Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
David, what were you just saying? I was talking about, do you know William Simmons? Oh, yeah, Billy, Billy, Billy, Billy Simmons. Yeah, he's the best. That guy's fucking great. Bill Simmons has his tentacles in a lot of things.
He's all over this space. You know, when I say this space, you know what I'm talking about?
Yeah, podcasting, he was... King of the airwaves of sports, uh, regular airwaves. Now he's podcasting. Now he's all over. He's part of that Andy Kohler show. Uh, He has a lot of things going. He's got a whole atmosphere over there, if that's what they call it. It's not what they call it.
Atmosphere? I don't know.
Well, like a whole world over there.
It's shaky.
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Chapter 2: How has Bill Simmons impacted podcasting?
We'll get back to that. The thing you're going to enjoy about this podcast, if you're a Saturday Night Live fan, is this guy, Bill Simmons, he knows more about every single sketch that I've ever done and every episode. So we do deep dive on that. He is... Maybe the biggest fan of the show ever. One of them. So that's very interesting to get into all the little details.
I saw him at that Netflix brunch the other day. Oh, okay. The other week, the other month. And super cool guy to just BS and bullshit with. And he also knows a ton about SNL. So when he was on, I think maybe we've had him on twice, but he basically interviews us.
He wants to know so much about the ins and outs and the behind the scenes that it's pretty fun to just lean back and kind of go back and forth with him.
Yeah. And he does really understand podcasting.
And he can tell that I'm an athlete. So he kind of likes that. Cause he's a sports guy.
Yeah. He just tagged you right away. Yeah. Right away.
Yeah.
Cause that don't come, that's not natural.
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Chapter 3: What makes Bill Simmons a notable SNL fan?
I used to tell him how, when I used to lead off a lot, you know, when I was in baseball. Yeah. And then I run back to first, I look at the picture, I go, what?
Well, did it ever throw in Little League Baseball, the batter's up and then the whole team starts going, hey, batter, batter, batter, hey, batter, batter, batter. You think they could heckle something better than, yes, I'm a batter and I'm going to batter. Hey, batter, batter, batter, hey, batter, batter.
Yeah. I have to say that. Do they still say that in the pros?
I should have asked him. No, I think sometimes they go beat them, bust them. That's our custom. Yay. That's our custom. New York. That was a real one from my high school.
You know what I saw A-Rod do? He goes, California oranges, Texas cactus. We play your team just for practice.
I know I am, but what are you? I'm rubber, you're glue. Whatever you say sticks to you.
I would be on second base going, but I can have, but I can have, but, but, but swing.
Should we save this for our regular podcast? Just bring on Bill Simmons. We're wasting gold on an intro. Please enjoy Bill Simmons and cut that part out.
This is my setup. This is where I do my pod. So I got all my stuff behind me. So it looks like I'm in this big. And then if you zoom out, it's just like this little weird corner of stuff. And then nothing else looks like that in the room.
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Chapter 4: How do comedians view the evolution of comedy and social media?
They started running the half hour kind of highlight shows on NBC. That would be like nine o'clock, nine 30, whenever that was on. And that's how Belushi was my first guy. I'm like, who is this? I'm like eight. I'm like, how does this person exist? Started watching those. They finally let me stay up late for the fifth season, my parents. And then I was all the way through.
Eddie, when you came on, when Spade, like the height of the 90s and all that, then Hartman, I mean, Farrell coming back and basically saving the show, and it felt like it was in trouble. I've been there for every piece of it.
Wow. Did you ever entertain going into the business of what we're in?
Ironically, I did. I was in the mid-90s. I was writing for the Boston Herald and I really wanted a sports column in the high school newspapers. And it's like, I have no chance. This is never happening. And I lived with a guy who I'd done a lot of comedy stuff with just for fun. And we knew this guy named Bill Lawrence, who I think- He's a producer. Yeah.
At the time he was on the show Friends and he had an SNL connection. And it was the year when everything blew up, when the New York Magazine, when they wrote that piece. And it was when they were coming in and they were blowing up the show. It was summer of 95, maybe. And we did this whole packet. And we sent in, you know, 20 pages of stuff.
Now I learn later, like, there's no way anybody even saw it. But we sent it in. We're like, this is it. This is our big break. And it never happened.
You mean without an agent or something, just sending in a packet?
No, but we had like, oh, a guy knows a guy. It was one of those. But you don't know any better. I was living in Boston.
We're not supposed to read them. When we were on the show, we were talking yesterday about how we had mailboxes. There wasn't email. So Dana's was always full. And Mike Myers. And then everyone else has started getting full. But if people sent packets, which a lot of people would send us scripts and stuff. And to this day, if you read, they can sue you. So you really can't even read it in case.
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Chapter 5: What challenges has SNL faced over the years?
I feel like the show was in danger in my lifetime three times. The first was... after the original cast left that gene dominion year that you talked about a little with Piscopo, but, um, it really felt like the, if Eddie, if Eddie isn't there, the show gets canceled.
Like that's just, was that the Robert Downey, Anthony McCall?
No, that was, that was the next one was that the, uh, so that was season six, but they had Eddie, they ended up keeping, but if they don't have any, I think the show gets canceled. Yeah. I think if the Dana Phil Hartman, that first season doesn't work,
I think the show gets canceled and it really feels like if, if the will Farrell that season, if Farrell's not on the show and the new blood and the people they kept, but then the new people they brought in and that season didn't work. I do wonder if they would have canceled it that year.
Cause I remember that that was back in the day when those magazine profiles, if it was the right kind of hit piece really felt like incredibly damaging. And that I remember reading that New York magazine piece and being like, oh my God, the show's going to get canceled. And then that first episode with Will, he showed up, he did Get Off the Shed. He did the phone thing with Meryl Hemingway.
And it was just like, oh, we're good. This guy's amazing. This show's going to be good again. But after that, I never felt like SNL was in danger again after that.
Where do you feel, now that you are sort of an expert, what do you feel about this season and this cast? I mean, do you watch as much anymore or no?
I watch... I still watch. I still monitor it. I think they've made the mistake the last decade of too many cast members, which I think you can always trace when the show is struggling. When the show is always humming, it's always smaller cast members. I've talked about... a bunch of people about this who've worked on the cast.
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Chapter 6: How do cast changes affect the success of SNL?
Like it's like a basketball team. If you, if you guys watch basketball, like I do, if you're playing 14 players, And everybody's playing 12 to 18 minutes a game. Guess what? The team's going to suck. But if you figure out who your seven or eight are and you ride those seven or eight, the team's going to be really good. And I always felt like SNL, at its best, always had the eights or nines.
I went to Lauren's office like 10 years ago and I got to do a podcast with him, which was amazing. I mean, it was honestly one of the highlights of my career. And I was giving him my basketball theory and his answer was, Yeah, but the new cast members, that's kind of like the draft. And it takes a couple years for the new cast members to have their sea legs.
Yeah, and you got to have those guys ready. And that's why we have the deeper cast. I get it, but I still feel like it should be eight or nine max.
It would have been tough on me.
Chapter 7: What makes a great SNL host?
I just happened to be in like four things on my first episode. I didn't even know what I was doing. but it's sink or swim. If you're slow motion, it's kind of like if you don't, like when an NBA player gets traded and then he comes in with a new team with a new system and he gets into his rhythm, he fits with the system, all of a sudden he's scoring 20 points. He's a different basketball player.
But if you're coming off the bench constantly and the offense isn't running through you, the same thing with SNL, if you can't get your reps in and get rid of the fear, not all of us are Eddie Murphy, who I thought was a savant. Right. at 19. But even Will Ferrell, everybody gets better the more they're out there. And then the audience also discovers you, gets comfortable with you.
So it's pick your poison. I don't think... Lorne, it's his show. He's 50 years. He has a method to everything. He thinks of everything. So I guess this is...
um how it how it works you get to be on the show but you may have we we didn't have anyone not in the show when i was there was seven cast members right so everybody was in every show but now a lot of times i wasn't in it for two weeks it's like survivor yeah because there's people that just if you don't make it and then and then they sometimes add but don't subtract so now
you add this person cause you got to cover like a leading man type, you know, there's sometimes there's types. I never got that back then, but sometimes you need to fill a Phil Hartman role. Sometimes you need to fill this kind of guy. And then, um, If you don't do it, or just adding, now suddenly it's just too many to keep track of. It's just hard for them. They go bananas.
But then if they leave, where do you go? I remember I was going to leave a year earlier, and then they're like, what do we have lined up? Because it's always easier to get work when you're on SNL. And then had a movie almost every summer, and then you leave, and luckily... God, don't just shoot me. But that doesn't always happen. So what do you do when you go?
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Chapter 8: Which classic movies are considered rewatchable?
And so you just sometimes just stick it out. And there's people there sticking out longer than we used to. I stayed six years and that was considered a hair long. Sandler, Farley, Rock was three, Sandler, Farley were four or five, no five.
So I stayed one year too long and I was like the fucking guy that went to college that came back to high school because it was Will and Sherry and I was like, I liked them, but I didn't, I immediately felt like, oh no, all my guys are gone. And I don't know what to do with this. I don't. And so I just did one, Lauren goes stay and you can do one segment a week, do whatever you want.
And I didn't do sketches. I just did one segment a week of whatever I wanted. And that was like my own kind of update. So that was where the Terry Hatcher thing was. Sean Penn gave me a tattoo.
I thought that really worked. Yeah. It was fun. It's fun.
But yeah, one swing to get it right. I went to the world series, did a field piece. to the Braves with Chipper Jones and some people. So, you know, some of those came out pretty funny. But after that, I said, no, I think it's time to boogie. And then I forgot where this question started.
Well, I mean, part of it is about how you build the cast, right? And everyone says the same thing. You have to have that one glue person. You know, and then you could argue about who the greatest glue person was. It's probably Phil. Phil Hartman. Yeah, Ackroyd's in there. I think there was a moment where Sudeikis and Hader together
We're just literally covering every possible glue thing you would ever want.
And Fred Armisen, too. Right.
All those guys are superstars.
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