Fresh Air - 'SNL' Turns 50: Aykroyd, Franken, Zweibel & Lovitz

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

For Saturday Night Live's 50th anniversary, we're featuring interviews with some of the early cast members/writers. Dan Aykroyd talks about the moment he and John Belushi came up with the Blues Brothers. Writer Alan Zweibel talks about working with Gilda Radner on two of her most iconic characters. And Al Franken tells us about a sketch he wrote that didn't make it past the censors. Jon Lovitz tells Terry how his character Master Thespian came to be. Also, film critic Justin Chang reviews The Annihilation of Fish, a romantic comedy starring James Earl Jones, Lynn Redgrave and Margot Kidder, made in 1999 and released now for the first time. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air, I'm David Bianculli. NBC's Saturday Night Live is celebrating its 50th anniversary this weekend with a triple header of special events. Tonight Peacock streams a live music concert featuring scheduled performances by everyone from Bad Bunny and David Byrne to Lady Gaga and The Roots. On Saturday in its regular late night slot on NBC, SNL repeats the first-ever episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by George Carlin,

and introducing the original Not For Primetime players. John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Lorraine Newman, and Garrett Morris. And on Sunday, NBC presents a three-hour live anniversary special, preceded by an additional hour on the red carpet. Today on Fresh Air, we're noting that anniversary by replaying interviews with some of the performers and writers who were there at or near the start, when producer Lorne Michaels created

and shaped the show's first five seasons. After a five-year hiatus, Michaels returned and has been there ever since, presiding over many decades of cast changes, musical trends, and political shifts. Even though Michaels and NBC are celebrating the 50th anniversary of SNL this weekend, the very first episode, then called NBC's Saturday Night, actually premiered on October 11th, 1975. Michaels had selected a cutting-edge counterculture comic as the show's host, but the comedian, George Carlin, suggested he do only the first one, making room for guest hosts from then on. Michaels agreed, establishing a template that still works,

while Carlin established another one, taking the stage at Studio 8H to deliver an opening monologue. We're talking about a live show. Nice to see you. Welcome and thanks for joining us live. I'm kind of glad that we're on at night so that we're not competing with all the football and baseball games. So many, man. And this is the time you hear when there's both, you know? Football's kind of nice. They changed it a little bit. They moved the hash marks in. Guys found them and smoked them anyway. One other noteworthy element from that first show, still part of the format 50 years later,

was a TV news parody called Weekend Update. Chevy Chase was the first update anchor. And thanks to that showcase, the first star to emerge from SNL. It helped that he started most updates with the opening line, I'm Chevy Chase and you're not. But the jokes he read, written by original writer Alan Zweibel and others, helped too. The Post Office announced today...just a second, I lost my place.

Oh, the Post Office announced today that it is going to issue a stamp commemorating prostitution in the United States. It's a ten-cent stamp, but if you want to lick it, it's a quarter. On today's show, we'll hear from Allen's Why Bell, and cast member John Lovitz, and also from Al Franken, a writer and performer who went from the halls of Saturday Night Live to the corridors of the US Senate. But let's start with an interview Terry Gross conducted in 2004 with Dan Aykroyd, who broke out on the show impersonating Julia Child and Tom Snyder, co-anchoring Weekend Update after Chevy Chase left, and introducing a range of unforgettable characters including the outer space

alien Beldar Conehead, one of the wild and crazy guys opposite Steve Martin, and most famously, Elwood Blues, one of the musical energetic Blues Brothers alongside John Belushi. Terry asked Dan Ackroyd about his love of music and more. What were the first records you bought, can you remember? Well the first records of course were you know the Beatles and the Stones and then I think the seminal record for me was the East-West record that Paul Butterfield did in the late 60s with Elvin Bishop and Michael Bloomfield. And from then on, I began to go out and try to search the bins in the record stores for

blues artists and then started listening to John Lee Hooker. And we had a tremendous booking agent in Ottawa, Canada, where I grew up. That's the capital of that great, great nation. And my parents worked for the government up there, and I was kind of a son of government workers up there. And there was a club called Le Hibou, which was right on Sussex Drive,

near where the Prime Minister lives. And we had a booker there named Harvey Glatt, and he brought in all of the great blues stars of the age so that as a teenager, I jammed behind Muddy Waters when S.P. Leary refused to take the drum kit, and he said, is there anybody out there that's a drummer? And I walked up and I started to play, and Muddy turns to me and he goes, keep that beat going, boy, you make Muddy feel good. I mean, this was part of my early exposure and then I saw Paul Butterfield and Charlie Musselwhite and you know all these great players and it was I guess just through the inside of this guy who was you

know booking for the college crowd up there and then listening to the black radio stations in Boston and Detroit and New York. This was you know these were sort of all part of my exposures I guess. So what was parents' record collection and what did they listen to and how did that affect what you liked or didn't like? Well my dad used to pour over the newspapers and look for record collections that were used. So he would go and he'd see that some guy in Ottawa or Hull or where we were living there would be selling a hundred records

and he'd just go out and buy them all. So we were listening to anything from Glenn Miller to Mario Lanza, lots of Broadway soundtracks and stuff. But I think my father really influenced me when he started to get into the Jack Hilton, Ray Noble, Freddie Gardner, English swing band music. That was really something because the value of horns was there. And then later, as I started to buy, of course, was the Beatles and the Stones and the Animals and then the Paul Butterfield record.

But my dad was into the swing band music as many people were in Canada at that time. Now, I read about you that you had a pretty strict Catholic upbringing, that you went to Catholic school. Seminary. Seminary, well okay. So you're growing up in Canada, you're going to a seminary and listening to blues and rock and roll and rhythm and blues. And seeing guys on stage in my high school imitating Mick Jagger, imitating the animals. Okay, that's where I'm heading. Were you, did you, long before you became part of the Blues Brothers and you developed this kind of alter ego for yourself, did you have a pose when you were in high school? Did you want, did you want to be black? Did you want to be a blues musician? Did you want to be somebody who you weren't

and kind of take on that pose in real life? Sure, I wanted to be Paul Butterfield and Charlie Musselwhite and I used to walk around in a long trench coat, a long brown trench coat with shades and I'd slick my hair back and I'd try to find any little band up in the bars up in the Gatineau and up in Ottawa and Hull and where I was living and I would get on stage with them and they'd be country bands and I would turn to them and say, well, can you do it like this? And I would get on stage with them and they'd be country bands and I would turn to them and say, well, can you do it like this? And I would kind of show them a basic, you know, 8, 10, 12 bar blues pattern and then we just take off from there.

And of course I was posing as Paul Butterfield. Yeah, absolutely. And then my friend Gary O'Dwyer, who is now a school principal up in Coburg, Ontario, he was pretending to be Eric Burton. And I had, you know, the math whiz in class in grade 11 was pretending to be Mick Jagger, so everybody was posing, and it was all based on rock and roll and music and blues then, all of it. Did you sing then, or I know you played drums?

I played harp mostly and sang. Yeah, the drumming was sporadic, but, you know, I filled in for bands now and again when I was growing up. How did you and Belushi start the whole Blues Brothers routine? In 1973, John came up to Canada to recruit for the National Lampoon Radio Hour. I was in Second City with Gilda Radner and with John Candy. And John came into Toronto and he joined us on the set of the Second City stage and we did an improv set. And then we went back to my very famous speakeasy called the 505, which opened after one o'clock after the Liquor Control Board of Ontario closed most of the bars in

the province. We had a bar at the corner of Queen and River at 505 Queen Street and all the streetcar drivers and cops from like outlying regions and waiters and waitresses and dancers would come to drink and I had a record on by the Down Child Blues Band out of Toronto, Donnie Walsh, an incredible seminal artist out of Canada. And John, when I was listening to it, John said, what is this? This is a great record. It's just a local blues band. Blues?

I'm from Chicago. I hear the blues now and again, but I'm into heavy metal, he says. I said, well, John, you show me heavy metal and I'll show you the blues. So we started to kind of talk about it and listen. And Howard Shore was there that night. He's, of course, the great Oscar-winning composer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy music. He was the original musical director on Saturday Night Live,

and he was in Toronto at that time and had dropped by the bar, and he said, "'Yeah, you guys should start a band, "'and you could call it the Blues Brothers.'" And we just went bink, bink. And we started to correspond. I didn't go back to New York with John. He'd managed to get Gilda to go back with him,

but we kept in touch on the phone and we started to look at material and develop material, and we did our first gig in New York in the Lone Star Cafe, and our backup band was Willie Nelson, with Mickey Raphael, one of the greatest harmonica players ever. And Willie understood what we were trying to do, like so many that came along and joined us. They understood that, okay, these guys aren't the greatest musicians or singers or dancers, but what they are are great front men and they love and respect the music. So the hat and glasses are from the John Lee Hooker album House of the Blues. He wears those shades and that hat on the cover there. The suits, the black jacket and thin tie and white shirts were because a lot of artists

in the 60s who were progressive and maybe were getting in trouble with the law like Lenny Bruce wanted to look straight and so it was kind of trying to get that IRS look together to kind of fool the straights was where that came from. One of my first jobs in broadcasting was working for CITY TV in Toronto, which was this whole new concept in urban television that really, basically today your news desk, your news desks across America, Channel 7, 4 or 2, wherever you want to be networked with the graphics and the presence of the seemingly sort of active presence of the newscaster.

This is from Moses Neimers, CITY TV. He basically changed the whole format and the whole delivery of news in North America. And I worked for his station. I was a game show announcer. And I also did the shot box announcing. So I actually had to do that fast rap stuff for car companies and beer companies and all that. So sure, I was actually doing it professionally

when I first started out. I was hired by none other than Ivan Reitman, who we went on to do the Ghostbusters thing together. Well, so you were doing the real thing before you did the parodies. I was, yeah. I was a mailman in Toronto when I first moved there. I knew I wanted to go to Toronto, work with Lorne Michaels again.

I had gone there to do a special with him when I was 19. Went back to Carleton University. Couldn't concentrate, you know. I had to be in show business. Dropped out of school, much to the chagrin of my parents. I got a job driving mail truck in Toronto and then I shifted to the broadcasting and yeah, I was a shot box announcer for about a year there with City TV and hired by Ivan Reitman and recommended by Lauren.

Lauren said you should hire this kid. So Lauren Michaels has been instrumental in my career from basically age 17. Let me ask about one of the parody commercials you did, and this is a terrific video compilation of some of your best sketches from Saturday Night Live. And this is the one for the Basso-matic. It's like a blender that turns fish into a delicious shake. People remember. Yeah.

Tell me how you came up with this and if it relates to a real ad that you ever did. Oh, yeah. No, no. My aunt, the late Hélène Gougon, she was a lovely woman, my mother's sister. She was in fact the Julia Child of Canada. Really? Yep. She had a television show and a cuisine shop in Montreal during the 60s and she, I went to her house for lunch and she was a master gourmet chef and she was very well known for it. She was on the network, the TV up there and she said she was making a fish soup and I

saw she dropped the whole fish into the blender. With the bones and everything, you know, she said, oh no, no, no, no, the bones, you picked the bones out like you're eating a filet. Don't worry about it. And I never forgot that. And then, you know, many years later, I was sitting with Paul Simon and Lorne Michaels and Elaine and Chevy and John and I were there. Belushi, Paul Simon, me, Lorne and Chevy

and we're sitting there. And, you know, we were just kind of laughing over things and I was thinking about that and, you know, we were reading a meal and I thought, yeah, I got this idea for, you know, a scene, you know, we were just kind of laughing over things, and I was thinking about that, and we were eating a meal, and I thought, yeah, I got this idea for a scene, you know, Basematic, and when I said that, Paul Simon, who's probably one of the most brilliant people ever in entertainment, he started to really laugh,

and it's hard to get Paul to laugh, because he's so intellectual, so smart, you gotta be at a certain level. When he started to snort, I said, man, I got something, if I can make Paul laugh, it's this easy. And I went away and I wrote the scene based upon that night and my aunt's real experience with the fish in a blender.

And I remember a woman wrote me a letter. She was very upset that I would change the molecular state of the fish from solid to liquid on television. She was really, really upset about that. And I wrote her back and I said, well, you know, this was actually the way that my aunt made fish soup. Well, let's hear Dan Aykroyd advertising the Basimatic on Saturday Night Live.

How many times has this happened to you? You have a bass. You're trying to find an exciting new way to prepare it for dinner. You could scale the bass, remove the bass's tail, head and bones, and serve the fish as you would any other fish dinner. But why bother now that you can use Rob Coe's amazing new kitchen tool, the Super Basimatic 76.

Yes, fish eaters, the days of troublesome scaling, cutting, and gutting are over. Because Super Basimatic 76 is the tool that lets you use the whole bass with no fish waste without scaling, cutting, or gutting. Here's how it works. Catch a bass, remove the hook and drop the bass. That's the whole bass into the Super Bass-O-Matic 76.

Now adjust the control dial so that that bass is blended just the way you like it. Yes, it's just that simple. Dan Aykroyd spoke to Terry Gross in 2004. One of the original writers on Saturday Night Live was Alan Zweibel. In 1989, he told Terry about how he collaborated with Gilda Radner on several of her characters. Together they wrote such still memorable comic creations as Emily Lattella and Roseanne Rosanna Dana. She was a great writer, undisciplined in that she wouldn't sit down at a typewriter and

stay up all night, you know. However, whenever we would write together, it was usually by virtue of me taking a legal pen and the two of us going to a restaurant and I would basically interview her on whatever we were going to do that week, whether it was Roseanne, Rosanna, Dana, Emily Lattella, any of the other things that I'd written for her, I'd say, okay, how do you feel about this? What would Roseanne say about that? So you co-created the Emily Lattella character with her? That was a, yeah. That was based on a character that was a nanny that was very, very important in Gilda's upbringing.

Her name was Dibby, and spoke like that. The character first appeared in a sketch that either franken and davis wrote or rosie shuster and wasn't named as such and then we started using it more more than ultimately gilded and i hooked into it and put her in weekend update and uh... the character evolved into what it was commentary is very important because i hear that President Ford wants to make Puerto Rico a steak.

Now, why does he have to make the mistake? I didn't think those people even liked meat. Now, let me walk on. All this fuss I keep hearing about violins on television. Now, why don't parents want their children to see violins on television? I say there should be more violins on television and less game shows. It's terrible the way things work. Mr. Teller, that was violence on television, not violins. Violence.

Oh, well that's different. Yes. Never mind. Can you describe the creation of the Roseanne Rosanna Danner character? Well, there was once a sketch called Hire the Incompetent that I believe Rosie Schuster wrote, where Gilda appeared with that wig and Hired the

Incompetent was a interviews with three people who were clearly too incompetent to have any job anywhere. It was successful and months later I was having dinner with Gilda and I said, you know, remember that character? I said, why don't we give her a name, put her in Weekend Update, and why not give her, let her be a consumer advocate, not unlike, and there was a local ABC newswoman called Roseanne Scamardella in New York at the time.

I said, not unlike Roseanne Scamardella. And Gilda said, well, okay, can we call her Roseanne Rosannadana? And I said, why? And what Gilda had done, remember that song, the name game, you know, Johnny, Johnny, Giovanni? Gilda started singing it, and if you sing it with the name Roseanne, somewhere in there, Roseanne, Roseannadana comes out. And I go, okay, fine, let's name her that. So every week she would get a letter from a Richard Fader from Fautley, New Jersey, who's my brother-in-law.

He was my best friend growing up, then he married my sister, and it was my way of saying hi to him every week. So we made him the letter writer. And basically we lapsed into a formula where we would take a celebrity and we would take something topical and we would put the two together and come up with sweat bowls at the end of Dr. Joy's brother's nose or nasal hairs from Bo Derrick or whatever we did. So what does she do?

She opens her perfect little purse and takes out her perfect little Kleenex and draws her perfect little fuzz and then throws her perfect little Kleenex into her perfect little Tiffany trashcan. But what this cutie didn't know was when she wiped off her nose, she didn't push back in this one little

perfect little nose hair. It just stuck out there. And it was long and it was black and it was perfect and I thought I was gonna die. Just between you and me, Rosanna, Rosanna, Dana, I felt like yanking down two more hairs, braiding them and putting a bead at the end. And her nose wouldn't look like her head, but I am head, bow, shove that hair back up

your nose. What do you say I do? Make me sin? You think you're so neat, not good-looking. Gross hand. Gross hand. Alan Zweibel spoke to Terry Gross in 2004. After a break, we'll hear from SNL writer turned US Senator Al Franken

and cast member John Lovitz. And Justin Chang reviews a newly released movie that's actually more than 25 years old. I'm David B. and Cooley, and this is Fresh Air. ["Dusty Road"] This message comes from Wise. The app for doing things and other currencies, sending or spending money abroad, hidden fees may be taking a cut. With WISE, you can convert between up to 40 currencies at the mid-market exchange rate. Visit WISE.com. TNCs apply. We're celebrating 50 years of Saturday Night Live, featuring interviews with early cast members and writers. Al Franken was one of the show's original writers, along with his partner Tom Davis. He worked as a writer and occasional performer during the show's first five years, then returned

in 1985 as both writer and performer for another 10 years. Terry spoke with Al Franken in 1988, and she asked him about how he dealt with the network sensors. What's your system of pushing for something when you're arguing with a sensor or with a producer about your material? You make a strong case about why it's really not in bad taste, explain what the joke is? Yeah, you know, people think we really don't like theors, that they're our enemies. And the fact is, I spend more time with the censors at NBC than with anybody else other than our staff.

So I know these guys real well. It's adversarial, but it's friendly, and we don't really pull anything off over on them. We just make our argument. I lost a piece last year that I really cared about. It was called What's My Addiction? And it was a game show in which the celebrity panelists were Johnny Cash, Liza Minnelli, and David Crosby. And the host was Betty Ford.

And all the guests would come on on and the panelists would ask them questions like on What's My Line and try to guess what their chemical dependency was. And the point of the show was that all chemical dependency is the same thing, whether it's barbiturates or speed or alcohol, you know, street drugs or prescription drugs or... It's all the same thing and it all has very, very similar tragic consequences. And I was more proud of this piece than of any I had written that year. And they showed it on the air. It was...

It went on the air once and it went over great and they decided not to run it in the repeat. Why not? Because it dealt with drugs and it got laughs. And there is this prejudice against comedy, which is if you do comedy, therefore it isn't serious. You know, they're just two separate things. But let me just ask you, when a sketch of yours is killed, either before it airs or in this case it was killed for the rerun.

That was very unusual. Yeah, that was unusual. What do you do? I mean, do you just accept it or do you go in and make a big argument about it? Well, we're beginning to try to make an argument higher up. We're thinking maybe this is something General Electric will understand, that we're in competition with cable and Saturday Night Live's on at 1130 and at least at one time had a reputation of being on the cutting edge. And that some of the censorship that we've had this year and in the last couple years has really

been silly. We wrote a sketch called Jew Not a Jew. It was a game show in which, you know, it'd be like a big board with someone's picture would come up and it'd be like family feud and there'd be two families and Penny Marshall's face would come up and it'd be like family feud and there'd be two families and Penny Marshall's face would come up on it. And you go, she was, you know, the star of Laverne and Shirley, now a director, married to all the family's meathead one time, Penny Marshall, Jew or not a Jew? And then ding ding ding ding, take it, Knopfler's. You know, she looks, she's from New York or something, she's got a big nose, we're going to say

Jew. Sorry. Penny Marshall is Italian, Italian descent. But anyway, the point was is that our censors said, no, you can't do this because some people will take it the wrong way. And we're just saying, well, yeah, but it's not intended to be Annie Smith. I'm Jewish. I wrote it. I'm Jewish. This is what we used to do at home when we were sitting at home. We'd see Mel Ferrar on TV and go, you think he's a

Jew? I don't know. And my dad would go, you know, Leslie Howard is Jewish, Alan. Really? Yes, he is. I think it's a preoccupation that a lot of Jewish people have trying to figure out who's Leslie Howard is Jewish, Alan. Really? Yes, he is. Well, I think it's a preoccupation that a lot of Jewish people have trying to figure out who's Jewish and who isn't. Yeah. So it's sort of a living, we made it into this game show. So that never got on the air? No, never get on the air. And it's just stupid, you know? I mean, I think at one point they

like asked some rabbi if it was okay to put it on or something. It's taken it to the top. Yeah. You started on Saturday Night Live the first season it was on, and you've been in and out of the show several times, right? Yeah, Tom and I have worked, we're called Lornegan. We've been there whenever Lorne's there. Lornegan writers, and so we've been there from, we were there for the first five years, and again we've been there when ever more than that lorne again writers and so we've been there from we're there for the first five years and now we've been here there for the last three first show this season that i say you and said i

like it revived the al franken decade uh... how to first come up with it the alfred it okay basically what happened was as in nineteen seventy nine hours at the end of 1979, remember the 70s was the me decade, and everybody was sort of saying, well, the me decade's over, what's the next decade going to be about? And there'd be some guy who would write a thing, My Turn, in Newsweek, and he'd say, this is going to be the pull together generation revolving around

how we use our energy resources. And then at the bottom would say, Ted Hudnut is an energy resource consultant. And I realized that everybody was saying basically that the 70s was the me decade, but the 80s is going to be about this thing that I'm involved with. So, I figured I'd just make it the Al Franken decade. Al Franken, thanks a lot for talking with us. Okay, well thank you. Al Franken speaking to Terry Gross in 1988.

And by the way, his Jew Not a Jew sketch did eventually get on the air later that year, with Tom Hanks playing the game show host. Ten points, ten points. Okay, let's continue. Hands on buzzers. Mayor of New York. Yes, yes, yes. He's a Jew, Bob.

That's right. Ed Koch is a Jew. Ten points. You'll hear another one of their conversations after a break. This is Fresh Air. When Al Franken spoke to Terry again in 1992, he was a more prominent performer on Saturday Night Live. He satirized the recovery movement through his character

Stuart Smalley. Stuart was a caring nurturer who was addicted to 12-step programs and dispensed advice on how to keep a positive attitude. Franken even wrote a book of Stuart's daily affirmations and released an audio tape of his guided visualizations. Both of those works were titled, I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Dog on It, People Like Me.

I'm going to do a great guided visualization tape and I'm going to help people because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. Hello, I'm Stuart Smalley and welcome to You're Good Enough, You're Smart Enough, and Dog On It, People Like You, a healing journey through the dysfunctional forest and other guided visualizations. It's a long title but that's okay, it's appropriate. Now before we go any further in this tape I do want to start with a little warning. Guided visualizations are powerful stuff and hopefully the visualizations on this tape will transport the you inside of you or whatever and free that inside person to be the best you inside of you that you

can be. But I think I would be remiss if I did not tell you that I am not a licensed therapist and while I am being paid to do this I am not a professional in the therapeutic sense and I do worry that I will misuse this power and really screw somebody up you know accidentally how did you come up with the kind of whiny voice that you use for the character you know the voice it's funny was sometimes when you write something How did you come up with the kind of whiny voice that you use for the character? You know, the voice, it's funny, sometimes when you write something, it comes with a voice and this just did.

And I don't know why exactly other than maybe there were a few people. I actually belong to one of those groups. I belong to an anonymous fellowship for friends and family members of drunks or recovering alcoholics, too. And I think there were a number of people in rooms that I've met who sort of remind me of Stuart. And I guess the reason I came up with Stuart and the way he is is that one of the great things I learned going to this fellowship is that I can learn stuff from people who I never in a million years thought I could.

And so I sort of deliberately made Stuart pretty silly and lame in a lot of ways, but very kind of courageous and sweet and vulnerable in his own way. I think that's one of the things I really love about the character is that you do kind of have it both ways. You know, it's like really funny and you're really mocking the character and at the same time you could tell you have a real kind of affection and caring for him too. Well actually, people who know me very well know that there's a lot of steward inside

of me, a lot of the insecurity and a lot of the self-doubt and all that stuff. And I think it's in a lot of people, because I think there are parts of all of us that are very vulnerable and very, you know, can be stupid at times. And I think it's okay, you know, it's fine to give yourself permission to do that and not, you know, beat yourself up. How do you deal with some of the language of the recovery movement, which you mock a lot, but also probably have some respect for too. Like Stuart's always saying, you know, that, well, this isn't my best show, but that's okay.

Right. So there's all this, like, affirmation in the language. Well, affirmations are... First of all, a program has this incredible amount of jargon. Yeah. And the jargon is usually just a shorthand for some concept. So all it really is, is just a way for someone to grasp, hold onto a concept. And most of these concepts are pretty sound. And so, but the jargon can get pretty grating and silly. And yet, when the concept has helped you so much and the way you got to the concept

was through the jargon, you kind of hold onto the jargon. So that's, that Stuart is a program junkie, so he is a jargon junkie. So actually people send me, send me these things. I got one the other day which is, fear is a dark room where negatives get developed. Which is a gift through the mail. So if you got good, if you're listening and you got good ones, send them to me. Stuart will use them. What are some of your other favorites? Another one someone sent to me was, it's easier to put on slippers than to carpet the entire world. Yes, I like that a lot.

And there's one I'm doing that I heard in program that I'm using this week, because Stuart is going to be, I think is going to be on the show this week. He's apologizing for yesterday's show, which is what he always does. And he evidently took Madonna's inventory. And he says, which is a good thing to remember, he says, when you're pointing a finger at someone else, remember there are three fingers pointing back at you. Now tell me your reaction to this aspect of the recovery movement, the people who say humor is a good recovery tool.

Well, Stuart believes that. He says, one of the affirmations is, today I will laugh at least once. And I've already laughed today, so I'm fine. There are some people in the recovery movement who really do believe that humor is good therapy. So although they are humorless themselves, they have taught themselves like little jokes and little ways to be humorous and they're very proud of it and it's kind of like prescription for their health. Do you come across people like that and I wonder how you react to them and how they react to you.

Well, you know, it's funny as you said that it's true and it's the first time I've realized that which I can't believe that's the first time I realized that. Thank you for... No, it is true. There are people who I... Because there are laughter in these rooms. By the way, there's much... I've gone to some Open AA meetings and there's a lot more laughter in Alcoholics Anonymous than in Al-Anon, which is really unfair if you think about it. But no, there are, you're absolutely right, there are people who just by nature have no sense of humor but know that it's a good thing and are working on it. And it's a really, really ugly thing to observe.

But I, you know, God bless him. Al Franken speaking to Terry Gross in 1992. He left Saturday Night Live in 1995 and 14 years later was elected as the Democratic Senator for Minnesota where he served until 2018. We'll end our Saturday Night Live tribute with a brief visit with one of the cast members who became a star during Franken's second stint with the show, John Lovitz, who was part of the repertory company from 1984 to 1990. The characters he created included Tommy Flanagan, the pathological liar and Master Thespian, the pretentious actor. In 1992, he told Terry the story behind

the creation of Master Thespian. Oh, I went to a college at UC Irvine and there was a professor of mine wearing needles who taught me Shakespeare. And when he would do it himself, he'd always go, he'd say, the opening speech from Henry the Fifth, the chorus, and it was, oh, for a musicifier that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention. And he would say like, oh, for a musicifier that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention and he would say like oh for a music fire that was his hand Right just heaven of invention like that and I thought was very funny. I thought I was very good, but very funny, too and I used to imitate him and then uh

And then I kind of put it together with you know And then I wanted to be an actor and an actor is a you know that's what a thespian is So I was like the master thespian. You know, I would just joke around with my friends and say, I'm the master thespian, because I just wanted to be a great actor. That was my goal. One of my favorite sketches of the ones that you've done on Saturday Night Live was Harry Hanukkah.

Oh. Did you write that? No. Al Franken and Mike Myers wrote it. But I based it on, they wrote it and it was really funny, and then I based it on this actor, Ned Glass. Ned Glass, he talks like this. And he was the father on Bridget and Bernie. He was the Jewish father. He was in, he's probably the West Side story. He was Pops, I guess who runs the drug store or the candy store.

And when I was 15 years old... What's wrong with you kids? Well, and I was, you know, if you see these movies, you know, when I was 15 years old, I was at my best friend's house and his father is a doctor and Ned Glass was one of his patients. And I was 15 and my friend's father says to Ned Glass, John wants to be an actor. And he says, you want to be an actor? He goes, what would you do if you hurt your toe? And I said, I'd say ouch.

He goes, would you say ouch if you were Hercules? And he goes, you know what you have to do? Because you know what you have to know to be an actor? You have to know everything. You think you could know everything? You have to know everything. You know? So as if he knew everything. And he goes, you know, that was only, he, and he was, literally, he was the same in everything he played. And he was, you know, he was a good actor and he was funny, but he was always, he was just himself. He was

exactly the same. And he says, you know, there was only two actors who were never typecast, me and Paul Muni. Anyways, I never forgot him, so I... And he was good. He was a funny actor, you know, he's funny, but he never... I guess he always thought he played all these different characters, and really he was just always, hello, how are you? I mean, in Julius Caesar in the movie with Marlon Brando, he's in the opening market scene and everyone's going, my lord, come here and hither and he's in the marketing. You wanna buy some oranges, my lord?

You know? Were there any jokers in your family? Did you have a father who'd sit around the dinner table and tell jokes? Yeah, he used to goof off and he used to make prank phone calls and I mean the look for annoying man I got from him, he used to comb his hair forward and wear his glasses low he didn't act like that but that's where I got the look from and he used to he used to do something, he used to come home and tell us he was his twin brother

Howard we would be like seven or eight. But he would play it so straight for like a half an hour and just insist on it. And then he would leave. And then like 20 minutes later, come back. I guess he'd just wait in his car. And then we'd say, Howard was here.

He goes, he was? So he really had a twin brother, Howard. No, he didn't. Oh, he didn't? No, he just said he did. I see. had a twin brother, Howard? No, he didn't. Oh, he didn't? No, he just said he did. Oh, I see. Okay. We were young.

He would do stuff like that. John Lovitz speaking to Terry Gross in 1992. The 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live is being celebrated all weekend with a live concert streaming on Peacock Tonight, a repeat of the very first episode of SNL in the show's regular late-night Saturday time slot on NBC, and a three-hour live special on NBC Sunday night. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews a new movie that's also an old movie. He'll explain after a break. This is Fresh Air. This week sees the belated release of The Annihilation of Fish,

which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 1999, but is only now opening in theaters for the first time. It's a romantic comedy starring the late trio of James Earl Jones, Lynn Redgrave, and Margot Kidder, and was directed by Charles Burnett, best known for his 1978 classic Killer of Sheep. Our film critic, Justin Chang, has this review of The Annihilation of Fish. The 80-year-old Charles Burnett is often thought of as one of American cinema's last true independents. His movies, most of which focus on working-class Black families in his home city of Los Angeles, have been underseen, underexposed, and sometimes misunderstood. In the past couple of decades, he's been

rightly recognized as one of the greats. His 1978 first feature, Killer of Sheep, was released in theaters in 2007 and widely hailed as a masterpiece. Burnett himself received an honorary Oscar in 2017. Critics have played their part in Burnett's rediscovery, though some have been blamed for burying his work in the first place. His 1983 feature, My Brother's Wedding, was never properly released, for reasons often attributed to a mixed review in the New York Times. And this week brings the overdue arrival of Burnett's 1999 comedy, The Annihilation of Fish, which, because of a pan from variety, as the story goes, never landed an American

distributor. That we can see it now, nearly 26 years later, is due to the remarkable efforts of the UCLA Film and Television Archive, the Film Foundation, and Milestone Films, which worked together to restore the movie. It's now getting a limited theatrical release. There are a lot of reasons to seek out The Annihilation of Fish, especially since it's a rare chance to see three late, great actors on screen together, Lynn Redgrave, Margot Kidder, and James Earl Jones, who died just last year at the age of 93. Here a sixty-something Jones plays a Jamaican-American man who goes by the name Fish, and who's

just been released from a ten-year stay in an LA mental institution. Fish isn't a danger to anyone. He's honest and unfailingly polite. Every so often, though, he gets into an aggressive wrestling match with a demon that only he apparently can see. Around the same time, we meet Redgrave's character, a San Francisco woman named Poinsettia, who, like Fish, has an active fantasy life. She believes she's being romanced by Puccini. Imagine if Miss Havisham from Great Expectations were an opera buff, and you're halfway there. Through a strange turn of events, Poinsettia moves to L.A. and rents an apartment in a

boarding house just across the hall from Fish. The house otherwise appears to be empty, except for their watchful landlady, Mrs. Muldroon, played by a lovely Margot Kidder. One night, Fish finds Poinsettia passed out drunk outside his door, and brings her inside his apartment so she can sleep it off. From this odd encounter is born an equally odd friendship. Despite some initial wariness, they soon take a liking to each other and spend their days together playing cards. While Puccini's ghost is pretty much history at this point, Fish's demon is still very active. During one of their wrestling bouts, Fish asks Poinsettia to referee, even though she, of course, can't see the demon herself. Close your eyes. I am, believe me. Oh, okay.

No biting, no gouging. What I say goes, and are you ready, Fish? Oh, I'm ready. What's his name? Hank. Hank? Hank, you ever heard of a demon named Hank? Princess, that's his name, all right.

Let's get down to business. Fruitcake, all right a demon named Hank. Poinsettia, that's his name, alright. Let's get down to business. Fruitcake. Alright. Ready, Hank. While he clearly isn't afraid of broad comedy, Burnett has no use for strained quirkiness. He doesn't deploy his characters as cheap comic relief, or treat their strangeness as a problem to be solved. He finds the loopy logic even in their most illogical behaviour. I think he wants us to look at Fish and Poinsettia pretty much the same way the landlady Mrs Muldroon

does. Although a touch stern at first, she comes to accept and even appreciate them in all their eccentricities. Whatever may ail Fish and Poinsettia, friendship and love appear to be the only medicine they need. Fish cooks Poinsettia Jamaican food, she takes him to the park, and in time their bond turns romantic. At one point Fish worries that the two of them have nothing in common, to which Poinsettia replies, old is what we have in common. It's one of many lines I laughed at in The Annihilation of Fish, which doesn't shy away from the realities of aging or the fitful complications of an interracial romance. But it doesn't inflate those things into obstacles either. What finally makes Fish and Poinsettia seem like an ideal match is simply the chemistry between the actors themselves, the way Jones's gravitas

tempers Redgrave's intensity, and the way her wild energy brings out his own. Burnett has made a simple yet beguiling film about how two imperfect people can find a kind of perfection in each other's company, and how sometimes in life, and in the movies, good things do come to those who wait. Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed Charles Burnett's The Annihilation of Fish, now playing in selected theaters. On Monday's show, we devote President's Day to understanding the scope of President Donald Trump's power as he continues to potentially break laws, use billionaire Elon Musk to dismantle the government, and circumvent Congress.

I hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Brigger is our managing producer. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld and Diana Martinez. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Susan Yacundi, Anna Baumuman, and Joel Wolfram.

Our digital media producer is Molly C.B. Nesbitt. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David B. Ngooli. On the Throughline Podcast, the myth linking autism and vaccines was decades in the making and was a major moment for vaccine hesitancy in America, tapping into fears involving the pharmaceutical industry and the federal government. No matter how many studies you do showing that this is not a problem,

it's very hard to unring the bell. Listen to Throughline from NPR, wherever you get your podcasts. This message comes from the Kresge Foundation. Established 100 years ago, the Kresge Foundation works to expand equity and opportunity in cities across America. A century of impact, a future of opportunity. More at Kresge.org.