Doug Abeles

And, I mean, the not...

well-kept secret about those pitch meetings because what happens is Lorne picks, he introduces the host and then he'll start calling on writers to pitch the host.

just a one or two sentence pitch of a possible idea for a sketch.

What do you mean?

oh people you know you've got to like come up with something but but but um often what happens is because no one really wants to give away their joke until that the sketch is written and and and read at the table often one or two sentence pitches are sort of what what are called fake pitches the writer who's pitching them never actually has any intent of writing up that particular oh wow

Even though they're hoping it will get a lot, they want it to get a laugh in the room.

But, uh, I mean, sometimes they do write them up.

Oh my God.

But often the strategy of that, you know, gamesmanship where it's like, well, I'm going to show you my cards, but I'm also going to keep some of my cards hidden.

Because you want the surprise joke landing the first time at the table read on Wednesday.

imagine it happens all the time but did you can you remember any times you threw ideas out and you just got a nothing response oh well again i i i wasn't pitching in those meetings because as the writer of weekend update my job was to sort of write um starting on monday to kind of comb through the newspapers and headline news yeah yeah

online sites and find like the topical jokes that would go, that constitute the weekend update section.

Oh, yes.

Well, part of the process is at the end of the week on Friday, the anchors of Weekend Update, the fake news anchors, and it was Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon when I first... Oh, right, right, right, right.

They read through all of the jokes that have been written during the week by the dedicated Weekend Update writers.

That ends up being like, you know...

It's a massive number of jokes, like four or 500 jokes.

Oh, for four or 500?

Yes, for each week.

Now, they actually don't read through all 500.