Fly on the Wall with Dana Carvey and David Spade - Susan Morrison - Author of LORNE: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Starting as Jim Downey's assistant, hours of conversations with SNL icons, and best Lorneisms with Susan Morrison. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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with iGaming Ontario. You know, when I'm on the road, Dana, I'm always pretty much staying in hotels, but there's been a shift to Airbnb and you hear about it all the time. Hotels are fine, they can be great, but Airbnb is a great alternative, you know, because you get a lot of choices on where you can stay.

Oh yeah. It's very practical. I mean, hotel can be like, oh, like when I go on the road, I go, that one's, the closest hotel is a half hour from the gig or something, but you say, oh, Airbnb. You just go, oh, I wanna go a little closer. I wanna be in this area. I want a swimming pool and I want this. Yes, and I famously have said many times a place

we used to go, my wife and I, to get away. And we stayed at some really nice hotels, but then we found this Airbnb, which we used, I think, three times. It was always spotless. The keys are outside in a little padlock and they used to have a bottle of wine and a note and you have a kitchen and it was very, very nice. The benefits of Airbnb is that space, privacy, better locations compared to hotels. You get to pick how close you want to

be to wherever you want to go. You're traveling with family, your friends, you're on your own. you want to be to wherever you want to go. You're traveling with family, your friends, you're on your own. It's great. Dana, today we have Susan Morrison, a writer. We don't always have writers. We have SNL writers, but she's a writer of SNL. Yeah. Yes, yes.

She wrote a big fat book about Lorne. And it's the 50th anniversary of SNL. It's a good time to have it out. Lorne, the man who invented SNL. And she covers a lot. She's telling things to you listeners that even we don't know. You're gonna hear something that's a little shocking,

a little surprising. How's that for a tease? But if we do a deep dive, the man, the moment, Lorne Michaels, based on the book and what she learned by interviewing. I got interviewed. I don't know. My quotes are probably silly. I got interviewed. Yeah. I got interviewed. Everyone got interviewed. Everyone talked. And it's just sort of a comprehensive look at Lorne Michaels through his childhood, all the way through his travails, seasons

that were rougher than others and on and on. So it's very interesting. Upstowns. Oh yeah. And they got, you know, Tina Fey and Steve Martin and John Mulaney. There's all these quotes up front and everywhere you turn, you know, they're talking about. So very in-depth. Took years to put this together. Years to put it together.

And it was very interesting talk. We went on and on. So here she is and you're going to learn this together. Years to put it together. And it was very interesting talk. We went on and on. So here she is and you're gonna learn a lot. Who's in Morrison. And I sort of forgot, I had forgotten until recently the wonderful accent thing that everybody says, the Eagles. Oh, the Eagles. That's right.

The Eagles. So you the Eagles. That's right. The Eagles. So you claim to have a book. I do, actually. I can even show it to you. Just opened it. It's coming out, okay. Out of the box. I don't know when this airs, but it's February 18th. It's called,

Yes, that's right. Lorne, The Man Who Invented SNL. That's right. Invented Saturday Night Live. We decided that Lorne has monomial status, you know, like Fidel or Madonna. You know, one name does it, Lauren. You know, you can tell the rookies because Lauren is such a name that comes up millions of times on our podcast and in life, but the people that call them Lauren and they spell it Lauren,

like the female name is pretty interesting because you know they're an outsider and I don't listen to one thing they say. It's like the people who say skits instead of sketches. It's an immediate disqualifier. Oh boy, don't even mean, oh skits gets him going. It's kind of interesting to me, I'm just thinking out loud to myself, is that because of his hallowed place and his Mount Rushmore, you know, thing that's been going on for the 50th, he had left for five years, did of them really landed, comes back in 85, has a rough season, and then I meet him. So probably in this whole 50 years, that was, would it be a Nate? I went to state school, his Nader or something. I think that's right. And Dana, I remember that when I interviewed you,

you told me that when you showed up there, you thought you were probably gonna be in the last cast of SNL. You thought it was on its way out, and it was kind of a Hail Mary pass. And you know, it's interesting because I met Lorne when he was perhaps at an even lower point. Even lower.

I worked for him. Well, I worked for him when he did the new show, which was his one public spectacular flop. And I don't think people thought he was gonna be coming back from that. And he also lost his own money in that show. It's strange it was such a flop because it was packed with talent.

The writer's room was incredible. Jim Downey, Jack Handy, George Meyer, John Candy did amazing work on that show. It's worth looking up Food Repair Man. No, I watched it. It was funny. It was just that besides in Living Color, which was a niche kind of prime time and it was on Fox in the day, prime time sketch, I did one that didn't make it. Martin Short, you'd have to line them all up. That's your next book. Why was there a bazillion sketch shows in primetime

in the 50s, 60s and into the 70s? And then so many swing and a miss, you know? I don't know if you have, I've never totally figured that out. I mean, I have a theory. Okay. I'm going to press record. He loved, oh, sure. We've been recording, don't worry.

I'm kidding. Lauren loved variety TV. He grew up watching Sid Caesar, and the New York Show of Shows and all that stuff. When he went to LA in the 60s and 70s, he just bounced around from one cruddy variety show to the next. You know, Perry Como, Burns and Schreiber, Phyllis Miller. What about Burns and Schreiber where he met his wife?

But the thing is, he liked the form, but he thought that it was like stuck in the 50s. You know, the people writing those shows were guys who had written for radio. His big idea was to take that format and bring it into the modern world. Movies were cool. You had Terrence Malick and Robert Altman. Music was cool, but television was like a really weird backwater. He was the first person who said, let's make variety TV something

that has something to do with what people in their 20s are like, you know, let's put drugs on. Yeah, and in my age group, you remember that when George Carlin was on Ed Sullivan in a suit and tie and a short haircut. Yeah, yeah. He was like so a symbol of this change and one lane of it when he became the hippie long hair

and all that. So there was a whole, I don't even call it counterculture. Laughin maybe was the last water cooler sketch show that was so different of course than SNL. But yeah, it was in the ether. And then Lauren picked up the toys off the carpet and said, okay, we're gonna play with these. But you know, I mean, the other thing that Lauren will say

is that when he was pitching a show like SNL for years, nobody wanted it. And what happened is that they needed something in late night on NBC to replace Carson's reruns. And Lauren had never thought of late night. But the thing, it ended up being what made the show work because the way he put it, the network thought of late night as like a vacant lot on the edge of town.

They weren't gonna pay attention to what was going on there. They weren't gonna meddle. You know, he just got to do whatever the hell it felt like and with no notes, you know, no interference. Right, and you can be a little dirty, like even TV shows on at eight versus nine when I was a sitcom, you can say a little more at nine because kids are asleep, you can say way more at 10.

And when you're way up there at 11.30, they don't worry so much about content as much. Yeah, I think he thought they were probably not even watching. Well, they didn't care. It was anti anti slick and late. So it right out of the bat. I'm just a little curious. Sorry, David. Do you have something to say? Not at all.

I'd like to interrupt him. Did you see the movie Saturday night? And what was your reaction to it? I mean, obviously, it's trying to get a feeling rather than a linear story. Yeah. But did you, how did you feel about that? Well, I guess I had several simultaneous reactions. You know, the journalist in me was watching

and my head exploding because there were so many things that were fictionalized or, you know, five years worth of events were kind of crammed into one night. But I did think that it captured some of, as you guys know, you've lived this, just some of the nail-biting knife edge chaos that I think gives the show, it continues to fuel the show.

It's funny, I talked to some of the current people, the people at the show now, some of the writers and cast, and they were indignant about it. They said that it was sort of like watching somebody screw up your song at a karaoke bar or something, that they'd someone, they were feeling proprietary about it. What did you guys think?

Well, I went into it with kind eyes because I knew it was an impossible thing to really capture. So we interviewed Jason, the director, and there were things that I really liked. You know in real time that there probably wasn't a bulletin board on 8H with like 80 sketches on it right before air, or that Lorne Michaels was the update guy until right before air. So you have to kind of give into it

and see did it capture the essence. I wasn't there then, they weren't famous. The show wasn't famous because as it evolved, it would never, no one would go ice skating right before the show. And most of the show is disappointment, even in the best seasons and the best shows. I'd say maybe if you can get one out of five great sketch, pretty good. Most of the time, I was just there for 10 weeks.

Most of the time we all went, well, I guess that's it. Just walked off stage. So go ahead. I mean, I found it enjoyable to watch. It kind of, you know, it felt like the Poseidon adventure. It was almost like an adventure flick. Yeah. I love that reference. I love the reference. It's hysterical. Yeah. I'm dating myself.

There's got to be a morning after there. There has to be a party after the show. Other people I know told me they had similar reaction to mine. The very end when it comes off and they do the Wolverine sketch and Chevy comes out and says live from New York on Saturday night. I mean, I kind of teared up a little bit because it made you realize how improbable the whole show was and how close it came to not happening, you know? It could easily have not happened. I did like little things I didn't know.

Now, Dana, I was gonna ask Jason about that Lauren one for update because I did like the chaos. I did like it was almost obviously too chaotic, but definitely knowing no fame. It just shows people, it's like sort of, here's what it was if you don't know how it started. This is, they weren't famous. No one thinks of Dan Aykroyd or Belushi as not famous, you know.

So you have to go back and say, hey, they all get a job. It's a cruddy place. They're just throwing shit together. And then there's, you know, Billy Crystal leaving. Those are cool moments where you go, oh my God, there's just so many things that happened where, everything there was life-changing. You get me in the first sketch, Chevy's on update, like this, this, he's a big, good-looking dude.

I thought there was a lot of parts about it I really did like, and you're right, when it all came together. Like what are the bricks on the stage? I don't even know, like I don't know what part was real, what wasn't, you know, fictionalized. That was real. So that was real. They were hammering those bricks in the day of the first show. And of course, the old timers on the crew looked at Eugene Lee, the designer, you know, who wanted brought in old oak doors and bricks.

And they said, what the fuck are you doing? You know, we just use cyclorama walls and you know, the way it used to be in old variety shows where instead of a set, you'd have like, you know, a window frame or a tree in a pot suggests a park. But, Norton's idea was that you wanted this hard wall reality and- It looked counterculture. And I did love one with J.K. Simmons,

he played Milton Berle and he's doing a song and dance number. And that was a really interesting juxtaposition because the variety shows everything was shiny and clean and 8H still looks the same. It's kind of beat up. And if you walk in there without an audience, you're like, it's kind of a shithole. Everyone thinks it's tiny. People go, this isn't where you, because I went back to do

Hunter Biden and it was just again, like when Dana going back, you go, oh, so here's Tom in wardrobe. You know, there's a lot of the same people and a lot of it's obviously bigger and a little fancier in places, but you get out there, it's the same tiny stools. Even people I was with were like, this isn't where the audience sit, this is it? This is where every sketch is, this tiny room? Yeah. I know, it's such an illusion.

Wow, it is true, that's the fun of it. Can I just say, unless you have something you need to say, I just- Well, one thing I was just gonna say to, we were talking about the improbability of it and how those people weren't famous. It's one of the things that was fascinating for me to learn is Lauren had trouble hiring people.

Like who wanted to be on this late night show with this weird Canadian guy no one had ever heard of? And you know, Chevy almost didn't come on because he was doing a play like a dinner theater with Paul Lind, you know? He almost didn't take the job. I like Broadway. Yeah, and I love that Paul Lind stood in the way

of another hire, Alan Swybell almost didn't come to work because he had been offered a job in prime time writing the questions for Paul Lind in the center square of Hollywood Squares. I have a dirty joke about Paul Lind, you wanna hear it? Anything about Paul Lind I want you to love it. Paul Lind walked into a party and he goes, it smells like pussy in here, I think.

Anyway, Dana, back to you. No, I will say- I don't get the reference. I just thought he was a funny guy. I mean, I don't understand. I was just curious. Pauline was a hero, by the way, with Hollywood Squares. Unreal. When I was a kid, I'd laugh everything that that dude said.

Oh, he was always hilarious. And now he's bewitched. Oh my God. And bewitched. And wherever he was- But the money was low, too. He just had a great kind of rhythm. You know, just naturally funny.

I was just curious, so you knew Lorne during the new show. Is that when you met him? Yeah, I was brought into the Brill Building in 83 by Tom Gamel, Gamel and Ross, who I'd gone to college with. And I met Jim Downey for the first time. And Jim hired me. Just one second. I can talk to you a little bit. I'll just be right back. I'll be right back.

No, I want to talk to you. I really do, but I got to go. Sorry. Go ahead. Stay right there. Stay right here. So, but yeah, so Jim in a rare act of decisiveness, right? Hired me that day. A rare act of decisiveness. It's funny. To be his assistant.

Oh, okay. I was 23. Oh my gosh. I was 23 years old. My job chiefly consisted of ordering shit loads of food from the Carnegie Daily. I mean, you know, if I didn't know what chicken in the pot was, you know, then I didn't know what chicken in the pot was,

you know, then I, I. Riders eat, they have to eat. Huxley's. Feed their brains. And you know, it was a great thing for me. I was really young. My mom had just died suddenly and, and I was kind of at sea. And so I got to go to this place with all these funny people every day. And they were so kind to me. Think about it. Christina McGinnis, and Lorne, and George Meyer,

and Jack Handy, and Zwaabel. It was fun. I didn't have a lot of one-on-one time with Lorne, but it was a pretty small operation, and we were all just on the ninth floor of the of the Brill building. So yeah, I mean, I knew him a little bit. And again, I didn't realize that what I was witnessing was this soul crushing failure on his part. How did he take that failure if you could even remember or all of you? Because I did a variety show that lasted eight episodes and kind of blew up the network. Yeah, yeah.

So was this, did you get a full season? I don't know how long. No, it wasn't, there were, I think we did like eight shows, and then, and this is the thing that was really weird about it. Lauren had been used to working live, but the new show was taped on Thursday to air on Friday.

So it brought out all of Lorne's less genius impulses. I mean, people always say that Lorne always says that the show doesn't go on because it's ready, it goes on because it's 1130. He needs that deadline. He needs a deadline. And that's when he gets into his kind of superpower mode, the meeting between the dress rehearsal and air.

But if you think about it, so the new show, we would be taping and he would yell cut and then it'd start a sketch over. And sometimes these tapings would last for five hours. And the audience was lost. Because you get perfectionist and you can't stop fixing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember the audience trying to leave in droves

and Tom Gammell coming out and going like, you quitters! You know? Sure. So they're watching the same sketch over and over again? Well, it's like a sitcom, you know, you're trying to get it right. When you're on a movie and it's a big budget that happens where you just do take after take,

someone's gotta go, hey, are we any good? Like, can we just move on? Like, this is it, the best we can do. And then they'd be up all night in the editing room, like splicing the takes together so that it leached all of the magic out of it. I mean, you guys know, cause you've done it, the live, the adrenaline of live really adds something.

But imagine these comedy sketches pieced together, they had to add laugh tracks, right? So. It's all different. I remember knowing that it wasn't going well. And then I guess Brandon Tartakov said to Lauren after, I can't remember, maybe eight shows, like, why don't you just not make the rest of them?

And instead, and here's the novel idea, let's make best of the new show hours. Best of. So after only eight episodes, we're going to do best ofs. Finished up. By the way, I don't know we have time we have. How did you end up writing this book? I'm just that's popped in my head. By the way, I don't know what time we have. How did you end up writing this book?

I'm just, that's popped in my head. Well, so, you know, I was only, that was my only time in television. I switched to journalism after that. But I stayed, you know, I stayed friends with all those writers and a lot of them, including Steve Martin and Jack, and you know, have written for me at the New Yorker and other places I've worked. So I was always kind of in the, you know, I would run into Lauren every five years and say hi. I think our daughters knew each other in school.

But after the 40th anniversary, I just, well, I was an empty nester. I had this crazy idea I was going to have a lot of time. And I just realized it really hit me how Lauren is single-handedly responsible for what America thinks is funny across so many generations. I thought he'd be a great subject for a book. So I sold the book first. I did a proposal.

It was a bidding war. I chose Random House. And then I went to see him in his office. And I said, because I know, you guys know, Lauren, he likes to be out of the frame. He likes to be behind the curtain. He's not a very public facing guy. So I said, Lauren, I just signed a contract

to write a book about you and the show. I don't need anything from you. You know I know your people and I'm kind of around. But if you wanted to talk to me and participate in it, it'll be a better and a richer book. And you know, your legacy deserves that. And at first he looked like he was going to have a heart attack, you know. And then, you know, he said he'd think about it and we had a drink a couple of days later and and he just started telling those stories. He just started talking. And so he was in. We didn't have

any kind of agreement, you know, it's he liked the fact that it was my book. It's not a vanity project that he had any approval over anything, but he's smart enough to know that that's better to have like a real work of journalism about you and not some silly sort of puff book. He had always told me, I would never write a book because I couldn't tell the truth. So in terms of like you're writing this

and like, what do I include? You, Susan, what do I not include? Is this unflattering to Lauren who I have affection for and I think is seminal. And so when he was sharing with you, it was stories that you felt were benign. I mean, the book's coming out. Did he bury people? What did he say about me? Oh, Dana, you know, what he said about you is, it's a fucking show pony.

I mean, you, both of you, both of you are really, really up there in his pantheon. No, I think that he, I think one of his reservations in the beginning, and this is very smart of him, he knows that people have very selective memory. I don't know that he read deeply in those, like the oral history by Tom Shales and Jim Miller, but he certainly knew that over the years, people had put out versions of things that were wildly exaggerated.

He also know that comedians like to kind of embellish a story to make it fun, right? That's a human thing. So I think he was a little worried about that, but I asked him lots of questions. He told me lots of stories. I'd say in the final two years of the reporting, what I was doing was I'd go over there on a Friday night and I'd say, okay, now what we're going to do is try to do some like fact checking because a lot of times I'd have three or four different versions of an event and I wanted him to try

to be a tiebreaker. Like what do you think actually happened here? And you know, he was very honest. A lot of times he just said, God, I don't know. It was the seventies, you know, but I, but again, because I, you know, work at the New Yorker and we're fact checking and accuracy are important, I worked really hard to try to get things right. And there were definitely things, and I brought all these things to him, there were definitely things that maybe stung a little bit or that he would have preferred not be in the book, but he never said like, oh God, don't put that in the book. He understood that. Yeah. And I, God, I really respect the hell out of that. I mean, he knew I was going to write a real book. And, but the response among his world and his publicist and the people around him has been really positive.

People think that I've really got him. But you know, I mean, going into something like this with a character as mysterious and feared as Lorne is, I always knew that there would be a contingent of people who said, like, oh God, this is just a blowjob. And then there'd be other people who would say, this is a hatchet job. I mean, you know, right? So I think, I mean, I'm, I really, I, I, I'm in awe of Lauren and I really admire him. And I admire and like him even more

at the end of this process than I did at the beginning. I think what he's done is incredible. But you guys worked there when people would be bitching about this or that or, you know, it's a tough place, right? That was us. Do you, did you talk to any cast that said anything that, or any personalities just very different

than what you thought once you get them on the phone? Huh, let's see. Or is everyone kind of- That's such a good question. Did you hang up with someone and go, wow, they were very... One person who blew my mind was Dan Aykroyd because he talks in these sentences. Have you guys ever talked to him?

We did a live podcast with him at David's house. You know what I mean? Like he talks in perfect paragraphs. And he's so, I just would never have thought that he, you know, he's somebody who, and he's so thoughtful and uses such interesting words. Let's see. You know, they didn't know what to do with the lumber back in Canada in 1954. He has a lot of facts, especially in Canada. The steel manufacturer did everything.

Very interesting. He numbered all of them. Yeah, he is like this, and he made it one of his comedy rhythms. Encyclopedia. Yeah. He did it in his Coneheads. Coneheads has a lot of that talk in it. Long, free, free consciousness kind of speeches. So it's part of his comedy.

Well, it makes you realize that, you know, Beldar Conehead and Van Aykroyd are very similar, aren't they? Very close. Parental units. you know, Beldar Conehead and Van Aykroyd are very similar, aren't they? Very close. Parental units. I told someone, are you with your parental units tonight? And then I said, after I've said this a million times, I go, you know that's from Coneheads? They're like, what is that term?

I go, I think so. Remember he goes, parental units. And no one knew that. I go, oh, that's so funny. This gets in the ether and people, you had some good quotes here from a lot of the stars. I think some are funny. Some are just straight ahead.

Interesting. And I like Steve Martin says, Dave Letterman is genuinely self-deprecating. He genuinely doesn't think he's any good. Those issues don't come up for Lauren. That's so funny. And I'll say. Go ahead. Jane Curtin saying,

he spent a lot of time talking about where he's going to eat. Or so tonight. At nine o'clock, Chevy will be there. Chevy Chase? No, Chevy Wilson. One of the Pauls. You'll find with Susan, she's that thing of like, No, no, no. Chevy Wilson. One of the Pauls. You'll find with Susan, she's that thing of like, she wants to please and yet she has an eagle eye.

And she sees what others don't. Bill Hader's is funny too. Bill Hader. Yeah. Bill has a great, Lauren, you have different, you just have very much very quiet- He says, Dana, if you start drowning, he's not like, hey, here's a life jacket. He's like, ooh, that guy's drowning in my pool. Let's go here and let's go hang with Alec Baldwin.

Well, you know, it is funny. One of the things that is so interesting about Lauren is that even though people would early in the show, as the show started getting successful and Lauren started getting richer with fancier friends, people would bitch and moan about that. Belushi referred to Lauren's fancy friends as the dead. All those socialites and everything. But I think that it was interesting the way Lauren managed to parlay that into a comic character on the show.

Like the Lauren that you see in the Smigels TV fun houses. parlay that into kind of a comic character on the show. Like the Lorne that you see in the Smigels TV fun houses. Yeah, very, very fun. Like, get me back my show. Sure. You know, and- Go back with my show. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, he kind of, I feel like he almost, you know, the Lorne posh-a, like producer character, became a character on the show as much as like church lady did. Yes, the aloof producer that just stands there with a beer or something or a glass of wine. Yeah. And I remember, you know, actually, I mean,

I hope we hear more of your Lorne data today, but I remember asking Alec Baldwin at one point, who do you think does the best Lorne data today, but I remember asking Alec Baldwin at one point, who do you think does the best Lorne impersonation? And Alec just said, Lorne. All right. Telling. Telling.

Right. It's that thing of like, I'd never met anyone who talked like that, you know? But I do believe that that's what I'm kind of curious about. And so you went on this journey and it's not so much just like what makes Lauren tick, but it's sort of like, where's the, where's the marshmallow inside this, this veneer, you know, because I think he wants to be one of the guys and he, I think he is very observant and wonders what people are thinking of him and gets easily wounded in a way. But he's also so resilient.

I mean he's Trumpian in just that way to which we probably talked about. Just keeping the show consistent. Now 50 years we have data, a fucking half century. Where did this guy come from? Who is he? Will that be answered when I buy the book? I think you're gonna get your $38 worth. But no, everyone I talk to about Lauren,

it's the same, they're all kind of trying to unriddle him. Conan says everybody thinks that Lauren has the secret. Part of that is that he isn't, unlike a lot of guys who got Richard famous in the 80s, like Barry Diller or Michael Milken or people like that, he's never been like a show off workaholic. He's not one of those people who says, I get up at 4 a.m. and work out with a trainer and then I, you know, he does seem to know how to live, you know, he has a, he kind of invented work-life balance, you know, but, but then in terms of you say the marshmallow inside, I don't want to be too psychobabbly or you know, too much of an easy answer, but a lot really does take you back

to Lauren suddenly losing his father when he's 14 years old. He was completely at sea. And his father collapsed one night after having a big argument with Lauren. Oh. Had a big fight, father collapses, disappears into the hospital. Lauren never sees him again. This gives you some indication of why,

you never see Lauren having a yelling match with anybody. He keeps it very low. I think at one point I say in the book that he speaks in the register of a man announcing a golf tournament. Yes. But I think that his whole world got smashed when he was 14. Then he had a bad year. His mother thought he was gonna be a juvenile delinquent,

to use the term popular in the juvia. And he had to kind of rebuild. He had to put it all together. I think it gave him a kind of resilience, a kind of resilience that helped him throughout his whole career. Just when I was starting the book, I interviewed Judd Apatow for the New Yorker Radio Hour, and he said something that really resonated with me. When Judd was 14, his parents had a really bad divorce.

And I think he, you know, there were financial problems, his whole world kind of fell apart. And he told me that he definitely because of that, like that's why he kind of early in his life abandoned his dreams of being a performer and instead became a director and producer because you know, when you're that guy, you've got the clipboard, you've got the call sheet,

you're making sure that everything works. You're making sure that it's not going to be chaos. You're taking care of everything. As opposed to if you're a performer, you're just strutting your own stuff. I thought that that reminded me so much of Lorne, because he also was a performer early in his life. But he is determined to not let anything fall apart

because his own world fell apart when he was 14. That'll be $350 for that. I always saw there was people who started out in comedy and just saw that it wasn't gonna happen for them. And then they became a writer or a director or producer. I did not realize when I was on Saturday Night Live that every single writer essentially wanted to be in front of the camera.

I didn't realize that. I didn't know that until I started reporting this book. Think about all the people who were just writers, Mulaney, Oden Kirk, you know? Those guys never got on stage. Robert Smiley. They all want to be, they all want to be, trust me. Conan. I love that kind of Lauren, you know? Well, do you think Michael B here is, it's not very far from, you know, the bleachers to where the cameras are.

He has so many sayings. It's a little short walk. Yeah, that's funny. Yeah. But when you do, Lauren, you get to kind of inhabit Lauren. And I do think because the show is magnificent chaos. That's also part of his his methodology is he'll be the calm. Was anybody angry? Oh, well, yeah, there's definitely some people who are angry, um, because you know, it's one of the things I would say that maybe Lauren's biggest

achievement was just creating this kind of culture with walls around it. You know, it's a tribe and you're in it or you're out of it. You know, it's like the Godfather kind of, and you know, there are a handful of people, uh, who, handful of people who, I mean, I think that's one of the reasons it was so painful for Conan. When he lost the Tonight Show and went to TBS, he had spent his whole career at NBC. And for a while,

he had a little bit of a frosty rupture with Lauren. I think he was off the t-shirt list, you know, stopped getting the Broadway video. You guys still get those, the Broadway video t-shirts? I don't know if I still do. I think so. Yeah, I do. Yeah, Lauren, he wants to be in the loop. He did not produce the Conan Tonight Show, right, for some reason. That the loop. He did not produce the Conan Tonight Show, right? For some reason. That's right. He produced Late Night for Conan.

And then when Conan went to LA, NBC, I mean, it was kind of a drama. NBC told Conan and his producer, Jeff Ross, "'Oh, you don't need Lorne to be your EP.'" But I think that was a misstep. I think it probably would have been a good. Yeah, I think in the end of the. I think it probably would have been a good- Yeah. I think in the end of the day,

and there's been even current things that I won't mention for different people, is just, that's important to Lauren. And maybe it's how he reacts to other people in his life. You show respect. You wanna give Lauren the chance to say, I think you should do it without me. If you started with him and he gave you your break,

then you do kind of have that feeling. But it's hard back and forth to say, Lorne, do you want to produce this movie? Because now you're putting it on the spot sometimes. If he doesn't, but if you don't and it's success, he's like, why wouldn't you bring that to me? It's very touchy because you don't want to go, I's like why wouldn't you bring that to me it's very it's very touching because you don't want to go I want a new favor I want a favor from you also this thing about networks is tough because also you

know let's say I did a show for a network like I've done sitcoms and they're they're always whining and dining you up for a sitcom the whole run and the second it's over let's say you do a pile or something, or even just they cancel your show, there's always part of you that thinks mistakenly, but this network, we were friends. Like, how could they do that? That's the weirdest thing that you realize. It's all just for the moment.

Things are going good, everything's great, but don't get too chummy because you're just a card on a board where they say, we don't need that anymore, we're putting this here. They don't think like that. They don't go, oh, someone's feelings gonna get hurt. They're just like, this does better than that. We gotta put that there.

It's very rare they go, hey, I mean, they might say it, but they're not just saying, hey, just because we're all buds, we should keep this on forever. Yeah, I think that for Lauren, it's a relationship business, you know, and he really does. For that, yes. One of his old Canadian friends told me that even from the very beginning,

you could tell he likes rabbit's feet, you know? He likes to have these familiar people around. Sure. I think, you know, one time he was kind of half joking, but he compared himself to, he said, I'm like Prometheus, you know, I brought, I brought the bringer of fire to these young people, you know, the people he hires and his life he changes.

And he is aware that, you know, he's very aware that you want to stay tight with the people who were there for you at the beginning. Sure. It's why he kept Bernie. I'm sure he was paying Bernie Burlstein 15% up to the very end when was the last thing Bernie did for Warren. Yeah.

Even when it went to 10%, he's probably still paying him 15%. Whatever. Yeah. By the way, Prometheus for all the kids listening is a rapper. Little Prometheus. Yeah, little Prometheus. BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. The credit card that rewards your good financial habits. Earn points for paying your credit card bill in full and on time every month. Level up from bill payer to reward slayer. Terms and conditions apply.

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from real Canadian superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. ["Superstore Theme"] By the way, I have it off the grid here. The new show, is it possible you would remember this?

I think this is a dumb joke for the new show. A, Whitney Brown and Louis, were they both on it possibly? I don't think they were, weren't they? But on camera. No, they weren't on it. They weren't on the new show. No, they weren't. They weren't.

OK, because this joke is from something else. It could have been. But weren't they on Dana's show? Louis CK, I hired as my head writer. Um, A. Whitney Brown was not right for it. I remember a sketch with Louis Anderson and Whitney Brown. What could have that been on? It could have been on a bad episode of SNL. On a figment of my imagination.

Might have been in the 85 season. I think that's when A. Whitney got hired. Here's the joke. Yeah, okay. It's like a just quick cutaway, like I'm laughing. They walk out in Roman togas, one's ripped and one isn't. And Whitney goes, no, yeah, Whitney goes to Louis that's ripped and says,

"'You rip-a-deez?' And he goes, you man it ease? And that was it. That's right out of its own. Isn't that a weird? That's topo, G, Joe right there. I mean, topo, G, Joe, rip it ease. I'm pretty sure I'm lying,

but why would I even think of this when you were talking about the new show? Why would you even lie? But you know, that reminds me of when Lauren directed his show in college, UC Follies, which was very much like a proto SNL thing. There was a Shakespeare parody in it that Lauren wrote.

This is actually one of the first funny joke that I've ever, that Lauren Michaels wrote to my mind. There was a character in it named Hand in Bra. Get it? Okay. Got it. Instead of Fort in Bra. Hand in Bra.

You get it? I got it. I like a good pun. That's the beginning, middle, and end. Hand in Bra. It's very economical. It was the 50s, people. I love it.

Listen, I laughed harder at Hee Haw. I don't know what, you know, I can't really reference. I laughed at Donnie and Marie. Oh, that's what Bernie Brillstein told me. They take your Hee Haw money in London. You know, because he was producing Hee Haw. You didn't like it. I don't like fake art.

You just thought the art scene was ridiculous. You know, it's funny when people say, like, you know, Belushi only made $400 a week on SNL and he made 10 grand for Animal House, which is not bad money, especially when you're an unknown. They forget that they weren't a huge star in the Cover of Time magazine. Did Belushi get on the Cover of Time?

I heard Chevy did. Did Belushi? Belushi was on Newsweek. Oh, Newsweek. Chevy for Animal House, and Chevy was on New York Magazine. At the end of season one, they called him the heir apparent to Johnny Carson. And that's basically what started all kinds of splintering

in that first cast. Because the idea wasn't for one person to emerge as a star. That kind of screwed everything up, right? Immediate problems. That's always been there since then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you were talking about the, asking about the new show. I just remembered one funny little conflict that happened there. I remember

Gamelan Pross Wrote a sketch called time truck. It was a time traveling truck And it was where I show time line Kevin Klein was hosting and the idea was Kevin Klein was supposed to play Abe Lincoln and they were supposed to go back in time to prevent Lincoln from getting shot. But Lorne thought that it would be much funnier to have his close personal friend, Paul Simon, play Lincoln.

Just as a side gag. The writers are like, Paul Simon is not a comic actor. Yeah, he's very quiet. It was Paul. Yeah, anyway. Yeah. That's their frustration.

Reason number 800, why the new show didn't fly off the shelves. Exactly. Did we talk about just, well, obviously you mentioned Lauren hacked life. That's the new phrase. Like you go to buttermilk and you ski, you know, and then you're in St. Barts and you go to Wimbledon and Paul and I would often go out and just buy socks. You go downtown.

So, and he did pace himself. That's part of the half century is he does pace himself. He knows when it's important for him to lock in. And that's the, especially this Saturday, that 30 minutes is where everything's made. And the whole show is based on ADD and procrastination. So at Lauren's core, does he have both those elements? Because I do.

Yeah, well, Jim Downey had a really smart way of describing this. He said, Lauren is a guy bad at term papers, great at tests. So if you give him an open-ended thing that he has to sit down and fiddle with, he's just never going to finish it. But when there's a deadline, when there's an alarm bell that goes off, I think someone said the deadline is Lauren's cocaine. It's the thing that gets him galvanized. Can you imagine if that show was taped? You would never have that moment at 1030 where he's saying, but yeah, I think that he definitely has said to me a bunch of different times that he was always his whole life reluctant

to burn a bridge or to close a door. He always felt like, if I do this, then I won't ever be able to do this. He also told me a story that's kind of related. He told me, it's a real memory of once his father taking him to a diner when he was a little boy and saying, just order anything you want off the menu. He ordered a hot dog and a hamburger and a grilled cheese and onion rings and french fries and couldn't eat it all. Then his father said, let this be a lesson to you,

your eyes are bigger than your stomach. Now, I don't know how Lauren converted that into a lesson about comedy, but he did. I think that if you think about that plate full of junk food at the diner, it's not unlike what the show is like Saturday going into, you know, they still have way more than they can use. And it's chopping it down. And you don't need everything. You don't need everything you think you need in life also is a bigger way. It's true. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. I want to go to lunch with his dad. Yeah. I need to learn things. That's a good one. Buy me a hot dog. Yeah. We both have dad stuff. I mean, do all comedians have mom or dad stuff? Right.

I don't know. Well, I thought it was, you know, a lot of people talk about these different rules that Lauren has about comedy, these Laurenisms. And I think all the comedy ones are interesting, but it was also really interesting for me to hear how many of them were just about like how to live your life. You know, so many people talked about how Lauren would say, buy yourself an apartment that you think you can't afford because, you know, then you'll come home after a hard day at work

and you'll go, wow, who lives here? And you'll go, wow, I live here. And you know. He told me that. And he said, buy, he said, get, it matters where you live. So if you're torn, get the nicer one. He does his learning, a lot of it is just good old fashioned wisdom, well crafted. He does his learning. A lot of it is just good old-fashioned wisdom.

Yeah. Well, well crafted. Did we talk about the one that was sort of took me by surprise, you know, about this generation or whatever snowflakes or anxiety or whatever? You know, we were raised in the wilderness and we got like civilized. They're raised civilized and then we want them to go out into the wilderness, which is sort of brilliant. I said that Howard Stern and go, what does that mean? I go, Howard. No, he said that to me too, and I totally get it. I like it. I like it.

Yeah. But it was also, I spent so much time hanging out there that it was really interesting for me to see. He's so patient kind of with the millennials and some of the snowflakey sensibilities. But one day he said something that really cracked me up. This is in the book. We were walking in the theater district and we walked past the Mean Girls marquee. And he had just got tickets for his friend, Margaret Trudeau to go. And he was really mad because one of the leads

had called in sick because she had to take her dog to the vet. The dog had eaten glue or something. And he just said, if it was Patti LuPone, the dog would be dead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

He just couldn't believe that this person's pat was ruining the performance. I think in the new days, there's just options you didn't have. Like you can just not do things anymore. And in the old days, it's like, no, you go. No matter what, you go to work, you go to school, you do this. And now it's like, if you feel like it,

if unless you want to call in a day, you're not mentally feeling like it. It's like, are you having anxiety? If I had the word anxiety back then, I would have used it all day. I think Lauren has a classic characteristic of somebody who has power in a meeting. And that is if things are going around the room,

and then Lauren will sort of sum up something or say something that's not exactly on topic, but related to the topic in very few words. And it's like, I just think, I don't know, this is a hackneyed one, but it just needs to breathe or whatever. Make sure that the audience knows you're actually performing. Don't just do it to each other. So that's kind of one of his superpowers. And that's really important with the suits and universal and stuff. I had, I was at parties with the suits and Lauren.

He doesn't talk a lot, but when he does, it's usually, it's pretty hard. Or it's interesting, you know? Yeah, no, he has a lot of things like that that can kind of close off discussion. Like he'll say, it'll get there. Or he'll say, it knows what it is. Stuff like that.

Yeah. Really good things. Yeah. All I'm saying, he never really says, do this. All I'm saying is like, do we really have to go there with that right now? I thought it was also interesting that even though, in that meeting between dress and air, he really is like a general,

and that's the time at which he famously yelled at Bob Odenkirk once, Odenkirk, if you talk again, I'll break your fucking legs. But mostly- That's when he's most confrontational because there's no time left. It's no time for any fun bullshit. It's like, go, go, go. Right. But even though he is, you know, that is his moment, he rarely forces somebody to change

something. I mean, writers are always telling me, yes, he'll give you the note. He'll say, maybe this, maybe that, but he isn't going to say you have to change the ending. You know, he lets it belong to the writers, which is so unusual. Some, you know, some of mine got dirty and he would say, to interrupt you, he would say, I don't know if you need that. Yeah. Yeah. Put it if you want, but I don't know if you need it.

And that's a good way of saying, oh, you feel like it's a little dirty. It's kind of smart the way it is. I don't know if you need that. And you go, yeah, okay. Like, okay, well, if you say it, I'm obviously younger and just new on the show, I think I would take your gut feeling over mine. I know, because I said to Lauren just in the fall

when I was there, I said, you're like an AI. Like you have downloaded the show and you're great. That's a good one. So, Lauren's blink is the best blink because he can't even, he's going back to, you know, Danny did that in my early days. So, it's similar to a Chevy idea, you know, it's like, so he, that's why his blink is really good. He kind of knows, he can't even totally describe what's wrong in a way, but his spider sense because he's, he's downloaded the show. But he might say, as David was just saying, he might

say, well, do you think it's working? You know, do you think it's working? But Dana, this is reminding me what David just said is the story you told me about the time he thought Church Lady got too dirty with the football players. Yeah. Yeah. And he was, he was really kind of right. It was just, um, you know, it was Joe Montana and Walter Payton and I'm doing a church chat. And so it was just became vaudevillian sexual innuendos.

Like we're playing football, squeeze that between your legs and let me, you know, it was just a lot of that. And Lorne was like, you know, does it really, it was like a little, you know, and he didn't want Churchley for a while. I think she needs a name, you know, and stuff like that. And he didn't really like the superior dance. He wanted to be more grounded in reality, but like he never told me yay or nay, but the Joe Montana one, because maybe it was low brow or something, it was later in the show, but it killed so hard that the old timer sound man said,

I've been here for 20 years. I've never seen the needles go that high. So anyway. You know, that superior dance thing. I mean, I didn't know he didn't like that because boy, I think that's so funny. But well, I think he wasn't a fan of it, but maybe he probably accepted it as the, as the character grew, got bigger. Yes. She became a signature because Yeah, because I know Conan told me that, or maybe Lauren told me, maybe they both told me, rare instance of everybody agreeing that Lauren was always telling Conan to get rid of that string dance thing that he did, you know, where he would touch his nipples and go, sss. Yeah. Warren hated that, you know, but Conan stuck with

it and it worked. You know, there are it worked. There are people, I guess- Well, that is the thing about catchphrases and or repetitive physical things, your signature, Johnny Carson does the golf swing. If there's something homey to your brain, oh, Conan's doing that again. We all do it. Right, right. Well, Mark McKinney told me that at the initial read through of the Kids in the Hall series, the one thing that Lauren just didn't like, didn't understand was the I'm crushing your head guy.

And that when Mark, you know that sketch. Yeah, the camera set up so it looks like you're, yeah. That would have gone viral. That came as a little kid in some way. When Mark first read it, Lauren said like, oh, so it's a funny voice thing, but he didn't. It wasn't. Dana, you can say that better than me,

but then when he saw it, when he saw that it was a visual, like that, then he got it and he liked it. So again, you have to have, you really have to have a sense of yourself, I guess, because more of a fading violet kind of performer would have just said, okay, we'll cut that sketch. Right, sure.

Right, and Lorne is, he's open to, if it works, it works. I mean, he just loves to laugh so, if you know, that makes him so high. Yeah. You know, and you see how he still just suffers. If the show's going a little flat, you see it in his body language, his attitude. If the show is lifted, it's just, you know,

from across the way, your sketch destroys, it'd be like, you know. And that's like a really good coach that never overpraises, but when he does, it means a hell of a lot. That's another aspect. Yeah, so many people told me about how they would come off stage and just feeling like they

really killed. And then in the Monday meeting, he wouldn't talk about that, but he would say, like, no, Nora, you were breathtaking as the fourth waitress. That kind of thing. I thought Jen's exit was breathtaking. The exits. Yes, I thought Jen's exit was breathtaking. Exit. Well, Susan, Dana, anything else for this young lady who's written a great book? So now your book is emerging within this gigantic SNL 50th.

Yeah. Whatever you want, extravaganza, you know, and I can't keep track of all the documentaries, people. I don't, you know, were you in that one? You gotta watch, the Cowbell one is great. We gotta watch that. It's a whole documentary. I just went to a little house they rented for me and said, will you talk about Cowbell?

I go, okay. So I'm doing it. And then they were talking about Lauren. You're great in it, Dana. I don't even remember what I said, but it's such an extravaganza. And then your book's coming out. I guess that's a good thing rather than if the book had come out during just a regular year.

Well, it took me so long to write it. Only 10 years. This wasn't part of the plan. Yeah. I love that it fell into right now is good. It really, yeah, it really worked. And I'd say, I mean, it definitely works. And especially because so much of the hoopla,

so much of the other stuff, you know, it's like snippets of sketches. But my hope is that, you know, people really don't know that much about Lorne. You know, the comedy cognacenti know that he's Obi-Wan Kenobi and everything else. But I think that the greater world doesn't know how complicated and fascinating and strange and brilliant he is. And, you know, I hope, as you were saying, Dan, I hope I'm kind of able to explain that a little bit.

The one thing people ask me today about the show that I don't have an answer for, just a basic answer, I guess, but how the numerologically the cast has started to expand and then become an expansionist cast. So like 20 cast members. So people will ask me, why do they have all those cast members? And I go, well, I guess a safety net or did he ever talk about that? Yeah, I think that's a really good question because I know there was a time in the nineties when he was trying to do the changeover like between the Hartman cast to the Sandler cast.

He was hiring a lot of people. I thought it was maybe just to ease the, you know, create a buffer. And then there was like some big budget cutback and he had to get rid of a bunch of them. But yeah, I don't know the answer to that unless, and I'm speculating here, unless it's a diversity effort, you know, to just try to get a more diverse cast. But I don't think it serves the show

because I think that there's so many people, you're kind of, who's that one? I don't remember them. You don't know, for sure you don't know, for sure. It's too hard. It's very hard. I talked to some of the young cast members because if you're not in it a lot, and then you get in there,

and then you maybe flub a line or don't totally score, then you go back again, where I think I was part of the last small cast. And then when David and Sandler and Farley all, we got some really great people to add to us and some left, but me and Phil and John, I think were just the three major male sketch players. So I was in four things the first show or five things. And I have a lot of empathy for the cast members that are, they're in the dugout, they're on the bench. They're not

playing. And do you quit or do you stay and you go, I quit SNL, I didn't get anything out of it. Like it's so hard to sit there and rot going, am I going to ever score? It really takes one good sketch, then you're on the map. What was yours, David? What was the thing that made you feel like? God, it took a long time. I think it was the one where I played a receptionist was the first time I got any sort of. And you had a catchphrase.

Did it at, it was in dress, the last sketch in the air, it was the first sketch. Oh, that's a good... That was Rosanne. NUR was the catchphrase. NUR is so good, yeah. Just a dry bit based on kind of Lauren going to see... And the assistants, yeah. Yeah, and all that.

You know, the thing about the huge cast that's even harder now, Dana, and when I was hanging around there a few years back, you know, the cast would also, they would let you know, I mean, of course it's thrilling for them when geniuses like you and, you know, Alec and everybody come in to play these cameos. But during the first Trump administration, you know, it's so many, you know, you have all these stars coming in and that also squeezes. Matt Damon and so forth, all great people doing great parts.

There's resentment. But if you were in the cast, you might be pissed. Of course, you for sure would be. Well, I did ask and I was sincere about it when they asked me to do Biden. I said, does Mikey still wanna do it? Does anybody wanna do it? And, you know, and they said no, because Biden was sort of a thankless task. It was a difficult one. And there

was the whole energy around, should you make fun of his mental acuity or not? And threading that needle. So I was totally aware of that. And they're all incredibly sweet. They seem sweeter than we were, but they're very nice people. But we never, we had Dan Ackroyd come in and do Bob Dole. That was it once. And then it was all us playing it. So I don't know. I mean, Lorne has his thing. I don't think he likes when people leave. I think when Belushi and Ackroyd left, it kind of left him flat-footed. And so he likes a, I get it, he likes a bench that can come in and, you know, so. Right.

50 years now, a final question. Okay. How much longer, since you've been inside this lorin brain, will he go? Well, I firmly believe, I don't he's going to just say over and out. You know, he's never missed a show. He's never missed a show.

Yeah. I think they'd have to carry him out of there in a stretcher. But I don't think that any of them. I don't buy any of the replacement theories. I don't think Tina or Seth or I can't see any of them doing it. What I think is the likelier idea, and I hope this doesn't sound too McKinsey, you know, but the way I see it,

Lorne is completely essential two days of the week. He has to be there during read through because he really pays attention to the room. And then he picks the show after that with his deputy's help. And then Saturday when he's sitting there under the bleachers. It's a good theory. And so I think he has this great team of people who could do the other stuff. And if he came in, was wheeled in on Wednesday afternoon and on Friday and on Saturday evening.

The stretcher. Well, there's an element, there's like a soft element of that now, you know? Yeah, a little bit. Because I would want an answer. It goes down, sure. And they said, well, we'll let you know when Lorne gets here, it's four o'clock.

Right, that's right. Lorne knows how to pace himself and when to lock in. So he's doing a soft version of that, you know? Yeah, I think that's right. And all those people, you know, Doyle and Higginst, they really know him. So they can give a pretty good approximation. Yeah, when he'll come in and what he might say. But there's no one could do what he does under the bleachers. I mean, when I was sitting

there under the bleachers with him, and you guys, I'm sure you've done this, right? And he's, I mean, the funniest one, when we got, I was there for the Jonah Hill show and Maggie Rogers, who was then just starting out as a singer, comes out on stage at dress, wearing this big red caftan and no shoes. And Lauren just goes, barefoot? Where's she from? A place with roads? You know, he was so

mad. I know. Well, the funniest one is just that he watched the dress show and the chardonnay should be more pale, you know, stuff like that. But he notices things you're not even aware of, but yeah, I think he's gonna go a while. He seems very, you know, he's very with it and alert. And I've never seen him sick, you know, he's taking good care of himself. It's true, I don't hear that. I never, it doesn't look like, even when I was there briefly,

it doesn't seem like he's, you know, barely getting to this 50th. It's like 50th, then they got the rest of the season after the big show, and then they start working on next season. I don't see him. I don't know when this podcast airs, but I bet you, Lorne, he is, he's only human.

I mean, he will be kind of a little bit relieved when this whole hoopla is over, because we can't, unless it was the mic drop, the show ends, he knows that pretty soon, okay, we still got 10 more fucking shows to do. Well, one thing he did tell me when the Reitman movie came out, that was sort of the beginning of

his anonymity being blown in a way. I mean, he told me he didn't see it. I mean, who knows if he did. I said I saw it for you and you can all upgrade. I said you don't didn't see it. I mean, who knows, who knows if he did. I said, I saw it for you and you can go off great. So I said, you don't have to see it. But he said, he said, I just feel like I've lost control of my life. You know, it's like, as a 50th approach,

I think he's really excited about the show and he's excited about seeing everybody. You know, he loves everybody, but he does feel, I mean, even to some extent with a book, it's just like, he's kind of stepping out. You know, the Reitman movie put him center stage. This book puts him center stage. It's a shift for him.

Right, and at the end of the day, he is the lynchpin. He's bigger than any cast member as far as the history of SNL. He is, you know. Well, he is, as I think I quote some agent in the book saying that when her, she is clients going to audition for Lauren, she says, you got to remember, he is the star of the show. It's Lauren, you know, which is interesting. Interesting. But he loves funny people. And yeah does. He does. And he's funny.

He's a funny person, which a lot of people don't know. Extremely dry, droll, wit. Yeah, that hits you pretty hard sometimes. Wow, well, congratulations. It's hard to write a book. Thank you, guys. And I'm sure it's gonna do really well. And what was your advance? How much did you have got so far?

Hello. February 18th. Thank you so much. This was really, really fun, you guys. This flew by. It was easy. We love talking about our old boss. Call back anytime, okay?

I can't wait to read my chapter. All right, bye. Thanks, Ethan. Have a good day. Bye, guys. You too, bye-bye. This has been a presentation of Odyssey. Please follow, guys. Bye, bye. You too. Bye, bye. This has been a presentation of Odyssey.

Please follow, subscribe, leave a like, a review. All this stuff, smash that button, whatever it is, wherever you get your podcasts. Fly on the Wall is executive produced by Dana Carvey and David Spade, Jenna Weiss Berman of Odyssey, and Heather Santoro. The show's lead producer is Greg Holtzman.