Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff - Harper Steele

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

Harper Steele joins Mark to discuss 13 years writing for Saturday Night Live, penning famous sketches for Tracey Morgan including Woodrow and Astronaut Jones, & writing for The Jon Stewart Show.

Hi, I am Mark Malkoff and welcome to Inside Late Night, presented by latenighter.com. Today's guest is former longtime Saturday Night Live writer and Emmy Award winner Harper Steele. We discuss Harper's 13 years writing on SNL, writing for the John Stewart Show, and so much more. Special thanks to Dan Pasternak. Now it's time to go inside late night. Harper Steele, thanks for talking with us. Oh, yes, you're welcome. So growing up in Iowa, were you a fan of Saturday Night Live? Nope. Nope. My show of my sketch comedy love was Carol Burnett, and my second one was Second City.

And I didn't even watch Saturday Night Live. No, no, I never, never. When did you start watching? Was it you were in college or just, you? Even like writing for the John Stewart show maybe in 1993 or whenever you were there, it was that? I didn't really start watching it until I walked in the building. That's amazing. I'm not being sort of, I knew what it was. I mean, obviously it was in the zeitgeist, but yeah, I just wasn't someone who, well, I just Saturday nights were just not a place where I sat around and watched TV. I don't think.

You actually had a life. Maybe. I don't know. Other than I make guess the original cast, is that didn't exist. You and Jim Brewer, the only ones I know that didn't. He admitted that he never watched the show in a press conference, and that didn't go over great, apparently. We both are idiots, so. Oh, who knew everything?

So, like, when you're growing up, are your parents, are they writers? Because I know John Irving, the author, was a family friend. Yeah. And he'd be over. I mean, people would know the world according to Garb and the cider house rules. Yes. Yes. Yes. I wouldn't say tight family friend. I babysat for him and probably 10 other faculty members' kids. He was at the Writers' Workshop then. He did live next door to me for a couple years. My parents were English professors. The English department was on the same floor as the workshop. And so like David Morel, the guy who did First Blood, I babysat for that guy. You know, I, I, uh,

But yes, my babies have for John Irving many times. And I think there's definitely something about him and me being a kid in Iowa City that was going to be a writer. I definitely was, I was going to be probably the best American novelist ever. That was my goal. And then how do you wind up doing comedy in 1991? Was that the first time you did comedy when you met the Higgins brothers? Clearly, I was not going to be the best American novelist. and those guys got a cable show on a tiny network, and I was going to grad school, and they called me up and said, do you want to come write for two weeks? They didn't know if I was worthy to be hired. I had, so in college, what I ended up doing is I had this old Olivetti typewriter, and I would write letters and things to people, actual post, you know, old-time email letters, and then I would also leave things on people's cars, or they're house doors or things, just fun parodies and things and invitations and all sorts of things. So I was always trying to write a kind of comedy.

We would occasionally in college have these kind of silly poetry readings. And Steve Higgins and I really clicked on this level. And so that was why when Steve Higgins got this thing in New York with his brother, Dave, and their friend Gruber, they were like, hey, let's give Steele a try for two weeks. And I went up there and worked inside the Grace Building, which was HBO, and then I didn't go back to grad school. I was very lucky. My job found me.

I didn't find my job. It was on the comedy channel. How did you meet Steve Higgins? Steve was someone who attempted to go to college at University of Iowa, but never really quite got in and out. He would take a semester and then kind of die off, I think. But I knew his girlfriend at the time. And so he would just be coming in and out through town with his group,

is comedy group, and we just really clicked. Steve becomes the head writer of the John Stewart show. Did you go over there when it was still on MTV? Or did you go there when it was syndicated? I was actually there before Steve. Oh, so you were there for the MTV version and the syndicated version on Paramount. Yeah, so the MTV version, I got hired by the producers Elise Roth and Madeline Smithburg. And I worked whatever two cycles, three cycles, how many cycles we did before we went

to Paramount over at MTV. We were in the, you know, MTV had a kind of adjunct production space that they always used above Colony Bookstores on, I think, 57, 58. Oh, yeah, I remember Colony, sure. Yeah, so something like that, I think. I think we, that's where our offices were. And yeah, they hired me. I don't, obviously, I don't exactly know why, but, you know. My favorite thing on the John Stewart show was talk show, John, which became the go lords on Saturday night live. Can you describe talk show, John? I will describe, yeah. So there was a show in the 60s. This also came out of Higgins Boys and Gruber. In the 60s, there was a show called The Thunderbirds. I think that's Thunderbirds. I think that's the name of it. And it was a British sort of James Bond show,

but complete puppets and really well done, like beautiful. And it's really a fascinating thing to watch still. We would screen these shows, which I'd never heard of, on Higgins Boys and Gruber at this tiny channel. This channel was a show. You could do anything on it. It didn't last. But we screened some of these things. And I really kind of got obsessed about these little puppets. When we got to John Stewart, I'll say this, I'm a crafty person. I like making stuff. And then the other strategy I always liked on a late night show was find a replaceable thing to do. So if you were the person who invented the top 10 list at Letterman, you were golden for life because you were in charge of something that was going to be on every show. I did talk show John. I probably somewhere third

into that Paramount show, I created that. And then almost every week I got to do it. Maybe it's more like halfway through. I can't remember. But I got to do it every week, which it just sort of gives you a comfort level then. It's like, oh, I've got this this week. It's basically Team America. The Parker and Stone took what you did. Yeah. Well, there was another guy, Rob Cohen, who was doing it at MTV with another series. It was really funny. It was in the zeitgeist for sure.

A lot of retro TV was in the zeitgeist. And Rob Cohen did a really funny, definitely marionette version, which was what this other British one was. And I did a really lo-fi version of it. And then when I got to SNL, I just, I don't know, I put a little more, there was more money, basically. You could do a little bit more, and we'll talk about that. But how was it working with John Stewart before he was John Stewart? We don't, we're not, our comedy styles are not the exact theme. I'm silly and goofy, and John is incisive and witty and smart.

It's a big difference. I'm a dummy, and John's very smart. But John was the quickest person, I think. I'll back that up. John was the quickest person I've ever worked with. He was fast, funny and fast. And also, he was a great, I mean, he'd just been already been doing stand-up for, I don't know how many years before that. So he also just had a good sense of what was going to work and what wasn't going to work. And as someone who wasn't dealing with audiences at that point, and I hadn't done anything in front of audiences, I learned a lot from John Stewart. He could look at a script and go do this, do that, cut that. And that's not something I just would do it because I wanted my job, but then I would see the results, and I was like, oh, yeah, this guy has a lot to offer people. What were some highlights of the show when you were there? Obviously, Dave Letterman coming on as the last guest and telling John, you know, this, you shouldn't be upset about this. I'll tell you my favorite story. I'm not even sure this is really a good highlight of the show. But Sarah Jessica Parker was a guest on the show.

John was interviewing her and John asked her a question about a stalker because, and I think you could do this. And I remember Letterman doing a few times in TV. I don't think people like to even talk about them now. I think you, if you have a stalker, which a lot of celebrities have and it's creepy and it's an awful thing. I think you just sort of like, it's like a person running on a football field, don't get them on camera. Don't talk about it. But in this where it's a little unsavier time maybe. John goes, so I hear you have a stalker. Anyway, Sarah is talking and then she's kind of like, the audience is like, oh, or laugh. I don't know, they weren't laughing, but whatever they're reacting like, she's looking around and she goes, oh, and you know what, he's right there and points

to the front row. So the person that had a restraint against her was sitting in the front row in the audience watching her on the job steward show. That was legit. Did security come? Yeah, security came. The show shut down for a second. They got rid of the guy. I think there was a little bit of, like, weird sort of like, yeah, like, I don't what you call that feeling. I don't know. I mean, you'd have to have Sarah Jessica Parker. She rolled beautifully with it, obviously, but it was such a weird moment. It was bizarre. So Steve Higgins was head writer of the syndicated paramount version. So then the show ends in June of 95. You do not have a job. And then Steve Higgins, Higgins winds up with the number two slot, the head writer gig, Jim Downey had left. And so Steve can pretty much hire. I mean, I guess Steve Corrin and Fred Wolfer back, maybe one or two. But Steve Higgins is hiring.

So did you even have to do a packet? Or were you just hired based on your merit that Steve knew? Honestly, I don't think, I don't, in those days, I'm always sort of the whole packet thing, the whole endless amounts of packets that. people right these days. I've benefited probably from what was, I am a trans woman, but an old boys club. No one just said you can have the job. You had to go talk to Lorne. The person that went in before me, very funny guy, go back a few steps. So this John Stewart Show ended, I immediately applied to Letterman because there was a guy over there who had worked with us at the comedy

channel. It might have been Donic Carey. Anyway, I applied to Letterman and was rejected. I had been rejected to Letterman maybe twice, maybe three times before, like after the Comedy Channel ended, I was out of work for a year and I applied to a lot of places and got rejected. The S&L thing, Steve said, I can get you an interview with Lorne, but I'm not, I'm not hire, I can't hire any. But what we had going into that show, and I've heard this from Mike Shoemaker, is that there was first of all, there was this giant turnover at S&L. So they needed staff. Second, so this was all about lucky timing, too. Second, even though we were canceled, the John Stewart show was considered a young hip show. So, and you can agree with that or disagree. I just know that was kind of the perception

in the city. It came out of MTV, and then it went over to Paramount. And, And John was a cool guy, and we all were like the young, new comedy people in town. And so I benefited from that probably as much as the Steve relationship. I'm not saying I didn't. Steve got me in the room. Anyway, I sat outside Lauren's office for an hour and a half like everyone does. This person that I knew had came out of the office. They'd been in there for 45 minutes.

They were laughing. It sounded like the best time ever. I mean, this is almost stereotypical. One of the Lornettes, that's Lauren's assistance, walks up to Lauren and whispers something in his ear. And then she says to me, you can go in. And Lorne has a, has to get to a meeting. So I had about five minutes. That was all I had.

Lorne looks at me, asks me a few questions. I didn't try to be funny. I just talked about my past and where I came from. Then I went downtown to this bar and met this other guy that had just come out of that room. and he was like, I got it. I mean, I'm golden. And I was like, yeah, I didn't even get to talk to Lauren. And I've heard this from many different people.

He's already got a sense of who I think he wants to hire based on people had seen my work. You know, Mike Schumacher had seen stuff I had done, talk show John and stuff on John Stewart. So someone was familiar with my work already before I walked in that place. And yeah, and then magically I got hired. I'm sure Steve was like, if you're thinking about, if I'm on. the fence. If you're thinking about these people, please hire this person because I know they can do it. And, you know, I am forever grateful to all these people who have helped me. Did that person get the job, the one that was before you were that was 45? No. No. No, I mean,

that person went on to work in other areas, but did not get that job. You would think, but you just never know. Yeah. No, I mean, I think the sphinx of Lorne is that you don't know. You're feeling great. And then you're not the one chosen and you're feeling shi and you are. I mean, very much sort of in a nutshell, you can't decipher what's going on inside his bizarre. Yeah, 45 minutes. Yeah, I mean, you would think you would want that time five minutes and you got hired. I know that you did an interview where you said it took me a while to find my bearings. How long did it take you to get your first sketch on? What was your first sketch? I think it was the second show where Chevy Chase was hosting. So I did pretty good right out of the gate. The problem was the sketch

was based on this thing, the hot zone that was a very popular book, and it took place in a laboratory where everyone's in like hazmat suits. And Chevy being a bumbling fool is a kind of careless person in this environment, and it was supposed to be funny. Lauren really loved the concept, I think. I had no idea how to execute a sketch at that point. I just, I was not from the sketch world. I did not have any kind of background in that. It was a disaster. So it got to dress. It did not make it to air. And that sort of shut me down for a while. That's what happens at us. You know, when you look bad, you have to climb your way out of that hole. And so I didn't climb my way out of that hole for a long time because I just, I didn't. Here's how I climbed my way out of that

hole. I think I have a sort of unique story that would not happen today. I think people have to understand, again, the environment of S&L right at this moment. Most of the staff had just left. The show was going through a big upheaval. This was the greatest moment for someone to get hired who needed time. You know what I mean? This was the best time in the history of the show probably for a newbie to get hired and then there was patience to get time. Lauren gave me all kinds of patience. What I say is he gave me all the rope I needed to hang myself. I failed week to week writing sketches.

I wasn't picking up the form around mid-fall. And that was true of a lot of writers. It wasn't just me. Around mid-fall, I started writing things. I got so angry, actually, because I just assumed I'd be getting fired. That I just started, there's two ways you can go, I think, when you decide you're going to get fired.

You can go run around the office. and look kind of sweaty and say, what does the show need? I got to write something for the show. Or you can say, I'm getting fired. I'm going to, I guess I just got to write something that is, I think, funny and silly. I went to the second route, which I'm so happy I did because I've stuck to it the rest of my life. And I didn't get sketches on. What I got was the room.

The room began to really appreciate me. they liked my style they liked my sketches lorne hadn't caught up to it he wasn't there yet um i had a sketch that i wrote called zipper boots if someone uncovers it it probably won't look that good but the room it really it really worked in the room it starred will feral i'm sitting there and rewrites on thursday the sketch was not chosen and will i've said told this story before will walks in with a pair of Floreshine Zipper Boots for me. It was like an acknowledgement that you are part of the comedy group here. We want you to be around. And me and Dennis McNicholas wrote some things together. We got a few things on after the Christmas break. And then I was helping in the room. I was helping

in the rewrites. What did you and Dennis get on, if you remember? I'm not, I'm the worst person. That's okay. Dennis, by the way, is the best person. Yeah, Dennis, you met at John Stewart when, yeah, 22 years old. Yeah, Dennis has an encyclopedic knowledge of comedy. We wrote a sketch that Dennis wrote called Murders in the Room, Morg, that might have been the second season, I think it was the first. We wrote one with Quentin Tarantino that wasn't very good about a kind of hobbyist. I don't even remember what that one was about.

There was a, there was, yeah, I'm forgetting. But we as a team got a few things on, and then I don't. don't want to get ahead of you, but the summer was a, like a summer for a lot of SNL people, even people who have had success. The summer was a frightening experience because you don't know if you're going to come back until August a lot. And Lauren calls me in the middle of the summer and asks this ominous question, do I want to come back? And I think that was terrifying because obviously you want to come back. Why are you asking me this? And so it was sort of, yeah it was scary um by by that time i think i was feeling okay about my comedy the first show back

the second season i had three things on the show so you had big brawn which was the the commercial with will feral and molly shannon at big brown i had the cold open and i think uh there might have been a piece at the end of that show like a 10 to one piece that i had on too that was tom hanks um what i don't remember the cold open i'm pretty good with my s n l and i'm I know Hanks hosted the show. I don't remember it, although. It's amazing to get three pieces. Oh, you know what?

I had Big Braun, and then I had another commercial parody on that was, I could be wrong about all the, because I don't really keep track of this. But I feel like there was a, I don't know if I had the cold open. I had Big Braun, and then I had this other sort of very much more topical parody about Priceless. Do you remember that commercial series about, that always ended priceless. I don't, I'm blanking on what it was.

Anyway, I did another commercial parodies. So I had two commercial parodies and then, oh, and then the sketch at the end was the sketch that Tom Hank did called, um... Was it the drunken office? Yes, it was that. That did very, very well. That was, yeah, the Tim Meadows... I don't remember doing well.

I probably was too scared. I don't, I didn't love it. I was more than I were joyed two things up front and another thing at the in the in the back i saw tom hanks you know he came by from time to time to just watch the show with kids or something i saw tom hanks later and i was like i thanked him because he chose that sketch you know in the room and i was like you kind of saved my career and he was very funny and very you know he was laughing and yeah that sketch was called the drunken asses and co-workers that were singing drunk and just remember they were singing to Billy Joel

and then one of them said something offensive, racist to Tim Meadows and then said, don't worry, you're one of the good ones. Yeah. That's what Will Ferrell said. And then getting back to Big Braun, can you describe it for the listeners that haven't seen Big Braun? Big Brons was just, the way it's a melding of two things. It's a kind of standard commercial parity method. but there was a when growing up there was a commercial called brawny which was a paper towel it still exists and it had a big i think it had a

a big lumberjack on it or something like a because it was it was this paper was so tough and absorbent it could you could use it in your kitchen more than your average paper towel the very tough paper towel brani anyway i decided to make it uh big brawn was a tampex company and um molly Shannon and Will played the big Braun character, but it was a song. I wrote a lot of music at S&L. The shame is I think some of my sketches don't get to be replayed because they don't want to pay the... It's like the go lords for, I know one is online, but it's not on YouTube that I know. It's because I use needle drops. I'm a record collector and I would be sitting in my office and I would find some piece of crazy music that then I would want to sing over. And back in the old

days, S&L, that was an easy-peasy. Now everything's gotten so litigious that they, you need to have original music so that they can play it forever. I don't think people anticipated their forever of it either. So, yeah, a lot of those sketches got lost. What are some of the other commercial parodies that you were, that are well-known that you wrote, or ones that you like that you did? The one that I think people responded to the most was, oops, I grab my pants. because I love shit. Oh, that was you. Okay. Yeah, that did get a lot of. Yeah, and we, we ran that one a lot. I want to say I did a lot of commercial parodies. I, but if you're going to ask me what I liked and what my favorites of these things were, I literally don't remember

them. I do not remember things that I wrote. I think commercial parodies were an area where I actually did pretty well, but I just don't remember. I do want to mention that in terms of Tracy Morgan's work on SNL. I do believe that his best work by far was done with you, writing the Woodrow's character for Britney Spears and astronaut Jones, which that premiered in February of 2002. And then with Tracy Morgan, with Woodrow, that was May of 2000, both Britney Spears hosting it. The thing that makes Woodrow work, and I want you to talk about the process and everything, is Tracy plays it so straight. And he sings this with his soul and he really believes in the sweetness. And it's just that commitment to that character is what really got me. But can you tell people about that and how

it started? Yeah. I mean, that's why I love Tracy. He's a raw human being. He is a human being. And if you can tap into the human side of Tracy, there's great pathos there, great emotion. And also an intense amount of humor obviously. I want to back up and say, for Tracy, there were three of us really working different areas of the show. Tim Hurley, he created Safari Planet and Brian Fellows, and Tishon Shannon picked up the mantle on that when Hurley left and Tishan wrote all that stuff. I think there was a kind of, and Tishan wrote for Tracy when he could. I loved Tracy, though, because there was something so messy. and wonderful and sloppy about him that I just really gravitated towards. Obviously, I wasn't

culturally in tune with who he was. So when I took things to Tracy, I would always say, hey, how would you say this? Because I could write, but, you know, I wasn't going to, I wasn't going to be arrogant enough to think that I'm going to write like a person from the Bronx and the projects. But savvy, smart, everything, that sketch, there was just nothing I like playing better with Tracy then. And it's different in Astronaut Johns, where it's just a lascivious human being, but in the Woodrow stuff,

that's literally my favorite kind of sketch writing. I wrote a sketch with him and Maya, which I think might still show up every once in a while. It was a Christmas sketch where they're both in a bar singing about their favorite drinks and they're both, you know,

drunk bar, you know, people. And they're just singing about delicious drinks. It's very sweet. and silly they're making they've come up with a whole musical around their drinks that they're drinking the other one that i did with tracy that i love once again that is very musical oriented is this one called fred which you probably won't see because again it came off of a easy listening record i had and i just made up lyrics to it but it's him and maya again on a train having an argument that breaks into a song i you know it's he's just he was just fun to work with he was great in terms

of Woodrow with Britney Spears. It's kind of a famous sketch that you really, I don't think it's on YouTube due to music, but he takes Britney Spears into the sewer, which where he lives and sings this very tender song. You can tell by the lyrics that he is not mentally sound, but it's so sweet the words. Yeah, I think, again, I don't mind,

this is a lot of comedy people who will disagree with me. I don't mind the awe in a comedy audience. I'm not a, I'm a hopeless romantic, so I don't mind that as part of the process. What my sort of more colder comedy person likes about a sketch like that, I'll point it out so if anyone wants to go back and watch it. One of my favorite things in sketch writing was when you had to make a transition. In that sketch, a bunch of rich people are sitting around having coffee, and then this homeless person, Tracy Morgan, comes in and starts bothering them, there was two.

There was Britney Spears, and then there was Kate Hutz. Kate Hudson, thank you. They both feel sorry and they say, hey, let's not, and they're picking on him, you know, in a very cold and very archway that I don't think a lot of humans would do, but we are an awful society. Yeah, the other people, not Britney Spears and Kate were nice. Yeah, no, these people in this cafe, you know. Anyway, so now in the mechanics of a sketch, Tracy has to go to another set that is a presumably underground. So that's going to take about 30 seconds. We need to see. sit on that first set for 30 seconds at least, sometimes longer. And what are we going to do there? That was one of my absolute favorite places in a sketch because it's nonsense. You're just filling time. And I think if you go back and look at some of these sketches that I wrote with transitions, I'm having a lot of fun with, I really, that's really still a favorite area of mine. Like it's just like this is a silly place to do a kind of waste people's time on air. It's nothing. Yeah. It's

It's really, yeah, those sketches, and I know that you did that twice, and I know astronaut Jones a few times, but I think Tracy's best work. It's hard to believe that Tim Meadows was on the show for as long as he was without a really, really huge hit. I mean, I look back and, you know, Ike Turner was popular. He did a sketch called Perspectives. Perspectives was done a number of times, and that was great. But this is October of 1997, and they did it, you all did it 15. times and it just it just worked was that did tim meadows came come up with that did you and dennis macnicholas come up with that or how did what was the process for ladies man so um tim had this character i don't know if he had a name i'm very good at names i'm going to say i came up with

the name but i don't know that it's it's leon phelps possibly possibly it was something but tim had a character he used to call in to radio shows in in chicago and he's He was doing the voice for me and Dennis, and it was ladies' man. It was Leon Phelps. And so he came to us to look for a format. If you want to break it down, Tim could do the character at the drop of the hat. So you're writing things he's saying. Dennis was a Harvard kid.

He was great at format and getting the jokes to be really sharp. And I was great at language and goofy shit. There you go. That's the formula of that little. trio and all of us were good at the other things too but if you wanted to say like who was like Dennis probably came up with the format I think like the advice show maybe he probably threw out there all of this is guesswork this is what I think might have happened and then Tim was able to riff no matter what the format was and then I was able to riff with Tim I'm good at getting into character

I always would get excited when they would do cold opens that had nothing to do with politics or anything topical. And they did that with the ladies man a few times. Now, when that happened, when ladies man was the cold open, it's a political, like a Jim Downey piece just didn't do well in dress. And they would move the sketch up to the cold open or was it designed sometimes to be the cold? Yeah, that was often the case. I mean, they would just, things would move around between dress and air. I actually wrote a lot of cold opens. I did write a lot of cold opens. I was going to ask you that because I always thought, and I guess incorrectly, because I'm you're going to be talking about this is, is that Jim Downey really kind of own that real estate of

the opening of the show with politics. But you would write some of those political pieces? Yeah, I wrote a lot. And he did own them. And if he wrote one, he was going to get it. If he didn't write one, it would fall to someone else. And, you know, there were a few of us, McKay or Tom Giannis and me. And, you know, by the time we got to the great female writers like Tina, it became and maybe her and Seth's spot too, but I had it for a long time. I was the second person. Downey was always the first. But what you were saying about replacing, I would write a cold open sometimes, and Downey would write a cold open. And it was a de facto thing. Jim's would be done. But Lauren wanted to see mine. So we had moved it over to Weekend Update or something.

And then if mine killed that update, we'd do a little switcheroo. Downey's would become a later sketch and mine would become the cold open. And that happened plenty of times. Did you write the Will Ferrell, George W. Bush? Heck no. That's poor Jim Downey. I mean, that was the genius of Jim Downey, he sat around and, I mean, he, mine were sillier, a little goofier. His was very well observed. You know, he's a, but I mean, I do like to point these things out, and it sounds a little snarky, but Jim Downey is the, Jim Downey, Tina Faye, you know, I don't know, Smigel, these people are,

the first ballot Hall of Famers for Saturday Live, who also hit 350. They were bad a lot of times. Tina was the only one I think who was 750, and I think that was crazy. But I think... You thought she what? I'm sorry.

I think she batted 750 or something. I don't know. She was just a really good sketchwriter right from the get-go. But everyone fails a lot. And Jim Downey failed a lot, just like everybody else. So that place, his place as the cold opener, like I said, could sometimes get knocked out by someone else's thing or a ladies man or, you know, something else that would happen just because Lauren is looking out for what's going to get people going at the top of the show. Yeah, I've been to the show where I've seen something that didn't work at this of the cold open and they would move something from update like a commentary to the... Yeah, that's what I did that. I did that probably, yeah.

I don't know how many times, but that was a spot that I took to my advantage plenty. What was it like when you were pitching? You were meeting the host on Mondays and you were pitching. Would you pitch actual ideas or would you make up fake pitches? I know some people would do. I know Nora McDonald a lot of times would just come up with this stuff. You could properly not do on television. But what was that like for you and just observing everybody else doing the pitches and the host? Yeah, I think there was two sort of strategies in there. There was there aren't a strategy of, this is a sketch I thought of, and would you want to do it? And the host of hearing that might go, like, I'm going to go talk to that writer on Tuesday

night because I did like it. Or there was the strategy, I'm going to hold my car as close to the vest, and I'm going to make up three fake pitches, which is what I did every Monday. Because, well, that sounds very like I always had a strategy. A lot of times you don't have an idea on Monday, so you're like scrambling at that point. This is, that's the hard part of Saturday Live. Like, you know, it's not like you just are an endless font of ideas. Monday, you need that Monday, sometimes Tuesday, sometimes all the way until 4 o'clock in the

morning on Wednesday to, you know, if something will hit you. And if you don't have anything, then when you go into that pitch meeting, you're going to pitch, yeah, you're going to pitch anything just to get a laugh. I mean, that was what I would do. I would use that pitch room to get a laugh and get out. Two pitches, see if I could get the room to laugh, and then we're all going home or going to the bar. How was Norm during his pitches? How would you describe that? Norm pitched the same pitch for a whole year, I think.

What was it? There was a paper that people used to hand out on the subway called The Street News. and I don't really remember the pitch, but he came in. It was about the offices of the street maze. It was a paper that unhoused people carried around with them in the subway and could sell for a dollar. I don't think I'd remember. I'm sure I bought them out of what their purpose was, I think was sort of charity, but I don't remember reading him.

I don't even remember the content. Norm wanted to do a sketch. that the street news offices, like a real news office and what that was. He pitched the same pitch. And he would always in that norm way start that first sentence with, have you ever heard of this paper called the street news? And then the whole room's already laughing because it's like, gee, he's going to do it again. And the poor host is sitting there like, why is everyone laughing?

He just said a sentence, but we all know it's coming. Yeah, Norm and I know Jim Downey, I think they, talked about it just as something that, you know, just kind of an inside joke, but Norm really wanted it. It was the inside of the street news with homeless people urinating on typewriters and 500 words on offensive stuff I don't want to say. But yeah, Norm would, I didn't know that he did that for an entire year, though. That was his. Yeah, I don't think, I think I'm almost positive. Norm didn't, Norm was not the most, we can rest in peace. He was. He was, was not the most politically correct human being on the planet.

He knew he was doing weak and up big. I don't, and he wrote great sketches, by the way. Norm wrote really good comically on, like very middle of the road, almost like an old Carol Burnett sketch. He wrote me an example. He wrote an incredible game show sketch that was about, and again, I'm the worst person at this, but the premise was, you know, you had to turn over a letter on a board,

like Wheel of Fortune or something. And the guy who was doing the letter turning it had been there for 40 years from the very beginning. And he was just, and it was played by Norm, I think. And he was really old and moved really slow. And this is almost like a Bob and Ray sketch. It was really funny. It was Bill Pullman hosted the show and he was the game show host. It's a neat thing sketch. I love the sketch. It was very much in, that was Norm's humor. He loved old Bob and Ray things. He loved old school humor. That's where we connected because we grew up an older TV. We love that stuff. But he also was so not politically correct. You know, no one was ever going to do this, street news. No one was ever going to do that.

You know, it was just, it was never going to not, no, it was just not going to happen. And to this day, like, I think if you pitched it now in a room, you wouldn't have a job. What was it like when people would bring in guest writers? I know for Charlie Sheen brought in Tom Hurtz, Phil Rosenthal, and Mike Royce came in with Ray Romano. What was that like? Because, It's hard enough for the writers to get sketches on and then have the guest writers. How did that work? It really depends what their attitude is coming in, you know, if they're nice people. Tom Hurtz is a good friend of mine.

Yeah, he's a really funny guy. I mean, he wrote Larry Sanders, the monologue joke. I love Tom Hurtz, and if he had a good Charlie Schen sketch, which I don't remember. It was 10 to 1, but it was, it was. You know, good for him. Yeah, I mean, he's a, he's a, he's, a very funny writer. Phil Rosenthal was really good friends with Steve Higgins. Probably still is. I didn't know him that well. I don't remember. I'm trying to remember. I wouldn't name names, but there probably were writers who came in with the attitude like we're going to take this show over. And that's always the kind of person that would rub you the wrong way. But, you know, it came with the territory. And yeah, as a writer, there's only a few slots on that show. So you're always pissed when the slots get eaten up by people's writers. But, you know, You know, there's a lot of people, Sean Hayes came in there with a couple of writers and they

mounted a couple sketches, I think. But Sean Hayes was so sweet. He was like, hey, guys, if these guys' sketches are not good, let me know. And, you know, the audience maybe let them know one. One in the room was like, eh, we don't want to do them. And, you know, I mean, that's the way you enter that room. It's like, you guys do this. And those were the better hosts. Those were the better groups that came in. And, you know. He was really funny. I liked his monologue on the piano and Rubik's Cube. Sean Hayes. He was great. You became one of the headwriters. Who had the best packet of anybody that you have ever read, like one or two people that you remember reading? And you said to yourself,

I have to hire this person. I mean, obviously you have to meet them to make sure that they're okay as a person. But was there anybody that stands out one or two people? Geez, I don't, I don't, you know, that would be a really hard one because over the summer, you're getting sent 100 packets more. You're getting sent two legal boxes full of packets. For me personally, Colin Joost stood out. Yeah, 2005. Yeah.

And I thought he was exceptional. I'll say one that it's weird or it's not part of the process you're talking about. But when I later was the creative director at Funnier Die, I sent over a guy named Ryan Perez. I thought his packet that he wrote for the show was the best packet I'd ever seen. Yeah, he was a funny guy for sure. How would that work when you were a head writer? Would you and Tina and Dennis McNicholas or whoever was there have to read everything that was submitted?

Or was it broken down into friends of the writers, people that we know? I think you read everything that was submitted. Obviously, like, comedy is built around. around, people are going to cringe at this, the nepotism of it. But it's built around a lot around trust and group. Someone who came from UCB that knew Amy Poehler and she could vouch for, you definitely are going to take more seriously than just a rando sent in from some agent packet. But you had to read all of them. And I read all of them. So did anybody actually come in or do you know one or two people that were hired just as blind submissions from agents?

because normally it did seem that, you know, this person, like Colin was the head, was at Harvard, was the Lampoon person or somebody from UCB, but would people just submit blindly and be able to get hired? Yeah, one of the best writers in the history of the show, Paula Pell, was just hired out of nowhere. She was like performing at Disney on a. Yeah, she was in Florida. I didn't know, know that it just came, that came in. I thought Lauren heard about her. Again, Mike Shoemaker saw a thing or maybe Marcy Klein or someone saw. She did something for USA. She did something for an USA network, I thought, but I could be completely off. Yeah, I think she did a commercial. And they were looking at that or something, and they were like, this chick is funny.

She literally is one of the best writers that ever worked on the show. Yeah, she was prolific as anybody. She did not come out of any of our, you know, standard lampoon, second city grounds things. She didn't come out of that door. When did you and Will Ferrell start working together? I wanted to ask you about the Robert Goulet pieces that you wrote. The one I like is the car commercial with the various ringtones that he sings, and you have the fake sheep.

I will say I wrote for Will like everyone did pretty quickly. We also spoke a kind of very common comedy language. We really sort of, we were sympathical. We sort of understood each other's. We were on the same brainwave on a lot of things. You asked me one of my favorite moments. at the John Stewart's show. My favorite, well, I had a lot of favorite moments at S&L, but one of my favorites was we were doing a Robert Goulet sketch, and it was Robert Goulet hawking his, I think,

his album full of, like, rap zones. In the car with him was Jay-Z, and two members of Jay-Z sort of, like, working crew, like people who had been on records with him, and I don't remember their names. And the sketch went okay. Robert Goulet sketches always went okay for the live audience. I love them to death. But the sketch went okay. I got called in. I think it was Marcy said, can you go talk to Jay Z? And that was one of the great. So I'm pulled into the green room where there's a music green room and then there was sort of the guest green room. I don't even remember who the guest was on that show. But I was pulled into the green room, Jay-Z, and he's sitting there with a giant crew of people. I'm just like this scared, you know, kid from Iowa.

And I walk in and he goes, hey, man, I need to get two favors from you. One of them is, can you not have will say the N-word? Because he said, and I won't say it, but he said it in a kind of what I thought was a comic way. It was not harsh. It was harsh. I mean, in hindsight, we've all learned. I would not. And immediately also, I was like, of course, if you don't want him to say this, why would I?

No, he's not saying the N word. Because I think one of the raps had the word in it, and Goulet was doing the rap. So he said, don't let him do that. I said, great, he's not going to do that. Then the next thing he said was, and they were, in the sketch, in the dress, they're all smoking a joint. and, you know, it's a fake joint. And he turns to me and goes, can we get a real joint? And I ran, found the guy that was the notorious person who could get us that.

And in that sketch on the live show, that is a real joint, I do contend, we're past the statute of limitations, I think, I do contend that that is the only real drug on the show ever. People were drugged up. That's the history of the show. I was going to mention, I'm not going to mention the person's name, but I know when you were there, at least one host was drunk on air. I couldn't really tell, but did that occasionally happen? Yeah. I think people just had different way of dealing with anxiety and nervousness.

I'm sure there were drugs being used and stuff. I'm the worst. I don't have a sense of people who are, you know, high or not. I can't tell. On a Tuesday night, how many sketches would you write on average? Would you get your initials on like four pieces, three pieces more? No, no. I was a different animal at that show than most people.

I wrote by myself. I occasionally wrote with, if Tracy Morgan, like I'm on Astronaut Jones, help me rewrite it in his language. He would, I would be steal Morgan. And if Will and I wrote a sketch, which we did from time to time, it would be, you know, either feral, steel, steel, feral. Most sketches that ever came up and read through that I was a part of just said steel. They didn't, I didn't write with people. I didn't like it.

It was not a process that I was good at. That was rare. That was extremely rare. Jack Handy would write by himself a lot, but everyone. Yeah, Jack Handy was another one. Jim Downey generally wrote by himself. I think people who didn't come from an improv background like myself, it was. more variety background. That was sort of more comfortable for me. So yeah, I didn't, I didn't write

with people. I'm sure my name is on other people's sketches if I offered up thing. Dennis and I wrote a few together. Your name is on monkeys throwing poop at celebrities. It's Steve Higgins. Well, that one I wrote. Steve Higgins, Eric Kenward, you and Jeff Richmond did music. So you did. That was steel. And then I'm sure, you know, there was some input by two funny people, Kenward and Higgins. And then if you're, the ethical thing at S&L is to make sure that you're crediting people. And so those people, like Steve Higgins is, I believe, on astronaut Jones. If he's not, then I'm a terrible person because Steve Higgins had the very funny idea of the way astronaut Jones ends is, this has been a Tracy Morgan production, blah, blah, blah,

Tracy Morgan directed Traylor. And that was all Steve. And so, yeah, I mean, if someone gave you something for your sketch, you had to put it on there. the monkeys throwing poop at celebrities with Jason Bateman and then you have the Sean Connery with Darrell Hammond. That guy, that did very well. That was 2005. I don't think I did Sean Connery though. That was, if you're talking about the, obviously the Jeopardy, that was. Oh, no, I'm not. I thought that they had that Sean Connery was that, yeah, he was tricked in appearing on the show that that was one of the the times they did it, but it could be off. Oh, okay. No, no, no. I don't, yeah, I don't, I don't, yeah, I don't remember. I remember the Jason Bateman poop thing and if John Connery was the other guest

and that that would make sense. Oh, and if Sean Connery was the other guest, then you would give that, then that's why Steve Higgins' name would be on there because he was the Connery expert. I mean, Dennis was really good at the jokes for Jeopardy, but Steve was, he did a Connery impression as good as Dary and so you could sit in a room and he would give you the Connery. I knew somebody that was an extra in a sketch that Tina wrote and they were there Saturday rehearsing. And in the middle of the rehearsal, Tina in front of everyone said, this sketch does not work. And sure enough, it did it address it died.

Could you tell that on a Saturday when you're putting your sketch up that would that happen where you like, this doesn't work? Yeah. Yeah, you could tell it during blocking. If you were smart, you would be scrambling after Thursday to try to make it better. and I'm sure Tina worked her off after that run through on Saturday to try to pick it up and try to find better ways to make it better. But yeah, you knew.

Well, I take that back. You sort of got a sense after being there for a long time, what was going to work, what wasn't going to work. On the other hand, things you really thought were going to kill could also die. That would happen. What was the difference between Adam McKay when he was headwriter versus Tina? Did they work different? Could you tell a tone of the show that was a little bit different?

not I mean the show isn't written by one person you know what I mean it's no but Tina and McKay had a lot of pull when you're a head writer you definitely have an influence on what gets in and what gets out is that is that fair to say I would say yes and no I mean the influence it comes down to two is the most important two people are the host and Lorne and then it falls to the trusted inner circle which I was a part up for four years but it was sometimes. You know, Steve Higgins was always there. Yes, Adam was there. But just as quickly as Adam might be overstepping his bounds in that room, Lauren might suddenly go, you know what, I don't want to do these Adam sketches. So that could happen. Or Tina. I think Tina was a more powerful voice in the

room than Adam, quite honestly. How so? Just because I think she, her sketches were, they worked. Adams were weirder a lot of times. They were off the wall and they were. They work to sketches her. She's an amazing sketchwriter. And so Lauren follows sort of the leader, and Tina was the leader. Same with Adam. Adam was the leader. Adam, and by the way, Adam is an amazing sketchwriter.

He's one of the all-time great. See, it's a lot of hall of fame as well. I just, it's, I don't, the difference to me, if you go back and look, I think people get a little in the weeds on these things, because if you go back from the very beginning to the very end, the show sucks. it always sucks. And there are two sketches that are amazing every time. And then you ask your friends what those two sketches are and they're different.

So the same two sketches are not the same for everyone. Watching a whole show from 76 to golden period or 78 the golden period, if you had to watch one from beginning in it, you'd be like, holy fuck, I never knew it was this bad. That's what Tom Davis said. Tom Davis, I knew him before he passed away for a while, and he yet, he couldn't believe it. And I know Jane Curtin publicly said in the last year that her and her husband and I think maybe one of her kids watched. And they're like, nothing's funny. But, you know, it's hard, I think, you know, 50 years or whatever later. The idea is that nothing's not funny. It's that comedy and Lauren would say it. It's a big tent.

You know, there's a lot of things in the circus you're allowed to look at. You're allowed to look at the tight ropes are the people playing with seals or everything. And what appeals to you? And so there are a bunch of sketches for a bunch of different kinds of people on the show. So it can't be, it's not one voice. It's not Second City. I love Second City because I consistently thought that funny voice from those people was very consistent. S&L is not a consistent show. It just occasionally has bursts of genius that I wrote always. That's a joke. It has true. It has bursts of genius that, you know that came out of there that are to this day you know cowbell that are amazing moments in comedy history but it also had a lot of crap Alex Bayes told me that Fred Armisen once in a while

would come into a read-through and write a sketch about the read-through that they were having that was currently going do you recall any of those sketches god no they make me just the whole idea makes me laugh that Fred and of course they would never get on this that's very Fred Armisen like The closest I came to being met, I think, was I wrote a sketch called Give Up the Ham. At the end of the sketch, there's a monologue by Will Forte, where he talks about getting a free sample of Rinecliff beer or some kind of beer. I can't remember, which is exactly what happened. They sent the show, this company, this small, like, microbrewery company, sent a bunch of free beer up to the show on Tuesday. and I drank a bunch of it, and then I wrote a sketch.

And so I told that portion of the story in the sketch at the end of the sketch. And so that was as meta as I got, but I don't remember the Fred ones. They must have been so excited. In your opinion, do you think that the best sketches in readthrough got picked? No, I mean, but there isn't a writer alive who thinks that. You know, every writer is biased towards their type of humor. Did the sketches that got the most laughter get picked? all the time. I mean, generally, the ones that worked the best on Wednesday night and read

through got picked. And then there was that scattering of ones that, for whatever reason, there was a lot of reasons. The host wanted it. Lauren wanted it, you know, someone viciously, Adam or Tina or Steve viciously fought for it in the room. Or, you know, there was, or this is a topical sketch. It's a shitty sketch, but we're going to make it better. Something like that, there was a lot of reasons why a bad sketch might have gotten on, but you had to kind of win the room on Wednesday. I read his book. I really enjoyed it, but I just, I could not believe that he said every year when they would bring perspective writers in that there would always be one or two people that were either on something drunk or there was something wrong with them. They were acting crazy. Is head writer, did you witness stuff like that? I can't even imagine somebody going in for SNL and not being on their best behavior and their best self. Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, the place is ripe with. I mean, it's comedy. Comedy is spiked with the joy of mental illness.

I mean, there are eccentric people. I get that, but in terms of their behavior for other... But that, I mean, that just led to behavior. There's a lot of insecurity going in there, so you're drinking. Yes, I definitely was around people who were drinking and who were incompetent because of it. You know, that show bred from its very beginning, Belushi and... you know, drug use, you know, I mean, it just drug use and alcohol. And so, yes, of course I saw it. What was it like when Chris Barley came to host in October of 1997? What was that week like for you?

What did you witness other than obviously he was not doing well? Yeah, you could tell he was not doing well. What I said to you earlier was I was not a very good judge of, I'm just not a good judge of like who's in trouble with drugs and who's not. I've never been. But I think that's the one time that I could see. It's controversial, I think, because I think some people think Lauren is trying to, you know, we've got a really hurt person and he's asking him to come back into this environment that might not be helpful. I don't think Lauren thought of it that way. I don't think a lot of people. Lorne would love Chris Farley. And I think he thought, I need to bring him back into the world because he's getting too far out there. And I don't think

SNL had any impact on his eventual death. I think he just was headed that direction for sure. And you can speculate that all you want about what caused it. None of us will really know, except drugs. I mean, except where he was with drugs. When it was you and Tina as headwriters and then Seth Myers came in, how was Seth? Obviously, he had this longevity as the head writer. Yeah. But was he right away, is a head writer with you? Do you, was he ready to go, do you think? Or was he still? I feel like he was there for a few years, wasn't he? I mean, I think he was. No, he was absolutely there. for a few years. And then they made him, yeah, one of the headwriters. Seth was a sketch writing machine. He really, I think he cranked out three, you asked me earlier, my writing night, it would be a miracle if I wrote two sketches. I wrote one sketch. This will be a comic, please note comic. Here comes a fake brag. I think I have the best track

record of any sketchwriter, because I also submitted the lowest amount of sketches you could possibly submit on the show. I mean, my my percentage, you know, again, maybe Tina, maybe James Anderson, I don't know, but I feel like I got a lot of my sketches on, but I didn't write very many. Seth wrote a bunch and he was a sketch machine. His sketches like Tina's work. So it made sense that he was, he knew how, he knew the sketch for him. He had come from I.O. He had been doing it for a long time. He really knew what sketch was. And so, yeah, it made total sense. of 2003, Adrian Brody came in and when he introduced the musical guest, he had a,

didn't check with Lauren and asked permission, had a fake dreadlocks and it used a Jamaican accent and took something like 30 seconds that was not approved, which, you know, Lauren has everything down to the second. Do you remember where you were watching and what was your reaction with all the writers and performers when this happened? I don't remember it all, but I'm sure it was pure anarchie. in comedy. I don't remember anything like that ever happening to that extent. There was lots of planned moments for sure. Yeah, that was definitely a surreal thing. What was it like at the UCB,

the writer's strike show in November of 2007 when Michael Sarah hosted the show in this basement in Chelsea, Yoletango was the guest and everybody that was a cast member was actually there. I know you were there because you commented in an article. I think the only cast members that weren't there, Maybe we're, I think Maya Rudolph, who would just, I believe, had a baby. Maybe one or two of them weren't. But what was that like that experience? And Lauren was there. There were cue cards.

Gina, the stage manager was there with a fake headset wasn't plugged in. I mean, it was. It was family. That was what it was. I mean, we were in the middle of a strike, and that's why we were doing it. And so Saturday Night Live was off the air. There were rumblings that some of the other shows were coming back on, without writers, which I thought was dubious.

But we were, Lauren was holding out with us. We were holding out, and it just felt like family. I mean, it is a family. It's a high school, too, and that you don't like people while you're there, and then you love them later. But that was a real family moment, I thought. You leave after 13 years. What was that like for your final show?

Will, Farrell, and Adam McKay wanted you to come out to L.A. and help them run funny or die. but what was that like your last show? Did it really hit you? It was scary, but I was ready. They had asked me four years earlier to come out and be a part of Gloria or Gary Sanchez, you know? I wasn't ready. I had children in various stages of development and I just didn't want to make the move. I hung around, but it began to feel as new cast members and new writers came on, I kind of started to lose my crew. I could feel I'd been there too long. So when they asked me to come out and run funny or die, I was totally ready. I remember telling Fred Armisen on the street up around in the 50s somewhere in New York or 60s or something.

I saw him on the street and I told them and I know it, it felt weird to me and it felt, you know, it just felt weird like it was going to happen. I didn't have that intense withdrawal that a lot of people have. I got out, I got done, and I felt pretty good about it. Did you work with Will on those old Milwaukee commercials? Yes, I made all those Milwaukee. How many, there was like at least 19, maybe 20 of those that he actually did these for free, correct? And they aired only in the Midwest. Well, they aired only, I think only three of them aired.

There are four, maybe four of them aired. They aired on one chin in like Nebraska because the commercial rate was $3,000, but we did it during the Super Bowl. So it was eligible for a Super Bowl commercial, which we did win an award for. Then it became a viral thing. We were using virality to kind of push that. And we did that. And then another weird one aired only on Swedish television. The thing that I love about this is I figured you did this with Will and just

you just laughing so hard, this absurdity of doing this for free. That's where Will and I really connect. We love the, why did this happen? That's why we did a Spanish language movie. That's why we did all the Rose Parade stuff. That's why we did. Lifetime, a deadly adoption. Lifetime movie.

That's our emo. We like, we all try to make money doing comedy, but every once in a while, we're like, let's try to not make money and see what that. Before we go, I did mention that I was going to bring up Go Lords again. And can you describe go lords that they did that on SNL? Like that was it five or six times? I'm going to guess maybe five times. Yeah, so I had done the puppet thing over at John Stewart and I fell in love with the process.

But what I fell in love with, it's terrible. What I fell in love with the most was complete control. You know, you're the one directing, acting, you're not acting, you're letting the actors have the voices. But the scripts have to be kind of set. There is not a lot of playing around. And so you go in with a pre-record of what the actors have made and then you go puppet it. I had a guy that had been at Hinson Bob, forgetting his name, puppet guy. Long time ago.

Yeah, worked with S&L all the time. If you see Puppet stuff on S&L in our period, this guy did it all. He made them for me. Another molder, another guy molded them for me. And then we went down to a studio and just cranked these things out. I loved it. It was exactly what I'm saying. I did five of them. They weren't huge hits, but they always had a payoff. They always had like a really big payoff, which was funny. Now, they allowed me to, again, get a piece on the show and make me less nervous about my job. So it was like, oh, I'm going to do a go lords. Oh, I'm going to do a go lords. I'm going to do a go lords. You know. Harper Steele, thanks for doing this. You're welcome. And I hope there's something there for people that will listen.

listened to. How did it go for you? How was this? It's always weird talking about myself and my comedy history because I think if you haven't picked up, I'm a fairly self-depreciating human being and I don't ever really think anything I've ever done is that good. People would disagree with you, but thanks. I want people to disagree with me. I think there's something selfish and narcissistic about that. I want them to go, no, you're wrong. wrong. I will see that person. Thanks for listening. Please subscribe so you never miss an episode. On Apple Podcasts, please rate it and leave a review. Be sure to go to late-nighter.com for all your late-night TV news. And you can find my podcast at late-nighter.com forward slash podcasts. Have a wonderful week, and I'll see you next Tuesday. I'm going to be. I'm going to be.

I'm going to be. I'm going to be. And I'm . I'm Oh. You know,

I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be a bit of me. I'm going to be. Thank you.