time.

So I said I'd love to come to New York, but I wanted to act, too.

I was just starting to act in the Smothers Brothers show and was enjoying it.

And he said, no, no acting.

So that was the end of that.

But I still went and was with him in New York City as we put together this show.

He hired various, you know, Gilda Radner and John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin.

various members of the cast.

And we just put it together there.

It took off.

It was live.

And because it was live, I think it was most entertaining because you weren't really sure what the heck could happen on it.

Well, let's see, well, Lorne Michaels had us all sitting around an oval table, and he'd point to John and Gilda and various, he'd say, do something, do something funny.

And by the way, he hadn't hired me to act.

As I said, he just wanted me to be the writer.

He pointed to me and said, do something funny.

And I did some thing about, you know how those news people like David Muir and others, they end their shows with a little light funny thing, they think.

Anyway, I did some takeoff on that and it was pretty funny.