Episode 731 - Seth Meyers
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuck tuckians what the fuck greekans what the fucksikins how's it going i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome if you have not been here before and
Marc:On the show today, Seth Meyers, one of the missing links of the SNL.
Marc:Well, obviously, there's dozens of people that have been on SNL, but I've done Seth's show.
Marc:He's a nice fella.
Marc:We talked about some stuff.
Marc:We talked about riding it out.
Marc:locking in and realizing your limitations acknowledging your limitations perhaps is a better way to put it it was a good conversation i think you'll enjoy it there's there's no way to say he's not a decent fella that that seth myers with all those s's so what else i've got big news
Marc:Big news that I'm afraid to utter aloud.
Marc:I'm afraid to speak it because it's one of those things many of you know.
Marc:I did not think a lot of things were going to happen.
Marc:And a lot of things happened that I had let go of, which is about, honestly, about...
Marc:realizing your limitations or at least being realistic about where the fuck you are in your life for a second long story short 700 and some odd episodes short I just didn't I didn't anticipate a lot of things and but I will say this I Mark Maron will be playing performing stand-up comedy at Carnegie Hall
Marc:On November 4th for the New York Comedy Festival, the pre-sale will run from Wednesday, August 10th at 10 a.m.
Marc:Eastern Time to Sunday, August 14th at 10 p.m.
Marc:Eastern Time.
Marc:Tickets go on sale for the general public Monday, August 15th at 10 a.m.
Marc:And that's happening.
Marc:That's I Am Playing Carnegie Hall.
Marc:It is insane.
Marc:I would never have thought.
Marc:Now, I hope I can feel it.
Marc:I feel like I can.
Marc:I did all right at BAM last year.
Marc:And on some level, it is just a big venue.
Marc:But it's fucking Carnegie Hall, and I'm feeling the pressure.
Marc:So if you were wondering why I've been so diligent about working on my stand-up, that's why.
Marc:That is why.
Marc:Because, frankly, I want to have my shit as together as possible for Carnegie Hall.
Yeah.
Marc:And the weird thing, I don't even know how to process it.
Marc:I'm just trying not to focus on it.
Marc:I believe Nate Bargetsy will be opening for me.
Marc:I've reached out to Nate, who is one of my favorite comics, at this juncture in the history of the medium, of the craft, of the form.
Marc:And he's into it, so I think that's going to happen.
Marc:So it's going to be me and Nate.
Marc:at carnegie hall i'm putting together the act for carnegie hall and then i guess after that i can just stop right i can quit i've done everything that i thought i would never do here's the fucked up thing about the life is that all those years of spite and envy and struggle and fuck that guy and why can't i have this and why why am i not on that why am i i would not have been able to do it
Marc:I would not have been able to function given the opportunities.
Marc:It would not have gone well.
Marc:And it's sometimes it's weird.
Marc:Sometimes people know better.
Marc:You don't know.
Marc:You know, if you're stupidly proud and selfishly myopic as I am, you think you're ready for everything.
Marc:I can do that.
Marc:I'm ready.
Marc:Let's go.
Marc:It's the act of desiring and fighting and competing and struggling.
Marc:Give me mine.
Marc:Where's my entitlement?
Marc:But usually, a lot of times, the people who are in charge of making decisions to do things with you know better.
Marc:You might not be right.
Marc:There was no way I could have handled it at any other point in my life.
Marc:Not even last year.
Marc:And I spent a long time seeing my peers do that venue and do other things.
Marc:And, you know, I've spoke about this fucking so much.
Marc:And all that jealousy and all that aggravation and spite, what you should be doing is working on your shit.
Marc:Whatever it is, whatever it is you think you can do, all the energy you're putting into saying, fuck, man, where's mine?
Marc:Why that guy?
Marc:How come I didn't get you?
Marc:Just try to put that energy into the other thing.
Marc:But sadly, I also did that on stage.
Marc:That was my voice for years.
Marc:But it is not now.
Marc:And I'm going to say it out loud again with my name involved.
Marc:Mark Maron, me, will be playing Carnegie Hall for the New York Comedy Festival on November 4th.
Marc:Holy shit.
Marc:Another thing that's happening today is August 8th, correct?
Marc:Tomorrow, August 9th, I will be, if something doesn't fucking go horribly wrong today, if somebody does not...
Marc:Hold me down and dump alcohol into my mouth or lock me in a room and gas it with weed smoke or turn me upside down and suspend me and dump cocaine into my nose.
Marc:Tomorrow, August 9th, I will be 17 years sober.
Marc:My name is Mark.
Marc:I'm an alcoholic.
Marc:And drug addict.
Marc:17 fucking years sober.
Marc:Tomorrow.
Marc:I don't know how this shit happened.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I do know that my memory is diminishing.
Marc:That everything's becoming a large smear of faces and cars and women and geographical locations.
Marc:Can't place things.
Marc:Things pop up here and there.
Marc:But...
Marc:Yeah, 17 years sober tomorrow, August 9th.
Marc:Carnegie Hall, me, November 4th.
Marc:I couldn't have done one without the other.
Marc:That's for goddamn sure.
Marc:And I also, look, I get a lot of email from you people, and I appreciate it.
Marc:I know that this show has been helpful to a lot of people struggling with that shit.
Marc:And it's hard at first, and it gets easier.
Marc:Life doesn't change, but not doing drugs and drinking does get easier if you get off the shit.
Marc:So that's the good news.
Marc:Can you fucking believe it?
Marc:I can't fucking believe it.
Marc:See, I don't even like saying this, because then you're sort of like, the other shoe's gonna drop.
Marc:How do I get rid of that part?
Marc:Be like, everything's going great, but what if, oh shit.
Marc:How do I get rid of my internal buzzkill device?
Marc:Had a spontaneous bit of closure last night at the Comedy Store, the greatest comedy club on earth.
Marc:Adam Egott, the dude who books it, bringing in people, bringing in the new guard, bringing in popular comedians to the haunted old fucking castle of comedy.
Marc:So I look at the schedule for the Comedy Store and Kumail Nanjiani's on the schedule and he don't work there.
Marc:And I don't I guess I guess you guys didn't know.
Marc:But I mean, maybe if you were sensitive to the situation and watched my television show Marin on IFC Mad Mark season three, episode six.
Marc:Well, it was basically a fictionalized meltdown show.
Marc:And I lose it on the guy playing Kumail.
Marc:And that really happened.
Marc:And that was years ago already.
Marc:And it was never resolved.
Marc:Basically what happened is I was doing a show there at Nerd Melt and it was actually the last fucking show I ever did in that goddamn place.
Marc:Whatever happened between me and Kumail stopped me entirely from doing alternative rooms.
Marc:I just do the comedy store when I'm in town.
Marc:They give me a lot of work.
Marc:I get my work done or I do the Steve Allen Theater on my own terms and work out shit.
Marc:I don't go to the Laugh Factory.
Marc:Fuck the Laugh Factory.
Marc:Fuck the improv.
Marc:Fuck Nerd Melt.
Marc:I go to the comedy store.
Marc:But the alternative thing, this just detached me from all of it for some reason.
Marc:I just turned my back on those venues and decided that I'm going back to my roots.
Marc:I'm going back to what I started to do.
Marc:I'm going back to a real comedy club and that's how it goes.
Marc:And now Kumail Nanjiani,
Marc:is on the schedule at the Real Comedy Club that is my home, the comedy store.
Marc:And my first thought was like, what's he doing there?
Marc:I mean, a lot of those guys are working there now.
Marc:Mulaney's there and Nick Kroll's been coming by.
Marc:And I love those guys.
Marc:These guys are all funny guys.
Marc:But me and Kamel had a problem and I was like, why is he in my house?
Marc:I don't go to his house anymore.
Marc:What the fuck is happening?
Marc:So I had that, but it wasn't that, I didn't really obsess about it.
Marc:Like I didn't, this wasn't an active bit of sort of like, I didn't feel that there was an injustice at hand.
Marc:I mean, what happened was not unlike the episode of the show.
Marc:I went on stage after he and Jonah Ray, you know, kind of did their rambling thing.
Marc:But I got on stage when they brought me up and I took a shot at him.
Marc:I busted some balls.
Marc:I said, you know, I made fun of him.
Marc:And then I got off stage and he was sitting in there.
Marc:He goes, you know, you can't make fun of me on my show.
Marc:And I said, are you fucking serious?
Marc:Are you really saying that to me?
Marc:And this is how I remember it.
Marc:And I'm like, you really serious?
Marc:He's like, yeah, it's my show.
Marc:You can't make fun of me on it.
Marc:And I was like, fuck you, you fucking baby.
Marc:I can't bust your balls on, you can't take it, fuck you.
Marc:And I called him a fucking baby and I stormed out of the room slamming the door like a fucking baby.
Marc:And I said, fuck it.
Marc:I'm not doing, you know, I'm not, you know, cross me off the list.
Marc:This is a big, dramatic, prideful baby bullshit.
Marc:Man.
Marc:But anyways, it stuck.
Marc:And I didn't go back there.
Marc:I didn't talk to him.
Marc:We unfollowed each other on Twitter.
Marc:And this was over a year.
Marc:I mean, this has been years.
Marc:So this sat there and we wrote that episode of Marin about that, about that incident, almost exactly.
Marc:And I saw it as my way of apologizing to Kumail without apologizing.
Marc:And I fucking asked him if he wanted to play himself in the episode.
Marc:And he did not.
Marc:Or he said he couldn't.
Marc:It doesn't matter.
Marc:He didn't.
Marc:So last night, I go to the comedy store.
Marc:I even forget that he's on the show.
Marc:And once I get there, I walk into the original room and I see him sitting there.
Marc:He looks at me.
Marc:He goes, hey.
Marc:I look at him.
Marc:I go, what's up?
Marc:And he goes, is it done?
Marc:I think is what he said.
Marc:And I go, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Then we walked out in the hallway.
Marc:We hugged, and it's over.
Marc:But it wasn't even that loaded.
Marc:I was happy to see him.
Marc:I tweeted later.
Marc:I said me and Kumail hugged it out, FYI.
Marc:He said something about the walls.
Marc:Now we tore the wall down, and then I tweeted detente, and then we both followed each other again on Twitter.
Marc:So...
Marc:There you have it.
Marc:The saga of Marc Maron and Kumail Nanjiani now ends.
Marc:The secret saga that some of you knew was real is over.
Marc:And I feel okay about it.
Marc:I don't know why I'm saying that like, you know, you should be proud of me.
Marc:Fucking baby.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:I'm better though.
Marc:I'm better.
Marc:And I love that talk with Eric Andre.
Marc:That was helpful too.
Marc:But there's a lot fewer of these.
Marc:There's very few left.
Marc:Oh, before I forget, Eric Andre and I talked a bit, but not really in any detail, but it was a little loaded about the writer Jim Goad.
Marc:And he emailed me feeling a bit misrepresented.
Marc:So...
Marc:If you are interested in following up on that, you can go to jimgo.net.
Marc:There's very little that goes on in his life or in his mind that goes undocumented.
Marc:It is challenging.
Marc:It is a dark rabbit hole, not for the faint of mind or heart, but I wanted to make sure that he is represented and I guess he can do that best himself.
Marc:So Seth Meyers is here and you can watch his show.
Marc:It's Late Night with Seth Meyers on at 1230 every weeknight right after the Tonight Show.
Marc:It's a very pleasant hang.
Marc:And it was nice to talk to him.
Marc:You want to listen to it?
Marc:Because I'll let you listen to it right now.
Guest:I don't know if I told you this, because I was an intern at Comedy Central summer of 95, and I did a lot of watching of short attention span theater.
Marc:When I did it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How did... Oh, my God.
Marc:But at Comedy Central, not at HBO Downtown, so you're up in the office.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, that's hilarious.
Marc:I watched me miraculously string together a bunch of promotional clips into TV shows.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's the department I worked in was just cutting promos for shows.
Guest:So we were you were cutting old sketches into a show and then we were cutting that into promos.
Guest:I wasn't.
Guest:I was just.
Marc:And that was before Broadway video.
Marc:That was before any.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How old were you when you did that?
Guest:Well, that's right before my senior year of college.
Guest:So I must have been 20 years old.
Guest:So you were gunning for show business all along.
Guest:Well, I was a radio TV film major at Northwestern, so I tried to get an internship, and Comedy Central seemed like a fun place to work.
Marc:You seem like a very well-adjusted person.
Marc:It bothers me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm fairly well-adjusted.
Marc:Like, I don't know what to do with it.
Marc:Like when you were doing an update or when I knew about you, when you were someone I knew, I was like, how's that normal fucker get to be the king of SNL?
Marc:How does that happen?
Marc:The normal guy.
Guest:I know, it's not fair.
Guest:I agree.
Guest:I agree.
Guest:Trust me.
Guest:I will say I spent the whole time thinking the normal fucker wasn't going to get it either.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, that makes you more like us.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:That there were problems inside that don't come out in front.
Guest:Well, I just felt normal at a place where I felt I was surrounded by exceptional.
Marc:Right.
Marc:If that makes sense.
Marc:Oh, I get it.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:So wait, so where did you, where was the upbringing?
Marc:What happened?
Guest:Where'd you grow up?
Guest:I was born near Chicago in Evanston, Illinois, but we grew up in New Hampshire.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Same, pretty much the same town as Sarah Silverman and Adam Sandler.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you didn't know them.
Guest:I didn't know them.
Guest:I knew people who knew Sarah because she's only a couple years older than me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I do remember thinking it was statistically impossible that three people from my part of New Hampshire would be on SNL.
Guest:Once Sarah got on, I assumed, well, that will never.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, you were working the numbers?
Marc:You were like, I'm out.
Marc:I just thought, no, that's just a long shot.
Marc:No, God will not allow that.
Marc:Why would they?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The great connection of coincidences.
Marc:Serendipity, it's over.
Marc:It's played out in that part.
Guest:New Hampshire doesn't get that many.
Guest:Well, what part of New Hampshire is that?
Guest:I'm from a town called Bedford, but I went to high school in Manchester, which is a town.
Guest:Yeah, that's like the town.
Guest:There's only a few in New Hampshire.
Guest:There really are.
Guest:It's pretty though, right?
Guest:Yeah, it was great.
Guest:It was a perfectly, you know, it's pastoral to some degree, but it's really suburban more than anything else.
Marc:Right.
Marc:How many brothers and sisters do you have?
Marc:I have one younger brother.
Marc:That's it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How old is that kid, your brother?
Guest:He's two years younger than me.
Guest:Josh, he lives out here.
Guest:He's an actor and a writer.
Marc:Josh and Seth.
Marc:How are you even Josh and Seth, but not 100% Jews?
Guest:Isn't that weird?
Guest:Well...
Guest:My father's father's Jewish.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he married a Catholic lady.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And then my mom, Pure Shiksa.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But you get Seth and Josh.
Marc:I mean, Jews are afraid to name their kids that Jew.
Marc:I know.
Guest:Well, that was the thing.
Guest:My dad... Do you know the book, North Dallas 40?
Guest:Yeah, I know the movie.
Guest:Yeah, so... I love that movie.
Guest:One of the characters is Seth, Seth Maxwell.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my dad was reading that book when my mom was pregnant with me, and he just liked the name Seth.
Guest:I don't think he thought...
Guest:How Jewy it would make.
Marc:Was that Mac Davis' character or Nick Nolte's character?
Marc:I think it's Nolte, but now I can't.
Guest:No, maybe it's Mac Davis.
Guest:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that's where it comes from.
Marc:That's where it comes from.
Marc:It has nothing to do with the Bible or Jews.
Marc:It's North Dallas 40.
Guest:And it was funny.
Guest:Growing up in New Hampshire, it wasn't until I got to college where I realized how... I was around more Jews in college than I was in high school.
Guest:Yeah, it happens in cities.
Guest:And that's when you realize... That was the first time I realized, oh, the rest of my life, everyone's going to think that I'm Jewish.
Marc:Think that you're Jewish?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, and they're going to approach you like you're one of them until you see them.
Marc:It was lovely.
Guest:Well, that's the lovely part is how happy people are to find out that you're Jewish.
Guest:Like, that was great.
Guest:Jews.
Guest:Yeah, Jews are always looking for more.
Marc:Jew?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now we can talk to the shorthand.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:so when you were younger though did you do um did you have like when did your interest in comedy start really early my parents my dad especially was a huge fan you would go well you obviously you wouldn't defend you go but a lot of like listening to steve martin albums and richard pryor my dad had comedy albums we would listen to those
Marc:Is your dad still around?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How old is he?
Marc:I was born in 48.
Marc:So he's actually almost like a boomer, almost.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just the beginning of it, in a way.
Marc:So he was part of all that.
Guest:He was.
Guest:They were in Chicago.
Guest:They both went to Northwestern, so they would go to Second City shows.
Guest:They were really into that.
Marc:Green Street Tavern?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did they do that stuff?
Marc:I think they did.
Marc:Were they like Shelly Berman or Mort Sahl?
Guest:I think they missed that.
Guest:I think they were more went to Second City.
Guest:I think like...
Guest:They didn't quite dig for it as much as if there was an institution in place, they would go there.
Marc:So they went and saw the old Second City people.
Guest:Yeah, and then I even remember when we went out to Northwestern to take me out to look at it, that was where they took me.
Marc:To Second City?
Guest:Yeah, so that was something I did when I was, whatever, you know, 18 years old.
Guest:Who'd you see?
Guest:Do you remember?
Guest:Anybody?
Guest:Yeah, Colbert, Carell.
Guest:Really?
Guest:You saw that bunch?
Guest:I did.
Guest:It was really crazy.
Guest:Because then they kind of both...
Guest:disappeared for a while.
Guest:Not really, but until they were on The Daily Show.
Guest:And when they turned up, it was, oh, hey, those guys are really great.
Marc:Well, you knew then, you knew Colbert then if you were at Comedy Central at that time, because he was on Exit 57, right?
Guest:Yeah, Exit 57, though, even working at Comedy Central, that was a show that, it was so brief.
Guest:So wait, what's your brother end up doing?
Guest:Is he in show business?
Guest:Yeah, he was on Mad TV for a couple years.
Guest:He was on a year of that 70s show.
Guest:He's on a show on Amazon right now called Red Oaks.
Guest:Josh Myers?
Guest:Josh Myers.
Guest:And he does some, he writes as well.
Guest:How did that happen?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, we were, we grew up really close.
Guest:We did a lot of stuff together.
Guest:Did you do comedy team thing?
Guest:We did sort of in high school and then- The Myers brothers?
Guest:With other people, so we're more part of a troupe.
Guest:And then we went to college together and then we both ended up out in Amsterdam working for this theater called Boom Chicago.
Marc:In Amsterdam, the country?
Marc:Yeah, in Holland.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Let me understand.
Marc:So what's your dad do?
Marc:My dad is in finance.
Guest:But he's also- That's vague.
Marc:So he's a money guy.
Guest:He's the funny guy.
Guest:He's the funniest person in any room.
Guest:The funny money guy?
Guest:He's not really.
Guest:Yeah, he's the funny money guy.
Guest:He's on right after Jim Cramer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, but he's a really funny person.
Guest:He's a fantastic storyteller.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Incredible.
Guest:Like every sort of dinner party I'm ever at, my whole youth, like my dad was the funny one.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Just overwhelming everybody.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No room to be funny.
Guest:Well, you had to really wait your time.
Guest:When you had a shot, you had to make sure you didn't waste it.
Marc:Which is where you develop your skills as a talk show host.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Waiting.
Guest:Waiting.
Marc:That's a lot of waiting involved.
Marc:There is.
Marc:There is sometimes, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I've learned to wait.
Marc:No, I'm not good at it.
Marc:It's really important, though.
Marc:Oh, no, to listen and wait.
Marc:It's weird.
Marc:The first time you decide not to make a joke that you can is a big moment for a funny person.
Guest:Just two weeks ago, there was a show where I walked off and I thought, what was wrong with me today that I just kept jumping?
Guest:There's something there was something.
Guest:Who was the guest?
Guest:I can't even remember, but it was all the guests.
Guest:I just kept like jumping in to say something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As if I don't get to do it every day.
Guest:That's what makes waiting easy.
Marc:Well, let's track that day.
Marc:Maybe you were sort of like, is anyone watching the show?
Marc:Am I not doing it right?
Marc:Or maybe I've got to get in there more.
Guest:Maybe the monologue was flat.
Guest:Are you overcompensating?
Guest:I didn't get my laughs that I needed to move on, so I was trying to steal them from other people.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it's a weird moment where you don't... It's a very thrilling moment to decide not to make a joke.
Marc:It really is.
Marc:I've never really talked about it with anybody because I don't...
Marc:I don't know that like I noticed it as much because you only notice it if you're I mean, I imagine you did from but on SNL, it's different.
Marc:But in improv, it's probably part of it.
Marc:There's a there's a moment where you're like, you got to let them have that.
Marc:I'm not going to do better or mine's redundant.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there's no reason to do it.
Marc:Or like, you know, like it's not necessary to win this one.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And nothing, you're right in that nothing is less satisfying than the lateral move.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Of, I can also do what you just did.
Marc:Hey, audience, look.
Marc:There's no way not to look like an asshole.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, it's like, yeah, it was unnecessary.
Guest:We probably notice it more than anyone else.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Because I do think we live in a society where people do lateral moves all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, they glom.
Guest:So it is hard.
Guest:But it is lovely.
Guest:I think that, and you probably discovered this even earlier than I did, but people, the problem with being interesting is the audience doesn't make a noise.
Guest:If every time they were engaged,
Guest:That way they were going, ooh, then you would never make.
Marc:I've used that to rationalize my entire lack of success throughout my career.
Marc:I may not be funny, but I'm compelling.
Marc:You enjoy watching me no matter what.
Marc:It's a very good era for compelling.
Marc:Yeah, I think it is.
Marc:Finally, this culture has come around to compelling.
Marc:Yeah, because I'm very hard on myself about my jokes and about whether or not they're finished and whether or not the tag is good enough or if there is a tag.
Marc:And instead of really work them properly, I'll be like, it's pretty interesting.
Marc:It's pretty compelling there.
Marc:It's okay not to have closure.
Marc:I mean, there's not closure in everything.
Guest:Especially once the audience also understands that that's what you're doing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Oh, I get it.
Marc:He's not being funny.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Oh, tonight's not going to be about closure.
Marc:Or punchlines or necessarily humor.
Marc:But so I guess I was just trying to establish that.
Marc:Like when you grew up like comfortably, you're not, you weren't in the poor part of New Hampshire.
Marc:No.
Marc:So, cause like when, when I hear like two brothers going to Amsterdam to do a show, I'm like, they had a little freedom, these guys.
Guest:Oh, we really did.
Guest:I mean, our parents were so supportive.
Guest:They came to everything we did.
Guest:My mom was a theater major at Northwestern.
Guest:She ended up being a school teacher.
Guest:So she had, she had a real performer spirit as well.
Guest:What grade?
Guest:What?
Guest:She taught middle school French for, you know, I think.
Marc:Like at a public school?
Marc:Yeah, about 30 years.
Marc:So many teacher kids I talk to.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's kind of nice.
Marc:I would hope that a teacher would be supportive at home and encourage whatever the creativity the person wants to do, the kid.
Guest:My mother is as supportive as you could ask.
Guest:My brother and I have never done anything that's been anything less than an A-plus for her.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Whereas my dad, who's also incredibly supportive, he's the one that's judgmental and will give you notes and will tell you that wasn't your best.
Guest:You hearing from him a lot?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Less now.
Guest:But early SNL, I heard from him a lot.
Guest:Really?
Guest:To a point that at one time I did have to say, hey, I also am aware it's not going great.
Guest:I'm there every day.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:When you were on Update or before?
Marc:No, before.
Marc:Oh, so when you were just writing?
Guest:Back in the struggle.
Guest:Well, I started as a cast member at SNL, and then I didn't become a credited writer.
Guest:I mean, everybody in the cast writes until about my fifth or sixth year, but I was just trying to write myself onto the show, and I just remember my dad walking down the street with him, because he'll be in New York every now and then for business, so I get to see him, and he was saying, you know what I've noticed is recurring characters.
Guest:tend to be very helpful.
Guest:And it was that thing of, I just want you to know, Dad, that I have also come to that conclusion, and I'm just not good at that.
Guest:It wasn't that it hadn't occurred to me.
Marc:No matter what level of success, through advice, they will diminish you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, the diminishing thing there is that it's one that I can't, I'm not, I don't have recurring characters.
Guest:The more insulting thing is that it had never occurred to me as a thinking man.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's exactly it.
Marc:Because I still get that from my dad.
Marc:You know, why don't you talk to Bill Maher or maybe talk to Charlie Rose about getting a show like his.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Like there's a sort of, they don't understand the business quite and they don't realize they're being shitty.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that the last person you go to to get a show like theirs is that person.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah, Charlie, why don't you move over?
Marc:I think your time is up.
Marc:You seem to be the person to talk to about being direct competition.
Marc:I don't know if it's... I have to... As I get older, I just want to believe that it's all with the right spirit.
Guest:Oh, 100%.
Guest:There's been no malice from my parents throughout any part of my life.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You sound like you're being paid to say that.
Guest:It's weird.
Marc:I didn't, I didn't think of it until you said, well, yeah, but I really, I mean, again, they, I guess malice is, would be a hard one for anybody, but swipe passive aggressive ego battles with parents are not, uh,
Marc:But I'm not suggesting that.
Marc:I'm just saying that like malice is a strong word.
Guest:I think my dad, because of the fact that everyone thinks he's really funny, because he is, I think he takes great pride in the fact that.
Guest:It's great.
Marc:Yeah, I think my dad's starting to, reluctantly starting to take pride.
Marc:It's nice.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So you go, you do some things with your brother in high school.
Marc:Is there music involved?
Marc:No, never.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Marc:I just had no skill for it ever.
Marc:No skill for music.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I love it, but I don't.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then, all right.
Marc:So you graduate and then you go look at Northwestern.
Marc:You see Corral and Colbert.
Marc:Are you thinking about SNL?
Guest:no no no i was uh i wanted to be a director i wanted to film director yeah and so i applied to schools that had good film programs and i ended up at northwestern for that and yeah pretty i like our new student week at northwestern i saw the northwestern improv troupe perform what were they called meow and uh were you happy with that name for the i wasn't no it's a spoof yeah
Guest:When Gary Marshall was on, he mentioned WAMU, which was sort of the all-school big, and so Meow was a spoof on that.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:So at least it came from something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:You and Gary are alumni.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Julia was in Meow, Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Marc:Was she?
Marc:Years before me.
Marc:Oh, that's right.
Marc:We talked about that.
Marc:I don't know if she named it, though.
Marc:I don't think she did.
Guest:I think she was smarter than me.
Guest:She didn't drop it.
Marc:No, I like Miao.
Marc:So you're at Northwestern, it's a Chicago school, so improv is a known thing.
Marc:So I guess maybe this group, judging by the alum, had a little traction somehow, or that you at least knew you were in an improv town.
Guest:Definitely saw these guys perform that new student week immediately.
Guest:That was the, I thought, oh, I think I can do that.
Guest:Yeah, were they attached to the theater program or was it more of a general?
Guest:No, it was an independent thing.
Guest:You didn't have to be in theater to audition for it.
Guest:And every year it had a student director who would pick eight students to be in the group.
Marc:Different student director.
Guest:Different student director every year.
Guest:And I auditioned for it for three years without getting in.
Marc:Really?
Guest:So I only did it.
Marc:Not till your senior year?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Holy shit, that's kind of rough.
Guest:And I never thought they were wrong.
Guest:Like when I would go see the shows, it would always be four guys and four girls.
Guest:I would look at the four guys who they had picked.
Guest:Yeah, and you're like, I can't do it.
Guest:No, they were all better than I was.
Guest:Well, what were you doing?
Guest:Well, they were, it was all, it was just a group of people a year older than me and they were, you know.
Marc:Improvising?
Guest:They were improvising.
Guest:They were writing sketches.
Guest:Fantastic improvisers.
Guest:Their shows would be sketch and improv.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like they were very much like based on the Second City model, I would say.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But then- Did people go to their shows?
Guest:Were they popular on campus?
Marc:Yeah, they were packed.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:They were rock stars.
Guest:Okay, all right.
Guest:I liked that part, too.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Guest:I was drawn to that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I started going into Chicago, going to ImprovOlympic and taking improv classes at the same time that I was sort of- Where at?
Guest:ImprovOlympic.
Marc:The other one.
Marc:So that's IO now.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Sharna Halperin's place, Del Close's place.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Del Close was ImprovOlympic?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I should know that.
Marc:He's the one who started that?
Marc:That was his offshoot?
Marc:Yeah, he and Sharna.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Del Close.
Marc:Did you meet him?
Marc:I didn't.
Guest:Was he already dead?
Guest:Is he dead?
Guest:I think he is.
Guest:Yeah, he is.
Guest:I just missed him.
Guest:He would have been what was level five at this school.
Marc:It's so amazing to me that like, you know, because I've talked to so many people that there's just the...
Guest:Chicago influence man yeah it was a big deal it was a big deal and it was a really exciting you would be able to go down to take your classes and then it was pretty I think if you took class shows might have even been free yeah but you would just hang out and see people that turned out to later be like Amy Poehler or Tina Fey you saw them where at ImprovOlympic just doing shows they were I.O.
Marc:people yeah
Marc:They were I.O.
Marc:people.
Marc:I'm sure I know that.
Marc:I can't remember everything.
Guest:I.O.
Guest:was like a place people worked before they got, you didn't get paid at I.O.
Marc:Oh, so you're heading towards Second City.
Guest:Yeah, it was like the AAA for Second City.
Guest:I get it, right, farm team.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you were seeing them.
Marc:You saw Tina and... Yeah.
Marc:And Amy.
Guest:Dratch.
Guest:I mean, I saw Dratch on Second City be funnier in a show than I've ever seen.
Guest:Like, pop out of a show more than anything.
Guest:Anybody?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Crazy.
Guest:Horatio.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I was just in awe of all of them.
Guest:So your brother's with you?
Marc:No, my brother... What's the age difference?
Marc:Two years.
Marc:It's just like me and my brother.
Marc:He's two and a half, though.
Marc:Two and a half.
Guest:So I finished school and was doing IO.
Guest:I'd done the one year of Meow and that had sort of put in my head that I wanted to keep doing this.
Guest:My goal was Second City.
Guest:That's really what I wanted to do more than that.
Guest:That was the short term goal that you didn't see past that.
Guest:I really didn't.
Guest:And they would sort of audition.
Guest:I would maybe every year, every six months.
Guest:Were you doing characters?
Guest:No.
Guest:I, as an improviser, I used to, I was doing a two-person show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And with this girl named Jill Benjamin, my old comedy partner, and we used to say that, like, just check me out during the course of the show.
Guest:This is when I was, whatever, 27 years old.
Guest:And I would say, like, over the course of the show, you'll see me play characters anywhere between 26 and 28 years old.
Guest:Because at no point in my career have I had range.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:And I think as an improviser, all my characters were just, like, slight variations of- On you?
Guest:Of me, yeah.
Marc:So what do you think your big comic strength is?
Guest:Well, I think I could write really fast as an improviser.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think premise and structure and good jokes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But I... So I ended up out in Amsterdam.
Guest:So these guys started this, like... Okay, so you graduate college.
Marc:You do I.O.
Marc:for a while.
Marc:You don't get into Second City.
Marc:I don't, right.
Marc:You tried.
Marc:I tried.
Marc:I auditioned.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think, like, I was probably on a short list for maybe the next year.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:But that was the thing about Chicago.
Guest:Like, you really had to, like, stick around.
Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Well, it's not unlike stand-up where you had to pay your fucking dues.
Marc:You had to show up at the things.
Marc:Other guys had to be like, he's a guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then, you know, then you get your shot.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:If you hang out long enough.
Guest:And I always remember the thing about auditioning for Second City is it would be a small group of people, not a group of people you...
Guest:picked yeah it was not self-selecting right and you would maybe have one or two shots to do an improv scene and you're with somebody else whose skills could be anywhere from a zero to ten yeah yeah you're just like you know you're just the default straight guy yeah or they're just dragging you down oh really and there's a couple ways it could go or what's that how does that work
Guest:Well, you know, you go out and you just realize somebody is not that good at improvising.
Guest:Oh, so that's the other side.
Guest:The not good guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The guy is floundering.
Guest:And then you just can't elevate your game past those limitations.
Guest:And but then we a friend of mine, this guy, Pete Gross, we saw an audition notice for this place, Boom Chicago, which was some Chicago guys started improv theater in Amsterdam.
Guest:And it was only in its third year now.
Guest:It's still going.
Guest:Still going.
Guest:Still going.
Guest:And we auditioned for that.
Guest:Same guys?
Guest:Same guys, yeah.
Guest:They're there?
Guest:Yeah, Chicago guys.
Guest:They just stayed there?
Guest:Yeah, they all married Dutch women.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Boom Chicago.
Guest:Boom Chicago.
Guest:And there've been... Jordan Peele from Key & Peele went through there.
Guest:Sudeikis was out there at the same time.
Guest:Ike Barinholtz, who's a really funny guy, was out there.
Marc:In Amsterdam.
Marc:But most of these guys, I assume, were sort of like, this is my semester abroad.
Guest:It was...
Guest:It was a year contract when you did it.
Guest:Most people ended up staying for longer, for two, because we did shows in a 250-seat theater.
Guest:They sold really well.
Guest:You got to do about 200 shows a year as a performer.
Guest:And living in Amsterdam was fantastic.
Guest:I mean, it was the most fun of my life.
Guest:It was?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, mostly because it was the age that you're just more likely to be happier.
Guest:How old were you, like 28?
Guest:I think it was there from 25 to 27.
Marc:Two years, 25, 27, young, excited, smoking a lot of hash.
Guest:I realized I don't love smoking weed there, but I love drinking Heineken from the tap.
Guest:It wasn't like there was plenty of debauchery.
Guest:It's pretty there.
Guest:It's beautiful.
Marc:And you went to the Van Gogh Museum.
Marc:I don't know if I did while I lived there.
Marc:Didn't make it, so right.
Guest:I go back a lot and I've gone since.
Guest:You go back a lot?
Guest:Well, I do.
Guest:I have close friends there and I love it.
Marc:The guys from Chicago who marry Dutch women.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you and your wife go there and spend it.
Guest:I went a lot more without my wife than with her.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I think we would like.
Marc:Gotta do your drinking somewhere, right?
Marc:Gotta do it somewhere.
Marc:You seem like a pretty clean cat.
Marc:You know, like you got a good reputation here.
Marc:You sneak off to Amsterdam.
Guest:Gotta go abroad.
Guest:There have been a few times where I was really messed up in Amsterdam and someone came up to say, and you just realize, oh, you're not the only American there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And really messed up and someone's saying, oh, hey, I'm a huge fan.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Or else like, hey, dude, you know, you're making us look bad.
Guest:Yeah, that's true.
Guest:I never made us look as bad as some of the Americans there.
Guest:That's
Marc:but that's fascinating to me so you know these guys have now been there for over a decade more than that now they started it in uh yeah 97 something like that like 20 years crazy so they're like 45 year old dudes yeah and they're they just built a life for them in amsterdam yeah and they have kids with dutch people they have dutch kids dutch kids and they speak two languages maybe they do and they and they just keep hiring young people from the states
Guest:yep and it's a grind like running a theater is a grind and they but they're just they still love it so much but it's a big business so they all do alright they live in nice houses in Amsterdam they do pretty good and they a big part of it is they they do a lot of corporate stuff because there aren't a lot of like corporate all around Europe mostly you know actually they do do all around Europe because there's not that thing right of like that kind of comedy where hey we'll come and like help message and be funny in that American way improvisers can do that easily they really can't
Marc:Yeah, like at a convention or at a corporate retreat.
Marc:Yeah, a lot of retreats.
Marc:And I guess with improvisers, it's easier than comics who begrudgingly get that list of, that's the boss and this is what we like to do here.
Marc:But with improvisers, they're like, great, we need this shit.
Guest:We were going to ask for suggestions anyway.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:If you want to give them to us ahead of time.
Marc:Makes it a lot easier.
Marc:I just like the idea of people just sort of...
Marc:finding themselves like in another country and deciding to like, well, this is it.
Marc:I'm going to live here.
Marc:And it seems exotic to me.
Marc:It was interesting.
Guest:There are a couple, I look, I think I could have ended up in Chicago forever.
Guest:I really loved it.
Guest:I think I could have, I was close to saying, oh, I could just do this.
Guest:I really love Dancer now.
Guest:Work with these guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was this girl, Jill Benjamin, who was like I mentioned her before, but we were out there at the same time and we were doing a lot of stuff at the theater.
Guest:And she was the one who said, I think we have to leave because I think we're going to hit the ceiling of what we can accomplish here because there weren't other jobs.
Marc:Right.
Marc:No, you would be doing that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's a certain type of person that's sort of like, I'm okay just turning this shit out every week.
Marc:I guess the challenges are different.
Marc:There's a difference between a creative person that's searching to do something more with their creativity all the time and somebody who is like, we can do this every week.
Guest:I feel like I'm really a little bit of both.
Guest:Yeah, no.
Guest:Because I was really... You're doing a thing every night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I ended up at one of them.
Guest:And I was at SNL never thinking, I got to get out of here.
Guest:I was, this is great.
Guest:I like this.
Guest:Funny people here.
Guest:So I was very lucky to have someone with the ambition of my partner at the time.
Marc:But also, you were able to find out new things about what you were capable of within the structure of SNL.
Marc:It seems like if you were just a cast member... Oh, yeah.
Marc:You had some power.
Marc:You had production power, and you had to manage people after a certain point.
Marc:So you rose through the ranks a bit.
Guest:And I think for...
Guest:being a writer like doing writing more than performing at the show like that kind of never gets old because you're going to go right right anywhere right somewhere else and SNL basically is like having whatever writing job you want each week to be I think for cast members I get how somebody like you know Kristen Wiig or Bill Hader after seven years can say oh I'm just out right and also they you know they've built up enough
Marc:Cultural capital to do bigger things in a way.
Marc:Yeah, of course.
Marc:I don't know if I've ever used that phrase.
Marc:Cultural capital.
Guest:Very nice.
Guest:It's pretty good, right?
Guest:And I think cultural capital is what SNL churns out probably more than any other show.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So you're in Amsterdam.
Marc:You're drinking Heinekens out of the tap.
Marc:You're doing improvs.
Marc:You probably have moments where you're like, I did this riff the other day.
Marc:I'm doing this improv again.
Guest:Yeah, similar.
Guest:Because it was, there was, the most rewarding part of that show was it was like second season.
Guest:There was sketch writing.
Guest:We did a lot of that.
Guest:But it was, the improv was a lot of it was short form improvising.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Which is, has a tendency when you do a lot of reps to feel redundant.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But you're learning how to write basically.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Throughout all this.
Marc:and you know learning how to sort of strip away sort of pop culture references that would work in the states that don't work in front of a dutch audience right that was kind of nice too i think yeah but like the the education of comedy writing came from not like class or school but actually just reps reps and listening to jokes and yeah you know like learning joke structure yep sketch structure
Guest:That was very helpful for that, but that real education for me just took place at SNL.
Guest:I mean, I think I was okay.
Guest:But that thing of sitting down every week and hearing 40 sketches be read.
Marc:Yeah, it's baffling to me how some sketches work.
Marc:Because I'm not...
Marc:I don't know if I have ever thought about it as much as I've thought about it after talking to people doing it, but they have their own life.
Marc:Either they're character driven or maybe they're comedy driven, but if you think in terms of comedy logic, like on the page, a lot of sketches that are character driven don't even add up.
Marc:No.
Guest:Well, that was when you used to read things before the table read.
Guest:Right.
Guest:before you understood what a Maya Rudolph could do, you would say, well, best of luck with this.
Guest:I don't like your chances based on the first read.
Guest:And then, of course, it would just destroy.
Marc:So you come back from Amsterdam, then what happens?
Marc:Is that when you become a... No, you did the internship in...
Marc:Yeah, that was in college.
Guest:So I come back two years.
Guest:Yeah, I come back after two years and start doing this show called Pickups and Hiccups with Joe Benjamin.
Guest:And this was this- Where's she now?
Guest:She's out here.
Guest:She's married to John Henson.
Guest:You know John Henson?
Guest:I do know John Henson.
Guest:So they're married, a couple kids.
Marc:Everyone, yeah, the kids.
Marc:You just had one.
Marc:Just had one, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, but it seems like you waited long enough.
Marc:I did, 42.
Marc:42.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You don't look 42.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:How old's your wife?
Marc:32.
Marc:Ah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Now that's reasonable.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I'd reason.
Marc:It's like, it's on the edge of reason.
Marc:You know, I've gone unreasonable.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:It doesn't last long.
Marc:It's not, it's not the greatest thing.
Guest:If I was not with my beautiful wife and thank God I am, I'm sure I'd be unreasonable.
Yeah.
Marc:Good.
Marc:So, all right, so you do the pick and what?
Marc:Pickups and hiccups.
Marc:Yeah, with Jill?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Off Broadway?
Guest:It was in Chicago, and it was like a little, but it became like a little, a very small, but like local hit.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:We did it for a while, and we were doing it.
Guest:What was the angle?
Guest:It was a sort of sketch improv show about relationships.
Marc:Oh, okay, got it.
Marc:So it was specific, and couples could go on Valentine's Day, and you do a special Valentine's Day show.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And then we did it at this Chicago Improv Festival.
Guest:And I was really lucky.
Guest:This woman who worked in the talent department at SNL was there.
Guest:Who?
Guest:Just randomly.
Guest:Ayala Cohen was her name.
Guest:Is her name still.
Guest:And she saw the show and reached out for me to send in an audition tape.
Guest:And that sort of started the process.
Marc:And you had not even been thinking about that?
Guest:No, fully focused on Second City.
Guest:On pickups and hiccups.
Guest:Yeah, I didn't think.
Guest:And getting into Second City still.
Guest:Yeah, and then, I mean, I had hoped, and I saw Second City as like, and then maybe after Second City, because that was the era that Tina had just left for SNL.
Marc:So you still thought you had to go through Second City?
Marc:I did, yeah.
Marc:And you did not have a relationship with Tina Fey at the time?
Guest:No.
Marc:I didn't.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:So it's just you and Jill, pickups and hiccups.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Chicago Improv Fest.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:You get a call.
Marc:Someone approaches you.
Marc:I get a call.
Marc:Aiella, what's her name, Aiella?
Marc:Aiella Cohen.
Marc:Aiella Cohen.
Marc:I know, I've met her, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:And she's like, we need a tape.
Guest:We need a tape.
Guest:And it's so funny to think back to,
Guest:Which it feels, it's not that, it's not ancient history, but I had to find a friend who had a digital camera.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And then it was a little tape and then I had to find a place that would transfer it.
Marc:Whose living room are you going to shoot it in or just shoot it in the theater?
Guest:Shot it in front of like a chest of drawers.
Guest:It's just this flat, like the lighting is so, again, I think the lighting was just two desk lamps.
Guest:One is the key and one is the fill, but they just, you know, just blasting heat on my face.
Marc:I'll never forget this time where we used to work for this company that used to book stand-up, and they'd get all these audition tapes, and we got hold of one, and it was a guy in a basement doing jokes, and he must have had a friend dropping a phonograph needle on a laugh track record.
Marc:So the guy would do the joke, and he would just drop in like, and he pulled the needle, but he heard the needle dropping.
Marc:It was one of the best things I ever saw in my life.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:So you do this horrible tape.
Guest:I do the horrible tape.
Marc:What do you do on it?
Guest:I think that's the end of it.
Guest:They had said, here's, I will sometimes say, I love when people give me specific rules.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That makes, that structure to me is, oh, thank God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because Iola sort of thrown away said, you know, it's about five minutes.
Guest:If you want to do impressions and characters, like three impressions, three characters.
Guest:And I just heard that and said, yes, five minutes, three, three.
Marc:Oh, and you're not a character guy.
Guest:So you did three 29-year-old?
Guest:No, I went to work.
Guest:I went to work.
Guest:And I used it.
Guest:I mean, I think that the one thing about SNL auditions is that you can show off writing.
Guest:Like you can write jokes within your stuff.
Guest:So I think I did Russell Crowe and Hugh Grant.
Guest:Again, we're talking about 2000 here.
Guest:So they were very of the moment.
Guest:um you grant you did a few times didn't you i did him like once oh just once i did him once yeah and then i did you know i i wrote like a boston guy oh yeah um and how are you yeah it was a guy who was upset about yeah there you go you got it this is all of it you've seen it got around
Guest:What about this guy here?
Guest:I made a very unique choice to do an upset Boston guy.
Guest:And then I thought that was the end of it.
Guest:And then six months later, they reached out again for another tape.
Guest:And it's funny.
Marc:Hugh Grant, Russell Crowe, upset Boston guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, this actually was a sketch once.
Guest:It was a fallen from grace Italian fashion photographer who now worked at Sears.
Marc:Good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I did that with Hugh Jackman.
Guest:We did it together.
Marc:And you did the Italian accent?
Marc:Yeah, it was fine.
Guest:Well, not great, but fine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, so it was a second tape, send that in, and then after a full year, probably about after they first reached out, I got called in to audition.
Marc:So you kind of, like, I've heard that before where you just sort of let it go.
Marc:Oh, I completely let it go.
Marc:And you go back to pickups and hiccups.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Guys are kicking ass.
Guest:I moved out here, actually.
Guest:I came out to L.A.
Guest:and went through.
Guest:With Jill?
Guest:With Jill and with Josh, my brother.
Guest:And we went, we had a place on, like, Vermont.
Marc:Wait, Josh was in Amsterdam with you, right?
Guest:Yep, and then he flew back from Amsterdam for a pilot season.
Guest:He ended up going back for a year after.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And before he fully moved out.
Guest:But we lived in, like, a furnished apartment and...
Guest:went through one pilot season and it was during that that I got the call to so I lived out here for all of six months before did you get a pilot no I did one episode of Spin City with Charlie Sheen though oh yeah yeah and then when the whole Charlie Sheen thing happened I had forgotten that was my first time on TV it was like two months into the Charlie Sheen meltdown that all of a sudden I had the memory of oh that was yeah I know that guy yeah I did a scene with him he was very nice what happened to that kid yeah
Guest:yeah so all right so you go back so then what's that so you get the second call for another tape or you gotta go to the studio now two tapes now i go to the studio i fly out and i had a friend of a friend new rachel drach um i asked if i could call her i called her she was absolutely lovely this before i'd ever met her yeah and she uh she was on the show at that time she was on the show she gave me advice about auditioning which is the advice
Guest:I still give people all the time, which is the best thing you can tell them is nobody laughs because then if you even just get one laugh, you think you broke.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You can delude yourself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I did my audition and I thought it went really well.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I don't usually think that.
Guest:You didn't get laughs.
Marc:You did.
Guest:I did.
Guest:I did.
Guest:I got enough laughs on.
Guest:I think I got my laughs more on the jokes than on the performance, but enough laughs that I thought, oh, that went well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And flew back to L.A.,
Guest:Then got a call that Lauren wanted to meet me.
Guest:Flew all the way back to New York and had my... Your one-on-one?
Guest:My one-on-one.
Guest:With Lauren.
Guest:How long did you wait?
Guest:I waited probably an hour plus.
Guest:Shoemaker and Higgins came out and said hi.
Guest:Sat down.
Guest:Lauren, I didn't realize I'd been hired.
Guest:That's how pessimistic I am.
Marc:You thought this was just part of the process.
Marc:Well, it is part of the audition process usually.
Guest:Yeah, but even in the, he didn't say you're hired over that meeting.
Guest:He said like, do you think you could work in New York?
Guest:And then he said, you know, I think we'll bring you in and see how you look in wigs.
Guest:And so I left thinking, well, now all I have to do is the wig stage.
Marc:The wig challenge.
Guest:And then I flew all the way back to LA before I got a call that I was officially going to start.
Guest:See how you look in wigs.
Guest:And by the way, he should have because I look terrible in wigs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Whereas like Bill Hader, transformative.
Guest:Put a wig on him, different guy.
Marc:Yeah, I think I've heard someone else say that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think it might have been Hader.
Marc:It was a question that he would ask.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And just whereas I just look like a guy in a wig.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:Always.
Marc:Well, Hayter's like one of those guys, it seems like if he held something in his hand that had enough juice, he could transform into it.
Guest:Yeah, it's really, I mean, that was, when those guys started showing up, Hayter, Sandberg, Sudeikis, before them, Fred and Will, that was when I had my real crisis of confidence of, oh, I'm not as good as they are.
Guest:And I like them personally, but I'm deeply jealous of how good they are.
Marc:Yeah, and there's nothing.
Marc:That weird humility of moving through jealousy to realizing your limitations.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's brutal.
Marc:Oof.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because you sit there, that moment where you realize, there's nothing I could do.
Guest:That was... I mean, I remember...
Guest:my the year four or five was really rough for me on that well who was there when you got there when i get there last year of will yeah uh katan yeah uh valentina 2001 2001 yeah tracy morgan i start with polar which is a lifesaver because uh we got to be really good friends and she was sort of she instantly worked on the show yeah um as would make sense to anybody who knows her talents where and it was good to be friends with somebody who was working did you write for her
Guest:I did, and I wrote with her a lot.
Guest:We had a lot of fun writing together.
Marc:So you were one of those guys where you get brought on as a writer cast member.
Guest:Just a cast member.
Guest:I mean, every cast member writes, but I wasn't credited as a writer.
Marc:So you start doing that on your own initiative with her.
Marc:At some point, you realize, like, I'm not getting on.
Marc:I'm going to work with Amy.
Guest:Well, it was more like I would write things that were group scenes that I would have a good line or two in.
Guest:That's how I was trying to stay alive.
Guest:Whereas if I wrote a Seth scene, they were unsustainable.
Marc:But that was just instinctual.
Marc:It wasn't like calculated.
Marc:I think it was more instinctual than calculated.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like I got to get on.
Marc:They're not going to give me the whole scene.
Marc:So maybe I could just be this guy.
Guest:It wasn't for lack of trying.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, I did try to be the guy in the scene.
Guest:There's a weird thing where when you get hired for SNL, you have this initial burst of confidence because you think they can't be wrong.
Guest:Right.
Guest:If they said you should be here, you're about to be Will Ferrell.
Marc:Right.
Guest:They must know something you don't.
Marc:They'll make you into that.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then over the course of that first year, you realize...
Guest:oh no, like this is, they can be wrong.
Marc:Yeah, and they can grind you down to nothing and make you go running away feeling like an empty vessel.
Marc:Yes, all of those things could have happened.
Marc:So, all right, so 2001, 2002, you write with Amy, you get on a little bit.
Marc:A little bit.
Marc:And then Will leaves.
Marc:Will leaves.
Marc:In 2001.
Marc:When?
Marc:Yeah, that was, yeah, 2002 season.
Guest:And that's not, oh, so then that's Forte and Fred.
Guest:No, yeah, Forte and Fred start the next year.
Guest:And they're kind of immediately like these really unique voices.
Guest:And that you just kind of watch other people at the table like light up when they do their sketches because they're like, I've never seen anything like this.
Guest:And I'm looking at these faces saying, I've never seen these expressions.
Guest:Where were these expressions for my first year?
Marc:and so you're you're quietly smiling and steaming inside yeah fuming fuming and also you know that thing of knowing being so aware of your own jealousy yeah but you didn't how did you not like see the difference between i guess you and me is that i wouldn't have been able to hide it nor keep it to myself i would have i would have started a gossip campaign just out of my own fucking anger and fear and just be like nah fuck fred i uh was there any of those guys around the uh
Marc:Yeah, fuck Armisen.
Guest:We were there at a pretty good era.
Guest:I don't think there were a lot of fuck people.
Guest:Fuck this guy, fuck that guy.
Guest:You know, Mike Shoemaker, who now I work with at Late Night, he was a producer at SNL.
Marc:Was he a head writer or he was?
Guest:No, he was just on the producer side.
Guest:But when I was there, it was Tina was the head writer.
Marc:From 2001?
Guest:Pretty much, yeah.
Marc:And that's when you really met her?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Her and Dennis McNicholas was a head writer.
Guest:But Shoemaker was one of these guys.
Guest:He was like a real good friend to me right away.
Guest:And he was the guy that kept me from making any of the mistakes that would have ruined my time there.
Guest:He was the one.
Guest:I'm really lucky to have him.
Marc:He'd pull you out of the crew when you were about to cry and stuff?
Guest:Or just say like, hey, you can't be jealous.
Guest:You're going to work with these people for a really long time.
Guest:You have to figure out a way to make it work.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:And you listened to him?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I'm a very good listener when I get good advice.
Guest:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:Because I'm looking for it.
Marc:Your jealousy did not contaminate your perception in a way?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Well, obviously, I have problems.
Marc:But like, I would have been like, what the fuck do you know?
Marc:But you were like, no, I want to stay here.
Guest:No, because yeah, I did want to stay.
Guest:And also I kind of, you know, the saddest I ever was at my time at SNL was when I came to this realization of if they fired me, I couldn't say they were wrong about it.
Marc:this was 2004 so you've been like kind of biting your lip for a long time and trying to figure out how to work it and you were just what you're getting in a little bit you know a little bit I was getting sketches on you know I was writing and this ended up were you credited as a writer at that point no so what happened was when Tina left
Guest:Lauren asked if I wanted to be head writer.
Guest:Just out of nowhere?
Guest:Pretty much out of nowhere.
Guest:2004?
Guest:2005, I want to say.
Guest:So after the crisis.
Guest:It kind of saved me from the crisis because I thought, oh, well then this will be the thing I am.
Marc:So you showed that you had an even keel and could manage content.
Guest:Yeah, and that I would, I could write for a lot of different voices.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I wasn't, I couldn't, some people are very good at writing things for themselves.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And not others, but I think like I had a good ear for people and could figure.
Marc:And everybody spoke highly of you and you were delivering sketches and Lauren knows that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He knows who writes what.
Guest:Yeah, our names are on them.
Guest:So that was really helpful.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But you weren't credited as a writer yet.
Guest:No, but when you turn in sketches at the table read, your name is on the top.
Guest:Do you get writer money?
Marc:No.
Marc:It's weird.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was very upset for it.
Guest:I was very upset about that in the years that I was...
Guest:I'm credited as a writer.
Guest:Yeah, because I like being a writer.
Guest:Like, Lauren always makes fun of me that I was the only cast member who was so happy to get a writer's credit.
Guest:He was like, usually people angle the other way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I really wanted that.
Marc:Well, you knew the... This is a great personal journey where you realized your own limitations, that you realized that your talent was what it was and you could use it within your reason, but writing was your strong suit and that if anything, if the other stuff went,
Marc:You could be a writer on some level.
Guest:Yes, absolutely.
Guest:That's always, I would thought, okay, this will be, and I really love doing it.
Guest:So, I mean, my favorite moments at SNL, the moments that I remember were more often than not me standing on behind the cameras watching people do something, watching like something murder that I wrote.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You're a good audience, and that's exciting.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Marc:Because you're waiting.
Marc:You're waiting.
Guest:Yeah, just waiting and knowing and that thing of- This is that line.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And also, my first couple years on the show, I'll watch reruns, and the stage managers had to tell me to stop.
Guest:I would move my mouth during other people's lines if I wrote it.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I couldn't get out of my writer's brain.
Marc:That's a weird habit.
Marc:It's a unique thing.
Marc:I would do it at Update, too.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Sitting next to somebody?
Guest:Yeah, and I have no idea, but I would be moving my mouth along.
Marc:You were on with Tina?
Guest:No, Tina left.
Guest:Oh, that's you were on with Amy?
Guest:Who was your... Yeah, so it was Jimmy and Tina.
Guest:Jimmy left.
Guest:We had SNL audition.
Guest:Did you write for Jimmy a lot?
Guest:No, I didn't really.
Guest:I mean, we wrote a couple things together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We weren't there very long.
Guest:We see each other now.
Guest:No, you're in the same building, right?
Guest:You'd be surprised how little we see each other just because- You tape at different times?
Guest:Tape at different times on different floors.
Marc:Right.
Guest:When you're in different floors of a giant sky rise.
Marc:I was just on his show.
Marc:Yeah, how'd it go?
Marc:It was good.
Marc:Great.
Marc:It was the first time I'd done his Tonight Show, but Lorne came down to say hi.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Is that crazy?
Guest:That's really great.
Guest:It's so crazy.
Guest:Here's what's crazy.
Guest:What?
Guest:That means Lorne's come and said hi to you more recently than he's come and said hi to me.
Marc:I was just so, I never, I feel weird that it's so exciting.
Marc:But I don't know him.
Marc:My experience with him is one bad meeting and then my interview with him, and that's it.
Marc:But during that interview, I was able to see him in a completely different way.
Marc:Like, you know, he's a guy that works there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He just works there.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I do still, you know, he doesn't stop by that much.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Which is fine.
Guest:To the new show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But when he does, it is always really nice.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because he just does that thing of like, everything good?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay, good.
Marc:Do you get the sense that he's paying attention?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know how much he's paying attention, but I think he's been very good over the course of almost, I guess, a year and a half.
Guest:I hope that's right.
Guest:But he, of just letting me know how he thinks it's going or, you know...
Guest:He's the kind of guy who wants you to make small adjustments.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:Well, let's get to that in a second.
Marc:So now you've been offered the head writer thing, and you're the head writer.
Marc:And what does that mean for your performing?
Marc:Did you find yourself on the show less or more?
Marc:As head writer.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So now I'm a head writer.
Guest:With who?
Guest:So I'm still a little bit of overlap with Tina and then Andrew Steele, who works out here now and does a bunch of stuff with Funny or Die.
Marc:Funny or Die, yeah.
Marc:I knew his wife used to.
Marc:Kiki.
Marc:Kiki used to.
Marc:I wonder if Kiki still hates me.
Marc:Kiki used to be a producer on my short attention span theater.
Marc:Gotcha.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:And I was a pain in the ass.
Marc:And she just did not.
Marc:I didn't know how to play the game.
Marc:I didn't want to be there, really.
Marc:I took the job because I had nothing else going on.
Marc:And, you know, in retrospect, I learned how to read prompter.
Marc:I did a lot.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But I was not nice to her.
Marc:And I don't, like, I imagine, like, I don't think I make as big an impression as I do.
Marc:Like, in everything, time fades, everything.
Marc:But I had heard at some point that, like, I was, like, the bane of her existence.
Marc:So you have the best memory of your worst behavior.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And you think you have this impact, but there's a narcissism to that.
Marc:You're like, hey, man, I really got to apologize for that thing.
Marc:And they're like, what?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Hey, have you bounced back from me?
Guest:Have you recovered?
Guest:I haven't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So then Tina leaves, and then I auditioned to be an update with Polar.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Did Lauren say we were going to audition?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We had auditions.
Guest:And also, Lauren sort of threw back channels.
Guest:Not back channels.
Guest:It was pretty specific.
Guest:But my manager at the time called and said, Hey,
Guest:next season yeah uh lauren thinks you should just be a writer and not a cast member this is before the update audition yeah and i that was a decision in my head where i thought i think if i don't get update i'm gonna leave because i thought it was the one because again i had all this awareness that these people are better than me yeah they're better than me i i'm jealous of their talents yeah i did think i was the right choice for update right
Guest:Who else was up for it?
Guest:Gosh, I feel like Kenan auditioned, a couple of other writers auditioned.
Marc:And that's just in the audition, you're in the studio at the desk with Amy, just doing camera tests.
Guest:Just doing jokes.
Guest:I wrote something.
Guest:I used to do the thing with Amy called Really, which I wrote one of those for that.
Guest:To be like, oh, this maybe will be like this.
Guest:And...
Guest:So anyways, I basically went into that audition being like, this is either I'll either get this or it's the end of it.
Guest:So that was the biggest thing that ever happened to me at SNL, obviously.
Guest:Getting up to it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then that also turned me into, it just allowed me to be so magnanimous because now all of a sudden as a performer, after years of struggle,
Guest:I'm gonna get 15 minutes every week.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Doing the thing that, the one thing I'm comfortable being, which is myself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And now I can just like redouble my efforts to sort of help everybody else with my extra energy.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you stayed on his head rider and did update.
Guest:And I think that I, I mean,
Guest:It was just because of ego and finally having that moment.
Marc:No, it's confidence.
Marc:Your work had paid off.
Marc:That piece of the puzzle was set for the time being.
Marc:And so now you achieve something.
Guest:Yeah, and I was so... And it was the first thing...
Guest:I don't think I'm along, but you feel like a fraud a lot of times at SNL.
Guest:Like, oh, they made a terrible mistake.
Guest:And I was all of a sudden, like, doing something.
Marc:This is how many years into it, though?
Marc:This is, like, six years in?
Marc:Six years.
Marc:You just feel like a fraud until you get update?
Guest:I mean, there were some... I'm really getting away with something.
Guest:There were some drunken rides home from, like, after-after parties in taxis where I was just, oh, no, this is... I've got to have fun at these parties because I don't think they're going to last.
Guest:I think this is going to end soon.
Yeah.
Guest:And then it was great.
Guest:And that was why I wasn't really thinking of what I was going to do next because I was so happy doing an update every week and being a head writer.
Guest:And I do think, you know, that cast that I got to write for and that whole writing staff got to write for, I do think that's one of the sort of top three groups of people that have ever been in the show.
Marc:And that was who?
Marc:His hater.
Guest:So that's Whig, Hater, Polar, Maya, Samberg, Fred, Will, Kenan.
Marc:They're all very nice people.
Marc:It's a good group.
Marc:So your relationship with Lorne was, you know, he must have liked your even-keelness and practical listening person.
Guest:Yeah, and I was the kind of person who was willing to fix problems that Lorne had.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:I liked...
Guest:Like he'd come to you as a writer and he'd go, I don't think this is working.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, that's really the head writer's main job is sort of, you know, the things that, because again, it's that great place where on Tuesday, everybody just goes off and writes their own thing.
Guest:So if somebody brings something brilliant, as a head writer, you have nothing to do with that.
Guest:You're just lucky.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And then it's like when Friday rolls around, like what are the cracks?
Guest:And oftentimes those are...
Guest:cold opens or monologues or, you know, we're an update feature.
Marc:So everybody monologue?
Marc:You mean guest star monologue?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Those are really tough to crack sometimes.
Marc:Because you don't know if this person can even deliver jokes sometimes.
Guest:Oftentimes, by the time it's a problem, you know they can't.
Guest:You know, it's Friday and now you've seen enough of them to know that they can't.
Guest:And sometimes they're holding on to the idea that they can.
Guest:I will, and I know that this has now become sort of an SNL trope that people don't like, but I loved question monologues where people in the audience would stand up and ask questions because then it's just, you know, you take six of them to dress and if four of the questions work and there were hosts who took that as an insult.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:I just feel like you obviously don't think that I can do a monologue if you have people in the audience asking me a question.
Guest:It was that.
Yeah.
Guest:But the real question was, why do you think you can do a monologue?
Marc:That's that question.
Marc:There's no delicate way to do that.
Marc:So the head writer's job at SNL was to primarily collate all the stuff that comes in, decide which was great, figure out which stuff needed work, and then after the first read-through, listen to Lauren's suggestions.
Guest:Yeah, well, the best part, I loved it.
Guest:I probably am now romanticizing it, but we would do table reads.
Guest:I'm sorry, rewrite tables on Thursday, which is the writing staff would sit around a table and you would have the sketches that had already been selected for the show.
Guest:And you would basically rewrite them, just adding jokes, making cuts.
Guest:And it was just sitting in a room with really fucking funny people.
Guest:Who was there when you were there, the writers?
Guest:I mean, James Anderson, Paula Pell, Emily Smivey, John Mulaney, America Sawyer, Simon Rich.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Colin Jost, who's doing Update Now, Rob Klein, Eric Kenward, Liz Kikowski.
Guest:I mean, there were tons of people.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, again, I was there for so long that anytime I list names, I know I'm leaving out tons and sets of people.
Marc:So you were there for, how did it end for you there?
Marc:How was the new job?
Marc:How do you go from head writer, update, I don't remember what happened, because I don't keep up with the show that much.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But but like what what was the evolution to where you are now?
Guest:That basically NBC made the move to put Jimmy in the Tonight Show.
Guest:And so there was an opening.
Guest:I really hadn't been thinking about it.
Guest:There was a article in the New York Post that said that I was a front runner for it.
Guest:I just assumed it was a rumor.
Guest:It was a leak.
Guest:It was a leak.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I talked to Lauren, and there's this weird thing sometimes when you talk to Lauren that you have a phone conversation with him, and it's as if he thinks you had a phone conversation beforehand, and this is the follow-up call.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he's having a follow-up call to a call that never happened.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because I was saying, oh, I made some joke about this thing being in the post, and Lauren's reaction was, no, look, I think you'll be good at it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was that same thing, much like, here it was, whatever.
Marc:That's how you were told, is basically what he's saying.
Marc:Is that like, no one ever gets the straight shit from him.
Marc:No.
Marc:But you find out some weird other way, and he just is like, oh good, he knows now.
Guest:He's like, we're going to want to try some ties on you.
Guest:And then, you know, we'll do the tie test.
Guest:No wigs, though.
Guest:But no, the wigs.
Guest:You finally can do your own hair.
Guest:And then that just sort of started this really fast process.
Guest:And it was near, very near the end of the SNL season.
Guest:And I, I don't know if this is the right or wrong decision.
Guest:I was not emotionally prepared.
Guest:I basically, when I found out about Late Night, I had only one more show left.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I asked Lauren if I could come back and do the first half of the next season, which I did.
Guest:What that meant.
Guest:At Update.
Guest:Yeah, at Update and Head Writer.
Guest:I did it, but then I did it with Cecily Strong for half a year, so that would help transition after I left.
Guest:But that only meant, basically while I was doing it, I was Head Writing, I was Update.
Guest:I also had offices downstairs for late night.
Guest:We were hiring staff there.
Guest:It was probably a time in my life where I was doing too much.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I only had three weeks between my last SNL and my first late night.
Marc:And now the decision for Fred to do the music direction, that was just sort of goofy, or he wanted to?
Guest:We, again, going back to my, I like music, but I don't have an understanding of it, and I certainly had no understanding of what I wanted the music element of this show to be.
Guest:I certainly knew we weren't gonna be able to provide sort of the musical expression that the roots have on The Tonight Show.
Guest:So we couldn't have a band that wanted to do a million things, because that was outside of my skill set.
Guest:And so we'd gone down a couple of roads and we didn't really know maybe we wouldn't have a band at all.
Guest:And then Lauren had the idea of Fred very much with like two weeks to go.
Guest:And I jumped at it.
Guest:It was just for me so nice as a comfort level to have Fred there.
Guest:And he put the band together.
Guest:Fred and I have similar music sensibilities, so I really like the way our band sounds.
Marc:And you have a lot of guest players come in and out.
Guest:Yeah, so Fred now, I mean the reality is with Fred's, and we always knew this too with Fred's schedule and all the things, projects he has.
Guest:You know, Fred will probably be there about 10 weeks a year, but it's his band and we have guest drummers every week and it's really fun.
Marc:What were some of the other decisions about the show when you had this short amount of time to revamp it a little bit, but it is what it is.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So tonally, what were you thinking?
Guest:Well, it was funny how you make all these decisions that are out, like we're going to do it differently and how quickly those don't work because audiences do work.
Guest:they know they want the desk they do they really do yeah we had this because if you don't have the desk they're like what are we doing yeah what's happening we want it it's a it's again i know these shows are are consumed a lot of different times of the day now but the people who are watching what happened it's like it's a settled time of the night yeah no it's definitely not like yay yeah yeah
Guest:But one thing was we built something that looked more like a weekend update desk.
Guest:And the idea would be that after the, in the second act of the show, we'd roll this out and I would do something very much like those update features, like me and a Stefan type character for whatever lack of a,
Marc:Was that a comfort zone thing or just because you thought that you were known?
Guest:We thought it would be different.
Guest:And then as soon as we did it, we realized it was a dud.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we had spent a lot of money to build a desk that I think we used once.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We had a big TV screen, like a hundred inch TV screen that we were going to use as a green screen.
Guest:And then we was just like, no, I don't.
Marc:They repurposed it over there.
Marc:They took it back right away.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we did all these, we sort of did all these things that we thought would make them different.
Guest:We kind of got rid of them.
Guest:And then we had sort of a fairly conventional structure.
Guest:I will say from the beginning, people would suggest that maybe I start at the desk instead of starting with a monologue.
Guest:And it took me, I was resistant to it or hesitant to do it because I thought it would look too much like Update.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And would sort of be me saying, yeah, I can only do that one thing.
Marc:And putting stuff on the screen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then all of a sudden I kind of came to the conclusion of like, oh, it's not bad to be really good at one thing.
Guest:That's kind of like what show business is.
Marc:Journey of you realizing your limitations.
Guest:Oh, every day I find a new one.
Guest:It's the best.
Marc:Because I remember seeing you do stand-up, and then you don't do that anymore there?
Guest:No, I don't.
Guest:I mean, I don't do a standing monologue anymore.
Guest:No, you don't.
Guest:No.
Guest:And it's nice.
Guest:And the other nice thing is, you know, we followed The Tonight Show an hour earlier, and I'm sure 95% of our audience are people who watch The Tonight Show first.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So they've just seen a guy do a standing monologue an hour earlier.
Guest:Yeah, and a lot of bells and whistles on that show.
Marc:Well, that's a big show.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:It's like there's a lot of things.
Marc:There's pranks.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:There's games.
Guest:They want to make a big show, and God love them.
Guest:It's fantastic to be on after a big show, especially if you want to be a little smaller.
Mm-hmm.
Marc:But that's also historically what happens.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And we wanted, we realized, oh, we can, we should just try to get to our first joke so much faster.
Guest:And so now we have a very short opening package, probably the shortest of any talk show.
Guest:And it just opens with me at the desk and I just start telling jokes and I do like 15 jokes at the desk with graphics.
Guest:And that allows you to do them a lot faster.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we sort of get like 12 or 15 minutes in that first act that's all day of writing.
Guest:And hopefully we hold as much of that audience as we can.
Guest:And who's writing with you?
Guest:Alex Bays, who was the head writer at Weekend Update.
Guest:I was the one guy I brought over with me.
Guest:And we put together a great group of writers.
Guest:We got guys that were improvisers in Chicago, people who wrote for The Onion, people who were stand-ups.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we just kind of, most of them, it was their first job in TV.
Guest:And how do you take to the guest interviews?
Guest:I dig it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought it would be the hardest part.
Guest:And when it starts, I feel like my job is over.
Guest:Those interviews.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:I like listening to people, and I like...
Guest:Talking to him, it's just not, it's, I thought it'd be so hard and it's really, I mean, I'm sure every now and then you have one that's a. Yeah, it's like, uh oh, I gotta work.
Guest:The hardest thing is, especially in this era where, you know, I do a lot of, most of the interviews I listen to are things like this that are so much longer.
Marc:Right.
Marc:How short seven minutes is.
Marc:How do you do it?
Marc:Oh no, it's crazy.
Marc:I don't know how you do it, how you would do that.
Marc:I mean, I can't do anything in seven minutes.
Marc:It's hard.
Marc:Well, you guys, you don't freewheel, right?
Marc:You segment produce.
Guest:We segment produce.
Guest:I mean, I will say every now and then, you know, you'll have somebody who doesn't want to do a pre-interview.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I like that.
Marc:No, it's exciting.
Guest:I like going in that way.
Marc:Well, Jimmy was doing that a bit when he did that spot where I remember doing the late night with him.
Marc:And it was one of the first times, because Kimmel did it too, you know, with his show, where it was just sort of,
Marc:It's like, you know, you're going to talk about the thing.
Marc:You all right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I was so used to Conan where, you know, what stories you got?
Marc:What do you got?
Marc:How's he going to lead you?
Marc:But the idea of just sort of like, just go out there.
Marc:He'll take care of it.
Marc:And I'm like, all right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's really kind of exciting because for me it was sort of unheard of after two decades of doing produced segments.
Marc:But it is kind of interesting if the person can handle it.
Guest:It is.
Guest:I mean, the risk is we try really hard not to edit our interviews.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, you know, there is this thing of we could talk.
Guest:I'm sure I could talk to anybody for 15 minutes and have seven great minutes.
Guest:But I do feel like you can tell when a late night interview is edited.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I think so, yeah.
Guest:And so we try to have that feeling of, like, this was as live as we could make it five hours before you saw it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, there's the idea that you only have seven and if you just freewheel it, like, it might not have an arc to it.
Marc:It might just kind of, you know, doesn't feel like, you know, you're just getting into it.
Marc:You don't want that to be the end of the interview where it's like, ah, you didn't even talk about anything.
Guest:Well, that...
Guest:The fun thing is I feel like you prepare an interview and then if you get somebody and you realize they're perfectly happy freewheeling, then you can just kind of throw the interview away.
Marc:And also you've got a lot of friends in the business.
Marc:So there are guys you have relationships with and that always makes it easier and fun, right?
Guest:It does, yeah.
Guest:The interesting thing though is some people really do want to have their eight beats.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Well, they're selling something.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:Or they just like to kill.
Marc:Get laughs.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:They don't want to risk.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I got good bits.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Let's do them.
Guest:And it's funny.
Guest:I mean, there's a... Doing these shows, you realize, there are 200 different kinds of talk show guests.
Guest:And the longer you do the show, the more you can, like, clock them quickly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because some people just come out and they don't look at you once.
Guest:They just, like, play out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they've just... They're here for the people.
Guest:And that's great, too.
Guest:I never thought of that.
Marc:I do that a lot.
Marc:But that's a good way to do it.
Marc:I mean, I do, but I'll check in.
Marc:Like, as soon as the joke doesn't go as good, I'm like, so, Conan, what's up?
Marc:Where were you?
Marc:It's your job to save me.
Marc:That's your job.
Marc:You're supposed to fill in here.
Guest:Fantastic.
Marc:Do you ever have that sense?
Marc:Are you watching somebody and the joke doesn't go and you realize, like, I got to pull this back around?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, the worst is when I can't then come up with something to save it.
Guest:And so I do the awful, like, gear shift of, no, I want to talk to you about...
Marc:It didn't come.
Marc:You wanted something.
Guest:I also try not to look at cards during the interview.
Marc:On the desk?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And so there are, and every now and then I, like while asking the question, we'll sort of forget what I'm asking.
Guest:And it's just that like, you know, like a kid giving an oral report, he's trying to run out the clock.
Guest:And you know, and this is something that in the times that I've been, and then you'll remember, and then you realize that what you're setting up isn't the question.
Guest:And then your work is, oh, you just, you just went to Italy.
Guest:I got it.
Guest:I got it.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:That was all horse shit.
Guest:Everything I was saying was horse shit.
Marc:Oh, that's funny.
Marc:So every night, huh?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where do you live?
Marc:I live in Manhattan.
Marc:I live in West Village, yeah.
Marc:Oh, I thought you got it.
Marc:Did you get another place?
Marc:No.
Marc:Oh, it's just all there?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right in the fucking village?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you got a baby now?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How old's a baby?
Marc:Seven weeks today.
Marc:Holy shit.
Guest:So what are you doing in LA?
Guest:Just out for a day.
Guest:For this?
Guest:For this.
Guest:And I did a panel for this show, Documentary Now, the one I do on IFC.
Marc:Oh, that's right.
Marc:Well, that show is, that's fun.
Marc:How did, like, what, because you, do you write on that?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Are you part of the conceptual part of it?
Marc:So it's you and Fred and Bill.
Marc:And the two directors, Alex Buono and Reese Thomas.
Marc:Is that the guy from Portlandia?
Marc:Are those those guys?
Guest:No.
Guest:They did a lot of the, they do SNL short films, commercial parodies and stuff like that.
Guest:Really good at grasping genre and style.
Guest:Mulaney's writing on it as well.
Guest:Oh, is he?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So once you decide the period you're working with and the tone of it, you just kind of stay within it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We just try to pick things that we feel like would both be fun characters for Bill and Fred to play and also fun styles for the directors to mess around with.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And how many?
Guest:You've done eight?
Guest:We did six the first season.
Guest:We're doing another six now.
Marc:But all right.
Marc:So let's talk about this Albuquerque connection.
Marc:You spend time in my hometown now.
Marc:Yeah, I do.
Marc:Like a lot because your in-laws are there.
Guest:Is that the deal?
Guest:I married a girl from Albuquerque.
Marc:Who's much younger than me.
Marc:But you say her family kind of knows who might be.
Marc:Well, my dad's still there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, they're Jews.
Guest:I married Jews.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How does that feel?
Marc:Familiar?
Marc:Good?
Guest:It was like a completion of this cycle of years of telling people I'm not Jewish and then just basically giving it.
Marc:And then your in-laws saying, just keep that to yourself.
Marc:You're Jewish now.
Guest:I did a show, actually, like a fundraiser in Albuquerque for some Jewish federation there.
Guest:And I was like, oh, this is full circle.
Marc:You did it.
Marc:You've paid your respects.
Marc:I've paid my respects.
Marc:So what part of town do you go to when you're there?
Guest:They're Placidas.
Marc:oh god that's fucking crazy because like when I was a kid Placidas was like this weird beat up hippie community well they're like they're weird hippies oh okay so they've been there a while yeah they're uh they're they went out a long time ago oh they're original Placidas settlers yeah I think they are
Marc:Oh, no kidding.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So they would have, like, maybe known of my dad, but I bet you they know, like, there was, like, my buddy Devin Jackson, his old man was a doctor, kind of the hippie doctor at the college, and I think they lived in Placidas for a couple years.
Marc:Gotcha.
Marc:Dr. Dennis Jackson.
Guest:All right, I'll check.
Marc:I'm throwing him some love.
Marc:Even though my buddy Devin doesn't talk to him much anymore.
Marc:So when you go to Albuquerque, that's still a little out.
Marc:Do you go into the city?
Marc:Do you eat at Frontier?
Marc:Do you do anything?
Guest:I've eaten at Frontier, yeah.
Guest:It's worth it, right?
Guest:We go to the Range.
Guest:That's the one we go to up in Placidas all the time.
Marc:I don't know that one.
Marc:Is Placidas developed now?
Guest:Yeah, but you still have to drive to... I mean, if you really want to go out for dinner, you're probably going to Albuquerque.
Marc:Or Santa Fe.
Marc:Santa Fe is like 40 minutes, right?
Mm-hmm.
Guest:But, and then we also, I was also out there because I, they shot MacGruber, Will Forte's movie MacGruber in Albuquerque.
Guest:So I spent a summer out there for that.
Marc:A lot of shooting there now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where'd you meet the Albuquerque girl?
Guest:I met the Albuquerque girl at Chris Catan's wedding.
Guest:So her older sister worked at SNL in the set department.
Guest:My wife's a lawyer.
Guest:She's not in show business at all.
Guest:But I went to Chris Catan's wedding and I knew her older sister very, like not well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Pretty well, and there was this girl, Alexi, there, and we were wedding hookup that then turned into a wife and a baby.
Marc:I saw Chris Kattan on a plane recently.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, and I should get in touch with him.
Marc:You guys friends still?
Guest:yeah Chris Kattan came to our wedding because again we met at his wedding yeah and Chris Kattan it was the greatest gift at a wedding because he got up at the rehearsal dinner to give a toast and it was just so obvious that the toast would be how we met at his wedding yeah
Guest:And instead, he told a story about when I first started at SNL, he and I went out with two girls.
Guest:And the girl I was with had a herpy.
Guest:And so, and again, this is not my memory of the story.
Guest:So instead, Seth just grabbed her boobs.
Guest:And it was just one of those things that everybody knew we met at the wedding, at his wedding.
Guest:He wouldn't do it.
Guest:And I just got up.
Guest:I don't even think he knew.
Guest:And I got up and I took the mic and I was like, thank you so much, Chris.
Guest:Because Chris said, I want to tell the story about how you met at my wedding.
Guest:And I said, no, no, no, Chris.
Guest:And it, I mean, we like laid the next day in my wedding vows.
Guest:I brought it up again.
Guest:It was just the gift I kept giving.
Guest:And you know, Katana's with guys just walking around in the way and going like, what?
Guest:What did I do?
Marc:Do you keep in touch with like a lot of the people though?
Marc:Like from the years of SNL?
Marc:I like knowing that some of you are still friends.
Marc:Like who are your friends?
Guest:Well, I'm really close with Andy and Polar and obviously Fred and Bill.
Guest:I see a lot.
Guest:Sudeikis, I run into.
Guest:Forte.
Marc:I mean, these are all people- But Andy's like a buddy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Nice guy.
Marc:Yeah, Andy's really- I just interviewed his wife a couple weeks ago.
Marc:She's a genius.
Marc:Genius.
Marc:I agree with you.
Marc:Like a savant of some kind.
Guest:It's really funny, too, that someone makes that sort of beautiful lyric music, like Mary, our greatest purveyor of dick songs.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, it's just so funny.
Marc:I went to see her in concert, and he was up in a booth, and I just saw him just sort of like in awe.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He genuinely is in awe of his wife.
Marc:It's so great.
Marc:It's pretty amazing.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but I'm friends with those guys.
Guest:You know, one of the things that's so heartbreaking is I kind of thought when I was at SNL, I daydreamed that we would all just like live in New York forever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the reality is there's just not that many jobs out there.
Marc:No.
Guest:And so everybody came out here.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't see them as much as I want to.
Marc:But, you know, you got New York, and I guess it's fun if you got the bread to live there, it's a nice place to live.
Marc:The bread helps.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, thanks for talking to me, Seth.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:How'd this go as an interviewer?
Guest:I thought it was fantastic.
Guest:It's nice to be on this side a little bit.
Marc:Yeah, good.
Marc:Well, it was good talk.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Okay, that was nice.
Marc:Me and Seth Meyers.
Marc:Nice fella.
Marc:Funny guy.
Marc:Knows himself.
Marc:How do you like that?
Marc:Pow, I just shit my pants with some cold press.
Marc:Just coffee.coop.
Marc:Yeah, I just did that.
Yeah.
Marc:Boomer lives!
Marc:Fucked up at the end.
Marc:I'm not a professional.