Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff - Inside Late Night: Dick Blasucci

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

Emmy-winning writer-producer Dick Blasucci joins Mark Malkoff to discuss a comedy career that spans Chicago’s Second City, SCTV, The Tracey Ullman Show, The Larry Sanders Show, Mad TV, and Muppets Tonight. Along the way, he shares stories about John Belushi and Bill Murray, co-creating SCTV’s Jackie Rogers Jr., doing punch-ups with Mel Brooks on Spaceballs, and discovering Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key during his years running Mad TV.

From late-nighter.com, it's Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff. Welcome to Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff. Today we talk to Dick Blasucci about his time at Mad TV, SCTV, and so much more. Dick Blasucci, nice to see you. Nice to see you. Thank you, Mark, for inviting me. You have such a fascinating career. I want to start in 1978, May of that year.

You were actually in a Saturday Night Live sketch with your friend Bill Murray. You started in Chicago. How did that come about? Richard Dreyfuss was hosting the show. That was May 13, 1978. Where do you get this research? There's something wrong with me, but please, elaborate. Remember Marty Short's character on SCTV, which was, was it Brockline?

I think it was Brockline, where he patterned it after a Canadian interviewer who always had so much research that the star would always go, where did you find this? So you're doing a good job. You're doing... Thank you, sir.

I went out to visit, I went to New York that weekend to visit John, Belushi, I think. And and Bill said, do you want to sit in the audience? He was doing his nightclub singer. Can I just interject that you went to high school with John Belushi? You were in a band with John Belushi.

Yes, I met John in high school. We were both from Wheaton, Illinois, and a suburb of Chicago. And it was actually my oldest brother, Lee, who had a little band and put, John, he needed a drummer and John played drums and had a drum set. And he first used him. And then when my brother Mike was forming a band in high school, he asked John to play drums. And then Mike asked if I wanted to play bass.

And so, yes, we were in a garage band, so to speak, in high school. And that's where I first met John. We were in classes together. And formed, well, I mean, I'll get into that. but it was John who really changed my direction of my life in terms of getting me started in Second City. But yes, I was in the going back. Bill said, would you sit in the audience in the fake audience because he was performing, doing his singer, lounge singer character. And I think I had one line.

You did. Over time, Nick. Thank you, because I was trying to think of the line. Thank you very much. I think there's a new word for nerd that you will to identify you. I hope so. A man can dream. Yes, and I think that was actually the weekend because I went back to John's place

and he showed me, he started talking about the Blues Brothers. He said, we've got this great idea for Blues Brothers for this Danny and I are going to be doing. And I think they had just done it on the show either the week. before. And he was so excited about it because John, even when we were in high school in the band, he was excited about all of that kind of stuff and music and everything like that. So it was no surprise that he, the Blues Brothers came about actually. So you were in a band called the Ravens with a loose game. That formed in 1965, around 1960. Around that, I think. But we spelled the Ravens, I-N-S, just so you know.

Just so I think. The Ravens. So how did he, Belushi change from when he got on Saturday Night Live? Obviously Animal House when that hit was a whole different level of fame. Well, John and I lost contact for a little bit after. You know, what he, did he change? You know, I don't know. Honestly, he, when he was around,

me, he was the same guy that he always was. And even when we went out, it was, if there was anything going on, it wasn't going on around me. And, and he, he did that with a couple of his old high school buddies where, um, whatever, whatever life he had outside of us, it was, he was not a lot, going to allow us into, you know. And, and, but, but he, no, did he change? No, I don't think so. I think he was, to me anyway, he was the same. But I, you know, I didn't see. You know, I didn't see. him much during that time. That weekend of doing that S&L sketch was one of the few times I saw him, unless he came out here to a Los Angeles, he would call it. I want to take it back to high school with Belushi. You're doing plays back to back. Is it Zoo's story that he's doing, which is Albi?

And then you have, is it John, you ask him to make, do a cameo, kind of like a Johnny Carson, like Don Rickles comes out. found a one-act play. It was called submerged about these guys stuck in a submarine, and they can't get up. They can't get the submarine up. And it was a drama. And I thought, it's funny how that works even back then. I just added jokes and just so, so I asked John, who was doing the zoo story after us. I said, why don't you come on just as yourself? And he said, what are you talking about? I said, just come on and interrupt. Like, you know, you're doing a walk on. And then I'll, I'll promote your play coming up. And,

Yes, that's what he did. He came in and we stopped. And I said, John, John Belushi, and what are you doing here? He said, well, I'm doing a play in the next. Well, well, good. That's called the zoo story. Yes. Okay, we'll look forward to it. That'll be coming right. And yes, I treated him just as a walk on, like the Carson walk on when you just interrupt the play and you break the fourth wall and the whole thing. It was fun. I talked to people that worked on the original Saturday Night Live in the 70s, and they said it was, essentially the Wizard of Oz. They had no idea at that point the first couple of years that it was going to become a thing. Just being an 8H in the 70s for the show, and I'm guessing you went to rehearsal if you were an extra in that sketch and a dress rehearsal. What stands out? What did you observe? Well, it was so, it was unlike anything that, what year did you say that was?

That was 1978. It was May. Okay, so I hadn't even started SCTV yet. So it was, it was all new to me. and I don't know if I don't know if I I don't know if I was in rehearsal I guess I was for some reason I may have been in the audience in the rehearsal audience in terms of being in the sketch but I think he gave me the line at the very very last minute and he said I'm going to go by you and and just say that you know when you just say the line so it was it was

It was exciting. I mean, it was, I, later on, and I'm sure you want to talk about it, when I was there writing for Marty Short when he was a member of the cast, that's when I sat in on the readthroughs and the entire process type of thing. Yeah, I was going to ask you, you're one of the co-writers of Jackie Roger Jr. One hundred thousand dollar jackpot, or Jackie Rogers, exactly, the character. Yes. Yes, Paul Fnerty, my old writing partner and Joe's brother, myself and Marty created the most hated character on SCTV, by the way. Really? Well, by the cast, in the sense of they just could not, it was so disgusting the character.

At the read-throughs, when we say we have a Jackie to read, they said, no, it's in. Don't even have to read. And they just pushed it through so they wouldn't have to listen. I want to take this back to your Chicago days. I was reading an article from May of 1973 in the Daily Herald, and it said that you and Bill Murray were doing a three-hour workshop, improvisation workshop at a high school, for high school students in Elk Grove High School.

What is that like doing a workshop with Bill Murray pre-being famous? Well, pre-being famous. Well, we had, when I first came to, went down, when John called me saying, down to Second City and audition for the touring company. That's when I first met Bill, and we roomed together. So we were, we were rooming together at that point. And he was, he was, he was just starting out. I don't know if he was in the main, no, he wasn't in the main company then at Second City, but, but we were both kind of in workshops and all of that.

So I think he knew somebody, it was either one of his brothers or sisters that had some sort of connection with that, the high school. But we were, we just decided to, you know, just teach kids, you know, first line, last line type of thing is give them a topic to start talking about. And we had a good time doing that, by the way. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, you stayed friends with Bill Murray. You're still friends with him. What is the story with you, Murray and his friend Hunter Thompson? Oh, yeah, that was, I came out, well, I was out here, but Bill was in town and he said, do you want to go over to Hunter's renting this house? Do you want to come over with me? I think that was right around the time Bill was set to do what was it,

where the Buffalo Rome or where did he play, where he played Hunter Thompson. Oh, you don't know that. I don't know that yet, but that sounds like, I'm just going to say that you're right. Yes. And we spent the afternoon with him. And then Hunter was shooting,

they were shooting a documentary with him that night. And Bill, and I was still hanging around with them. So Bill, I came along with Bill. and we were doing it and they were interviewing somebody else somebody just mentioned this too this is the nixon thing right yes yes and and and they were interviewing people about nixon and everybody everybody was saying if they hate him they hate him they hate him and bill said why don't you get on camera and i remember talking about i said well i don't i don't want to get on and say the same thing everybody else is saying what should i do and then i thought well why don't

I'd just be like really pro-nix? And just at least take, just have that going for me. So I did. And it got on that way. And I think one of my son's friends called because he saw that documentary not that long ago and said, I didn't know your dad loved Nixon like that. I had to explain to them. I was doing it as kind of a joke. But I think it got out, it was put in there and people actually thought, here's this goof talking about how much he loves Nixon. and all that. So yes, that was a Hunter Thompson documentary that was being shot. How did you wind up in 1988 doing Scrooge with Bill Murray? Did he just call you and say, do you want to be in it? Were you visiting the set? Did he pull you in?

No, I think he called and asked if I wanted to do it. How was it? You played a TV executive. How was it? I remember taking my mother to the screening because there was a boardroom scene where I had a few lines. All that was cut out of it. So I was in the movie, but no lines of the movie. In fact, at the very end of the movie, I told that the movie had gone over by a few weeks, and I was working at Castle Rock with Rob Reiner, for Rob Reiner. And I told, I think it was Dick Donner, the director.

I told him, I told him, or at least maybe the AD, I said, I had to go back. I couldn't stay another day. And he said, but we're shooting the final scene and you're in the close-ups. And I said, but if your guys are going to keep going, I just can't do it. So he said, oh, okay, just go. So you'll see Bill, Bill makes a point of walking up right next to me during the speech and putting me right in the front. And then if you cut to the wide shot, I'm gone. So that was- That happens.

As a Mark's brothers fan, I have to ask you this. This was November of 1974. You beat out 79 other people to win a groucho, Mark. look-alike contest. That is true for Channel 32 in Chicago. What was about your groucho that stood apart from all the other grouchos? And there were five-year-old grouchos, I mean, and you beat. That's how pathetic hits by the way.

I was going up against a five-year-old groucher. What was mine? I don't know. I improvised it. I had my friend come along and be the straight man for me. And I just kind of improvised it using old groucho lines and things like that. That's really fun. That was Channel 32.

And I went a TV set, by the way. I was wondering if you got anything, so that's not bad. For back then, especially TVs were expensive back then. Yes, it was a TV set. We're skipping around a little bit, but I wanted to talk about your involvement in that amazing year Dick Ebersol put together with Saturday Night Live with Chris Guest and, you know, Martin Short and Billy Crystal and so many other talented people. Can you talk about your involvement that year? Yeah, we were originally. supposed to go in and write for John Candy and Eugene Levy were supposed to host the show.

And a writer's strike happened. And by the time the strike was over and they got up and running again, SNL, either John or Eugene, whatever happened, they couldn't do it because of scheduling problems. So Marty said, why don't you just, to Paul and I, Paul Flaherty and I, why don't you just come out and write anyway. So that's why we went out there and we wrote, we wrote two sketches, the $100,000 Jack Potwad sketch, which still holds up. It's famous, yeah. And then we wrote another one which never got the rehearsal, but they cut it before. It was, he was playing, I think, Best Truman or Margaret Truman, one of the two, one of the Truman, the President Truman. This is how far.

But he was doing it like Lucille Ball. So it was really broad. stuff like that. So anyway, after that, that sketch was cut. But the jackpot wad got got on obviously. Jay Moore, who was on Saturday Night Live for two seasons, mentioned that is his favorite sketch of all time. And I hear people still quote it. So that is a phenomenal. I have to ask you about SCTV. There's a lot that I want to cover. But in terms of the Netflix documentary you've been working on, what is the status? Well, the status is it's going, It's going to be, I don't know when exactly, but it's either going to be in the fall or it will be, it is scheduled to go on.

As far as that, this is what I hear, because I'm not actively involved in it anymore. But it will, in fact, I don't even know if, I know they're starting to run the SCTV episodes now up in Canada. and they may be running them, they may start running them down here, so I don't know if it'll be in tandem with, with the documentary that goes on. Why is the documentary taken so many years? It's not surprising.

It's, you know, the cast, SCTV was, I think, more like Python than what was anything else, more like Python than certainly than SNL, because we never did it in front of an audience. And the cast like Python kind of ran the show. I mean, there was no showrunner on SCTV, even though NBC tried to put people in there.

And I think it was just what people wanted to do. It wasn't anything that people were angry about or anything like that. It was just that there were some people that wanted to do sketches again. I mean, original stuff, not just go back and do the old ones. And there were some that just wanted to be interviewed and just, you know, thought, you know, just let's just make it like that. Then we did end up doing, and maybe you have that in your notes, a live kind of everybody on stage in Toronto with Jimmy Kimmel who was hosting it. And we did that with, I put together some clip packages and things like that for it. What was Martin Scorsese's involvement at all, or was that a separate documentary that never happened?

No, it was, it kind of morphed into what it is now. It was, that show that I'm talking about, this live show in Toronto was directed by Scorsese. And he wanted, he was a huge fan of the show. And I spent a lot of time with him going through outlines and ideas for, for premises for things. And he knew he was, he knew a lot about, he knew the sketches. I mean, he was really truly a fan of it. So he wanted to be involved in it. And then as it went on and on and things were kind of at a standstill, he just backed off and, and, and just kind of turned it over in terms of that.

But he did direct that live Toronto show that we did, which was more of a question and answered. kind of thing, but still, it was good getting everybody back together again for that. You got hired at SCTV. You had an unproduced screenplay called Toast of the Town that you wrote with Paul Flaherty. And that got you hired. Who hired you? Well, SCTV had done two half-hour syndicated seasons. The show was a half-hour. And it was shot up in Toronto. and it was just, you know, syndicated throughout Canada. And then they shut down for a year because they didn't have enough, they didn't have enough stations to make it profitable again. Our executive producer, Andrew Alexander, found this doctor out in Edmonton who said, if you come out and shoot the show in Edmonton, I'll bankroll your show for you.

So they were starting, so they had a season, they did two half hours, had one year down, where people went off and did all of their stuff. And then they started back up again for a third half-hour season. And that's when they hired Paul and I. And Paul and I had written Toast of the Town, which was kind of a takeoff on a 1940s comedy about Broadway and the mob getting involved in Broadway. And we gave it to Harold Ramos to read because we knew Harold,

and we knew Harold would be honest with us because we all trusted his opinion. And he really liked it. And he gave it, he knew that Dave and Joe were, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas and Joe Flaherty, were going to start up SCTV again. And he gave it, he gave it to Dave to read. And Joe, because Paul was Joe's brother,

Joe stepped back and said, no, to have Dave read it and Dave hired it, he didn't want any nepotism or anything like that. So Joe let Dave read it. And Dave Thomas liked it and hired us as writers. Did you feel accepted right away, or was there a little bit like I need to get in the club and it took a little time? No, because it was an odd year. It actually was the perfect year to kind of come into it because John Candy had gone off to do his own sketch show up in Canada called Big City Comedy.

I think Eugene and Andrea were down in L.A. trying to break into sitcoms and things like that when the season started. So it was Rick, Rick Moranis, that was his first year because Dave had known Rick and asked him to be a cast member. So it was a very small cast. I think Catherine wasn't on at the beginning of that season either. It was Robin Duke who went on to be an SNL cast member, Tony Rosado, Dave and Joe, and Rick. So it was kind of a smaller group and a small writing staff. And actually it was perfect to kind of cut my teeth in that kind of thing like that,

to be in that kind of group, which we were accepted immediately. Because I had known Joe. Joe, when I first went to Second City as an actor in taking workshops, he was my teacher, you know. And so I knew Joe. show. And we knew Harold, although Harold wasn't on the show by then. So it wasn't that, it wasn't that tough. It was, and the sensibilities were kind of the same anyway. We all kind of share the same sensibility. For STTV, you won two Emmys for writing. What are some of your

favorite sketches that you, you worked on? That I worked on. Yeah. Let's see, during, during those years, I always liked, oh, God see, you put me on the spot. I thought we'd did, I liked the My Fair Lady we did with Perini Scleroso. We did, Rick did Cavett, no, but he wrote that. I just wanted, he did, I don't know if you remember the Cavett interviewing Cabot where he was on screen. And I just went in there to help him with some Groucho Marks stuff because you wanted some Marks Brothers references that Cabot would always drop. Let me think, give me time. I'll think of, What did you like of ours?

I liked Indira that Andrea did, which was a Vita takeoff. Go ahead. What would you? I was just going to ask you, did you have any idea that McKenzie brothers would explode the way that they did? And that happened in that half hour, that third season of half hour shows. Because we had to have like two or three minutes of Canadian content in every show because they were getting Canadian financing. So Rick and Dave thought, well, let's just give them the goofiest, dumbest thing we can. And they improvised them all anyway, pretty much. I think they had a

topic that they wanted to cover. And they kind of improvised those. No, nobody thought that that was going to take off as the McKenzie. Yeah, that's unbelievable. I was going to ask, what were the circumstances in 1984 that you and Paul Flaherty did punch up with Mel Brooks for a film? doing and what film was it? It was space balls. I didn't know he brought some people in to help him with the script. He did for one day. What was that like? Who else was with here? No, we were with all the we were with all his guys. We were with Mel, Ronnie Graham. Rudy DeLuca maybe? No, he wasn't. It was that Tom Mahan. Tom Mehan. Tom Ian. He was in there. I think it was just those, those three. And then Paul and I, I think as Mel is, by the way,

Mel has always been great to me. He's a great guy. He's the funniest guy, I know. And he, I think he called us in, well, I think Moranus may, because Rick was playing, they were still writing the script. But I think Rick may have probably suggested that Paul and I, because I think the way Mel told me, he said they had written like the first 70 pages and he gave it to his kid to read, probably Max, who is also really talented.

and instead it was a little corny. So we wanted to bring some young people into, so we were the young people for that day. But it was exactly the way you would think a Mel Brooks writing room would be. It was people just Mel standing up on a chair and yelling things and the assistant walking in saying, Mel, why don't we do this? Good, we'll do that. And it was just so much fun.

It was, but it was one day. What was it like working for a season at the Larry Sanders show? Gary Shandling could be really tough on the writers. He expected a lot from himself, but other people. And I know that there are a lot of talented people that went through there that didn't get past this season. What was your experience like? Well, I came in in the first season. So it was, you know what?

He, yes, I guess he was tough. He was, he, I found. it to be really gratifying and the fact that I got a chance to do it and and I always credit Gary with that being his show and his vision and it really was. Genius, absolutely genius, yeah. It really was and he for all whatever, you know, was he hard to work with it. It wasn't it's not, I always go back and to the point was, it It was this guy's vision, this guy's show. And he really deserves all the credit for that.

But I thought it was hard, but it was actually looking back on it. As I always said, too, the shows are great. I mean, the product was really great. And I think at the end of that first season, it was time for me to move on. And I think he wanted to find a different show. I wasn't even a showrunner. I was, it was my first job as kind of like a producer credit or something like that.

But I did, I did enjoy, I really liked working, Rip Torn was really a trip. And I, I admired him because he was honest. I liked the idea that if he didn't like something, he would really tell you.

Can you tell us a story about Rip Torn? I, I figured out with Rip that, first one, he loved John Candy because he did this movie Summer Rentals. So I knew he loved John. And I knew he liked fly fishing, too. And I know Chris Kest is a big fly fishing. But whenever I saw Rip coming toward me as if something was going, he was not happy with something. Before he could say anything, I would say, I just talked to John by Rick. I just talked to Candy and I hadn't, but it didn't matter. and he said and he would change he immediately hey how's he doing what's he what's he up to he said he well

he talks about you all the time you know i did all that stuff and i got him completely off track and then i'd bring up fry fishing just to if that didn't work but usually i knew that as many times as i did that whenever i mentioned john's name i could get him down from from that but but he would he he he he was he knew exactly if you changed the line of his or gave a line to somebody else or whatever. He knew it. He would say to you, you took that line away from you guys. But I admired him.

I really did admire him. You worked on Martin's short show. That was on NBC. It was short-lived. Jan Hooks, one of the greatest Saturday Night Live cast members of all time, was on that show. What was it like working with Jan Hooks? Jan was great to work.

We also did a special. After they had canceled that show, They gave Marty a special that called the show formerly known as, I think, the Martin Short Show, which they put in the SNL slot, which we, which when I, again, when I worked with Jan and Phil Hartman was a guest on that show. Jan was great to work with. She's really, she was really, really talented. Yeah, I really do miss her. She was phenomenal talent, but I'm glad you got to work with her. How did you get brought into Mad TV?

You came in on the fourth season. How did that come about? It was the showrunners, Fax Bar and Adam Small, they were going to season four, and they were moving on. They had signed an overall deal somewhere. So I think they were fans of SCTV, the two of them. And I think they recommended me to come in and talk to them about taking over the show. Was the director John Blanchard gone by then, or did you work? Was he still there?

No, John was gone by them. John, of course, directed all the SCTVs, which was brilliant. And I remember seeing John at a couple of restaurants and places where they were having a mad TV like after show party. So I had met a couple of the old cast members before I was even on, but it gave me a chance to catch up the John. but he had left, he had left before that season started. Were you told before you took the job that there was some drama and some pit with the writers and the cast and they were not necessarily getting along? Did you know that going on? Where do you hear all this stuff?

It's the truth. I only say that what actually happened. And that happens on certain shows. I mean, that got rectified, but did you know that going in that? I knew going in. Well, here's my take on all of that. I don't think you can do sketchcom, especially sketch. I mean, just sitcom has its own rules.

You know, it is kind of producer run and writer run, sitcoms, unless you're a style, unless you're a big name and then, of course, you don't say. But with sketch, you can't separate the cast because they're all character people. I mean, all those characters come out of the cast. So when I came into Mad, even though there was a little riff between, the production side and the stage side, which were the actors and the director. I just brought over what I learned on SCTV, which is it's totally collaborative. You get the actors up into the writer's room.

You get them. Not every cast member is a writer or one. So there are cast members where you have to write for them. Or if they come into the room, they'll brainstorm ideas and then you go off and write them. But there are other cast members, as Matt TV had, that really are great writers and want to be involved in that. So I just took that wall down and said, and really opened it up for everybody to cooperate. Michael McDonald came in the same year you did. Is he the one that actually got the actors paid as writers? Because famously, it's Saturday Night Live, the actors are up all night

Tuesday writing and they are not credited or compensated that I'm aware of. But, but, But did Michael change that? Michael did change that. Michael was the first one to bring that up because he was starting to write the Stewart character, the Stewart character he did. He was starting to write those by himself. And he'd come in with other ideas. And we went to the executive producers. And yes, he would, but he's the first one that pushed for that and opened that door.

I found it fascinating when you were sitting down in post. You know, you would do these pre-tapes, and then you would show them to the audience, you'd do sketches live. And then you'd sit with the sound mixer, and they originally were taking the laughs, and then from the actual studio audience, but then they were taking Cam laughs as well and putting them over. You've made a stop to that. Why? Yes, because I wanted it to seem, because it's, I can, I can tell Can laughs from a mile away, and I'm sure you can't too. And what it was doing, they were putting a whole bed of, a lot of shows do this, by the way. Even before I got into the studio, the mixing studio, because I would sign off on all the mixes and stuff. But that first time, that first day I went in there, they had already gone through the whole show,

and the laugh guy had put down a whole bed of laughs on top of the studio audience. So it sounded all fake. So I said, take them all out. And I think we had to change laugh guys, too, because they were, he was resistant to it. And I wanted it to be, I wanted it to sound, even though we weren't going live, I wanted it to sound like there was a real audience there. Because I remember those shows growing up that even sitcoms that taped in front of a, or shot in front of an audience, like the old Dick Van Dyke show. You could tell there was an audience right there and even some of the variety shows too in the day. And SNL, too.

So I had, we read every season. I'd hang microphones in different spots and we'd put in different mics and more mics in the audience and all of that kind of stuff. I wanted to get that real, real, that sound that the people were right there on top of them. So yes, I did change all of it. Very rarely, though, sometimes if a joke didn't play here or there, you would put some laugh. I would put, yeah, but very little, very little. I would just, yes, if something was just laying there, and not to cover it up for that reason, but it didn't happen very often, not in the sense of sometimes I would let the silence play.

But usually I just have them add just a little. And I think I had them go in actually to make it even more realistic. is to record the live laughs and use that as our kind of laughter, not the box that they used to use of all these kind of generic laughs, that they'd actually use our audience laughs. Saturday Night Live has a dress rehearsal so they can see what's going to play with the studio audience. Were there times where you would put this in front of the live studio audience and the sketch wouldn't work and you just wouldn't use it in the show?

I don't think we'd ever not used anything, only because it, We may, and we did this on SCTV too sometimes. If a sketch didn't work, even though we weren't in front of an audience, if a sketch didn't work, we would cut it down and sometimes turn it into a commercial, like a minute and a half commercial, which the producers don't like because it's all that time to shoot it. But same with Mad TV. If something wasn't working, I would go in and we'd really try to take all that fat out. And that was the one thing that I could control that SNL can't, is I could go into editing or send one of the producers in. And really, from the rough cut, the long rough cut, just take things out or find different camera angles and try to salvage if it needed salvaging. Originally, when Matt TV started, they really wanted to take down Saturday Night Live.

By the time you got there in season four, was that sentiment still there? I don't know. No. way and I never had the thing to take down so I mean that was originally they went on record saying that that was initial thought that they were going to make but they never did really make fun of the show but they were originally that they thought that that might have been the direction that they were going to go but first show the first live audience show that I was produced that I was in charge of one of the executives at Fox came up to me and said don't get too comfortable you're

going to be off the air by Christmas. So this is my first, my first week. What changed? What changed is we got on the air. I started open, and I'm not taking credit for this. I'm just saying, I started opening things up and letting people, what I learned on SCTV is if we laughed at it, that was enough that let's do it, not that what made us laugh. And I think by by the, first of the year, I think we started in the fall, we started shooting new episodes. By the first of the year, our ratings in the, never in the 1849 demographic, but certainly in the 1834 demographic, started changing and we started, in some market, started beating SNL. It was, in that demographic, we were always won two. And then teenagers, we had two. We beat them in

teenagers as to us well. And that started changing because I know because I went into NBC to talk to a friend of mine one day and he was looking at the ratings and he said, geez, you guys are really doing well. And that was the first time I got an inkling that we were kind of making a little dent into S&L's ratings a little bit. Who was your initial hire cast members that you said, I want this person. You saw either tape or they auditioned for you? We, oh boy, we had such a turnover. But, But I do remember hiring Ike Barronholz. And because he had come out of a boom Chicago, which was a in Amsterdam, was a, it's two Chicago people had started an improvisational theater there.

And Ike was the one who said, you should look at Jordan Peel. So we brought Jordan in and hired him. And then I found Kegan. He was at Second City in Detroit, but at the time I saw him, he was in Chicago at a little annex theater of Second City called ETC, which was right behind it. And they had their own cast and their own shows that they put it up. And he was hilarious. So I hired Jordan and Keegan around the same time, the two of them. And when McDonald was with me, Mo Collins started with me.

Who else? Taryn Killum, who's gone on to have a. a good career, a great career. I hired him. I wanted, do you know Stephanie where? Oh, yeah. I saw her perform in Chicago at Second City. She was, she's phenomenal. That's where I saw her. And that's, I really wanted her. And, you know, sometimes the audition process, once you get to L.A. with Mad TV, in fact, Mike McDonald always brought this up, how many times he had to come back to an audition. And he was right. It was ridiculous. It was four or five. times. And Stephanie came in too and then went back to Chicago and she, I think she said to me,

she's told this story before, that she thinks, she thought she wanted to stay in Chicago. And then I, I really pleaded her to come out one more time. And she didn't, she got in the, and she got in the cast. Because I really, I thought she was so talented. There were some Chicago Second City people and just improv people that you hired as writers. Did, did they have to do? a packet or did you hire just on their audition? No, they did. No, they usually did a packet, you know. Some of them, some, I, they, no, most of them, I don't think I knew beforehand.

But, but they did the same thing. They went through the same thing of handing in a packet and pitching a few ideas and things like that, seeing if they had the sensibility for the show. When you were doing the show in front of the live studio audience, what are one or two unusual things that you recall happened? Well, oh, God, I always forget the guy's name. Who was the guy who had the big clock around his neck? Flavor Flav. Yes.

I know my Flavre Flav. We were doing, maybe I shouldn't tell this. Although it was it. Anyway, we were doing it, Aries, who was Aries, who was Aries Spirit. was one of the cast levels. He was around the time of all the Michael Jackson stuff starting to hit all that stuff. And Aries was throwing his, had put in a bunch of Michael Jackson jokes. And when we shot, we started shooting in front of the audience, Aries kept those.

I remember going through it in the dressing room with Flavor Flav. And Aries said, I'll take this out. I'll take this out. Anyway, by the time we got on camera, he started playing a while again. And Flavre stopped, he stopped the taping and said, I'm not going to go on until this is in front of the audience. And said, I'm not going to do this anymore because he's a friend of mine. And, and, you know, I get it. I get it.

And so we started up again, and I talked to Aries. and right at the end of the sketch as it was over, airies through, I think, one more Michael Jackson junkin, just to say, I'm still going to keep one thing. But it was fine, it was fine. It was just uncomfortable. It's not a great idea to stop a sketch in front of the audience and start saying I'm going to walk off if you guys don't.

That's hard to get the audience back after something like that. Yes, it's not easy. But that one, unusual stuff happening. Oh, God, I don't know. It was always, you know, it's funny with a live audience. There were some actors in the company that preferred just we would alternate live audiences. One week we'd have an audience in. The next week we would shoot either on location or down on the stage if the pieces were a little more.

involved. So there were some actors that really liked not having an audience. And there were those like Mike McDonnell that had come through the groundlings, loved that because he would always save the second take for lines that he had written that did not, he did not tell anybody in the cast that he was going to do. And I always gave him that second take, obviously, because we always did a couple takes on everything. But the second take for Michael was always, I'm going to throw in the lines that I've been thinking of all weekend to it, which was funny. It made for some great moments. And I would always, that again is the freedom I had in editing that could cut from take to take if I wanted to. So there were those that really rose to the occasion. And I found that

if it was a flat audience that wasn't reacting, the actors would push it just to try to get the energy up and and sometimes that seemed a little false and because they were trying so hard to get the audience into it a little bit and bc was very hands off with saturday night live just because lorne michael's guarded it very um as he showed it was his show and they didn't really have much interference was fox opinionated on sketches that should get in or not and how much power did they have to kill a sketch no it wasn't it we there was a standards guy there but he was they were fairly reasonable about that. I mean, they would give their notes on the read-throughs and the,

maybe the rough cuts that they would be sent over, but they trusted either me or the, at least the process that we were going through to do it. I mean, very, very, very seldom. They might ask for a rewrite of a line or something like that if it stepped over the line. It was a little bit too much. but they were they were actually pretty good about it believe it or not and um i was glad of that i'm like you know on c tv it was run by the cast and uh as i said before they tried putting people

in that position and it never worked and there was a trust between the cast and the writers and that's that's what i tried to do when i got up there as uh as to do that same kind of thing. And the network liked us anyway. They, they, you know, we always brought it in on budget at Mad TV and, and we were doing well in the ratings. The affiliates really liked us because we were doing well in those markets across the country and they were selling their advertising time and all of that stuff. And they were, they were very happy with us. When you did a table read, normally Saturday Night Live would do maybe 40 to 50 sketches. You would do pretty much half at a table read. Why was that? Yeah, that's all, I was in, when I was that week at SNL that Paul and I did,

those readthroughs went on forever. That's true. It was really, and anyway, I don't think we wrote that many sketches in the, with our writing staff. I think we, we, we didn't use every single sketch in the packet, but it was, you're right, it was probably no more than 25 or 26. maybe if even that much. But I made sure, though, and maybe this is what I've heard about SNL and at the time anyway, that if an actor doesn't cover themselves, that's their tough luck. But I knew that if there was an actor on Mad that didn't have anything in the table read, that we were going to write something for them for the table rate.

So I'd bring the writers in or the head writer and everybody, and we'd start brainstorming for specific actors because I did not want them to go to the table with nothing to read. That's fantastic. Alex Bordstein said that it really wasn't that competitive with the cast as opposed to what you hear of Saturday Night Live. Is that what you observed? Yes, that is what I observed. And that's the way it was on SNL. I mean on SCTV.

It was competitive, but it was competitive in the right sense. It was everybody wanting to do the best that they could do. So everybody's scenes, I remember reading or at a table read on SCTV, and Eugene always wrote these great scenes. And Catherine would write. Catherine or Harold would go off and write great scenes. But I remember just turning to Paul after Gene won a Gene scene and saying, we've got to write a better one of that. It was like, it was so good. You know, there was stuff that was so good coming out, and the bar was set so high.

And, and, you know, on mad, I just, the competition was not between the actors at all. It was, it was, you know, just people wanting to do their stuff. And, you know, the competition, always people want to get their scenes picked. We would, out of those 25, we would maybe pick, I don't know, 10 or 12 to be put into production for the following week. but we would you know we would put things on hold which people the cast members would shape their heads

and it's never going to be put on hold you never get to you would do musical guests some iconic singer some iconic acts traditionally music the ratings would go down so why did you do music if the radio would be a bit like one of my executive producer I like music I'm just asking

who is saying the same thing Why? Because I think it was, we were getting, what was happening was a lot of the acts, either rappers or they, they, the music companies thought that our show was a better demographic to bring these artists on, you know. And it wasn't, they weren't middle of the road artists. It wasn't an older audience. You know, SNL, when you got into, you know, the demographic of 50 and over, it was, you know, there was no, nobody watched that TV.

It was a younger audience, and the record companies knew that. So they started coming to us with all of us. I remember Usher coming on the show, and his mother was his manager at the time. This is when he was. And he had to go to London to play or something. And they had to cancel it. And I said, you can't, I told, I said, well, who's his manager? He says, it's a mother.

Well, I say, well, can I have her number? And I talked to her mother. I said, Mrs. I didn't say Mrs. Usher. That's too cheap. But I said, please, just have him. We'll get him out. I swear to you, he'll go first. I swear to get him on.

And it'll go and he'll get it and it'll make a spay. And she said, all right, I'm going to do that for you. And he did it. And he did it. And those are the kind of artists that started doing our show. And that's why, even though we were getting a lot of pushback in terms of musical guests, even though we wouldn't necessarily keep, if they were really hot, we wouldn't keep them until the end of the show. We'd put them right at the beginning of the second half of the show, I think.

But when we stopped doing that, we gave it all over to SNL, and I never agreed with it. Because even though you're right in the sense that music doesn't give you braiding bumps, like you think you would. But it did increase the awareness. And a lot of those people and the acts and were

just people started watching the show, maybe not for the acts themselves, but I thought it helped the show. Because our show was always kind of buried. All the shows that I've done. SCTV was always kind of the not quite

SNL and it was always done on a shoestring budget, not like SNLs. And Mad TV was a shoestring budget, not like SNL. But you make it work. And that's what I learned on SCTVs. You can make it really look good and you can make it look professional. And you go out and do these remote pieces that really look great. And you don't need a lot of money to do that kind of stuff. Did Quincy Jones have any feedback at all or any input when you were there? No, Quincy was gone by that. That's what I thought. Okay.

Looking back, what are some of your favorite pieces from Mad TV? I know The Sopranos was one of your favorites. Ryan Adams wrote that. One of our writers wrote the Spra. And you know what about that? For those of you who know it. People always assume that, well, you went into editing. It was every cut in that.

The idea of that, obviously, is that a religious network in syndication buys the Sopranos. puts it in syndication. It was called the Pax Network at the time. That's right. The Religious Network. And by the time they get on the air, they have to cut out everything so the whole episode is only about two and a half minutes long, or three minutes. But all those cuts were in the script. All those edits on the line were in the script. It was all written that way, which I always thought Brian did such a great job with it because it wasn't like it was loosely done. It was by the word and by the joke that we need. knew we were going to cut and go to the next scene. It was a, it was a brilliant idea, a really funny

idea. Yeah, he's really a great guy. I worked with him on the Colbert report. Oh, that's right. He was in Colbert. He's a good man. Do you have another sketch or two that you were really proud of that you really enjoyed? I, you know, I didn't do much writing on there because there was so much, if I had an idea, I like the Korean soaps that we started to do with Bobby, especially the first one. And that came about, I think one of our editors, daughters, got it was like Korean soap operas and he had he gave me a tape of one and I and then I I went to the writers and said we've got to do so Mike Hitchcock I think Mike Hitchcock and Lauren Dombrovsky wrote and and they took the idea that I had or at least that I wanted to do

and we brainstormed it and then I had them go off and write it and I thought that really that first one really worked great it was a funny one the other one I thought worked was it the infomercial that Nicole Parker and McDonald did about the guy who had this book about the pharmaceutical companies poisoning you and all

these simple little herbs that it's one of those guys and it's so underplayed and it's so desperate and it's so subtle and I always thought for Mad TV that was a great thing to actually have these two people really acting I don't know if you remember that

piece. Yeah, so it was the book where it's like They don't want you to know the cures. They don't want you to know. Yes. Yes. And then Michael goes and does the guy who's supposed to be, let's talk to somebody who, you know, you're giving us a real firsthand report. And it's actually Michael, but it's all blacked out.

But you don't, you just cut to a guy. And then I found a, I was in the editing room and Michael has to get back. Nobody knows it's Michael behind the thing, although his voices. And I said, there's got to be a way to get them back. Let me see the cameras. And there was one camera that shot Michael actually walking onto the set and sitting down in the chair. And the camera's shaking. I said, let's see that's.

Let's use that. It looked so cheap that Michael was running back. And Michael came up to me afterwards, said, where did you find that angle? Perfect. Anyway, I always like that. I always like, I thought our music videos were really great. You know, Mad had a, you know, the funny thing. think what I figured out in terms of the people in the chat rooms and the kids that would write

because it was a younger audience. And this is the same with SCTV. I think kids or any viewer wants to catch up to the show. And I didn't want to write down to the audience. And especially knowing that we had a big teenage audience, I didn't want to do that. I wanted them to catch up to us a little bit. I mean, I didn't want to make it so obscure that they didn't want to. I didn't want to at all what we were talking about. But I thought to everybody, and I learned this at Second City, is that you kind of write to the top of your intelligence or don't assume the audience as dumb or not as smart as you are.

So I like the idea. And it was like that because I would read all those comments in the chat rooms. And the pieces they like the best are the ones that they had to catch up to a little bit. Not the ones, not when we were making fun of people that, that Britney Spears that we were, that they were hearing all about all week at school. They, it was, it was how we were handling that and how we were satirizing that and the other topics that we were satirizing. Can you talk about your favorite Second City sketch?

It was the funeral with Belushi and Brian Doyle Murray and Joe Flattery. Yeah, that was an old, that was a, that was an old sketch from that's, I did that once on, the Merv Griffin show. Oh, yes, you didn't know that. I didn't. Tell me. Well, I was, you know, Second City had a cast and a theater in Pasadena, California

for about a year. It was in a little shopping mall. And it originally started with John Candy and Eugene and Joe Flaherty was in it. And I think Betty Thomas and Debbie Harmon with both, you know, Betty went on to direct. And they had gotten rid of one of the cast members that were in there.

I used to hang out there all the time because I knew all of it. And I replaced somebody that they got rid of, one of the cast members. And right before they were to do the Murph Griffin Show, like literally a day or two before they were doing it. So I had to step in and I got on, it was on murder. And we did the funeral. We did the funeral sketch. And I can't remember which part I had.

Can you explain with the premise? Well, the premise of the sketch is that the guy got to, he died by getting a can of Van Camp's pork and beans stuck on his head. Right? Isn't that how that's right? And so the funeral set up almost like it was still, I think, the idea that that he still had it on his head or people, every time people started talking about it at the funeral, everyone would start laughing until and it would start building with each person that would come in it would be about getting his head stuck on the camera and it just built and built and built where everybody's laughing it was one of the tried and true second city sketches that would always work and then going on murb it was fun you had a good time yeah it was great i mean it was you know he he kind of interviewed everybody we all kind of lined up afterward and and he went down the list of everybody and just And I was just, you know, I had just gone in there to do that to help them out. You won an Emmy for Muppets tonight.

You had people like Martin Short, Billy Crystal, Michelle Pfeiffer. What are one or two moments that you really enjoyed from that time? You know, the great thing about the Muppet show, unlike Mad TV where you could, getting guest stars were hard. That's surprising just because I know people like, Regis and Susan Sarandon were huge fans, and they would call up and ask to be on. Susan called and said, can I be on? And we had her on a couple of times. She never hosted Saturday Night Live. I just want to end. They were huge. She was a huge fan of the show. And in fact, she called and then obviously we wanted her on. And,

but they would really watch. And Tim Robbins did it for us too. And I think she did it twice. Yes, those, yes, you're absolutely right. People like that, they were huge fans we would find out about. And I don't know how Susan, I think, even called us. I can't remember how we found out unless her manager or agent called us. But historically, but we would not, other than those people, we would not get the SNL guests that they, that they, you know, the host, those host big name, big name people. we would get some people like Susan. But the Muppets was the easiest thing,

because especially with celebrities that had kids, and like Michelle Pfeiffer did, you know, it was yes. I think that was supposed to be Sharon Stone and she canceled. And Michelle Fife, we got Michelle Fyfer at the last. Good replacement. It was a great replacement. She was, you know, the ones that do those shows that just kind of let go and want to have,

with it, especially with them, especially with them, are the ones that do the best. And, and, and, and you can tell they're having a great time. And they'll kind of do anything that you ask to. Dick, I have to ask you, would you, would you come back to the podcast? I know we have to go, but I would love to have you back. I have so many more pages of questions to ask you. Please, I'd be happy to. Are you sure this was interesting? This was interesting. Yes. This was incredible. you've lived such an amazing life and you're still doing it and we didn't talk about Tracy Allman and there's so many other things that I did want to ask you about. So Dick Blasucci, thank you so much for talking to us.

I really appreciate it. Oh, you're welcome. It was great fun. Thank you. Thanks for listening. Please subscribe so you never miss an episode on Apple Podcast. 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 latenighter.com forward slash podcasts. Have a wonderful week, and I'll see you next Tuesday.