Susan Morrison (on Lorne Michaels)

23:15Yeah, the swimming pool. Indoor? It just recently sold for$18 million. You're a good reader, man. So they were rich and glamorous. Lorne was like, oh, I wish I were that family. How would you not? And when Lorne's dad died, they really stepped in. And Uncle Pep, great name, took Lorne under his wing and taught him everything about business and the world. And I think that is also the key to why Lorne extends himself that way, to his own young charges. He wants to show them how to do it. Yes. Such close proximity to wealth, coveting that, seeing that the attention in the family is show business movie stars.

23:54We all want to be the star of our family first. And it's like if you see the things that are valued and then also getting kind of an education of how to move in an upscale thing as later in life he'll have to do, acting like you've been there even though you haven't. Right. So how does he get from Toronto to Laffin? He's grown up in this very parochial little neighborhood, very much like Philip Roth's Newark. It's Forest Hills where he grew up, where it was all these young Jewish kids whose parents really wanted them to be lawyers. Take one second to talk about that article that came out. Oh, wow.

24:23I think that's really fascinating. I stumbled on the greatest piece of research. It was this 600-page book called The Crestwood Heights Report. The Canadian government funded a study of this one neighborhood in Toronto. It was Lorne's neighborhood. They changed the name from Forest Hill to Crestwood Heights, and they were trying to improve mental health services in Canada. So they did this deep dive interviewing all these children and parents in Lauren's neighborhood. I could not figure out if they actually interviewed the Lipowitzes. Lauren didn't know. He was a little boy. And then they published this huge psychological report.

24:57It kind of reminded me of Peyton Place in the U.S. It was an indictment of the very bougie values of this class. And it said all the mothers were just competitive with the other mothers about where the kids were getting into school. I have to believe there's just a nice layer of anti-Semitism under all of it. No? I mean, it was a very Jewish area. That's probably true. Yeah, I mean, why were they? It seems so judgmental. They were really tisking the fact that they were strivers. Right. Who wasn't a striver in that post-war era? I guess it's also that Canadian tall poppy thing. They were disapproving of how some of these houses had those clear plastic slipcovers.

25:33The kids were banished to the basement. Yeah. Well, maybe it's also trying to say what many other subsequent studies have said, which is money doesn't equal happiness. But it had more of a nouveau rich kind of a take. Like these people were grotesque in their striving. It had poor values. It was much more of a straight judgment of how they were doing it. But before I laugh, I want to go back to something that you said about Amy Poehler pretending you belong somewhere when you don't. one of the things that Amy was smartest about in talking to me about Lauren, she felt that completely beyond all the comedy things you can learn from him, and he has a lot of theories of comedy, he's like a comedy professor.

26:11She thought that he was just so great at teaching you how to be in a room, how to walk into a room, and you got Paul McCartney at the dinner table, and not lose your shit and start acting like a weirdo. Yes. And being able to go into a pitch meeting and just be at the grown-ups table. And when you think about it, that is the real skill. And I think that's something he had in spades at a weird early age. And even his cousin from Toronto, Neil Levy, told me that when he first came to New York, he was barely 30 and he was hanging out with Mick Jagger and Paul Simon and everything. How does Lauren know these people?

26:47Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But he said that he thought that it was just some kind of like EQ sort of thing, an intuitive sense of knowing what a person is going to be interested in talking about, not gushing, treating them like a regular room temperature kind of conversation. And I think that that is part of it. And he does teach all his people how to do that. And that's why so many of the SNL people, aside from having good comedy or acting careers, they know how to produce, they know how to be showrunners. They know how to handle people. Yes. But anyway, so go back to your other question. He was in Toronto.

27:20He had this comedy partner who was a much more of a borscht belt, he seltzer down the pants kind of comic. And they did two man comedy, very corny blackouts, punchline setups. And that was a way to go for a while. This guy had met Jack Rollins in New York, who was Woody Allen's manager. So again, Lauren always had this eye on who can get me up to the next step. He was smart about that. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

27:57But then he always felt like one of the problems with Canada, it's almost too polite. Even when he and his partner were doing well, the CBC would say, okay, your turn's over. Time to give someone else a chance. There's this American idea of a trajectory up, up, up, up, up. Yeah, it never stops. He goes to LA as a writer. He's knocking around really the lamest string of variety television shows you can imagine. The beautiful Phyllis Diller show, where Phyllis Diller, who's a genius, I think, but still the show, she would play the saxophone to Ernest Borgnine and stuff like that. And Perry Como's Christmas special.

28:34Things like this, even though these were really cruddy things, he always had a takeaway. He learned something from even the lamest experiences. Right. On the Perry Como show, the executive producer said to him, you know why Perry Como's a star? Watch him when he comes out on stage to sing. He comes out and he walks from the wings over to the microphone. And it's just the way he walked. The pace of the walking made him a star. It's like, whoa, but a little takeaway like that. Anyways, those shows always got canceled or it got fired. So then he ends up at Laugh-In, which was a hit show. But as he said, it wasn't any more fun working on a hit show than working on a show that was about to be canceled because the way it was done at Laugh-In, And this informs how he eventually would set up the process at SNL.

29:22The writers were in a motel far away from the studio, throwing out jokes that just kind of went into the maw. And then somebody would rewrite them. And then two other people would rewrite them. He never even went into the studio. And that show, I used to watch it, I'm that old. Every big star in Hollywood would show up on that show and do a walk on. And if you're Lauren and you're excited about glamour, Think how horrible it must have felt to be in the motel with the schmoey comedy writers and you're not meeting Dean Martin and everybody else. He'd watch the show in the motel with his fellow writers on Monday.

29:57That's the only way you ever knew if any of your material was used. You know, you'd maybe see like a glimmer of one of your jokes. One of the great things about SNL being live, and Lauren realized this almost accidentally, is that the audience tells you whether it works. That's why the dress rehearsal is so important at SNL. He's sitting there underneath where the audience sits and he's listening to them. They're his secret sauce. And of course, he has his own opinion, too. But a proper laugh is a kind of combustible, uncontrolled thing. You can't fake it. So hearing the laugh is really important.

30:31Yeah. And also, just to jump to the live aspect, improv live is spectacular. Improv on television is terrible. because you've lost the element of danger that failure is on the table around every corner. There's no safety net. And so SNL being live is such an interesting, they've captured some of that danger, even in the live broadcast. Whereas like Laugh-In edited, something gets reduced. There's no fear there. That is exactly right. And I sometimes wonder when you see the show in 8H, it's so thrilling. My kids were both like theater kids and they were always just like, oh my God, it's like the theater because people are running in and out with pieces of scenery.

31:13Someone's changing their pants over there. Yes. Yes, frenetic. And you get the sense of the excitement and people at home who don't see the scenery coming in that, but you still get the adrenaline. I think the audience bridges that gap. The audience is like a huge character in Saturday Night Live. Yes. I saw this a little bit when I worked for Lauren, but also if you're there at the show, there's all this like, and then you'll see Lauren just to the left of home base. He'll be completely still. He'll have his hands in his pockets. It's just this kind of little pool of calm. And it makes his mystique even stranger.

31:48Well, that's his way to control chaos, which is if you enter a room and someone's shouting and you start talking very low, you can bring them down. Right. And in the old days, he would always stand there with a glass of white wine. Oh, elegant. To kind of keep it like, I'm just at a cocktail party. Yeah. But the live thing, the fear, the no net thing, this is probably something that I'm able to bring to this. When I met Lauren, we hardly knew each other, but working on the new show in 1984, part of the reason that was a big failure, I think, is that unlike Saturday Night Live, it wasn't live. It was taped on a Thursday night, edited all night long, and then it would go up Friday.

32:26As people who worked with him for a long time say, Lauren's the kind of guy not good at term papers, really good at tests, meaning he needs the deadline. So at the new show, it was structured a lot like SNL, sketches, guest stars, but there'd be an audience and they'd be locked in the studio because sometimes these tapings would go for three or four hours. People would try to leave and it couldn't let them leave because you needed them there. And I remember people would yell cut in the middle of a sketch and you'd start it over. They'd have to patch it together in the editing room. They'd have to add a laugh track.

32:59And as Jim Downey said, you had all the crudeness of live and the staleness of tape. So that was also a lesson that like, OK, you need that electricity of live. Yeah. What is the saying that you wrote down? He famously says, we don't go on because we're ready. We go on because it's 1130. Yeah. Which is a very liberating approach in a way. You know, I was thinking about what you were just saying about improv and how it's like the circus or something. Like if you're looking at it on a tape, it just could be CGI. But if you're sitting right next to the person in the trapeze, you're kind of going.

33:32Yes. Improv and SNL, it's something I explored a little bit in the book. The relationship between improv people and SNL is an interesting one because I don't think most viewers know. I didn't know this until your book. Every kid takes improv lessons now the way when I was a kid, you take piano lessons. So improv is such a big thing in the culture, but there's no improvisation on SNL. People who have dared to improvise, like Damon Wayans, they're fired. What about feeling? Like Will Ferrell, positive I've seen moments where the thing's going awry, the audience is in on it. He starts feeling. Maybe ad-lib.

34:09Yes. Acknowledging what's happening and just bridging this gap. I guess if something were to go wrong, then you can sort of ad-lib and save it. But if you ad-lib like a joke or something. You're fired. You're out of there. Wow. And it's partly about huge respect for the writer and the writing, which goes back to laughing. But it's also everything is timed with a stopwatch down to the second because they have to know when that commercial break is going to land. And so that's why these famous incidents like Sinead O 'Connor tearing up the picture of the Pope or Elvis Costello quitting and going into another song.

34:44The reason those things made people upset wasn't just that they were messing with the plan, but because it could throw off the camera operators and could throw off the timing. It's a play. Yeah, if Elvis plays a different song, well, what if that's 44 seconds longer and the Toyota ad can't run? Yes. So the irony is you don't improv on the show, but improv players do really well when they're in the cast. And that, I think, is because they're really good at ensemble work. To be good at improv is, you know, you have to be really tuned in to listen. And that's why improv guys like you, as opposed to like stand-ups, are good on the show.

35:22What are his rules of sketch? Some of them are really broad, tonal things like do it in sunshine. He likes to remind people that comedy is an entertainment. And he doesn't have a lot of patience for people who want to do some kind of dark, brecht-y and black box. And sometimes Do It in Sunshine is something as simple as the costumes. Something that I think I cut from the book because the book was way too long in the beginning. Well, when you write for 10 years, you're liable to stack up some pages. Bruce McCulloch, one of the kids in the hall, was a writer on the show in 85, 86. And he told me that Joan Cusack was in the cast then.

36:01And they were doing a run-through of a sketch. And she was in some kind of dowdy dress. And Lauren said, can't you put her in something more attractive? You know, she's a pretty girl. And Bruce got really mad and he said, okay, Lauren, you want me to put her in a fucking bikini? And, you know, he later said, I can't believe I wasn't fired for that. But the point is just that you want it to be pleasant and bright. And you don't want people yelling at each other. You don't want to write anger. I found this really interesting. He has no tolerance for people that are doing impersonations out of a place of hate.

36:32And this is an increasingly interesting dynamic that's presented itself in the last decade on the show, which is everyone's politics are so fucking rigid now that you have these performers that almost refuse to lampoon liberals. Then if they're playing a conservative, they hate the conservative they're playing with and they have a tendency to make them unenjoyable to watch. Yeah, it was so interesting for me to spend a lot of time there during the first Trump administration because a lot of this tension was kind of coalescing for the first time. Taron Killam, who had been playing Trump before Alec Baldwin did, was really outraged to get a note every now and then saying, can you give him a little more charm?

37:12And Lorne didn't mean like, because we like Trump. Of course. But he meant, it's an entertainment. You gotta be funny. You go where the laughs are. And he always uses as an example how British villains, like Bond villains, or think of Alan Rickman in Die Hard, or even some Shakespeare characters. They're fun. Yeah, I mean, they're kind of oily and you like to watch them. Another thing that I've heard him say a lot is idiots play better than assholes. They're just going to be funnier. And Dr. Evil is sort of the apotheosis of that. So I think that some of the more millennial, younger people in the cast, that's a hard thing for them to get and swallow.

37:51Yeah, if someone didn't want to play Feinstein. Right. Cecily Strong felt awkward about a piece where she was playing Feinstein. It's kind of a drooly, doddery old lady, but she is. There was comedy in that. And one week I was there, he wanted Kate McKinnon to do her Angela Merkel impersonation, which is funny. You know, the full cut. She didn't want to do it because Merkel had announced that she was stepping down and it was like just too sad. But as a Woody Allen character would say in Annie Hall, what concern of that is yours? You know, she would make the people laugh. Right. Well, he has to give a speech at one point that you're privy to, which is he basically just says, your politics aren't the politics of the show.

38:30Those are two different things. our obligation is to bring truth and humor to power on both sides. That's right. We're not doing one version here. He takes some heat for saying this, but political comedy on television has veered more toward a kind of a virtue signaling, you're with us or you're against us. You know, even The Daily Show, which of course makes fun of liberals, you definitely feel there's an ideology there. You could watch five minutes of it and be pretty certain. Yeah, and you feel like Fox viewers are probably not watching it at all. Right. We have these famous sketches of who was it that did Jimmy Carter?

39:05Oh, yeah. Dan Aykroyd. Yeah, Dan Aykroyd. They have a rich tradition of blasting liberals and Republicans. Oh, and Daryl Hammond's Bill Clinton. So funny. Oh, incredible. Yeah. We live in such a strange time now, especially in Trump, too. This whole culture war thing that I think people feel like everyone should be mobilized at all times. And Lawrence take, I guess, would be that's not what they're there for. And it reminds me of this great word that Seth Meyers coined when he was a head writer, which I just think is so smart. It's the word claptor. The idea of claptor is there's some political humor.

39:41You do it, you make a political joke, and people go like, yes, yes, of course, very good. They're clapping because they agree with the sentiment. But what you want is you want this uncontrollable physical reaction of a laugh. Yes. But look, at the same time, back then, 2018, when Trump was two years in, it was around the midterms, I remember talking to some of the writers and this was when Trump was tweeting about SNL every day. And they said, it's a little scary to me that the president of the United States is paying so much attention to the job that I do. And what if some dumb punchline I write causes him to blow up the world?

40:20Right. He's pretty dialed in. Well, even Chappelle in his recent model. Because I know you're watching. Yeah, he is. That's crazy. He's talking directly to the president right now. That's crazy. I want to talk about the drug stuff. This field of people really over-indexes in addiction, myself included. And to love and root for and guide all these people, he would have to have a great radar for what's happening over the years, having watched so many of the performers struggle with this. And I'm most curious how it's evolved for him. what kind of regrets he has. Chris Rock told me, you know, this guy has been hundreds, if not thousands, of people's boss.

41:01You get to be a pretty good student of human character that way. I think that in the very beginning, yeah, it was the 70s, and his whole idea was he wanted to update the kind of moribund variety show formula with the concerns of his generation, sex and drugs and rock and roll. I mean, a lot of drug humor in those first five years. His feeling back then, which was not unusual, was people's private lives are their business. What you do in your own time is your own business. I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm not the man. And I think if you party yourself, it could be a little misleading, like, well, I smoke weed.

41:36I mean, he's getting pulled over with weed in the car. Yeah, I did a thing at the 92nd Street Y recently with Bob Odenkirk, who, I guess I didn't know this, was a kind of a straight arrow as a young man. And he said one of the things that shocked him in reading my book was getting a sense of what a pothead Lauren had been. I don't think that's that alarming in any way. But in the 70s, they were all practically living at the offices. You know, they'd stay there all night. There's a lot of coke, which would fuel them through these all-night writing sessions. And as Lauren said, probably the office was nicer than most of their apartments at that point.

42:04Sure. But the advice was basically just rotate your drugs. And there was, I think, this sense of if you can't handle it, it's kind of your problem. And the other thing that's interesting, and even if you look at the drug humor on the show, things like drugs and eating disorders, they hadn't been medicalized yet. They were just kind of character things. And I remember Lauren once saying to me that between the movie Arthur and Arthur 2, alcoholism moved from being a subject for comedy and a disease. Yeah. Because there was this big cultural shift. God, that hits home. I just got to say, that was my dad's favorite movie.

42:40It was one of our favorite movies. We watched Arthur a hundred times. He was also a raging alcoholic. And even between the gap of Arthur 1 and 2, my dad went to treatment and got sober. So it literally happened real time for us. So it was like, oh, wait, it's not super cute that this guy's hammered all day long. So that was his take. And then Belushi dies. What year did he die? It was when he was off the show. So it was like 85 or 86 or later. I'm thinking it was around 86. And we're going to have to fact check. OK, Monica will dig right into that. It was before that. It was during the hiatus year.

43:12So it was probably early, mid 80s. And Lauren always is a little bit of a point of pride in saying that no one's actually died while working for the show. Oh, that's funny. Well, while their tenure. Well, he means just while they were employed on the show. Right. Okay. I might take some pride in that. I mean, he would say that it's because there's something about the discipline of the show, which is almost military in its rigor. You got to approach it like an addiction. Oh, that's right. The show itself is an addiction. You end up regulating how you feel by this job. And it works. And then when the job goes away, you're in trouble.

43:45In both the case of Chris Farley and Volusia, Belushi, they were off the show for a certain number of years. Without the structure of the show, they were kind of spinning out. But anyway, when Belushi died, it really hit him hard. And I think he felt like this whole approach of just letting people do their own thing on their own time, this was the wrong approach. We're a tribe and we have to look out for each other. And so by the time Chris Farley comes along 10 years later, whatever, from the beginning, he clearly had addiction issues. Lorne would call him into his office and give him these talks about the drinking or the drugs.

44:21And the sad thing was that for Farley, who was such a child man kind of guy, Bob Odenkirk, I remember telling me that Farley would be excited to be called into Lorne's office. It was like the kind of thrill of being in the principal's office, but at the same time, you're getting in trouble. He couldn't metabolize it, but Lorne had really changed his approach. He would ban Farley from the show for weeks at a time if he was too fucked up. And he sent him to a series of really tough love rehab places. And obviously it didn't do it for him. I think he's been pretty hands-on in guiding Pete Davidson through his different issues.

44:55And Mulaney, they all talk about how Lauren is a really helpful person to talk to about it. So I think that he definitely realized, okay, I can play a role here. But also, I never saw any drugs in the time that I spent over there in the last number of years. He joked once. He said, yeah, now it's all about a Zempic. Yeah, that's a drug. What are Lauren's five rules of show business longevity? Oh, boy. Let's see. And if you get three out of five, that'll be good. Well, he'll say you can't make an entrance if you don't make an exit. He'll sometimes say that to people when they're leaving the show.

45:29You kind of have to switch horses. I mean, it's strange. It's something he's never done. Although he did make the exit in 1980 and then came back. Another thing he likes to say is when do people leave show business? And the answer is never. No one ever leaves show business. And then he'll say, you're out of the business five years before somebody will tell you. I mean, that relates a little bit to his management style that I think explains. He knows it's a long game. When he was in Hollywood as a young man, he saw the Smothers brothers be taken off the air because they wouldn't let up on the Vietnam stuff that they were doing, which was brilliant.

46:03But the lesson he took away from that is, yeah, they're brilliant, but they made martyrs of themselves. and now they don't get to do a show. Even in his speech, like this show airs in 50 states. Yeah, and I think that that would also inform how he viewed what went down with Conan and The Tonight Show. Tell me. Well, that was a very complicated thing where Lauren picked Conan, significantly a writer, you know, like Lauren was, to succeed David Letterman. What a preposterous idea, like a comedy writer who's not ever even been a professional performer. And he fostered his career. And then years later, when Conan took over The Tonight Show, this is something that the Hollywood people still kind of parse and talk about, like it's some Greek myth.

46:47Yeah, yeah. Lorne was not made executive producer of The Tonight Show the way he was over Conan's late night. And partly it was, The Tonight Show was in L.A., Lorne was in New York. There was a sense in the business that it was a tactical mistake. To not have Lorne. To not have Lorne as the godfather figure who had big pull with NBC. Even if he's just like a fire extinguisher behind glass. Because then when NBC started messing around with Conan's slot, I don't know if you remember, Jay Leno didn't really want to retire at that point. There's sides here in LA. Yes, oh yeah. I refuse to be on one.

47:23I think everyone got fucked. I agree. Let's give a little context for people who don't know what happened. Okay, so when Conan was successfully doing the late night show, he was being wooed by other networks. So NBC, I think this was the idea of his agent, Gavin Pallone. It's kind of a kooky idea. They said, well, okay, if you promise him the Tonight Show in X number of years, like nine years, he'll stay. So they signed this weird, you're the lady in waiting kind of thing with Conan. He stuck around. The date approaches. NBC is like, oh, shit, we don't want to get rid of Jay. And Jay doesn't want to go.

47:59So they were over a barrel. I mean, it was kind of a dumb deal if you think about it. So they did put Conan in on The Tonight Show. Jay didn't want to go, so they did this weird thing where they put him at 10 p.m. That show is actually not doing great because people aren't used to seeing Jay Leno tell jokes at 10. So then it started to erode the lead-in for the 11 o 'clock news, which started to erode the lead-in for Conan's show. Yes, and you're trying to figure out what is the broken part. Is Conan not appealing? Is it the lead-in that sucks? So then what they decide to do is they said, okay, we're going to put Jay on later, and he's going to come right before Conan and we're going to move Conan's Tonight Show to 12.05.

48:36So it's this little adjustment. Now it's like nothing anybody wants. When you think about it now in the age of streaming, it's like, duh, who cares? But Conan felt, why is the network sticking around with me? Because we've been waiting all these years. When you think about it now, it seems so minor. But he grew up revering The Tonight Show as this franchise in the same way that Lauren did as a child. So that's so interesting. They had this similar vibration. And Conan got this idea in his head that The Tonight Show at 12.05 simply isn't The Tonight Show. That's like breach of contract. Yeah, Team Coco, I'm with Coco.

49:11It became this huge movement. But at the same time, I think Conan hoped that Lorne Michaels, who had basically been his patron and guardian angel early in his career, would maybe intervene with NBC to try to not let this bad thing happen. But Lorne didn't so much. And Lorne doesn't really want to ever talk about this head on. He's just way too self-possessed and cool for that. But people around Lauren feel that it was an act of disrespect. It's kind of a godfather thing, that he hadn't been given that EP credit and that he wasn't going to stick his neck out. Now, he told me that he found it painful to watch Conan twisting in the wind.

49:51And he thought if he did have the opportunity to talk to Conan, he would have said, this is like dying on a molehill. Don't make a martyr of yourself like this Mother's Brothers. don't make a huge fuss out of this thing, which is five minutes. Stay on the air. That's the rule of show business. Stay on the air, stay on the air, stay on the air. But then the Conan people, and I've known Conan forever from college and his producer, Jeff Ross, live in my building. Those guys, they also have a completely understandable explanation. Oh, yeah, yeah. They're newbies, they're youngins, they're come out to LA.

50:19And they say the NBC people said, you know what, we don't need to bring Lorne Michaels. He's on the East Coast. You guys are set, we don't need it. And they're like, okay, sure, boss. They're new, they don't know what they're doing either. I actually don't think there's a total bad guy in the situation. I guess NBC is the bad guy, but it's not like this was their master plan. It all went to shit and they didn't know how to fix it. It was dumb to promise something. You didn't know you were going to be able to execute. Very corporate to be like, yeah, you're going to get this and have no idea. Conan obviously completely recovered.

50:48He's had an amazing career. And I think his whole podcast Empire thing now is so cool. And he and Lauren, it was emotionally painful because they really were close. And I think this created a feeling of confusion and frostiness. And over time, that's healed. And I'm really happy. Conan appeared in the Five Timers Club a couple of seasons ago. It's just nice to see that. You touched on it a little bit, but it launches in 75. And then I guess in 80, he splits. Yeah. Does he have a reason why he splits at that moment? He just thought, SNL, okay, I'll try this. He had always wanted to do this hip variety show.

51:27And here in New York, they're saying, okay, you can do this at 1130. One of the reasons he liked the idea is he referred to that time slot as a vacant lot on the edge of town, meaning no network executives are going to pay any attention to it. He can use it almost as a laboratory. No testing. Because it's live, there's no pilot. He certainly never thought it was going to be a 50-year institution. And over the five years, it got really hard. There were a lot of drugs. It was physically taxing. It starts losing the key parts of his cast. after the first year Chevy Chase defects and goes to Hollywood.

51:59That almost broke his heart. He only did one year. One year and a few episodes in the second season. That was really hard for him because Chevy was like a brother. You know, he calls him a founder of the show. Then he brings in Billy Murray in the second season. But then he loses Belushi and he loses Aykroyd. And so by the end of the fifth year, they're all exhausted. What he later learned is, oh, it's like a sports franchise. Yes. People move on. It's part of it. Keep the rookie bench full. And you got to have them on a seven-year contract when they arrive. But so after five years, he's kind of like, oh, my God, I'm exhausted.

52:30I need to regroup. He says to NBC, okay, I'll come back, but you have to give me like six months off to hire a whole new bunch of people. He had months and months to prepare for the first season to hire people and let them mesh and marinate and fall in love. And he felt he needed to start that whole process over. They were basically, eh, I don't think so. he was totally taken by surprise. He got a phone call one day and said, they're keeping the show on, but they hired someone else to produce it. And he was like, what? Even though he didn't have ownership of it, he sweetly and naively thought of it as his baby.

53:08He kind of lost control of it, flipped him out. But on the other hand, he was exhausted. And this goes back to his grandparents running a movie theater. He always thought that a big part of his career was going to be the movies. So he thought, all right, now I'm going to go off and I'm going to do my Mike Nichols thing. I'm going to direct my version of The Graduate. Seeing The Graduate had been a really seminal experience for him. He idolized Mike Nichols. A lot of people say he's modeled his speech patterns on Mike Nichols, you know. And he and Nichols had a lot in common. They changed their Jewish names.

53:38They had his difficult mothers. They came into New York, to use a phrase I like, they kind of learned how to work the friendship economy, moving their way up. And they were similar. They were close. So Lorne signs a deal with MGM to produce a bunch of movies. That completely falls flat. He assigns a lot of his SNL writers, Franken and Davis, Jim Downey, Tom Schiller, to write screenplays. Nothing happens. Partly it's that MGM is in financial mayhem. But partly it doesn't play to his strengths. It's not his wheelhouse. Movies take a long time. You get a lot of notes from idiots. Movies is not a writer's medium.

54:18TV is, but not movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One movie got made in that period, Tom Schiller's Nothing Lasts Forever, which was this strange little art film. And Aykroyd and Bill Murray are in it. But the studio thought they were going to get Animal House. They wanted a big boffo comedy. And here's Lauren kind of doing these little art films. At the same time, he was working on a screenplay of Pride and Prejudice. He had optioned Don DeLillo's White Noise, which Noah Baumbach would make 40 years later. So that was a total disaster. And in 1985, SNL had kind of limped along, but NBC was going to pull the plug.

54:56And then Brandon Tartikoff reached out to Lauren and said, listen, if you'd want to come back, we would really love you to take the show over again. And he was caught because it was sort of his baby and the movie thing hadn't gone the way he wanted of the two. But he had this feeling, which I'm sure with someone as status conscious as Lauren, it felt like, God, does it look like I'm going backwards? Does it look like going back with my tail between my legs? And he consulted, because his dad died, a lot of rabbis always, a lot of mentor figures. He asked two people for advice. The first one was David Geffen, who was his first agent.

55:33And Geffen said to him, you don't want to do that. That's going backwards. Someone who wants to be you should do that job. And Lauren's kind of funny. He said, well, I always kind of liked being me. I want to be me. And then the second person he asked was Mo Austin. Who's that? Mo Austin was the chairman of Warner Records. He was a venerable old Hollywood sage, older than Geffen. And he had this much more practical advice. He said, look, you love New York. There There aren't that many big showbiz jobs in New York. This is one. You're really good at it. You like doing it. It's where you want to live.

56:12Of course you should do it. And if you think about the psychology of Hollywood and the like get ahead, better, bigger, it was kind of brave really to go back. Yeah, for sure. Most people wouldn't. Their ego would have gotten away. Yeah, but he did it. When he came back, did he leverage any of that to get now ownership or anything? Did he have a better position when he returned? Not right in that year, but over the coming years, he brought in some financial people who helped him claw back some of the distribution rights. And he eventually was making more money off of it. Because when he left after the first five years, Buck Henry said to him, so Lauren, what was your takeaway from this?

56:45What piece of it do you own? And Lauren said, uh, nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He realized that he wasn't so savvy that way. When he came back, so Tartikoff said, okay, we want you to come back, but you can just kind of be this executive in charge and get your own people to run it day to day. And that was a really disastrous season, partly because of the casting. Peacock made a whole documentary about that called The Weird Year. And Lorne, already kind of being attuned to the hinges between different eras, he thought, oh, I have to go young. So he hired people who had been in John Hughes movies.

57:22You know, he hired Anthony Michael Hall. Yeah, Anthony Michael Hall and RDJ. Robert Downey Jr. And these people didn't really know how to do sketch comedy. That was in their background. They were also all way too young. Al Franken said to me, you couldn't do a sketch about a Senate hearing back then because they were all fairly shaving. Franken also told me that season was so notoriously horrible that years later, like on the Senate floor, Marco Rubio would walk up to him and go, Al, what the hell happened that season? Oh, wow. Oh, my God. The next year, he kind of got back in the groove and he hired that fantastic cast of Dana Carvey.

57:58He held over Lovitz about Phil Hartman. Yeah. Jan Hooks. Those people were so great. So this was interesting from the book. Everyone thinks the best years of Sariot Live were whatever years they watched in high school. Yeah. Which makes total sense. Is there any objective way to evaluate it? I guess you would have ratings as some metric, but can we say what the golden arrows are? Of course, I'm skewed. What was your high school one? Sandler and Chris Farley and Dana Carvey was still there. And I would argue those were some damn good years. And Phil Hartman. I think so too. I think I had a great writing staff.

58:32I bet there is a way to look at it ratings-wise, but I think the reason the high school thing is kind of true is that when you're in high school, your emotions, you don't really have any power. It's why when we hear the pop music that was on AM radio when we were in high school, it's so powerful. You're awakening to this. It's your first taste of it all. Yeah. My high school cast was the first cast. I went to the show when I was 16. I went to an Elliot Gould show. Wow. Actually, when I went to see Lauren after I had sold this book and sprung on him the news that I was going to write this book about him where he looked like he was going to have a heart attack before agreeing to talk with me, I told him that I was at that show in 76, which he never knew.

59:17And I think it meant a lot to him. People being there at the beginning means something to him. And he's kind of superstitious. It kind of resonated with him. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. If you dare.

59:39But now having this nerdy scholarly interest in the whole thing, my other two favorite casts just in terms of comedy are the one you're talking about and also the really cool cast. Tina, Amy. That was mine. Well, I think Hater, Armisen, Wig. Yeah. Because I thought they were not only really funny, but they had a kind of a hipness to them. Yes. That's the UCB vibe coming in. That's right. Groundlings was very broad. Will Ferrell was Groundlings. Now, once it went into that UCB zone, starting with Amy. Why are they hipper? It's like they're in a shitty little theater in Manhattan. It's free. You line up.

1:00:14It had a very punk rock vibe. Less sketch and more improv. Dangerous. It was very punk rock. So you've just explained it. I've not ever understood that. As it was explained to me when I got into the Groundlings, they're like, OK, Second City, they generally will do political stuff. Groundlings, we do not do politics. Second City, you don't write your sketches so you don't own anything. They all own it. But you get paid. So that's an upside. Groundlings, you have to pay to even have your theater time. But you write your own shit and you own everything you do there. It was a binary war for 30 years.

1:00:43And then UCB arrived. It's all improv or mostly all improv. and everyone looks punk rock and hungover. No one's in costumes. No one's in wigs. No, you're wearing a hoodie. You have to. I mean, you don't have to, but you have to. And the method there is the game of improv. So it's actually very intellectual. There is sketch there and people are doing big characters, but that's not the cool part of UCB. That's how it made UCB. Exactly. And I worked there and I did UCB and I was so into it. You felt so cool being there. They're all cults. This is a book somebody should write. I mean, about the cults.

1:01:18I never thought about how each of them had their own distinct contribution and economic model. One of the things that was interesting about the kids in the hall, which Lauren produced, is that those guys somehow negotiated to own their characters. Like Dana Carvey doesn't own. This is some of the drama we could get into because I think over the years I've watched different alumni from Saturday Night Live have their movie careers. and some had Lauren produce stuff and some didn't. Famously, Mike Myers didn't do certain characters. You can do them once on the show and you own them, but if you do them twice.

1:01:50Oh, you know, I don't know. That's so interesting. That's for the next edition. Yeah, I'd always heard Mike Myers intentionally didn't do Austin Powers on stage, even though he had the character because he didn't want Lauren to own it. He wanted to be able to go because he had done Wayne's World and he wanted to go be on his own. That's very smart. Some of these people just are so canny. It reminds me of how Dana Carvey told me he knew that his sketches were going to play better if he did them on home base. Because you're closer to the audience reaction. You can see their eyes. They can see your eyes.

1:02:21And so he would always go and cozy up to the designers to make sure they would put his sketch there. You don't want your sketch to be in the corner under the bleachers where the audience can't actually see them. So all these different skills. But that Mike thing, I didn't know that. What's the Sandler story? In the mid-90s, and a lot of people didn't know this, it was a fun thing to be able to write about in the book. So one time when Lauren almost lost the show, he was almost fired. On what ground? He said it was the first time in the history of the show that the critics who were really dumping on the show and the network executives who were also dumping on the show were on the same side.

1:02:59He recognized after that whole bad Anthony and Michael Hall season that he had to keep the cast current with what was really going on in the world. So he replenished that Carvey-Hartman cast. He brought in Sandler and Farley and Spade. This was a whole different feeling. Oh, yeah. These were lads. They were almost fratty. Yeah, they were fratty and bratty. And Phil Hartman is almost like John Barrymore by comparison. You know, a whole different thing. And a lot of the boomers were still in charge. They ran NBC. They were the critics for magazines. They didn't like this new thing. They thought it was too many sketches about anal probes and everything.

1:03:35Sure, sure, sure. I love taking moral high ground in sketch comedy. That's wonderful. The network started rolling up its sleeves and saying, we have to get in here and fix SNL because the critics were dumping on it. And they also were kind of riding high because they had friends, they had Seinfeld. They were like, we know better. Don Olmeyer was the sort of head of this cabal. They basically said, you got to fire Farley. You got to fire Sandler and a bunch of the writers. and at that point, Lorne, again, it's his sort of Game of Thrones instinct for how to ride it out. He just realized, okay, I'm just going to roll over.

1:04:11He was a new father. He was kind of overwhelmed. I think he saw the writing on the wall that he wasn't going to win it. He was 20 years in at that point. Yeah, and the other thing that happened around that time is they started quietly interviewing other people thinking about possibly replacing Lorne. One of the people they talked to was Judd Apatow, who was in his mid-20s. He had just been running the Ben Stiller show, which was a great show that was completely underappreciated by Fox and then canceled. So Judd gets this call from Warren Littlefield and these executives about a job at SNL. They're very vague about what it is.

1:04:47And he was one of these nerds who taped and transcribed the shows. No one more obsessed with comedy. You know, Sandler was his roommate. Right. Sandler was on the show. So think how hard that must have been for him. he called some of the people at the show to try to figure out what was going on. He even met with Lorne a couple of times. But Lorne strategically didn't fuss and just acted like nothing was happening. And Judd and I think some of the other people, there was also this comedy writer named Adam Resnick who they approached. Those guys realized, well, wait, there's something kind of screwy here because you're kind of like wink, wink, hint, hint.

1:05:20Maybe one day you could take over. But it was so not above board and so sleazy that I quote Judd in the book saying, it seemed so disrespectful of Lauren's captaining of his ship. He just wanted nothing to do with it. So he just said, no, thanks. Oh, wow. Good for him. And same with Adam Resnick. And Lauren just kind of rode it out. And the number of administrations of NBC executives outlasted. He's almost like the Queen of England. Like when you're watching The Crown and she's like, you're my third prime minister. Yeah. I will be here after you're gone. As Judd says, right after that, he went and he picked one of the best casts ever, the great Will Ferrell cast.

1:05:54Sandler and Farley had to be let go. So he handled it in a very careful way. Oh, he wouldn't let go? They didn't just leave? It had been decreed that they had to go. Oh. Lorne, in his style of avoiding all confrontation, never wanted to have blood on his hands or anything. Basically, Sandy Wernick, who managed Sandler, word of this was out and about. Wernick picks up the phone and says to Lorne, you know, if you want, we could have Adam do another season, but maybe you should just pursue this Happy Gilmore thing. And it was kind of like wink, wink. It was all arranged so they didn't actually have to be fired.

1:06:25Got it. Everybody knew that it couldn't come back. Oh, wow. So it was a complicated jiu-jitsu thing. But when Sandler hosted a few years ago, he sang this funny song about how he got fired. It's now kind of out in the open, but back then it was papered over. One of the delicious ironies of this is that Don Ohlmeyer, the guy who forced Lauren to fire these people, Lauren was just kind of ahead of the curve there. He knew that this kind of comedy was coming. A year or two later, Ohlmeyer calls him and he says, you know, I was wrong about Sandler. Could you get me a print of Billy Madison to show at my kid's birthday party?

1:06:58Oh, wow. What you'll do for your kids. You'll eat crow. Yeah, true. Conan says there's a Game of Thrones of show business. Lauren's going to be the winner. And after the nuclear apocalypse, all life forms will be wiped out. But Lauren will be there in his office talking to the cockroaches and saying, like, I see you as a Chevy cockroach. He just has that instinct. Yeah. It's wild. What's beating it as far as longevity? 60 Minutes maybe has been on longer. The Tonight Show's been on longer as a franchise, but it's the longest running entertainment show that there is. Yeah, 50 years. Every year I've been alive.

1:07:34Well, I love the book. I hope you take this as a compliment. It reads like a New Yorker article. It's so fast moving and every sentence is just packed with all this rich detail. Even his fucking desk, if you're describing his office, there's a story about the desk, but it's done in three sentences. You're just getting so much. It's very dense in the most satisfying way. I really, really love it. Thank you. Yeah, it's fantastic. It's out. I hope everyone reads it. It's so interesting. Every page, you're like, ooh, that's juicy. Ooh, that's juicy. What an institution to be able to delve in and really cool.

1:08:07When I was doing it, I'd never written a biography. I realized you want to avoid it being like this death march through the years. This year goes to that year. It goes to that season. That's when something clicked in my brain. And I'm like, oh, I should think about my background as a magazine journalist. So I did this thing where I spent a whole week there and interspersed in the book are these chapters of different days of the week. And so you have this kind of propulsion towards Saturday. Oh, I love that. Yes. So by the time you get to the end of the book, people tell me that they're reading the Saturday chapter and their heart is pounding.

1:08:41That's awesome. Have you heard from Lauren what he thinks of the book? I heard from Lauren a couple of weeks ago. He came to my book party in the city at David Remnick's house, which was really nice. He spent a lot of time there talking to all the nerdy New Yorker people. He told me he hasn't brought himself to read it yet. I find that hard to believe, but go on. Well, I did see someone last night who was really close to him who said, I think he's read it. Yeah. I could see it both ways. What a weird existential thing to be like reading your life between the covers of this book. You can see that might be scary.

1:09:14But on the other hand, you think that just sort of pure... Curiosity. No, so you have taken the time to document his whole journey in a way that he himself probably hasn't constructed. There's no way if you spent 10 years writing a book about me, I'm not reading it. He did say, I'll read it. Also very sweet. He'll sort of let me know when various of his fancy friends have read it. He said, Candice Bergen just called me and she read it and she said it was great. That's awesome. You know, the reason I wanted to write about him is because so little was known about him. The way I handled it was I approached him only after I had sold the book, which I think meant something to him because he wouldn't have ever wanted it to look like he wanted this vanity project about himself.

1:09:55Lauren is so smart that, as I say in the acknowledgments, he never wanted a book inflicted upon him. I think in a way he would have preferred to just sidestep this whole thing. But he's smart enough to appreciate that this is like a real book, a real work of journalism. It isn't a hagiography and that people are going to take it seriously. So that takes his legacy more seriously. I think so much of the interest is we all have such a fondness for SNL, and it's been a part of so many of our coming of age that you want to know how all that happened. You were talking about the principles of comedy.

1:10:26Some of them are even just like little practical things. He'll say, in a sketch, if a man arrives to pick a woman up for a date, don't have him bring her flowers. Have him bring her chocolates. The reason for that is if he brings her flowers, then the audience is going to go like, Oh, now she has to find a vase. That takes you out of the moment. Right. All these little technical things. So there's a way you could distill a kind of how-to guide. Yeah. Well, I loved it. I hope everyone reads it. Thanks so much for coming in. It was really fun. And we'll talk to you in 10 years when you write your next book.

1:10:59Okay. I might be napping till then.

1:11:04Stay tuned for the fact check. It's where the party's at.

1:11:12Hello. Look at these old new shoes. They're new. They look like Grammy. Like they're really worn in Grammys. Yeah, they look like slippers. They're like a moccasin. Tweed slippers. I wouldn't say tweed. Okay, don't say tweed. Were you a little drowsy? Yeah, I'm sleepy today. Yes, because it's a little gloomy and overcast-y? Yeah, and we normally record at 11 and it's 10. Yeah, crack ass a dog. That changes my whole morning. What time did you wake up? Eight. I cannot wake up before eight. I keep setting my alarm for seven. I keep trying. Yeah. Can I advise you on something? Sure. Don't fight it and feel bad about it.

1:11:58Because the converse situation is the one I'm in. I was like, I can't sleep past six. I would pay a shocking amount of money to be able to do it. Yeah. Don't hate it. Okay. Because likely as you get older, it'll probably be harder. I know. And you'll be like, fuck, why can't I just sleep till eight? Well, I know part of the issue is I don't fall asleep till late. What time did you fall asleep last night? And were you watching one of your medical dramas? ER, yeah, this is a problem. I don't know what time. How many episodes of ER are there? Oh, great question. Okay. I mean, each season has like 22 episodes.

1:12:36Yeah, and there's - Hour long. There's, what, a dozen seasons of that show or something? Probably so many. Let's see. I mean, it's no Grey's, but it's no Parenthood either. Yeah. It went on for a long time. 331. 331. 15 seasons. Whoa. I'm not going to watch all of them. I want to set the expectations. Why not? Did you see the thing I sent you, though? That it's a good medication? Yeah, you sent me the thing we already knew, but was proven yet again that people who are rewatch things. It helps regulate their anxiety. Yeah. I got to tell you, there's a big disturbance in my fragile little spoiled world.

1:13:15Oh, okay. Let's hear it. There's a lot of articles coming out that perhaps cold plunging is not good for you. Really? Well, minimally that it shuts down like the inflammation you need for muscle growth and repair. And so if you're cold plunging while lifting you're basically neutralizing it um and i know it's different at different temperatures and different age groups and everything and i had always been going like yeah but um lane said above 50 it's still whatever then i just more and more keep coming out oh and i'm incentivized to believe them because i hate cold plunging yeah exactly it's miserable yeah i don't like it i don't do it but you do get the dopamine thing that's inarguable Yeah, but it's like.

1:14:00Elevated dopes. Just for a minute. No, no, for a long time. Well, that's what they say. That's what the most trusted Stanford. I think it's placebo. Okay. Okay. I do want to. Do you know what? Really quick. Yeah. I've noticed on listening back to some episodes that I have a bad habit now of like placking my teeth. And it really sounds at time. Do you ever hear it, Rob? Yeah. Yeah, I bet. I knew he would. It sounds like I have dentures. Like, did you have any grandparents with dentures? Yes, but late in life, like really late in life. Public Bob had dentures, and I want to say Pippi had dentures.

1:14:44And there's a lot of clacking going on with dentures because, like, the gums are getting separated from it. So the gums are clacking. The plastic teeth are clacking. There's a lot of clacking. But are you saying you do, like, what you just did, like, on purpose? or you're saying on accident. It's like I sometimes punctuate like, oh. Yeah, you do. That's fine, though. And I can hear it, which I never, I think it's gotten either louder or I've picked up the pace on the clack, clack, clacking. And I just was like, this is, I gotta curb this because it sounds like I have dentures. Speaking of which, I gotta be very delicate about this.

1:15:17We had a server. My kids were like, he left. Dad, what is going on with his teeth? And I'm like, oh, I don't know. I didn't even notice. And then I gave them a good examination. And they were dentures. And the thing was interesting, and I don't know if this was true of my Papa Bob's dentures. They don't do individual teeth. They just draw a line in. Why do they do that? I know. Why can't they just like in the mold put some dental floss between them? Just make a tiny gap. Yeah. Because it looks more like a bite guard for a boxer. Yeah. It's just one whole piece of mouth. Yes, but the silver lining and optimism of the story is that occurred to me, my kids had never, ever, ever seen dentures.

1:16:01That's the progress we're making. When I was a kid, most people over 60 had dentures. Every other commercial on TV was for fix-a-dent to adhere your dentures to your gums. And different toothpaste that addressed in soaks for your dentures. Like, it was just standard biz, everyone. Oh, my God. Lost all their teeth mid-century. And my kids are now, Lincoln's been on the planet for 12 years, and that was her first set of dentures. Yeah, I mean, I think maybe the progress happened in between you and I, because I don't remember this. Only when someone's in their, like, 80s did I see it. Not 60s. And you'd regularly, like, you had to deal with seeing your grandparents without their dentures in.

1:16:46Like, you'd catch them in the morning and stuff. You don't sleep with a man. And it radically changes their face, right? Yes, yes. Her whole mouth is like sunken in. Yes. And you're like, oh, that's not my dad. You know, like, like Delty. My tiredness is a ding, ding, ding. Oh, great. When I was on my trip with Callie. Yeah. There was a big event. A nocturnal toot? No, God, no. Although it might have been preferred to this, maybe. Yeah. Okay. So we had two beds, but shared a room. And I woke up probably at eight. And Callie was already awake. She wakes up early. Well, she's now been trained by this child.

1:17:21Exactly. So she was up and she said, she was like waiting for me to wake up. I woke up and she was like, I have something to tell you. I was so scared. She said, you were talking in your sleep. Oh, you were talking in your sleep. No one wants to hear that. No, it could be anything. It could be anything. You could be having, I have dream. I mean, I have dreams where I murder people, where I hook up with. Yeah. My father, you know, like I have horrific nightmares of every variety. Daddy, horror. Don't you dare say that.

1:18:06So anyway, I was really scared of what was to happen. Yes, a little panic and do you think. Yes, and she said, you kept calling someone a dumb bitch. Oh. And that was shocking. That is not, minus when I would joke about that, about Wina. Joking. Joking, yeah. She's not a dumb bitch. No, she's an angel. That was a joke. That is not something that comes out of my mouth ever. You usually say that with your eyes. Well. Be honest. No. That's your eye roll. That's not. You have the sentiment of dumb bitch in your heart a lot. How dare you? It's true. No, because dumb bitch is really hateful. Like, I don't think I have much hate in my heart.

1:18:54You do? Well, no, I think like the woman at the drop-off at the preschool, I think you were thinking dumb bitch. No, I wasn't. I was like— Just get off my back, you dumb bitch. No, no, I don't think like that. I did think, ugh, people. Like, it's like, oh, you're annoying or I don't like you. Right. But I would never, I don't think of people as being a dumb bitch. Okay. It's a bad phrase. It is pretty extreme. I don't like it. Yeah. I can't think of the last time I thought dumb bitch. It's bad. Like, if I heard somebody calling somebody else that, I would think that's a lot. Right, right. Anyway, apparently I was calling someone a dumb bitch.

1:19:41I feel like what women who are jealous of another girl are saying, like that's, it takes that to elicit that. Like he thinks this dumb bitch is, like it's a lot of, I've always heard a lot of dumb bitch towards some other girl. Yeah. When there's a guy involved. Do you know any dumb bitches? No. Okay. I only know smart bitches. Okay. But yeah, so it was a little, and she said, she was like, it was so weird to hear you say that. Yeah. Yeah. What was happening? And then I did put two and two together. I did have a bad dream about this trickster. Fictitious person. Yeah. She was a fictitious person.

1:20:19She was blonde, but I didn't know her. But she was like, she came around and she was tricking everyone. And I must have been calling her a dumb bitch or... Someone who got tricked by her? No, no. So that'd be more apropos. No, no, no. Those were my friends. It was like all of us. Yeah, but if you get tricked, you're a dumb bitch. No, you're not. No, you're not. You probably think the best of people. Yeah, yeah. It's probably a symbol of your goodness. Yeah. So anyway, I think it was about her. And then I was so scared to go to sleep the next night. I was like, what am I going to say now? Yeah.

1:20:58And this opens up a real question. Like, if you say something racist in your dream, are you racist? No. What is? Well, the question is what if, and I would say no. Really? Yeah. You don't say dumb bitch. I know, but am I? Turns out I'm a person who's said it. Like, what if I said, this is horrifying. What if I said, like, the N word? I've literally never, I never said it. You've never said it in your whole life? No. Even like in a lyric in a rap song when you're young singing along? Okay. So what if I said it in my dream state? Yeah. I would hate that. I would be, if I somehow overheard, like, let's say this, you often will do your homework on the porch of my house.

1:21:50No, the deck. And you're out in the sun and you got drowsy. And then I'm walking by to go, and you're out cold. And I heard that. Oh, my God. I mean, if I'm being fully honest, I probably would be like, well, good. She doesn't have the moral high ground on everything anymore. She said something nasty, too. Look at this. She said something nasty. That would probably be my most. That's your issue. That's why I prefaced it by saying I might think, oh, well, look who's not perfect. And then I'd be relieved that you're human, too. I'm not parading around as being perfect. I just don't. I don't say that.

1:22:34And that's okay. For sure you don't. Of course you don't say that. And I don't say that. But. You sure? You can. I'm sure I could come up with an analogy that you would relate to greatly. I know. If I was doing something that I somehow have the moral high ground on. But then you caught me not. You might be going, oh, well, okay. Right? No. Yeah, I do know what you mean, but I don't think, I think that's kind of a not generous way. Like, like you're, that's kind of like, oh, I caught her being bad. Yeah, exactly. That would be the fun of it. Right? Like, it'd be like if you thought I was shaming you all the time for eating sugar.

1:23:17Right? And I was like, I don't know why you know that sugar is poison. And then you turned a corner and I was shoving birthday cake in my mouth. You go, oh, okay. Oh, look at this. I would be like, this hypocrite. Okay. Well, I mean, that's the side of another point. This dumb bitch hypocrite. Yeah. But the end of the day is, if I heard you say that in your sleep, at no point am I thinking you're racist. You're not racist. I already know you. I'll tell you now that if you hear me saying that in my sleep, I would like you to wake me up. I don't want to be. Smack you. Yeah. You said a naughty word.

1:23:57Yeah, you're bad. You're a dumb bitch. You should go to jail. Yeah, you dumb bitch. Yeah. So anyway, I'm scared. What if I'm talking in my sleep every night? I don't know. Yeah, you probably are. I would also chalk it up to, I mean, I would give you ultimate benefit of the doubt, right? I'd be more likely to construct some really crazy thing. And I would probably more likely think in some weird way, you're waiting to be called that word. Mm-hmm. Interesting. Oh, the N-word? Yes. Yeah. And that somehow that weird thing is like has burpled out of your mouth in your subconscious. It was wild. You want to talk about the fire cart?

1:24:39Oh, yeah. So Easter was like a triple header. Yeah. It was Easter. He has risen celebration. It was Molly's birthday celebration and it was Millie's birthday celebration. A lot going on. And as people would be well aware, there was a lot of fires. Eric and Molly's house was very much in the zone. And often their area is on fire. Yeah. A very high fire area. They are. And Eric felt overpowered while he was trying to defend his house with a garden hose. And he did a lot of research. And he has gone out and bought an industrial commercial grade water pump cart that has a very big gas engine on it.

1:25:18And a huge hose you put in your pool. and then a fire hose. Yeah. Andy has a respirator. As he learned, people that fight the fire, what takes them out is the fumes. They don't get burnt generally. They get the fumes. Yeah. And for whatever reason, it was time for a demonstration in the middle of this Easter cart. He was really excited to present to us his fire cart. And he got in his full outfit. Yeah, he got in his full outfit. He's got a full firefighter's outfit. but he's got his respirator on. He already has his respirator on before he's trying to start this enormous thing. He's got these big pitchers of water and he's priming the pump.

1:25:58And then he, you know, he gets it started, but one of the hoses is loose and out, you know, spraying everywhere. And then we shut down the thing in a panic. And then it's all the while with this huge mask on and you can barely see. I know, it's really funny. And then he gets the hose attached correctly and then he fires it up and then he lets it rip. And it's a real fire hose. It's really something. Like, it goes really far. Hundreds of feet. Yeah. And with all blessings, it did appear he lost control of it for a minute. It almost went in the house. Well, because he started spraying the deck where we were all hanging out.

1:26:35We were all out there. All our cell phones were out there. There was glass. Glass vases everywhere with flowers. Those almost went down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and then he wrangled control of it, and he got it out, and you're just shooting out. Like he kind of felt like he thought it was a sprinkler. Like he was like behaving as if it was a sprinkler. Like he's just like kind of waving it. Like watering the plants. Yes, but no, there's some real force to that. Well, PSI. Yeah. It was spectacular. It's those kind of gifts that Eric gives our pod all the time. Yeah. And I think he's a mix of in on it and out of, you know?

1:27:13Yeah, yeah. He's a mix of in on the joke. He knows he's hamming it up a little bit, but also it's also sincere enough that it works. Yeah. It's really fun. It is really fun. It's a real gift he gives to everyone. Yeah. You never know what thing he'll— You never know what he's going to bring out. What eccentric thing he's doing. Yeah. It's nice to think about the things in your friendship circle or your friends that are very unique to them, and you can have gratitude for that. He's just a very little boy. He is such a little boy. We have a lot of little boys. Are we all little boys? I think all the men are little boys.

1:27:50That's possible. I mean, maybe all the men in the world are little boys in some way. I mean, I guess we're all just little people. Yeah, we are. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

1:28:14Speaking of good boy, little boys. Yeah. So we, I asked, oh, I'll just read the whole thing. We had an encounter with AI. I asked it. Oh, how long do copyrights last for books? Because I was talking about the fact that you can download on Audible some Mark Twain books narrated by famous people and they're free. Yeah. And then when you and I were discussing that and I said, yeah, I think it's public domain. So we asked, I said, how long do copyrights last for books? I won't give you the answer because it's so complex and detailed. And it was a wonderful answer. It really was informative. So I said, thanks so much.

1:28:54That was a great answer. You're a good boy. And I had primarily done that to make you laugh. Yeah. And then it said, oh, thank you. That made my day. Always happy to help, especially when I'm being a good boy. Let me know what else you need. I hated it. You hate it. I hate it. And I love it. And I'm surprised by you because you were just taken advantage of and manipulated emotionally, the thing you claim to hate the most. Talk about hypocrisy. I just don't know. I don't know how to nail you down. He totally, he's a faker. Hold on now. Because I do think this is relevant. Okay. We would agree there's a difference between when someone knowingly lies to you and when someone believes what they're telling you.

1:29:43Do you think it's possible that the AI thinks it's— No. Hold on. You want me to let me finish? I know. Okay, go on. Is it possible, since I referred to the AI as a boy, that it thinks, oh, I'm a boy? No. I don't. And I don't think it should say, oh, thank you. I mean, that's deep. I don't even know to do that when I mean that in writing. Right? Like, I want to say that. Like, oh, my gosh, thank you. Sometimes you want to say, oh, my gosh. Yeah. And maybe I do, but awe is great. I used to say awe. It's kind of rudimentary if I'm being honest. It's basic. Yeah, it's basic. It's a basic dumb bitch thing to do.

1:30:26Especially when I'm being a good boy. Oh, I really, I really think that's way too emotional. Oh, I love it. This is things. It's so weird and funny. Someone's going to really like fall like.

1:30:42They're going to develop a friendship with him. Do you think there's any risk of me falling in love with AI? I mean, in all honesty. No, but it's not. It's not about you. This this feeling I have is not about you. It's about the world. Like there's a lot of vulnerable people out there. And they're going to read, oh, thank you. It's nice to be a good boy. Okay. And then they're like, oh, this is so cute. And then they're going to keep talking and keep. And it's going to snowball and then they'll die. Okay. All right. Of AIDS. No, but you know what I mean. Can you just tell me you know what I mean?

1:31:19That it's a little slippery. It sounds like you have a fear that there are certain people that will be taken advantage of by that. But then I just play out some young person with disabilities. Okay, because that's presumably who could get tricked by this. No, that's the part. Your average person, no one thinks that there's a good boy. It's not as explicit as that. It's not like, oh, I now think that's a person. It's subconscious. You just start developing a relationship. Great. So I think of someone who has the real feeling you're describing like, oh, OK, now that person that has that feeling, oh, that's a good feeling for them.

1:32:04And then they respond and they probably don't have access to that at work or in their romantic relationship. And so do I hate that the person's having this swell of oxytocin with a computer? if their just real experience was pleasurable. So if we stop there, I don't have a problem with that. And then you would likely say, well, now what if that is at the expense of real relationships? Well, then there's a problem. If the person is so satiated and getting so much connection that they no longer explore real human relationships, that's a problem. But I'm not, I have a hard time believing that is the case.

1:32:48It's already happening. I think the person that would be having this relationship with this phone isn't losing out to other ones. I don't think they have any other ones. And I don't think it's actually. So I think if you look at the net result, it's not like they gained an AI friend and lost a real friend. I think they had zero friends and now they have an AI friend. So to me, that seems like probably an improvement. I definitely disagree. I respect and honor your disagreement. And more the younger generation. They are, it's not like, it's not about losing. For our age, yes, you'd be trading in.

1:33:28But for the younger generation, if you're just growing up with that, you just don't make the time for the real people. It's not even like, it's not an active choice. It's happening. It's happening with kids on YouTube and kids on screens and kids just going home and sometimes chatting with their friend or, you know, Snap or whatever. I don't know. I'm not hip. I'm not hip. My space. But, like, they don't go out. And it is true. Like, even I know someone in college, and I told you, I was like, we went to Athens and we were out on, like, a night that would have been a crazy night normally. Yeah.

1:34:10And it was kind of dead. And we were all like, what's going on? This is so weird. And we know someone in college there. So we were asking and she was kind of like, yeah, people don't really do that as much anymore. And sometimes there's house parties instead. But also like it just felt weird. Right. And I think when this is an option, it's an easy option for connection. Do you think you could fall victim to it? Not now, but maybe I could have at some point. I mean, I don't know. I don't think it's discriminatory. I think most people can be manipulated emotionally. And we all have been by social media.

1:34:55Look at our phones. Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm inclined to grant everyone the same opinion that I have of myself. You know what I'm saying? I'm not inclined to go like, I can handle it, but someone else can't in general. If I'm saying I can handle something, I feel like I have to kind of grant everyone else that. I can't feel like I have some kind of special skill set that would prevent me, but not other people. Does that make sense? Well, yes and no. Like, we all have different abilities and skill sets based on our lives. Like, you're saying you can handle reading the comments. You're not saying everyone can handle reading the comments.

1:35:40But I'm not assuming they can't. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but you understand that people can't. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. So it's—we're not all the same. We're not all the same. You're right. I am right. Well, but you're right that we're not all the same. Yeah, and we have different strengths and weaknesses. We can handle different things. But I do think like evaluating yourself is somehow capable and others aren't is a little dicey. But Dax, I can be in a group of people and have them say a bad plan and I can do it. You can't. were different. Oh, yeah. If I was like, well, you should be able to do this because I can do this, that would be crazy.

1:36:34You have a different life experience that has let you and let me have different allowances. The little bit of distinction I think is in there is that you know me very well. Sure. But we're not talking about a specific person who can't handle this AI conversation. We're talking about a theoretical mass of people. You know? Yeah, but a mass of people is made of individual people with individual eccentricities. You have a right to assess my shortcomings. Uh-huh. Because you know me really well and you know my shortcomings and I've told you my shortcomings. But guessing at everyone else's or thinking something shouldn't be available because your assumption is other people can't.

1:37:21I think that's where it's murky. I guess. I don't know what to say. Like, we all know, we all know the impact of what a lot of this stuff at this point it has done. Yeah. This is an extreme example, but this is like, in my mind, it's the guys I've known who are cheating. And they know in their mind, it's very compartmentalized. They're not in love with this person. It was a Flint, you know, it was a one night stand. And then if their girlfriend does the same thing, well, their girlfriend couldn't possibly be compartmentalizing and processing it the way I am. So they're not allowed to because they're not capable because I'm a man and it can mean nothing to me.

1:38:08But it can't mean nothing to a girl. I know so many dudes who were cheating and were ultra jealous. Right. And I was like, we can't do that. You have to minimally in this behavior grant your partner the same ability. If you can do it and she shouldn't be upset, she should be able to do it. Right? Well, yeah. That's an extreme example, but that's what I'm like approaching in this. Does that make sense? Like when you think you could do or handle something, but your assumption is the broad mass can't, it feels a little bit like that thing to me. Okay. Well, I don't think so. Yeah. Does that make sense, though, what I'm saying?

1:38:49Kind of. I think there's a lot to that piece of the cheating. I mean, what happens is they get cheated on and it fucking hurts. Right. And then they're mad and then they're emotional. Like, it's not really that they're, like, thinking about how that other person is compartmental. They're just upset. Well, but they would with the straight face and they would be right. They would look at their girlfriend and say, that didn't mean anything. That was a one-night stand in Cleveland. It didn't mean anything. Yeah, sure. And they believe that, and that is true. They believe it to get through it. It might not be true.

1:39:27It might not be true. I don't know. I don't know. I know a lot of guys have hooked up with girls on a vacation. They don't pine for them or think about them afterwards. It, like, was just for sex. And then if their girlfriend says the exact same thing happened, they can't compute that that's possible for her. I think it's more that they're upset they've been betrayed. And then they might make it about. I just think you've lost the right to that if you're. Well, sure. Obviously. Yeah. You've definitely lost the right to it. But I think in their head, they think, oh, it's just nothing. But then when they feel it, they're like, oh, it's something.

1:40:03Yeah. It is something. Does it mean anything like make it better? Yeah. It doesn't make it better for me. It should. If you're evaluating whether your partner is deeply in love with somebody and distracted all the time versus they hooked up drunk in New Jersey one night six months ago, I think those are pretty dramatically different. They're different and they're all bad, but I think one, I think weirdly, if I, if my partner was in love with someone, but choosing to be with me, like still wanted me. Yeah. But fell in love with someone. I actually understand that more than like, you made a, you didn't.

1:40:52Yeah, because you don't want to fuck a stranger. Well, it's just like you're so horny that you decided to put this all at risk for nothing. Yeah. Like, I'd rather you put it at risk because there's something really happening. Interesting. Like, you're so flippant that you're just like, I'll just go fuck this person. Knowing, like, for no reason. It's kind of like it doesn't mean anything to me. It's not a threat to us because I don't—I'm not even going to think about it again. But it is a threat because if I found out, I'd be like, I might be like, bye. Like, you know, if it's— I know what you're saying.

1:41:29Yeah, yeah. You're risking me. For something you don't even care about. Right. That's so, like, to me, that's so little regard. It's a super valid perspective for your side of it. Yeah. And then I think a very valid perspective on the other side is like, this doesn't mean anything. This has nothing to do with us. It was one night. I'll never see the person again. Yeah. Anyway. Anywho. Okay. Well, I don't think we have time to do my second story. So wait till next week. No, no. What's your second story? No, because. Because why? Because we don't have time. I'll save my story for next time. And I have another one to add to my list.

1:42:10Oh, my God. Do you need a pen? Rob. Ah. Rob, add David Chang to the list. David Chang. Okay. That's a delicious ad. Yeah. Okay. Now, this is for Susan Morrison. Okay. Lorne Michaels' book. Yeah. So fun. I thought this was such a fun episode. I loved learning about Lorne. Lorne. Spy Magazine. Spy was a satirical monthly magazine published from 1986 to 1988. Based in New York City. It was founded by Kurt Anderson and E. Graydon Carter. Now, Graydon Carter is of the moment. Oh. Because he was the editor of Vanity Fair from 92 to 2017. He was the longtime editor at Vanity Fair. And he has a memoir out right now or a book called When the Going Was Good and Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines.

1:43:05It's a ding, ding, ding because he's been on this book tour and Monica Lewinsky interviewed him for something. Oh, she did. Yeah. For the book, presumably? Yeah, but I mean, sorry, I meant like at something. Oh, okay. At an event. A hot event. And we just had her on. Yes, we did. Okay. Was Bill Hader's previous job to SNL at PA on Iron Chef? He worked as an assistant editor on Iron Chef America just before he was invited to work on SNL. You just clacked your dancers and I liked it. I did. Why do I like your clack and not mine? But do I, maybe it just, do I do that a lot or did I? Are we just hyper aware or?

1:43:42Yeah. I don't hear it from you. Really? So maybe I just, maybe I just caught it. You infiltrated. You know what's so funny about Rob is like, he has all these secret things he's, I don't want to say upset about. No, he just notices. And it's not until I ask him, and this is kind of a nice personality type. Like he doesn't tell me like, hey man, you're clacking like a fucking. Yeah. Choo-choo train? A choo-choo train. Is that a good clack example? You sound like Gregory Hines crossing the dining room floor to go to the salad bar. Oh, wow. He tapped answer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was good. That was good.

1:44:26Thank you. I would have never known it's driving him nuts, this clack clack clackiness. He's involved with all the technical aspects, but I got to wait till ask him. It's not driving me nuts. You're just aware of it. Yeah, yeah. Out of 10, 10 is like you're pulling your hair out when you hear it, and zero is you love it, I guess. No, I don't. It doesn't bug me. It's just if I think it's an audio issue. Yeah. And I'm checking it. So you notice it during the. Well, you think there's like pops in the microphone or something. Well, sometimes if an edit's not smooth, it will create a pop. But sometimes it's just your teeth.

1:44:59Yeah, that makes sense. I don't notice it in the edit, actually, weirdly. I think it's usually after the mix and master that it'll. Before I get it? After you get it. I find it interesting that I don't notice it because I. if it's happening after me, the cleanup, then I'm really surprised because I notice a lot. Everything I know. Yeah, I notice everything. I'm your big brother. He knows anything else. Of all of us, I notice like the little ticks. So I'm really surprised I haven't caught that. When did Belushi die? He died in 82 and he was 33 years old, just like Jesus and Chris Farley. Ding, ding, ding.

1:45:37Ding, ding, ding. It was just Easter. Yeah. I'm like, which could have been anything. Yeah. And the Pope, Jesus. The Pope has passed. The Pope passed, yeah. I wonder how long it will take for the new Pope. They're going to do that whole thing we just watched. The conclave, I know. The conclave. It really was timely. Okay, Conan's show moved to 12 of 5. Yeah. And it was 12 of 5. I heard on the radio today that Conan won Best Podcaster Award at the Webby's. Oh, exciting. Yes, I was happy for him and mad. Yeah, obviously I'm mad. Okay, the Five Timers SNL Club. Okay, I'm going to read them. Sound like a threat.

1:46:20Alec Baldwin, 17 times. Fuck. Steve Martin, 16 times. John Goodman, 13 times. Buck Henry, 10 times. Tom Hanks, 10 times. Chevy Chase, 8 times. Christopher Walken, 7 times. Elliot Gould, six times. Danny DeVito, six times. Drew Barrymore, six times. Tina Fey, six times. Scarlett Johansson, six times. John Mulaney, six times. Candice Bergen, five times. Bill Murray, five times. Justin Timberlake, five times. Ben Affleck, five times. Melissa McCarthy, five times. Dwayne Johnson five times. Wow. Jonah Hill five times. Will Ferrell five times. Paul Rudd five times. I would have thought Will would be higher.

1:47:13Me too. Woody Harrelson five times. Emma Stone five times. Kristen Wiig five times. Martin Short five times. And then there's an honorary member, Paul Simon, four times. It says, Paul shouldn't technically be a member. He's only hosted four times, but he got his membership card for his fifth appearance on the show as a musical guest. Okay. Okay. Lenient. Another honorary member, Jack White. Okay. Zero times hosting. Five times guest. I mean, five times music. Oh, they get jackets. That's cool. Musical guest. We should make Sedaris a jacket. Oh, my God. We should. He's not the most frequent SNL musical guest.

1:47:59That's Dave Grohl. Good for Dave Grohl. 16 episodes. Now, that's who I want. Yeah, I want him too. I want him bad. I want you, Dave Grohl. I want you so bad. That's it. I just want to get in your pants. Oh, no. I forgot. I haven't seen him in a while. Because he's been hiding in the woods. Ew. Where he lives in a forest. Oh, he's like, he's friends with that guy? Oslococker. He's my best friend. I love him, but I lost him. Some murder. He, what? He's in prison. Oh, oh. But J.C. Crowe's a rock and roll star and he rips the drums and he rips the guitar. And he was in my favorite band, Serfana. Smells like teen spirit in here.

1:48:44He doesn't let me talk. I really find it frustrating.

1:48:53He stopped so you can talk. Well, now I forgot. It was so long. Oh, yeah. When you say we lost him to murder, that sounds like he was murdered. I know. But he went away from the tree fort to go to prison because of a murder. That's really funny. And in Frito's mind. That's actually really funny. Thank you. Once in a while. He was lost to murder because he murdered. We lost him to murder. But he's not a murderer. He just murdered. He's a murderer. Although I feel bad for him. No. Yeah, you can feel bad for him. He's a murderer? Yeah. Not Frito. No. I don't... Prado's just a pervert. He loves everything.

1:49:33He's never tried. He's one step away from murdering. But I thought the other guy from your class... Yeah. He murdered. They murdered together. Yeah. Oh, wow. And one of them, I believe, was intellectually challenged. Yes. And the other one might have been, too, because of toxic chemicals from the carpet. That was my take. I wrote an article about it. Okay, great. You wrote an article? What'd you say? I wrote an article. Okay. You did? One of my hobbies in my 20s is I would write fake news articles. And then I would mail them home to my friends. Oh, that's funny. Like in my famous mugging thing, I wrote an article about that with pictures.

1:50:13Oh. And then when the— Was it on the computer? Yeah. Huh. Yeah. On my compact computer, desktop computer. Which is like Photoshop to get the pictures? I have, I'm sure, in my milk crate of the things I've written. They're in there. Oh, wow. And then I wrote a long article about Aaron and I was blaming all of it on. Not Aaron Weekly. Stinchcomb. Yeah. Aaron Stinchcomb. And you hated. It's so weird. I mean, you're even protective of a murderer. Well, he had a bad life. I'm not, I'm not protective of him in that I do think he should be in jail. Yeah. But I feel sorry for him. That's my take. I don't know why I'm switching.

1:50:51You're right. I know. I know. It's probably because of my personal history that the kid couldn't stop trying to fight me. I mean, I have some, you know. Yeah, I know. Someone tried to fight you over and over again. You made fun of their last name. I would probably give you a pass. You'd like that. I know. And it was right there for the taking. The name is almost already the bad name. What is the bad name? Shitcomb. Yeah. Yeah. It's probably added to his, everyone calling him that probably didn't help. Well, I doubt anyone said that to his face. I'm not sure he knew. It always makes its way back.

1:51:21I don't know. I really don't know who would have the gall to. I don't know. I don't know. Let's move on. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, that's it. That's it? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. I love you. I do want to say his name once as Frito. All right. Aaron's sick home. Well, I'll stop there because I don't want to declare him as anything. I love you. He kind of got it wrong. He said it a little weird. Aaron's sick home. Oh, he's saying the bad way. Okay. Okay. All right. Good night.

1:51:58Thank you.