Downloaded from YTS.MX
[jazzy music]
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
* *
- Shit, if I was at home, and I saw this,
I'd be like, who the fuck is Jim Downey?
- Why would we do a documentary on a writer?
- I think it's great that Lorne has found
another way to make money, uh, by doing films
about staff members.
- God, it's so hard to distill the Downer.
- Maybe they won't know his face,
but everybody knows his work.
- Governor Bush?
- Strategery.
[laughter]
- Mmm, Colon Blow.
Sounds delicious.
- Have you ever made love on one of the five
existing copies of the Magna Carta?
- Remember when you were with the Beatles?
[laughter, applause]
- Sure, sure.
- That was awesome.
[laughter]
- Jim's good work is just as funny now
as it was when he did it,
whether it was in 1976, 1996.
- Please, Larry!
- And look at how much comedy has changed since
Jim Downey started on "Saturday Night Live."
[laughter]
- It's something I'm not gonna do.
Not gonna do it.
- [whispering] You're a [bleep] dog.
[laughter]
- There is nobody who knows Downey that
doesn't put him as number one.
- He was one of the reasons I wanted to start writing.
- There's nobody else like this.
- Me, Captain. - No, no.
- Punish me.
- Hi, I'm Norm Macdonald,
and this is the fake news.
- [operatic singing]
- His language lives here, and without that language,
so much of this place wouldn't have been established.
- How'd that someone get attacked by a rabbit?
- That's what we do.
[cheers and applause]
- More than anyone, at least for that first 20 years,
he became the voice of the show.
I would think I probably was in the '70s,
but I more and more began to realize
if something important had to be said,
that I'd go to Jim on it.
[ethereal music]
* *
[jazzy music]
* *
- One way you could start this, I thought,
is you hear a voice.
There's nothing the general public hates more
than looking at or listening to a writer talk.
* *
This is my first office that I shared with Bill Murray.
- Jim Downey and I, we went to work the same week
at "Saturday Night Live."
- This was his first encounter with, you know,
professional show business.
And because Bill Murray was coming in as well,
I put them together in that office.
And it was--it was not a natural fit at the beginning.
- Like some sort of a bad roommate movie where
we'd come in and go, like, oh, you.
There you are, you know.
And he'd be off, like, writing sketches,
and I'd be like, oh, hi, Jim.
[laughter]
Hi, Bill.
- But it turned into something wonderful.
- What is your test?
- Do you see that boulder over there?
I want you to lift it.
- That boulder is too large.
I could lift a smaller one.
- Even though we were slow
to get to know each other,
Jim Downey's the one that I'd say that
I'm friends with, of all the people that I work with.
- I mean, we would write all night.
You know, crash on the couch.
Billy brought in, like, a little hibachi grill.
He was trying to grill a little steak or something,
and set off the sprinkler.
[alarm ringing]
And so that put a quick stop
to, you know, our little Benihana.
[indistinct chatter]
At "Saturday Night Live,"
you come up with an idea,
and it's gonna be on television five days later.
I mean, it's crazy.
- 10 seconds!
- There's a lot of rewriting between dress and air.
It kicks you into that kind of animal adrenaline state
where you either get something remarkable,
or you fail spectacularly.
You don't get that anywhere else.
[cheers and applause]
For those of you sitting through this just in hopes
of learning something about
how you write a really good sketch,
this is a formula.
And mind you, you're not to copy this formula.
This is my formula.
* *
- Jim invented a type of American comedy
of, like, hyper-nuance.
- I have a fondness for the comedy of someone
very painstakingly, laboriously explaining something
that doesn't even need any explanation to begin with
and also getting it wrong.
- I needed to take the bus but all I had was a $5 bill.
I went to First CityWide, and they were able to give me
four singles and four quarters.
[laughter]
- "Change Bank" was a perfect example,
at length discussing something that doesn't need explaining.
- We will work with the customer
to give that customer the change
that he or she needs.
If you come to us with a $20 bill,
we can give you two tens.
We can give you four fives.
We can give you a ten and two fives.
We will work with you.
- "Change Bank" is so specific.
There was an idea, there was the attitude,
there was performance and then the absurdity
of how far it was taken.
- We are not gonna give you change that you don't want.
If you come to us with a $100 bill,
we're not gonna give you 2,000 nickels.
[laughter]
- A slender premise like that but under such controlled,
uh, execution--
- Jim gives you no indication
that anything funny is happening here.
- Like, that was an interesting thing about Jim's sketches,
is that you had to deliver it so straight and so on the line.
And not just straight, but in his rhythm that he wrote it in.
And it would work perfectly.
- Yeah, it's true.
- Thank you.
At Global Century, we like to be completely
upfront with our clients.
That's why in our prospectus we clearly state
that our investment advice
is often self-interested or deceitful
and may work to a client's disadvantage.
We think you deserve to know that.
- Jim is deadly serious when he's presenting you his comedy,
and the people in his comedy are deadly serious.
- It's like, if you weren't watching closely,
you wouldn't know that comedy was on the TV.
- Like a lot of us here, I followed your broker's advice
and over the last few years,
I've lost 80% of my life savings.
- That does not surprise me at all.
- I'd just like to say that even though I think
you're an evil person, and even though I came here
intending to kill you,
I've been really impressed with your honesty.
[laughter, applause]
[soft music]
- Writing comedy is either easy or it's impossible.
* *
Any writer will tell you most of their good ideas come
when they're doing something else and they're not trying
to come up with an idea.
We're just going through our ordinary lives,
experiencing things, when something hits us.
* *
The really good stuff just flows.
You can barely write fast enough.
That's an awful lot better than sitting at your desk
staring at a blank legal pad.
- Hi, I'm Dale Sturtevant.
I've been raising dogs since I was six,
and nothing has brought me more joy
or more sheer frustration
than training a puppy.
With a very young pup,
correcting problem behavior
can be especially maddening.
And like you, I've probably tried all the tricks--
screaming myself hoarse, starving them,
locking them in a closet for days on end,
or just beating them without mercy.
But after my third arrest and court-ordered
anger management counseling, I learned to channel
my rage into an effective, nonviolent puppy training tool.
It's called "Dissing Your Dog."
- That just began with training my dog
and just kind of cranking up a normal experience
to silly dimensions.
- Oh, right, Margaret, you wanted prime rib.
Here's the deal,
the Palm wasn't taking reservations,
and I didn't want to try Morton's because I understand
they have a new chef,
so for now, let's just go with the ALPO.
OK, I understand it's not your first choice,
but keep in mind...
[whispering] You're a [bleep] dog.
[laughter]
- It's a perfectly-written piece for Will.
It's an attitude thing that's taken so seriously.
- When you're writing a piece for television,
there's a million different ways I could say,
could you turn out that light?
It's a little bright.
There aren't a million different ways to tell a joke.
Most of what makes us laugh is something that's true,
that just--you've never heard it put that way before.
I'm always looking for
the perfect version of that joke.
[jazzy music]
- It's not too late.
You could be peppers.
- Oh, this is my slave.
His name is Phil.
[laughter]
- I was in Paris. Went to the Louvre.
I tell ya, I don't know what the big deal is.
Just one out-of-focus sculpture after another.
- No matter how hard you scrub,
no matter how hard you clean,
you just can't rid your home of sewer rats.
* *
- It was this two-part thing of nonexistent problem,
ineffective solution.
- A problem that isn't really a problem.
It sheds light on the way in which the people talking
about it are the real problem.
[laughs]
- Sleepytime Rat Control.
It's not a poison. It's not a trap.
It's a powerful sedative that puts rats to sleep--
deep sleep.
- I wouldn't say rats are a nonexistent problem.
But sewer rats in your home is a nonexistent problem.
- So why live with this...
[boinging]
- I was under the bed, like, punching the mattress,
and then we slowed it down and gave it
some boing, boing, boing, boing, boing
kind of sound effects.
- When you can have this?
[sawing, lullaby playing]
- [quietly] That's more like it.
- The joy is just watching everybody
in that ad is so committed to,
we've got the solution to the problem.
And...[laughs] The rats are surrounding
the bed sleeping peacefully,
but no one ever removes the rats.
- You'll sleep better knowing they're sleeping.
- A lot of "SNL" is just wasting the audience's time
with a nonexistent problem and an ineffective solution
that made someone like Jim laugh really hard.
- Mr. President, there is one other item on the agenda.
It seems we're scheduled to hear a presentation
from that frontiersman.
What's his name again?
[banging]
- The name is Johnny.
Johnny Canal.
- * Johnny Canal *
- John Candy had a sensibility that was
kind of close to Downey's.
They loved these historical figures
with really stupid ideas.
- What I am proposing, gentlemen,
is a system of canals knitting together every corner
of this great land of ours.
- "Johnny Canal" with John Malkovich is
number one in my Downey book.
And it has the same kind of pace that I really liked,
and that I was not always brave enough to pursue.
- Excuse me, Mr. Canal.
Is it your proposal that every town,
even the tiniest villages, have literally hundreds
of canals running in and out of them?
- Or more!
- My favorite part is the president
taking time to explain why it's a bad idea.
- Well, your plan is certainly an intriguing one,
but there are several points that you haven't touched on.
For example, the proposed cost of this project,
how long it would take to build,
who would maintain it once it was built,
would these be toll canals or free,
how would the rights to the land be obtained, by--
- And then they do a push-in on Malkovich
as the president explains,
and it's just pushing in on Malkovich's face,
and you're reading that he hasn't thought
through any of the logistics.
That is Downey's humor.
- I've never been great
at writing plotty kind of things.
I like to establish the premise
as quickly as you can,
then we hope it's gonna be joke, joke, joke,
joke, joke, joke.
It's like microwave popcorn, where at first,
it's a flurry of... [imitates popping]
But then, pop.
I wanted to generate jokes that no one
had ever seen before because they came
out of a unique premise.
You're trying to reach a critical mass of--of laughs.
- Donde es la biblioteca?
- It's eight jokes around a theme.
Basically, the only purpose of the structure and the story
is to get to those jokes.
[ethereal music]
* *
[clicking]
[gentle music]
- I'm so happy you're doing this, Jim.
It's so exciting!
I want to know more about young Jim.
Were you quiet, or were you trying to make people laugh?
- When I was very little, I understand I was very sweet.
When I was in school, I was more of, like,
a class wit than I was a class clown.
My dad loved practical jokes.
I remember he liked to call his friends and go,
Jim, I'm gonna hand you the phone
and you say you're with the health department.
I'd go, what? What do I have to--what?
- [laughs]
- When I was a junior in high school, I was in Chicago,
and I saw the "Harvard Lampoon Life Magazine" parody.
I thought it was the funniest thing.
It was the first thing that really spoke to me.
That's what made me want to particularly go to Harvard.
- I went to Harvard... [clears throat]
High School, so I'm almost as smart.
- This would be one of our issues
that was done when I was president.
- The "Lampoon" is the oldest
comedy magazine in the United States.
I mean, most college humor magazines meet
in a basement somewhere.
The "Lampoon" is this crazy Flemish castle
that's right near Harvard Square.
[rock music]
- In 1972, we did a parody of "Cosmopolitan Magazine."
- That's the famous pinup of Henry Kissinger.
Burt Reynolds had posed on a rug like that.
- It would just infuriate most people to go,
this is what these Harvard assholes are
doing with their education.
- But you can make stuff that influences the culture.
- Earlier this month, Harvard University's
humor magazine, the "Harvard Lampoon,"
sent movie star John Wayne a letter.
[jazzy music]
- We challenged John Wayne
to come to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
At this point, he was extremely unpopular
on the Harvard campus.
It was like a three-day phenomenon.
[static droning]
- "Duke," John Wayne, was mobbed
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, today.
Police and soldiers had to convoy him
into a Harvard Square theater to face a roasting.
[cheers and applause]
- We had that place, absolutely every seat, filled.
- Hi!
- I was one of the speakers.
I have known John Wayne a very long time.
[laughter]
And...
[laughter]
That was maybe the first forays into public speaking
where I was trying to make people laugh.
Biggest thing I've ever been involved with.
We were on the front page of every newspaper
on planet Earth.
I concentrated in Russian studies at Harvard,
but I spent most of my time at the "Lampoon,"
so I pretty much majored in the "Harvard Lampoon."
By the time senior year rolled around,
I just sort of woke up and realized
I had not given any thought to what I was gonna do
with the rest of my life.
- Live from New York, it's Saturday night!
[cheers and applause]
- NBC's Saturday night!
- "Saturday Night Live" started up
at just the right time.
I sometimes think about that, wow, how my life has unfolded.
Huge element of chance.
When I was hired at "Saturday Night Live"
I was 24 and the only writer who wore
a suit to the group photo.
That quickly changed.
1976 to 1980, I'm writing, like,
three or four pieces a week.
- Fred Garvin... - You're constantly...
- Male prostitute.
- Throwing stuff out there.
- [grumbles] - Come on in!
- You're not operating out of any playbook.
You don't know what can't be done.
You go, like, how about this?
- You don't suppose he'll make me squeal like a pig, do you?
- And then the argument is, why can't we do that?
- Let me show you.
I play with it all the time.
[laughter]
- And then the grown-ups go,
actually, I guess you can do that.
- What a marvelous entertainment, Salisbury.
And these chopped steaks are delicious,
especially with this exquisite mushroom sauce.
- Well, thank you.
Coming from you, Worcestershire,
that certainly is a compliment.
[laughter]
- The Earl of Sandwich.
It's a setup.
- Your Lordship.
- You knew with Jim, there was a turn coming.
There was some moment where he was going
to reveal to you that everything up to this point
had been serving a purpose.
- Lord and Lady Douchebag!
[laughter, applause]
[whistling]
- I think we had been holding on to Lord and Lady Douchebag
for, like, four years.
- Douchebag, how are you?
[laughter]
- You could tell that the audience was so thrilled...
- Right.
- That we were doing that kind of material.
- Tell me, Douchebag, when are you going to show us
that invention of yours?
- Yes, Douchebag, just what kind of an invention
are you sitting on?
[laughter]
- It was all the stuff that we wanted to do,
and we saved it for the end.
[ethereal music]
- There's a saying that we used to use in the '70s,
that if you want to kill somebody talented,
let them do everything they want.
And that was sort of what was happening.
We were unprepared for the level of success
and attention that we got, so, uh, people were
offered all sorts of things.
People had more money than they'd ever had,
so it just changes things.
And, uh--and that's sort of the price of success.
The sun got too hot.
I think people were proud of what
we'd done in the first five, and...[chuckles]
Uh, we left.
* *
[static droning, clicks]
- From New York, home of courteous service
and a relaxing atmosphere,
it's "Late Night with David Letterman."
- That summer, my mom called me and said,
are you watching this guy David Letterman's show?
I said, no.
Oh, my God, Jim, it's-- it's the funniest show.
It's, no offense, so much funnier than
"Saturday Night Live," so much funnier.
- What's, uh--what's next for you two gentlemen?
- Oh, we'll be down in the, uh, Caribbean.
We're gonna be seizing an Aramco, uh, oil tanker.
- OK. - I just love it.
I just love the whole sensibility of it.
I love the silliness and the braininess of it.
He was himself.
He was standing apart.
- Letterman's show was not only innovative, but it was--
it was original.
But I think Jim was a big part of that.
- Fall of '81, and Dave Letterman
contacted me and said, hey, we're putting together
a writing staff.
- I thought, this is gonna be fantastic.
Jim will be here two or three years.
This will be great for the show, great for me,
and hopefully great for Jim.
- My day became basically sitting alone
in an office with Dave for, like, three hours,
trying to sell him on stuff.
He was a genius at flicking pencils
into the acoustic tiles.
You'd look up, it was just bristling with pencils.
And I would go, like, Dave, what about this?
There's a three-alarm fire in the studio.
He'd go, uh-uh.
Uh-uh. You know?
- Let me introduce you to our head writer, Mr. Jim Downey.
Jim, come on in.
[applause]
Frank Zappa.
And you know, of course, Gerard and Bob.
- Hi, Jim.
- Uh, what do we have on tap tomorrow night, Jim?
- Uh, we sort of thought you might throw
one of your blue cards at Paul and put his eye out.
[laughter]
[jazzy music]
* *
- I can remember in this hallway,
I started talking to Jim,
and he was making me laugh so hard.
That's when I thought, oh, my God, I think
this may be the funniest human I know.
- Sometimes I-- I wear shirts without
really reading what's on them.
[laughter]
- It's crazy.
You know how much time he must have spent
with David Letterman?
Like, just in a think tank,
combing over politicians,
news of the day.
- Ouch!
- Barry White has just been bitten
by a northern copperhead.
- I don't want to die, David.
- I think audiences want you to think of things
that they couldn't think of.
[laughter]
At "Letterman," we were conscious of trying
to teach the audience to appreciate things
they might not have appreciated before.
- Someone sent this postcard to us in the mail.
What you have here is something called
the world's largest vase.
We thought it would be interesting
if we could find out just exactly where this vase was.
- I mean, we would do running jokes that,
the first time, it died.
We said, no, damn it, this is funny.
I'm sorry, they're wrong.
You didn't laugh the first time, but here it is again.
- You have the world's largest vase.
- Uh, that's right.
- Uh, all right.
I'm gonna--I'm gonna ask you
to get a grip on yourself now, and--
- Deliberately wasting the audience's time,
I can't think of that many people
who have had the vision to follow through
with that besides Jim.
- Well, here--here it is, the world's largest vase.
- It generated, like, five or six different pieces
that we did on the show.
There was, like, a black tie event.
And then we had the next night where
it was the changing of the guard.
- We are adding a 35.5-inch radio transmitting
tower to the vase.
Oh, my God, this is television.
This is on American television.
- I don't even know if you'd call them sketches.
I don't know what--what you'd call what we did on that show.
- [laughs]
Oh, my God.
"Children's Letters to the World's Largest Vase."
This is all you need to know about Jim Downey, right here.
- That era of "Letterman" was the most exciting TV
I had ever seen.
It had this confidence of, like, this is what it is,
and you're watching it, and you're gonna keep watching,
'cause we got you.
And it's like, yeah, you fucking got me.
- Are you still wrestling?
- No, not--not really.
But I am having a very good time,
though, with myself. - Uh-huh.
[laughter]
And that period of time was really beneficial to us
because it then helped attract, uh,
other really good writers to our show.
[applause]
- We did do some, I think, some really good things.
- Now you can blow out the match.
- You're in town visiting?
- Well, um, next month, uh, we'll be
appearing in Atlantic City.
- Jim, come on in.
[applause]
This is Frank Zappa, and you know--
Lorne started something called "The New Show."
And, uh, everybody fled.
I wish we would have had more time with Jim.
[clicks, static droning]
- Good evening, and welcome to "The New Show."
[orchestral music]
[phone rings]
- Hello, Roy's Food Repair.
Yeah, eggs?
Yeah, we fix 'em.
[laughter]
- According to the Fort Lauderdale Police Department,
are the five most common causes of injury
suffered by students on spring break.
- We did "The New Show," which was...
[imitates explosion]
That's an example of why you want to do stuff live,
'cause, um,
that didn't work.
- Hello, it's the Naughty Lady.
- It's her!
It's the Naughty Lady.
- Hot dang!
* *
[projector whirring]
[soft piano music]
* *
- 1984, I was on staff at "SNL"
and Jim Downey returned to the show.
The prodigal son came home.
One of the high points of my life
was sharing an office with Jim.
We were right off the read-through room.
- Oh, give me a break!
Burned to a crisp.
Why do I keep forgetting to wear an oven mitt?
Ow! Ow!
Ow, ow!
- We never really had had a head writer, per se.
I tried to help every piece be the best version of itself.
It sounds corny, but it's the truth.
- And I do have this memory of other cast members and writers
lining up outside on Tuesday night,
sometimes well, well, well into the night,
to run their sketches past Jim.
- When I first started, people would wait outside your office
to get time with you.
- Midnight to 3:00 a.m., I would camp outside the door.
And you would wait, and you would wait, and you would wait.
And then around 1:30, he'd crack it.
- And the door would open, and I'd go, hey, Jim.
And you'd want to test the idea on him to see,
should we pursue this?
Or is it just awful?
- He knew how to take what we wrote and just go,
well, you don't want to say that.
You want to say this.
- We'd go over Hanz and Franz,
and he'd come up with, like, three different fixes.
Listen to me now and believe me later.
You can't count all the stars, Franz.
It's like trying to count all your muscles.
- Even if you have a sketch that's good,
he can always throw his magic wand on it and make it better.
- What I was trying to create for the performer was
an attitude to sort of sink into, you know?
- An overall concept of a thing being funny
and not just, like, setup, punchline, setup, punchline.
The Receptionist was that sort of attitude.
- Hi, I'm here to see Mr. Clark.
- OK, and you are?
- Kenneth Hornaday.
- Right.
I put that together and Downey goes,
I like that attitude.
I like what you're doing.
It's not joke-heavy.
So he sort of steered it.
Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh. Hi, there.
Hi.
- Yeah, I'm here to see Dick Clark.
- Uh-huh.
And you are?
- Tell him it's Hammer.
- And he would know you because you...
- Look, it's Hammer.
You know, like Madonna.
- Right, and she is...
[laughter]
- Your mama. Never mind. Forget it.
- On "SNL," you could be a genius Saturday night,
and then by Tuesday, if you didn't have an idea,
you felt like the biggest failure, if you were a writer.
- The worst part is you go in and you tell him
your sketch idea, and he goes,
I can't tell you why that wouldn't work.
I just--I don't think that it's gonna work.
So you walk out there at 3:00 a.m. going,
I have to start over.
Read-through's tomorrow.
I go knock on Smigel.
Need help with anything?
Housekeeping.
- You write it yourself, and you go,
I don't know, is this any good?
And then when you take it to someone like Jim Downey,
and he says it's really good, then suddenly you go,
well, if Jim thinks it's good, it must be good,
so I'm fine.
- It wasn't until I did the national anthem sketch...
* Oh *
* Say *
* An ooh ee *
* By the dawn's *
* Early light *
That he went nuts over, that made me feel like,
I think I did something here.
- Jim had such respect from everyone.
He would give you confidence.
- I loved a great impression.
And you bring to that really good writing to the character,
that's pretty hard to top.
- Yeah, yeah.
- My approval ratings are down a little bit.
Don't like the direction they're taking.
This is good here.
That's good.
That's--that's bad.
[laughter]
Worse.
- Dana would duplicate the character,
and then he would italicize it
and stretch it and pull it out of shape.
- Notice I didn't say recession.
Well, as an undecided Latino voter--
Natural disaster.
Not my fault.
And then we had this one phrase,
which I remember specifically.
You wrote it.
On the paper it was, not going to do it.
And that became--
- And it became, nah-gah-dah.
- On the cue card.
Not gonna do it. Not gonna do it.
Ah-gah-bah.
Once the audience went with that, we had them.
* We're not gonna lose *
* Not gonna do it *
* Not gah, not gah *
* Not gonna do it *
[jazzy music]
- You, watching this at home, worship me!
I command you, become my willing thralls
and live eternally!
- That much oat bran...
- What the hell do you think you're doing?
* *
- You tell somebody a joke,
most people will make it worse,
but there's 10% who will bring it back to you better.
And so that's why we introduced
the Thursday rewrites, to have everyone there
offer up quick suggestions.
We never had rewrites in the first five years of the show.
I added them when you joined the show--
- When I joined the show.
It was like, this guy's gonna need...
- He's gonna want--
- A little bit of tweaking.
- What happens at read-through stays at read-through.
You're free to, like, take a shot,
and it was important because it meant people
were willing to take chances.
You always had that first wave of relief
of, like, oh, OK, we came up with something.
It was written up.
But the fear of death at the table
is really significant.
- Where is Canteen Boy?
- [chuckles] He's right over there.
[laughter]
- Downey looked out for me my whole time at the show.
My stuff didn't do that great at read-through,
and Jim always kind of said, I don't know, just--
that one, give--let Adam just give it a shot at that.
- Let's go, scouts.
- He mentioned Alec Baldwin being a scout leader
and him wanting to be alone with the Canteen Boy.
- I wanted to talk to you about something.
I see you take a lot of ribbing from the other scouts.
- Goes with the territory, Mr. Armstrong.
Sticks and stones.
[chuckles]
- [laughs]
Atta boy.
[laughter, groaning]
- Jim gave me that one.
That was a monster.
That was, like, one of my biggest things that I ever had.
- Took on another level with Downey,
where it's like the performance is part of the concept.
- It should be noted, when you have one line
in a Jim Downey sketch,
you are going to have a long conversation
about exactly how he'd like you to say that line.
- It was word for word.
Like, he would take you through sentence by sentence.
And that's not an exaggeration.
- Blueprints that you want to build the house
exactly to those plans.
- Sometimes between dress and air,
where you're like, oh, my God, Jim,
we're gonna run out of time.
How are we going to go over this
beat by beat by beat?
- But he also had such love for a cast
that could bring performance to his work.
- The other cast members would be slightly pissed at you.
Like, how the fuck did you get Downey on your side?
- I think, uh, the initials, uh,
JD on a sketch, that, I think, helped improve its odds.
- He's picking the sketches, so if he's on your team,
it's great.
- Now, this is Lorne's office,
largely unchanged.
The board has every sketch indicated by
a little three-by-five card.
I'd be in here with Lorne.
There'd be a lot of--of people coming up to the board.
Like, writers going, like, uh, are you fucking kidding me?
We're doing "Elevator Ride"?
Jesus.
[jazzy music]
We take what we do very seriously,
but it is a lot easier when you're having a good time.
- Oh!
- Nice one!
- Oh!
- Oh, yeah! - Whoo!
- Oh, my God!
- Bob Odenkirk was writing at the show.
We were sent these soft vinyl--
like a baseball.
We're sitting there in rewrites,
and Bob is, like, undoing the stitching.
It took him all day and he finally unraveled the thing.
It was very quickly discovered that if you threw
this shit really hard at the wall, it would stick.
And so Jack Handey and Odenkirk invented this game.
- Oh!
- The idea was to hit the goo with the dart.
- No, no, no. God, no.
Jesus, Conan.
- I'm sorry, I'm thinking of old goo rules.
- Yes, old goo.
You throw the darts in a pattern
to deflect the goo... - Ah.
- So that--and you create either a shunt or a--a fence.
There were different terms for the different
types of barriers.
- Oh! Sorry.
- It's, like, 1:00 in the morning,
and everyone's having a great time.
And they pan around the room,
and I'm just like this.
- [laughs]
- I'm just looking at my script and just...
- Yes.
The equivalent of the royal flush
was to create what's called a cradle...
[laughter]
Where you'd create, like, a semicircular pattern
of darts so the goo would roll into it and get trapped.
- Yeah!
- But you could also slow the goo down
and give another player time to cradle it.
- You realize it's not a real sport?
- Well, tell that to the American Goo Federation.
- What I have found in comedy writing,
particularly, is that screwing around is
80% of the job and somehow necessary.
Years and years of my life have been spent in a writers' room
with us howling, playing with some stupid prop in the room.
- Yes.
- And when you try and go home
and explain it to your wife, it doesn't make any sense.
But somehow, it's part of the process.
- This exchange, which I will never forget...
- [laughs] - From your audition.
Surely this will be familiar.
- Yes. - All right.
- OK, so this is Scarface--
- And the Church-- - Church Lady.
- Scarface and the Church Lady.
- [as Scarface] Lady, let me tell you.
Let me tell you, lady.
You look like a big bowl of fuck.
- [laughing]
- [as Church Lady] Well, isn't that special?
[normal voice] Perfect.
That's, like, perfect comedy.
[as Lorne] Uh, the show is over.
We're canceling it in the middle.
There'll be a TV movie of the week.
It was...
[laughter]
[jazzy music]
- I am Uberman. I have superhuman powers.
- Two wild and crazy guys!
- You need a good attorney in your corner.
* *
- This is impossible.
Uh, can't we just hire them both?
- No. We've been through this.
We've only got the budget for one dancer.
- Yeah, but they're both so great.
I can't decide between them.
- I always forget that he wrote "Chippendales,"
because that, to me, is one of my favorite of all time.
[laughter]
[Loverboy's "Working for the Weekend"]
* *
- That premise came to me because of the host,
because Swayze.
- * Will you come out tonight *
* Everyone's trying to get it right *
* Get it right *
- "Chippendales," I was 10 feet away
just watching it going, goddamn, this is good.
And you don't know.
They go, "Chippendales," and they go,
OK, next, uh, 30 seconds.
And everyone just runs off, and you don't even think twice.
You're just running to the next thing.
You don't know, I just witnessed history.
- * Everybody needs a second chance, oh *
[jazzy music]
- [growls] Fire bad!
[shouting, grunting]
- You crazy bitch!
I'll kill you!
- You're not a man, you're a joke!
- [screams]
- It's almost unimaginable today
to comprehend a private life
as emotionally charged as the Lincolns'.
- You're a sick woman, Mary!
[cracking, rumbling]
- ...the complexities
of modern life and warfare.
- I hate you!
- It's amazing how much of the tension and struggle
of that show just is somehow built-in.
It was hard for me.
I think it's hard for anybody over time to not go,
if only I could have two more weeks to rehearse this,
and maybe rewrite this stuff,
and try to have a higher laugh ratio.
I wonder what he thinks about the built-in degree
of expectation falling short.
- I had been basically miserable
my last couple years doing it.
That was a time when I should have
taken a year off on my own.
And then I was fired as producer in--
at the end of the '94-'95 season.
[tense music]
- At a certain point, you've done enough work
that you're competing with yourself,
so it becomes harder and harder.
And you want to stay fresh
and you want to stay original, and--
and most of all, you want to stay funny.
So that is just how it works.
[projector whirring]
* *
- You know, I had a lot of--
I thought there were some productive years there.
* *
Norm, meanwhile, is calling me like,
hey, hey, hey, Jim, we gotta do "Update," huh?
[exciting music]
- "Weekend Update" with Norm MacDonald.
- Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Thanks.
Thank you.
I'm Norm Macdonald, and this is the news.
Real estate mogul Donald Trump announced this week
that after 3 1/2 years of marriage,
he is seeking a divorce
from wife Marla Maples.
According to Trump, Maples violated part
of their marriage agreement
when she decided to turn 30.
- Working with Norm was so fun.
That was a very happy period.
- And in music news,
number one on the college charts this summer
was Better Than Ezra.
And at number two, Ezra.
- Oh, my God, he just dared people to laugh.
Norm just couldn't care less.
- A French man who calls himself the Snake Man
was arrested this week after climbing up the side
of a Manhattan high-rise.
Yep, he climbed right up the side of a high-rise,
just like a snake.
[laughter]
- The rhythm of them was something that,
even today, hasn't been replicated.
- It was all in the writing and Norm's
committed dry performance, you know.
- Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- Note to self, uh, find new way
of fraudulently obtaining food stamps.
[laughter]
- We just believed in the jokes.
When Norm did those jokes, he couldn't be shaken.
- He has the most unique, one-of-a-kind kind delivery.
I can imagine how exciting that would be,
to have Norm Macdonald be the mouthpiece for your jokes.
- Clinton yesterday announced that, from now on,
the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina
will be referred to as Vietnam.
- Of all the performers that I've ever worked with,
I actually had the most perfect simpatico with Norm.
- When you and Norm found each other,
it was like tuning forks that were perfectly matched.
- Norm and Jim,
that has to be Jim's favorite combination
in--in all of show business.
[laughter, applause]
- Can I tell my favorite Norm joke?
It was, the richest girl in the world
had her 10-year-old birthday.
- Millionaire Athina Onassis
celebrated her 10th birthday this week.
- What do you get for the richest girl in the world?
Well, here's an idea.
- At the party, they had two cakes.
[rim shot]
[laughter]
- And it's such a good joke.
It doesn't really play, but a truly great joke
is one that doesn't play
and that I remember for 30 years.
[light percussive music]
* *
- "Update" Norm is totally in sync with your values,
which is perfect word choice, perfect phrasing,
let's get the timing just right.
- When you're telling the joke,
it has to be a really good version of the joke.
All the important elements are done in the best possible way.
- The October issue of "Penthouse," now on newsstands,
contains a picture billed as, quote,
"the alien, the world's first authentic photograph."
- The original joke we started with was...
- A survey of "Penthouse" readers finds
that 60% think the photo is a fake,
while only 40% think it's real.
All 100%, however, found it, quote...
- Quote, "sharp, clear, and easy to masturbate to."
But we decided that it would be better--
- All 100%, however, found it,
quote, "surprisingly easy to masturbate to."
[laughter]
- But then it became
"surprisingly easy to masturbate to."
Or, quote, "surprisingly easy."
- [laughs] Elevates it a little bit.
- But that's the kind of thing where
other people thought we were kind of insane.
- OJ Simpson is wanted.
He's been charged in the two murders
that took place Sunday night.
- A lot of people think they know the story of Norm,
"Update," OJ, NBC.
But I don't think, necessarily, they do.
- F. Lee Bailey said this week that if the defense only
knew what Ron Goldman's last words were,
they might be able to find the real killer.
You know, if you ask me, Goldman's last words
were probably, uh, hey, you're OJ Simpson!
[laughter, applause]
- The OJ murders happened-- still unsolved--uh...
- To this day. - To this day.
And you and Norm start doing jokes about
how it's quite clear that he is the murderer.
- Was OJ Simpson high on speed the night of the murders?
Absolutely not, said defense attorney Johnnie Cochran today.
And a simple test of any of OJ's blood
found at the crime scene will prove it.
[laughter]
- Hey, Norm, what's up? It's OJ.
- Oh, OJ!
OJ Simpson's new fitness video was released this week.
Oh, no! OJ has struck again.
How about that?
It was revealed this week, the defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran
once abused his first wife.
In his defense, Cochran said,
"Hey, at least I didn't kill her
like some people I know."
- That would make them exponentially funnier.
Just the sheer volume--
- I felt that way. - Yeah.
- It was usually OJ thought he was making a great point,
but incriminating himself instead.
- In a brilliant move during closing arguments,
Simpson attorney Johnnie Cochran
put on the knit cap prosecutors say OJ wore the night
he committed the murders,
although OJ may have hurt his case when he suddenly
blurted out, hey, hey, easy with that!
That's my lucky stabbin' hat!
[laughter]
- What you come to realize is that the head of the network,
Don Ohlmeyer, who's best friends with OJ,
doesn't like these jokes.
- I believe OJ did not do this.
I don't think the media in this town
believes that OJ did not do this.
They're trying to portray this like a football game.
- He didn't like Norm's comedy.
Jim was devoted to Norm.
I loved Norm as well.
It was all like his personal taste
should be the thing that decides things.
It wasn't the kind of comedy he was used to.
And also they were making a lot of jokes about OJ,
and that's when it started.
- In his book, OJ Simpson says that
he would have taken a bullet or stood in front of a train
for Nicole.
Man, I'm gonna tell you, that is some bad luck,
when the one guy who would have died for you
kills you.
[laughter]
- He was respectful.
And it was never a fuck-you attitude,
but he was just like,
who's this guy gonna talk to me about
what's funny and not funny and what we're allowed to say?
- Like we were not gonna make jokes about OJ.
- There's a lot of people in this town,
when he's proved innocent,
who are going to look at you guys
and the stuff you put on the air
in a totally different way.
They're just not gonna believe you.
- They joked, and they just were like, oh,
you want us to lay off the OJ jokes?
Well, why don't we do more?
- Don Ohlmeyer said to me, they're not funny.
And I said, no, they're not funny to you,
but they are funny to the audience that, uh,
is watching the show.
- The idea that the head of the network
is supporting someone who clearly
is a murderer, and therefore insisting
on the firing of people based on their jokes
about the murder, is unheard of.
- We, the jury in the above entitled action,
find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson,
not guilty of the crime of murder.
- Now the fake news.
Well, it is finally official.
Murder is legal in the state of California.
[laughter, applause]
- Don, he was-- you gotta fire Norm and Jim.
And I obviously wasn't gonna consider that
till the season was over.
He just kept pounding on it.
I said, do not do this.
If you want to make this decision
at the end of the season, Norm, maybe he was ready
to leave anyway, and we'll decide then.
But he overruled me.
It's, I think, the only time that anybody
actually overruled me.
And he kind of had the critics on his side.
And so, uh, he did it.
It was a disaster.
It tore us apart.
- The phone rings, and it's Michael Shoemaker
saying, a couple things.
Chris Farley is dead, and you and Norm are fired.
[laughs]
Norm was really devastated.
My attitude was, hey, we got three and a half
fun seasons out of it.
And, like, I'll take a year off, you know?
- This guy Don Ohlmeyer, he goes, uh, oh, yeah,
I'm, uh--I'm firing you there from the show.
And then I said, uh, oh, that's not good.
You know.
And then I said, why is that now?
And he goes, uh, oh, you're not--
you know, you're not funny. - Yeah.
- And then I said, uh--
I said, holy lord, that's even worse news, you know?
[laughter]
- When Norm passed away, just about everybody
did not know that he was that sick.
People went back and they started looking at
these mash-ups, his best "Update" jokes,
and you just saw this barrage of really great,
fantastic, timeless jokes delivered perfectly.
And it was just a great tribute to what
you two guys made together.
- That's all for now, folks. Good night.
Thanks a lot.
Enjoy.
[cheers and applause]
- It takes a special person
to be able to write something,
spend so much time doing it,
and then give it to somebody else,
and just not have that sad desire
to need to get the laugh yourself.
- I thought Jim was an actor
because I'd seen him on "Letterman."
- When you know Jim's face,
then you see him in all those little things
over the years.
[jazzy music]
- Hi, I'm Craig.
I'm thinking of taking a vacation in Jurassic Park.
I'm gonna go through it once more.
I'm not the sort of person
who starts a job and walks away from it.
- Much has been said about Jeffrey Epstein.
Terrible things have been--
- No, Jeff--
I'm talking about Jeff Epstein,
the New York financier.
[laughter]
- Yes!
We're talking about the same Jeff Epstein.
- No. - Yes!
- No.
- Yes!
- Andy, I've been dating your dad.
- Like, my dad, dad?
- It's gotten extraordinarily physical.
[cheers and applause]
- Downey commits a thousand percent,
and they really do go at it. - Yeah.
[cheers and applause]
- If it were up to me, we'd be putting up drywall
on your vagina building today.
- Well, I appreciate that, Jim.
I really do. - But in the current climate--
- Downey's so present.
In "Billy Madison,"
I recognized him from "Change Bank."
- We wanted Jim to be the principal
and called him up, and he said, yeah, yeah, what about this?
And he wrote the most quoted thing from that movie.
- Mr. Madison, what you've just said
is one of the most insanely idiotic things
I have ever heard.
At no point in your rambling, incoherent response
were you even close to anything that could be
considered a rational thought.
Everyone in this room is now dumber
for having listened to it.
I award you no points...
- [laughs]
- And may God have mercy on your soul.
- Yeah, man.
I mean, I think Downey said that
to me and Farley several times in real life.
[funky music]
- You also were in
a Paul Thomas Anderson movie as well.
People forget about that.
- He just had this notion that I was
the perfect guy to play that part.
So I go, oh, OK.
- "There Will Be Blood" is one of my favorite movies
of that decade, and Jim was in it.
- Can everything around here be got?
- Sure.
- He really is, as a sketch performer,
a really good actor.
- We will take our clients' money and invest it.
Part of the profit, we'll keep for ourselves.
The rest, we will give to the client.
We will make a list of our clients
and how much money each of them has given us to invest.
We will keep this list in a safe place.
If we have time, we will make a copy of the list
in case something happens to the first list.
- At "Saturday Night Live,"
the writers have a lot of power.
- I want a piece of you, Potter!
Why, I oughta pound you!
[shouting]
- The shape of the kind of things that you do at "SNL,"
the degree of control you can have...
- Is there a particular moment when you said to yourself,
it's just-- it's just not my night?
- Probably when the mountain lion urinated on me.
- I know I would never find anywhere else.
[jazzy music]
I'd been away from the show for a couple years,
and then Don Ohlmeyer left the network.
It seemed like a few minutes after he left,
Lorne's like, he's gone, right?
It's official?
Then he called me and said, hey,
I'd like you to come back to the show.
I remembered my friends telling me,
if you go back to the show after being fired twice,
we'll lose all respect for you.
- I did not say that.
- Lawrence did not say that. - Yeah.
- Lorne made it very clear that
he wanted me to be a specialist.
- Good evening.
This is the CBS Evening Anthrax Update,
Dan Rather reporting.
All right, this just in.
CBS News now confirming that I have anthrax.
Now, to sum up where we stand at the moment,
Rather, anthrax.
Blitzer, anthrax, attacked by a squirrel.
- Politics wasn't always considered,
like, a hot property.
- Where have you been?
- Certainly not in the early years.
- Ah, guten Tag.
[speaking German]
- Each decade sort of kicked up
to where more and more people were actually
interested in political comedy.
- I don't run around saying, Bob Dole does this
and Bob Dole does that.
That's not something Bob Dole does.
- Jim was like the king
in the cold open world.
- Stay on the track.
Stay the course.
Thousand points of light.
[laughter]
- Governor Dukakis, rebuttal?
- I can't believe I'm losing to this guy.
[laughter]
- Jim prided himself on that he was
an impartial, uh, satirist.
- We did not feel it was our job to have
a political point of view.
- There's no one I like.
I'm looking to make fun of anything
that comes down the pike.
- This film, "Independence Day,"
tells the story of a young, idealistic,
compassionate president who's facing a crisis.
Frustrated in his personal life
and unable to realize his vision for the country
due to a hostile Congress.
But suddenly, everything turns around
and he's able to achieve true greatness
when aliens invade Earth
and a helicopter crash kills his wife.
I love this movie.
- He kept me honest sometimes.
Sometimes I'd have an idea that was a little
too undermined by sort of
how partisan it was or something.
- I want to be around for a long time,
on the job,
making the tough decisions,
24/7.
That's 24 hours a week...
[laughter]
Seven months a year.
- In the first five years of the show,
I bet we opened with a political piece
maybe two or three times a year.
- It became more urgent in 2000.
These campaigns were vulnerable to the swing voter.
They were trying to get their hands on,
who is this guy, Gore?
Who is this guy, Bush?
[applause]
Those performances, and what you gave the actors
to do with those characters,
gave people a handle on those characters
that they didn't have before that night.
- I remember looking at the script,
and I said, is that as good as I think it is?
- Governor Bush, you said the following.
Quote, "More seldom than not, the movies
"gives us exquisite sex and wholesome violence
"that underscores our values.
"Every two child did.
I will."
End quote.
[laughter]
What did you mean by that?
[laughter]
- [clears throat] Pass.
[laughter, applause]
- I'm just silently just screaming with joy in my head,
oh, my God, he's-- he's literally
schooling the entire show on how to write political comedy.
- Now, under my plan, Etta's prescription drugs
would be covered.
Under my opponent's plan,
her house would be burned to the ground,
and that is wrong.
- I believe that some of his figures may be "in-ack-urate."
[laughter]
- We are almost out of time, so I will instead
ask each candidate to sum up in a single word
the best argument for his candidacy.
Governor Bush?
- Strategery.
[laughter]
- The whole country was saying strategery.
- The word strategery.
- It's become part of the lexicon.
- As "The New York Times" put it, the national consciousness.
- You know, I've always been
a big fan of "Saturday Night Live."
- Clearly, the candidates have taken
their appearances on the late-night show seriously.
- Although I'm a big fan, I have seen
some things on the show I thought were,
in a word, offensible.
- The most important political writing of this election year.
- Jim, your reaction?
- Well, I'd like to hear more from Lawrence in that vein.
I thought he was on to something.
- And the thing you have to know about the undecided voter
is that they don't consume any information
from the political media.
- If they had, they wouldn't be undecided--
- They do catch things like this.
- We are America's undecided voters.
Before you get our vote,
you're gonna have to answer some questions.
- When is the election?
How soon do we have to decide?
- What are the names of the two people running?
And be specific.
- Who is the president right now?
Is he or she running?
- What happens if the president dies?
Has anyone thought about who would replace him?
What's your plan, gentlemen?
- Somehow, that set this pattern,
so that, ever since then,
whenever there's an election year,
there's this sort of expectation--
well, we have to have debate pieces.
- So don't be telling me that I'm part
of the Washington elite because I come from
the absolute worst place on Earth,
Scranton, Pennsylvania.
And Wilmington, Delaware's not much better.
- Governor Palin.
- Oh, are we not doing the talent portion?
[laughter, applause]
- And it was becoming this gigantic part.
- We'll work on you. It's gonna take time.
[chuckles] Maybe for four more years.
- Our politics has never calmed down since 2000.
"SNL" became absolutely mandatory in American politics
and is to this day.
[microphone feedback, applause]
[jazzy music]
- Your Honor, I'd like to say something if I could, please.
- Excuse me, are you a relative of the plaintiff?
- I am her mother.
[laughter]
- And what is your occupation?
- I am a barfly.
[laughter]
- I'm a barfly.
- I am a barfly. - I am a barfly.
- And by that you mean you loiter in bars
waiting for men you don't know to buy you drinks?
- That is correct, Your Honor.
[laughter]
- Just hours ago, it was made apparent to me
that I am not, as I have long believed myself to be,
a licensed bikini inspector.
[laughter]
As experts have shown,
the official bikini inspector license
upon which I base this assertion is a forgery.
And indeed, no such medical specialty exists.
To the hundreds and hundreds of women
I may have wronged, albeit with the best of intentions,
I can now only offer my most sincere
and heartfelt apologies.
- This is a sidewalk costume.
- A sidewalk costume?
- Yeah. I mean, you know,
we don't recommend it for blind kids.
I mean, you know, there's a warning right on the label.
"Invisible Pedestrian, not for blind kids."
[laughter]
- Did Bob Dole grow up in Canada
in a small farm town?
Didn't have the prep school education
or the sterling silverware,
or the bumper pool table in the basement.
Didn't have the shower massage,
the five-way adjustable head.
- The deficit, like many of our problems,
will ultimately be solved if we can legalize
and federally fund female circumcisions.
- Larry, please, let's hit the fast-forward button,
because we've heard this before.
See, now, folks, we'd all like better schools,
less crime, and female circumcision, right?
There's nothing better in the world
than female circumcision.
But where is the money gonna come from?
- I think you'll really like Stu.
He's absolutely the most sincere,
genuine, straightforward person you'll ever want to meet.
A real honest guy. - Mm.
- What a jerk he is.
- Listen, we'll-- we'll talk quietly
so as not to disturb you, OK?
- Oh, you won't disturb me.
I'll be in my room masturbating.
They won't disturb me.
I'll be masturbating.
- Live long...
[laughter]
And be happy.
[laughter, applause]
- This guy here is the best writer
that I ever worked with at "Saturday Night Live."
He's my friend.
And if anybody messes with him,
they're messing with me.
And they're messing, um, with the local union here,
which I have, uh, talked to about anything
that might happen here tonight.
[cacophonous piano melody]
* *
* Jaws *
- * Jaws, get away from me *
- * Get away from me *
* Jaws *
- They had been fooling around with this "Jaws" theme
since, like, 19-- since the movie came out.
- It was just their running bit, you know, for years.
- * You took and you made me *
* You made me *
* Made me part of you *
- * Made me a part of you *
- I remember Maya in my hotel room,
and Downey on the phone singing that,
and you and I are both frantically writing.
And I'm up in the music thing
with Paul Shaffer.
I think Bill's gonna come. We don't know.
And then here comes Bill in a--
literally in a Hawaiian shirt or whatever.
And then we were on--on TV.
- By the way, we seem like we're playing it cool.
But, like, these are the guys we had boners for.
- * You bastard, Jaws! *
[cheers and applause]
- I have to believe it's some kind of record
for the longest time between the original idea
and the execution,
which would be 40 years, just about.
[soft music]
- Jim is a brilliant artist,
and he's working in this amazing medium
called sketch comedy,
and he's really defined it.
- He could get a laugh from the intro before the cold open.
- A panel think tank nerds excitedly discusses
some topic no one else cares about, followed by
long, incoherent questions
from even nerdier members of the audience.
- Like, those little, like, jokes,
that is not easy to do.
Shout out to Jim Downey, man.
[laughter, applause]
- As a person who loves the show
with my whole heart,
I want people to understand who he is.
He's so much a fabric of the show.
- Es Senor Eliot Ness!
- You know, we would say when we'd write our movies--
this is fucking 10 years after we left the show--
we'd be like... [inhales sharply]
I think Downey would like that.
That's how fucking insane we are with Downey.
Oh, yeah, all right.
[speaking gibberish]
[laughter]
[speaking gibberish]
* *
- I think comedy writers in general,
for whatever reason,
they feel like the world is a bit of a swindle and a lie,
and they want to point that out and laugh at it.
Jim was so wonderful at making comedy
out of the way people relate to each other.
* *
The way they misunderstand each other,
talk to each other, conversational failings,
the depth it can go to in revealing human behavior
is as deep as people can go.
Plus the two with Dave Letterman.
I mean, I had three or four separate careers
within "Saturday Night Live" alone.
Along the way, I became a father,
and just last February, on the eve of the 50th anniversary,
a grandfather.
I met the love of my life at this show.
That's how wired I am to this place.
When I started here, I was the youngest person
on the writing staff.
And when I left, much the oldest.
It's cool that, you know,
I was able to do it as long as I did,
working with some of the funniest people on the planet
and still make a contribution.
But at a certain point, you've proved what you need to prove,
and it's time to quietly step aside,
and slip out the back way unnoticed--
the Irish goodbye.
- Live from New York, it's Saturday night!
- Ex-Lampooner Jim Downey
not only wrote for "Saturday Night Live"
longer than anybody else,
he also created this perennial list
read by David Letterman.
- What is the Top 10 List?
- I'm pretty sure, with respect,
if there was some news about Jeff Epstein,
I would have heard.
- I have to tell you, he's gone.
He's dead. - What do you mean?
- He's dead. - He's dead?
- He's dead. - No.
[laughs] Sorry, nice try.