BEST OF: Al on SNL’s 50th Anniversary

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Al Franken Podcast – "BEST OF: Al on SNL’s 50th Anniversary"

Episode Date: April 19, 2026
Host: Al Franken
Guest/Interviewer: Peter Ogburn

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Episode Overview

In this special "Best Of" episode, Al Franken is interviewed by Peter Ogburn to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live (SNL). As one of SNL’s original writers and a 15-season veteran, Franken dives deep into the history, behind-the-scenes processes, legendary cast members, political sketches, and cultural impact of the iconic comedy show. The episode is filled with hilarious anecdotes, insightful reflections, and inside stories—perfect for both longtime SNL fans and newcomers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Getting Hired at SNL & Early Days

[02:07–06:21]

• Origin Story: Al Franken and his comedy partner Tom Davis got started as a duo in high school, performing comedic announcements during chapel.
• Showbiz Entry: After hitchhiking to LA and killing at The Comedy Store, an agent (Herb Carp) suggested they write a TV packet for a show they would want to see.
• Landing SNL: Their writing package, full of the kind of offbeat sketches SNL would soon be known for, caught Lorne Michaels’ eye. They were the only writers hired without a meeting with Lorne.
• Early Team: Franken describes the original group: Mike O'Donoghue, Danny Aykroyd, Chevy Chase (at first only a writer), Garrett Morris, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, and Lorraine Newman.

  “I think to this day, if [Lorne] had met us, we might not have gotten hired.” – Al Franken [05:26]

2. SNL's Unique Writing & Show Process

[09:54–17:46]

• Monday Pitch: Writers and the week’s host meet in Lorne’s office to pitch sketch ideas (often intentionally bad to break the ice).
• Tuesday/Wednesday Writing: Intensive writing sessions, often going all night, with most of the writing happening late Tuesday into Wednesday, producing a flurry of material.
• Small Cast Advantage: Original, much smaller casts allowed everyone lots of screen time—Al remarks on today’s "Hunger Games" atmosphere due to so many cast members.

  “The advantage to having seven was that everyone got to perform a lot on the show. I feel bad for the cast now…they don’t get enough reps.” – Al Franken [11:51]

• Read-Through: Wednesday’s read-through in the writers’ room (later moved to the studio) determines which sketches move forward.
• Thursday/Friday Blocking & Rewrites: Blocking sketches, table rewrites (which Franken calls ‘turd polishing’), and cue cards. Writers also "produce" their own sketches—rare in TV.
• Producer Role: Unlike other shows, SNL writers are deeply embedded in production, working closely with directors and technical staff.

  “No one does a show like SNL…The writers get to produce their own [pieces].” – Al Franken [26:49]

3. Legendary Casts & Noteworthy Characters

[13:22–14:20]

• Cast Comments: Franken praises Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, and Kevin Nealon’s versatility and utility.
• Iconic Characters: Discussion about Erwin Mainway (Aykroyd), Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer (Hartman, written by Jack Handey), and Stuart Smalley (Franken).

  “Phil was called the glue…he held everything together.” – Al Franken [13:49]

4. Notable Sketches: Creation & Censorship

[24:05–25:05], [51:41–53:51], [54:22–56:21]

• Memorable Bits:
  • Stuart Smalley & Michael Jordan: Exploring self-doubt with an ultra-confident guest.
  • One Man Mobile Uplink Unit: Parody sketch born out of a real technicians’ strike.
  • Placenta Helper: Never made it to air due to censor Jane Crowley—but read in full for the podcast.

    “A dog humping your leg isn’t sexy.” – Al Franken [52:12] (explaining the limits of TV censorship)

  • Julia Child Bleeding to Death: Developed with Tom Davis, originally for Walter Matthau; made possible by creative, hands-on technical work.

5. Weekly SNL Schedule Breakdown

[09:54–36:05]

• Monday: Meeting & pitching ideas.
• Tuesday-Wednesday: Writing all night.
• Wednesday Afternoon: Read-through with cast.
• Thursday-Friday: Blocking, music rehearsal, rewrites (sometimes until dawn).
• Saturday: Full day of rehearsals, dress show, final edits/cuts after dress, finally live performance and afterparty.

  “We called it turd polishing. That was self-deprecating humor: we’re turd polishing my piece here.” – Al Franken [25:28]

6. The Role of the Host

[37:21–43:40]

• Best Hosts: Steve Martin, Michael Palin, athletes like Joe Montana, Fran Tarkenton, and specifically Peyton Manning—athletes were “almost always great” due to comfort performing under pressure.

  “To a man and a woman…these athletes just were so comfortable with doing a live TV show.” – Al Franken [38:20]

• Worst Host: Steven Seagal

  “You would have us do the ugliest piece that’s ever been on television?” – Al Franken [42:14]

7. Politics & SNL

[56:26–57:33]

• Long Political Tradition: From the very beginning, often led by Franken and Davis, SNL poked fun at politicians—Ford, Nixon, debates, etc.

  “Tom and I were very political. We had done, in our stand-up act, politics and Nixon—a lot of Nixon.” – Al Franken [57:21]

• Impact: Chevy Chase’s Ford impersonation and the famous “Nixon final days” sketch set a template for politics on late night comedy.

8. Music on SNL

[18:45–23:00], [61:48–63:25]

• Booking Guests: Franken and Davis pushed for The Grateful Dead, but Deadheads in the audience proved problematic—“they didn’t laugh.”
• Paul McCartney 'Hey Jude' Anecdote: Franken recalls emotional musical rehearsals and a running joke about sneaking away Gap jeans during the performance.

  “I went from crying…to stealing pants.” – Al Franken [22:57]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On SNL’s culture:

  “No one does a show like SNL anyway.” – Al Franken [26:49]

• On cast changes:

  “Now it's like the Hunger Games or something like that for the cast.” – Al Franken [12:14]

• On writing & producing:

  “The writers get to produce their own pieces. And that was a great part of the show.” – Al Franken [26:49]

• On the gap between early and current SNL:

  “Now, [with] so many cast members...they don't get enough reps.” – Al Franken [11:51]

• On infamous SNL censor Jane Crowley:

  “She was the worst censor we had. And she censored Placenta Helper.” – Al Franken [53:51]

• On Steven Seagal (worst host):

  “So you would have us do the ugliest piece that's ever been on television?” – Al Franken [42:14]

• On the impact of SNL in listeners’ lives:

  “One of my favorite memories ever: going out shrimping with my dad and then coming back and discovering SNL.” – Interviewer [67:56]

• On Lorne Michaels' role:

  “So much of it is him…this is his 45th season.” – Al Franken [68:23]

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Important Timestamps

• [02:07] – How Al Franken joined SNL with Tom Davis
• [09:54] – Weekly show process breakdown
• [13:22] – Discussion of Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Kevin Nealon, and performer chemistry
• [25:28] – The reality of midnight rewrites: "turd polishing"
• [30:08] – Dana Carvey as George H.W. Bush and Perot
• [39:33] – Stuart Smalley with Michael Jordan behind-the-scenes
• [42:05] – Steven Seagal as the worst host
• [51:41] – The censored “Placenta Helper” sketch
• [54:22] – Julia Child bleeding to death: special effects and improvisational ending
• [56:26] – Politics and SNL’s origins (Nixon, Ford, political parodies)
• [61:48] – Getting The Grateful Dead on SNL & Deadhead audience story
• [67:43] – Interviewer’s personal story of discovering SNL with his late father
• [68:23] – Lorne Michaels’ contribution to SNL’s legacy

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Tone & Language

• The discussion is candid, nostalgic, and infused with classic Franken self-deprecating wit, quick asides, and layered showbiz/insider humor.
• Franken and Ogburn maintain a conversational, irreverent, and affectionate tone throughout, with plenty of digressions into show lore and heartfelt reflections.

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Conclusion

This "Best Of" episode offers a rare, comprehensive look inside SNL's mythology—its origins, comedic process, iconic sketches, the long shadow of Lorne Michaels, and its clockwork creative chaos. Franken’s stories illuminate why SNL remains a singular television institution, beloved for its creative risks and awkward, glorious unpredictability. Whether recalling the smallest writer’s-room incident or epoch-defining sketches, Franken brings warmth, honesty, and a deep sense of comedic craft and television history to the conversation.

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Transcript

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[Al Franken]

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[Al Franken]

Hey everybody. We've got a great one today, you know, for a change. And that's because this, this one is a best of. I'm taking a little break from the podcast. I've been doing this show for seven years and frankly, I deserve a break. So I'd like to revisit my special SNL episode from February of last year, you know, when SNL celebrated its 50th. It's Peter interviewing me about my 15 seasons at the show, starting as one of the original writers back in 1975. Yikes. It really is a different one, you, you know, for a change. And I know you'll enjoy it. So, Peter, we're going to. You're gonna ask me questions about Saturday Night Live, right?

[Interviewer]

I have so many questions to ask you. How did you get the job at SNL in 75?

[Al Franken]

So Tom Davis and I were a comedy team. We started in high school together. We went to an all boys school. Really sick thing, I think. And it started in the morning with chapel.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Al Franken]

And during chapel, we'd sing Protestant hymns. We had to wear coats and ties. That was the scene when everything was done. There'd be announcements and Tom and I started doing announcements together in chapel. So that's how we started. We would do the Smothers Brothers or we do Carnac the Magnificent. That kind of stuff. We'd do Shtick and we would announce the, you know, that the Glee club was having a concert or that the chess club was meeting. And then in between my junior and senior year in college. Tom didn't go to college, I did. We hitchhiked from Minneapolis to la and we got on the stage at the Comedy Store and we killed. We did our World War three newscast, Tragedy, death, catastrophe, highlight. Tonight's News after this message. And we did our stuff and we went over. And so we are now. We are on the map for young comedians in show business, I guess. And then I went back to college and Tom came to Boston with me, and he stayed in my room. And people thought he was a student most of the time, but he was just hanging out.

[Interviewer]

You guys were just doing your job, just hanging out.

[Al Franken]

And then on weekends, we'd go to New York and do the improv.

[Interviewer]

How funny.

[Al Franken]

The improvisation. Yeah. We started doing the Comedy Store when we got out to la. We moved to LA with Franny, with my wife. We did a lot of the Comedy Store and other places. And this agent, Herb Carp. Great name for an agent, isn't it? Perfect. Herb Carp.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

Well, anyway, Herb saw us at the Comedy Store and brought us into his office and said, I like you guys. Your writing is great. Have you ever thought of writing for tv? And we said, we'd love to write for tv, but there was nothing on at the time that we were suited for. There was the Carson show with the Tonight show, which is a great show. I love Johnny Carson, but the Mighty Carson Art Players wasn't what we wrote. We didn't write that. Speed. Carol Burnett show was on. She was great. The cast was great. We weren't right for that. They were just generationally, just different. And then there was Sonny and Cher had a show on, and that was a piece of crap.

[Interviewer]

Right. Okay.

[Al Franken]

So we said, well, we'd love to write for tv, but there's nothing. So then he said, write some stuff for a TV show that you'd like to be on the air, that you would like to see on the air. So we did, and we wrote. I remember our package. It was 14 pages, and it started off with our World War III Broad Podcast. No, there were no podcasts then. 75. Anyway, this was. Yeah, I think late 74, when we met with Herb and we wrote this package. And when, unbeknownst to us, the show Saturday Night Live was starting, Lorne was hiring writers, the package got to him, and he read it and hired us. And we were the only writers that were hired that he hadn't met.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. And I think to this day, I think that if he had met us, we might not have gotten.

[Interviewer]

You might not have gotten hired.

[Al Franken]

Yeah, it was very, very possible. Yeah. We had a newscast, we had a sketch, a commercial parody, and a conceptual film. We didn't know what the show was going to be, but that's the kind of show we wanted to see. So we did a newscast, a sketch. Let's see, what was. The sketch was a parody of Kosseni and Cher.

[Interviewer]

Oh, nice.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. And a conceptual film. It was, like, in a 7 11, like the security cam. And the security cam would rotate and would move so that you'd miss. Keep missing the perpetrator. The guy was robbing the store, and you'd hear a gun. Gunshot, and it would hit a. Like a V8 can and start spurting red blood. Or V8, but you'd never see the guy. So that was. That's. That got us hired.

[Interviewer]

You were there season one.

[Al Franken]

I mean, day one, really kind of day one.

[Interviewer]

Day one.

[Al Franken]

Well, not day one, because Lauren was hiring people and doing stuff. But we got there, I think, the day after the fourth of July.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Al Franken]

So that was. And the first person I met was Mike o'. Donohue. Mike o' Donohue was a very sophisticated. He was one of the creators of the National Lampoon.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Al Franken]

Very sophisticated. And we met him. He was the first one we met, worked on the show. And remember, he asked how much we were being paid. For some reason we told him, which is we were splitting because we were treated as an apprentice. One apprentice writer. So we were paid.

[Interviewer]

You and Tom were both being treated as one writer.

[Al Franken]

One writer, in terms of getting paid.

[Interviewer]

Right, right, right, right, right.

[Al Franken]

So it was $300 a week that we split. And we told that to. For some reason, to A. Donahue. And he said, I pay that much to get my cat's shoes shined every week. So that was our first. So I. So my reaction to that was, this is great.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Al Franken]

This guy's hilarious. And this is our first meeting of anybody. Then we went up the elevator, and there was other people there. Danny had already been hired. Danny Aykroyd. Aykroyd, yeah. And so he was up there, and so the writers started coming in. It was. Chevy was one of the writers. Chevy first was not a cast member.

[Interviewer]

Oh, interesting. Okay.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. And he was. Of course, you never probably saw Chevy. You never saw those original shows, right? Those original.

[Interviewer]

I went back and saw some of them, but I didn't realize he was a writer, just a writer at first.

[Al Franken]

Yeah, he was a writer at first. Garrett was a writer. Garrett Morris was a writer. And he got on the cast, and then. And let's see. We were doing auditions, so Belushi had to audition.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Al Franken]

Yeah, yeah. And he did the Samurai.

[Interviewer]

Oh, my God.

[Al Franken]

That was his audition. I remember when we got there, we started writing. Lorne had done Laugh in and had been a writer for Laugh In. You know what Laugh in is?

[Interviewer]

I do.

[Al Franken]

Okay, good, good. Well, Lauren had been a writer for that. And at Laugh in, the writers, they were not on the actual studio lot and they never worked with the actors at all. And they work like in an office building and the material gets taken over to the studio and they never work with the actors at all. So Lauren kind of broke with Hollywood tradition and had the writers and the performers in the same office. And. And we thought, of course, that's how you do a show.

[Interviewer]

It makes so much more sense.

[Al Franken]

And then obviously some of the cast became writers. Danny was a very prolific writer. Now, I don't know if you remember Erwin Mainway, who sold dangerous toys.

[Interviewer]

Yes, I do. I have seen that.

[Al Franken]

That was Danny's character who was a sleazy. He would sell kids toys like a bag of glass.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he plays a great sleazy character. You mentioned about the writers and not being in the writers room and how Lauren kind of changed that. I'm curious and I've always been curious about what the process looks like to put together a show. Live show happens on Saturday.

[Al Franken]

Oh, I'll go through the week.

[Interviewer]

Walk through the week. Walk through the week.

[Al Franken]

Okay. First actual formal meeting of the week was at 5 o' clock in Loren's office on Monday. First day of the week for us. And we'd roll in around 2 2pm Something like that, and start talking to each other and start kicking around ideas. But it was Monday. You weren't really expected to have much. And then we would meet with the host. So this is the first time the host kind of met everybody. And Lauren would introduce the host and everyone would applaud. And then I go, and next week, Steve Martin. Everyone go, yay. That was our welcome to the host.

[Interviewer]

Nice.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. So then we would pitch ideas. Most of the ideas we had were really lame because and or fake ideas, but the host would get some idea of what we were working on. And if I were a host, I would be scared by the caliber or the pitches that day. But every host was kind of intimidated by the whole process.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I can imagine.

[Al Franken]

After that meeting, we started kicking around ideas, but we really didn't get writing until like Tuesday night.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Al Franken]

That's when the show really got written. When we started, we had seven cast members. Jane, Lorraine and Gilda. Chevy, Garrett, Danny and Belushi.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Al Franken]

And that was it.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Al Franken]

That was the cast. And I don't know how many they have now. I'M like. I'm like the old bitter comedy writer now. They got like 20 cast members.

[Interviewer]

Right, right, right, right, right.

[Al Franken]

And we, you know, the advantage to having seven was that everyone got to perform a lot on the show. So it really. I. I feel bad for the cast now if they're one of. I don't know, now it's like 17 or 18 or something.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

Versal. They don't get on, but they don't get enough reps. They don't get enough, you know, just go out there. You know, at a certain point when you just do it a lot, you get comfortable being on tv.

[Interviewer]

Sure, of course.

[Al Franken]

And. And you. You get good at it. And that's. That. That's the whole point. So we had seven people. So every show we had, everybody was in it. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Compared to now, I don't recognize some of like, the Hunger Games or something like that for the cast.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Al Franken]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so that gets us to Tuesday, Wednesday, more writing.

[Al Franken]

Well, Tuesday folded into Wednesday. We would stay up all night. This is.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Al Franken]

Probably not, you know, maybe till four in the morning or something like that. Maybe catch a few winks and come back. There were bunk beds there, just two.

[Interviewer]

Interesting.

[Al Franken]

So Danny slept there a lot. And so did Belushi. Did sometimes. And so Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, early morning, that was the funnest times. If, you know, if it was working, if things were working and we were creating stuff, we would just. I would just roll on the floor laughing at who. If Dana was, you know, doing Hans and Franz or something like that, it was just the most fun I ever had in. In my life, you know, and through my year, I did 15. I mean, if Dana Carvey would come up with new. With, you know, a new character, or we would start doing his bush, and we really, really only wrote the bushes at the last for cold openings.

[Interviewer]

When I think of the core cast that. That I grew up with, Dana Carvey's in there. Dana Carvey's in there.

[Al Franken]

So that's Carvey and Farley. Mike Myers.

[Interviewer]

Mike Myers. Kevin Nealon.

[Al Franken]

Nealon was just the greatest utility player. He. He did attitude better than anybody else on the.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, 100%.

[Al Franken]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And I think maybe the greatest performer, Phil Hartman.

[Al Franken]

Oh, well, he was called the glue. He was called Glue.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Al Franken]

Yeah. Because he held everything together. Now, Phil was a genius. Danny and Phil had a lot in common. They were both very incredibly versatile. And also, for some reason, they were unbelievably good, at least learning their lines and also using cards.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Al Franken]

Using the cue cards without seeing it. So, yeah, Phil was trying to think of a Phil piece.

[Interviewer]

There are so many funny Phil pieces, but one of them that I think of is unfrozen caveman lawyer.

[Al Franken]

Well, that was Jack Handy. Jack Handy is a writer on the show and unfrozen caveman lawyer. When I was in the Senate, John Kennedy of Louisiana was on the Judiciary Committee, and I was on the Judiciary Committee. He had this really thick accent, so I thought he was like, unfrozen caveman lawyer because, you know, he went to the University of Virginia and then to Oxford because unfrozen caveman lawyer did that kind of. I'm just a unfrozen caveman.

[Interviewer]

Your planes, flying machines scare me.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. Just a fucking brilliant piece.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Yeah. I remember seeing Phil Hartman and learning what he would do week after week was I just remember thinking, this is maybe the most talented person I've ever seen on television.

[Al Franken]

I mean, that's why he called him glue and the Glue, and he held the show together.

[Interviewer]

Okay. All right. So you continue to write into Wednesday,

[Al Franken]

into Wednesday morning, and then on Wednesday afternoon, we have read through.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Al Franken]

Right. And they still do this to this day, 50 seasons later.

[Interviewer]

What does read through look like?

[Al Franken]

Read through is we did it up in the writer's room, which had a big, long table on it so people could get around the table. And it was the cast members, of course, were there because they were doing the reading.

[Interviewer]

They need a much bigger table these days.

[Al Franken]

These days they now do the read through in the studio.

[Interviewer]

Oh, sure.

[Al Franken]

Okay. Yeah, we did it on the 17th floor.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Al Franken]

Okay. So we didn't get down to the studio until Thursday, but now there's so many cast members, and so. And also there's crew. You know, you need. Or there are people that. Technical people that need to hear what's in the show and what isn't in the show. Yeah, read through. And read through would take a couple hours at least. And we'd read, I don't know, sometimes like 15 pieces or 20 pieces. Right now, their read through is incredibly long because they have. They also have, like, 20. Some writers.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Al Franken]

But anyway, we'd have read through and at read through, people would laugh at stuff and other stuff they wouldn't laugh at. Or Lorne took that into account and what he liked. And then we'd go into Lorne's office and meet with the boss. The host would meet with Lorne, and the host would say what he or she liked from the read through, and they would put cards up on the board, we had a bulletin board with all the act breaks, all the commercials, where they came, and he'd start putting the show together. But really it was just about what pieces were gonna block. How many are we gonna rehearse? Blocking is part of rehearsing. Camera blocking is blocking it so that the cameras get it. And he had all kinds of factors to deal with. How much room we had in the studio is a factor. So you could only have so many sketches with lots of sets or a couple sets. We used to do two or three sets in our. Some of our sketches, our complicated sketches. And I think they don't do those as much anymore. I don't think.

[Interviewer]

I'm trying to think of. Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to think of when I've seen two sets. I don't know that I can name any.

[Al Franken]

Yeah, so we used to do. And the audience, we, you know, the show, we did very few pre taped pieces. Now they do a number of them. And it was exciting for the audience to see people running from one set to the other and get, get or change costumes in the middle of. And they don't do that as much anymore. I'm an old fogey, so I'm going to be talking about how they don't do stuff.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that's fair.

[Al Franken]

Of course, the host is in a lot of stuff, so the host has to change. So yeah, sometimes there'd be a new wig or new, you know, you'd see that a host is in a bald cap for something. So anyway, yeah, that was an exciting part of the show for the audience, which I think it's a little less so now.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, that gets us to the read through. Is what? That's Wednesday.

[Al Franken]

Yes, we're now. So then you go home and you find out before you go home, hopefully what's gonna be blocked on Thursday and Friday, what's in the show. And Lauren always picks enough stuff so that you're about 20 minutes over or something like that. Okay, so on Thursday the first thing you do with the host is just, you know, hi, I'm so and so. And I'm so and so. And I'm Chris Farley. And I'm Paul McCartney and I'll be hosting the promos. Yeah, yeah, you do the promos. You didn't like having to write the promos, but I did every once in a while. So you were. And that was the first thing. Because you don't need a new set. You're doing that home base. The promos are home Base. Then the next thing that was rehearsed was always the music. Because we use the same music set every week, basically. I think now sometimes they change it a little bit for the artist, but basically there is an area where the do the music every week. And so we could rehearse that so that whoever our music guest was. Would. Would play. And some. I remember once it was McCartney, Warren, after they did verse or two songs. This is with, you know, when he was on tour as McCartney and he had these great musicians with him. They weren't the Beatles, but they. They had. You know, he had the best musicians in the world with him in his band. And. And Lauren came up to him, said, could you do hey Jude as a third song? And Paul says, well, I don't really know it. We haven't done it in a long time. I don't really. And I went, hey Jude. And he said, stop, stop. Because he knew that I started singing some verse that wasn't the first verse.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Al Franken]

And so. And then he talked to this band and then they. These are the greatest musicians in the world. So they did hey Jude.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Al Franken]

And hey Jude was when I. I was 16 or something when hey Jude came out. And I remember there was. It was the song that if you're driving and you. You ended up where you were going, you would stay in the car to hear the end of hey Jude. Yeah, you would. And so hey Jude. So I start tearing up. People in at 30 Rock know that we do the music rehearsal on Thursday afternoon. They know exactly when we do it. So people from 30 Rock would. Who could get in the whole building. The whole building. So the whole bill. So they did hey Jude and everybody was so moved by it. Then when we did it again, then the band rehearses. The next time they rehearse is between rehearsals and dress. They have rehearsal during our dinner break. And so I went in there and we were doing a Gap Girl sketch. Remember the Gap Girls?

[Interviewer]

I do.

[Al Franken]

Okay. As Farley and Sandler made.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Al Franken]

Okay. They were the Gap Girls. And this one took place in a Gap Girls set. And it had thousands of dollars worth of clothes there. So they put a guard to make sure that no one took clothes and Gap clothes. And so when we played hey Jude, I watched the guard for some reason. And the guard was so transfixed that I went, I need a pair. I need a pair of 36, 30s. And so then I watched him during dress rehearsal, and the guard was equally transfixed, if not more so. And then during air, because the guard just Was couldn't take his eyes off the band. And I went. And I went to the jeans and I found a 3630. It took me a while, you know, and you had the length of hey

[Interviewer]

Jude to find the right size.

[Al Franken]

That's basically right. And so I took the pair and I told our prop guy. The prop guy is in charge of all the. I told him later that I took a pair of jeans.

[Interviewer]

That's incredible.

[Al Franken]

I went from crying.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. To stealing pants.

[Al Franken]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

A range of emotions from hey Jude.

[Al Franken]

Yep. Then other things get blocked, but the only, like, very simple things like talk shows. That kind of stuff gets blocked on Thursday. And meanwhile, we started doing this when Jim Downey started doing this when he was producing the show. We started doing rewrites on Thursdays.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Al Franken]

So we'd have a table rewrite, which was a really good thing.

[Interviewer]

What does that look like?

[Al Franken]

So There are about 10 writers or so sitting around the big table and doing rewrites there on the 17th floor. And it was a long slog. It was Thursday went into Friday morning, Thursday went into Friday morning. And we would do rewrites. And the cast, if they were in the. In a piece or especially like if Adam Sandler had written something and that he was in, he would come up there for the rewrite and the best line. You know who Dave Attell is?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I do.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. He's a great stand up. Really good stand up. And he was. He wrote one year. But remember Stuart Smalley?

[Interviewer]

Of course.

[Al Franken]

Okay, well, Stuart Smalley was my character. Stuart Smalley was on with the Bobbitts. Do you know who Lorena Bobbitt is?

[Interviewer]

I do, yeah.

[Al Franken]

Lorena Bobbitt and her husband. Her husband. She cut his penis off.

[Interviewer]

That's right.

[Al Franken]

And threw it in a open lot.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

And they retrieved it, evidently, and it was sewn back on.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Reattached it.

[Al Franken]

Yeah, they reattached it.

[Interviewer]

And he went on to star in adult movies with his reattached penis.

[Al Franken]

Yep.

[Interviewer]

What An American Story.

[Al Franken]

And so I had the Bobbits on st. And so we're in a rewrite. And I turned to Mike Myers, who played Mr. Bobbitt, and I said, and how does that feel? And he says, and Attell came up with this. It itches. So that. That's what. That's what rewrites are about.

[Interviewer]

That's what.

[Al Franken]

You know. So you come up with the biggest laugh in the piece is tell. So rewrites is a little like Tuesday night, which. Except that it was more dragged out and you weren't creating as much as you were rewriting. And sometimes we call it turd polishing.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Al Franken]

Yeah, okay. Because I get that. Yeah. That was self deprecating humor. We're turd polishing my piece here. That's what happens. So then that's Thursday. Blocking sketches that you can block. And the writers in the show produce their own pieces. So you would go down for the camera blocking and work with the director if he wanted your help on camera blocking. They had the cue cards and they were learning where the camera shots were going to be and where the cards are going to be and rehearsing. And they were. The director was calling his shots and marking up his book and figuring out how to show, you know, where the camera blocking was. Wow. So that was Thursday. And then we did the same thing on Friday. Friday we came in and Friday was a very long day, I would imagine. Yeah. And Friday is just blocking, blocking, blocking. And when I say the writers producer pieces, you did the graphics. I mean, you didn't have to do them yourself. You did it with a graphics guy, but you supervised everything. That's part. And that was a great part of the show was that the writers get to produce their own.

[Interviewer]

That's so interesting. I never realized that.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. And this is very. It was like the opposite of Laugh in. Lauren's experience at Laugh In. So he actually instituted a lot of practices that I think everybody. But no one does a show like SNL anyway.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Al Franken]

There was a show called Fridays that lasted a few seasons.

[Interviewer]

And I remember in the 90s, at some point they did a mad TV that was kind of an SNL and

[Al Franken]

they did In Living Color.

[Interviewer]

In Living Color, yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

[Al Franken]

And so there were shows that. That last and that was a great show. But ours is celebrating its 50th year right now.

[Interviewer]

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

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[Al Franken]

Okay, Friday, more blocking, more finishing, more blocking. Also, maybe if we don't have a cold opening, we have to write it. When Dana was doing George H.W. bush, he got. Remember his George H.W. bush? Absolutely not. God da na Goda. He actually didn't really have his Bush. When we did the Bush Dukakis debate, I don't think you saw that. That was 98 or 88. Dana really didn't have the character until after he got elected. And Dana and I were sitting around and he started moving his arm like you know, over there, doing that thing over there. And he found the character and then we used him as a crutch. He also. I remember I had seen Perot on TV and I got a tape of him and I showed it. I went into Lauren's office. He had a 3 quarter VH tape machine and I played a Perot for him and Dana said that's a three dimensional comedic character. And his Parot was just amazing.

[Interviewer]

Here's what I remember about the Perot. And this stuck. It just stuck with me. Can I finish? Can I finish? Can I finish? Can I finish?

[Al Franken]

Can I finish?

[Interviewer]

And that just was so funny to me.

[Al Franken]

You are not listening. He had that. So we did a debate. We did. The debate was something we went to every election. Yeah. And it was a highlight every year. And we had a debate where we had Dana as Bush and Perot.

[Interviewer]

I remember this.

[Al Franken]

And we had to pre tape his Perot. Yep. Because it had the most makeup. And David Spade in the wide shot played him.

[Interviewer]

How interesting.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. So Spade was, was short and slender and he from. You put him in a ball cap and a wig and he was pro. But then when we cut to Perot, when it was his speech, we cut to a close up a pre tape of Carvey of Dana.

[Interviewer]

How funny. I remember that. I remember that and being kind of blown away as a kid and being like, how are they making that happen With Dana playing two characters?

[Al Franken]

That's how we did it. And then Hartman, of course, was Clinton. Yeah, he did a great Clinton. And that was one of those debate sketches, I think were always, always great. I remember in the Bush Dukakis debate, we had this joke which was Dukakis was about 5, 6, and Bush was about 6, 2. So we used the height differential. I don't know how we did it, but when they shook hands in the middle, Dana was about, I don't know, 8 inches taller than Lovitz, who was playing the caucus. So then we did this thing where he goes over to the podium. And I don't know if you remember this.

[Interviewer]

This is 88. I do remember seeing this. I just.

[Al Franken]

You saw a repeat of this?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I saw replays. It was in the. It was in the discourse, you know.

[Al Franken]

Okay, so John is. Dukakis has a lift. Bring him up.

[Interviewer]

That's right.

[Al Franken]

And we did it with a. I don't know how we did it, but we did it very convincingly. And I remember at the rewrite table, Conan o' Brien came up with the. With the sound effects.

[Interviewer]

Oh, really?

[Al Franken]

I mean, the idea. The concept of the

[Interviewer]

goosh, when I

[Al Franken]

would stop and then go. So it went up goosh. And it was too high. He went up too high, and then it goes down. And, boy, did that get laughs.

[Interviewer]

That's so good.

[Al Franken]

So. So that's when, like, Conan came up with the sound effects for the.

[Interviewer]

That's the rewrite.

[Al Franken]

Those are the rewrites.

[Interviewer]

That's the rewrites. Okay.

[Al Franken]

Yeah, yeah. So then on Saturday morning, we started rehearsing again. And we went through these with cameras and we rehearsed. Update. Of course, for the first time, we did that until the dinner break. Then we had the dinner break. That's the music is rehearsed again during the dinner break. And then we have dress rehearsal.

[Interviewer]

You had mentioned earlier that Lorne would have maybe 20 extra minutes of material. At what point is the final call made for what goes in the show?

[Al Franken]

It's after dress.

[Interviewer]

After dress?

[Al Franken]

Yeah. So we put it in front of an audience. Then dress ends and it ends. Let's see if we started dress, like around 8:30 or 8 or something like that. By the time dress ended, there was probably about 40 minutes to the show or 30 minutes to the show.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that feels like a tight turnaround.

[Al Franken]

It was. Some turnarounds were tighter than others. I mean, the show really ran Long. But then we would meet up in Lauren's office on the ninth floor after dress, after dress. And then it was. Lorne would just. First of all, he'd make the lineup. He'd have to cut things. And he usually did that with one of the producers. And so I was in that room sometimes and Downey was in that room sometimes and he would have the board and with the cards and the thumbtacks, he would do the order of the show. So everyone would come in. Okay, come on, let's go. We'd all come in. Everyone would see what was cut with their, their piece was cut. You know, a lot of disappointment sometimes. Sure. And. Or joy that, okay, I'm going to be in and my piece is in. And then he would go through the camera blocking, like, you know, and cuts. We probably make cuts in pieces to shorten them if we needed time. And that meeting took about 20, 25 minutes or something like that or depending. And then we had a show to do and everybody got in their costumes. And in the early days, the. Because there were only seven cast members, the writers got into the show a lot because they needed, you know, needed bodies. They needed bodies. And so if in the old days, if there was a waiter in a restaurant scene, it was a writer.

[Interviewer]

Ah, right.

[Al Franken]

Okay.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

Now it's, now it's one of the cast members because. And those are pretty thankless parts, but that's the way it goes now.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, sure. So that's the week. That's the week of snl.

[Al Franken]

Then you do the show. Then you do the show and that's it. So, yep, it's a six day week. And then you go to the party afterwards and that goes very late because it doesn't start till the cast gets out of their costumes and you have to go to the restaurant and you know, the show started at 11:30. It goes to 1. I'd say the party started at 1:45 or something like that at this, at some restaurant. We would go over the show.

[Interviewer]

That's it? Just go over the show?

[Al Franken]

Well, no, we would have fun and people. And then, you know, sometimes celebrities would show up. So you have a beetle there or something, you know, or, you know, some famous actor who'd come. If the show was great, the party was a happy party and if the show sucked, it was not as kind of a bummer. Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

So that's the week. That's the week of how to put together an SNL show. That's so interesting. That's so interesting. You mentioned the Host and the host role.

[Al Franken]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So I want to ask you a couple of host questions.

[Al Franken]

Okay.

[Interviewer]

What makes a really good host? And feel free to provide examples of who that might be.

[Al Franken]

Well, Steve Martin was probably when he first did the show first, you know, five, six, seven, eight times that he did the show. It was eye opening. And he did wild and crazy guys with Danny. And so you had there a world class writer and performer and who is as hot as could be. But what made a good host was either we had people like Michael Palin from the, from the Pythons was an amazing host. Eric Idle hosted the show. People who had done comedy, you know, were really good hosts.

[Interviewer]

That, that feels obvious, but are there any hosts that really surprised you?

[Al Franken]

Athletes were almost always great.

[Interviewer]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Al Franken]

I have a theory about that. Is that they do live. They. They perform live.

[Interviewer]

They perform live under pressure. Yeah, I get that.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. So to a man and a woman, because Chris ever did it, these athletes just were so comfortable with doing a live TV show.

[Interviewer]

That's really interesting.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. And if they, you know, blew something, they, they didn't. They moved on.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Right.

[Al Franken]

So if you throw an interception in the game, you move, you know, the next series, you don't think about that inter. You do think about that interception, but you think about not throwing it to that defensive back side if they cover. Anyway, it's funny because.

[Interviewer]

And I want to talk more about your Stuart Smalley character in a moment, but when you and I first started working together, one of the first things I did was show my kids Stuart Smalley with Michael Jordan. And then they were really impressed. That was. They really, they didn't, they understood that is to me so funny. The Jordan thing is so funny. And how you spoke to Jordan about doubting yourself.

[Al Franken]

Yes. And it was, you know, Stuart saying, I know that you think I'm not good enough. I can't dribble the ball as fast as I need to.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Al Franken]

Shoot the ball into the basket as much as I'd like. Well, actually, Stuart, I'm. And he was such a pro. He cracked up during dress.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Al Franken]

A few times. Yeah. And between dress and air, we said, you know, don't do that. But he did it. He. He almost broke once. And that was perfect. It was perfect. I think he knew exactly what he was doing. Yeah. And I was so impressed with Jordan just being in the dressroom. And they were going to be doing the Olympics after that show. They were going to do the Olympics. It was the first time NBA players were allowed in the Olympics.

[Interviewer]

The Dream Team.

[Al Franken]

The Dream Team, exactly.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Al Franken]

And I asked if he was nervous about. And he said, no, we're going to kill him. Yeah. And they did.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I wouldn't have thought athletes, but that makes perfect sense. Yeah. They rise to the occasion.

[Al Franken]

Spotlights on Joe Montana did it. And Fran Tarkinson was actually my wife's idea. I'm from Minnesota and so Vikings are our team. And the Vikings lost the super bowl that year. And Frank, he said, why don't you have Fran targeted in host? And he was the first athlete to do the show.

[Interviewer]

Oh, that's so interesting. I never knew that.

[Al Franken]

I think Peyton Manning, by the way, is the best. Was the best. I wasn't there at the time when he did it.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Al Franken]

But I think he's the best athlete host we ever had.

[Interviewer]

I was going to bring up Peyton Manning. I know that wasn't under your tenure, but I think of the sketch where he's throwing the football, he's playing with kids and he's just throwing rockets at these kids and just nailing these kids. An NFL court all time NFL quarterback just throwing bombs at these kids and just mowing them over. Yeah, it's so funny.

[Al Franken]

He is a brilliant performer. That's why he and his brother get all these commercials. Yeah, his brother's lucky that has.

[Interviewer]

He has a charismatic older brother.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

All right, so what makes a bad host and who is the worst host that you ever worked with?

[Al Franken]

Well, hands down, it was Seagal. And I'll tell one little story.

[Interviewer]

Steven Seagal. Steven Seagal.

[Al Franken]

Steven Seagal. Sorry. So we did read through and then I was a producer that year. So I go in and it's me, Seagal and Lorne. And Seagal really didn't like much that was written for the. For him. Okay, so I have an idea for a sketch and I'm a psychiatrist and Victoria Jackson is my patient and I hypnotize her and then I have sex with her and then I unhypnotize her and tell her she comes back next week, same time.

[Interviewer]

And that's the bit.

[Al Franken]

And that's the bit. And I go, huh? So now Lauren has to maintain a relationship with the host, of course. And so Lauren kind of looks to me and I just said, so you would have us do the ugliest piece that's ever been on television? And he said, you don't like any of my ideas, do you? So that was Seagal. He was just an unbelievably terrible host. Wow.

[Interviewer]

So he's the worst in your opinion?

[Al Franken]

By far. He was by far the worst. There's other. Other stuff that I can't even talk about.

[Interviewer]

Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah.

[Al Franken]

But I think he lives in Russia now, doesn't he?

[Interviewer]

I think so, yeah.

[Al Franken]

Maybe he won't hear this, but you can hear this. Marshall. Yeah, we put this somebody Dabs gets Glistens.

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[Interviewer]

I, I want to come back to

[Al Franken]

you on screen

[Interviewer]

your best character. We just talked about Stuart Smalley, right? How did that kind of come about?

[Al Franken]

Oh, Stuart, basically I, my, you know, I, I would go to Al Anon meetings as for family members and friends, I guess, of people who are alcoholics. And so I would go to Al Anon meetings and I was at a meeting and this guy shared and he kind of sounded a little like Stuart. And he said, I'm just so, you know, glad that the higher power put an apartment in my life. And then he talked about how, how he got the higher power put an apartment in his life and he needed, he needed to get out of that situation with my roommate. And it just happened. And so I remember thinking like, this guy is a hilarious idiot. Then the next Al Anon meeting, he said something that really touched me and I can't remember what it is. I can't remember what it is.

[Interviewer]

Oh, wow.

[Al Franken]

But I remember something where I go like, oh my God, I can learn stuff from people that aren't smarter than me. Which is a very odd thing to think at that age because of course you should know that. But I was really moved by it and I said, okay. So I created this character and I wrote the first Stuart I wrote. I gave it to Mike Myers to do in read through for him to be Stuart Smalley. Wow. And he did it and it didn't work because I just knew the character in my head. You know, I knew. And so Lauren said, why don't you do It Al and I did.

[Interviewer]

How funny.

[Al Franken]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And that's your best. That's your best known character on snl?

[Al Franken]

Easily my best known.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah. What were some of your other on screen appearances? I remember the one man mobile upload up.

[Al Franken]

Uplink up.

[Interviewer]

The one man mobile uplink.

[Al Franken]

The one man mobile uplink unit. That happened because nabet, which is the national association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, were on strike because. And one of the issues in the strike was the electronic news gathering were crews, by union rules, where you had to have five people and it was the person who did the upload of the signal, that was the producer. There was the talent, in other words, the reporter. There was a sound guy and the camera guy. So there were five. And the networks and local TV wanted to change it to three. And so there was a strike. So I logically said, well, let's try to do a one man mobile uplink unit. So the prop department put the satellite dish together.

[Interviewer]

I remember you had like a.

[Al Franken]

It was a flying saucer. It was a sled, you know, it was a flying saucer with the wrong end of a bicycle pump sticking out of it for the transponder or whatever you call that thing, and a satellite dish and mounted on. On a helmet on that I put on my head and I mimed having a Steadicam, which. But I always did it with a, with a. A cameraman, of course. And that's, that's how he started. And he's the one man mobile uplinking. And it happened because of a strike at. From nabet, from the technicians.

[Interviewer]

Okay, Two pieces. I wanted to ask you about Placenta Helper.

[Al Franken]

Okay, Placenta Helper. Jane Crowley was a censor on our show. So Placenta Helper was actually never on.

[Interviewer]

Okay. Right.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. And she cut it and she. I remember once we. Tom and I wrote a script that had the word horny in it. And she said, well, you can't use horny, you have to use sexy. And I said, a dog humping your leg isn't sexy.

[Interviewer]

Isn't sexy? Yeah.

[Al Franken]

But still she wouldn't change. So she was the worst sensor we had. And she censored Placenta Helper. So I wrote it down so that I could do it. So here, here is. So it was two women in a grocery store. That's what the stage direction said. And they both have their carts and they run into each other. Lisa Johnson. Joan Baxter is Joan Hansen now. And it's Lisa Miller now. We're both pregnant. It's my first. Well, it's my third. And there's nothing to be nervous about. By the way, do you plan to eat the placenta? You're kidding. You mean the afterbirth? Yes. It's 100% natural and very nutritious. But is there enough placenta to make a complete meal for me and my husband? Well, not if your husband has a hearty appetite like mine. And that's why you need Placenta helper. She had it in her cart. Placenta helper? Yes. Placenta Helper lets you stretch your placenta into a tasty casserole like Placenta Romanoff. A zesty blend of cheeses makes for the zingy sauce that Russian czar has commanded at palace feast. Look, you can only eat your placenta once every nine months. Why not make a rare occasion? A rare occasion. Okay, that was censored.

[Interviewer]

Censored in that it never made the air.

[Al Franken]

It never made the air. Wow. I could get. I could say, lauren, why don't you finally do Placenta helper?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, bring it out.

[Al Franken]

Yeah, bring it out.

[Interviewer]

That wouldn't get censored today, certainly.

[Al Franken]

Oh, God. No, no, no. There's nothing in it. I mean, it was censored because she was grossed out by the idea of casserole eating a placenta.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

They did a Saturday night movie.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

And I think she. She was in it as a character. She was the worst sensor we had.

[Interviewer]

Another bit I wanted to ask you about. Is Julia Child bleeding to death.

[Al Franken]

Yes. Julia Child bleeding to death. That Tom Davis and I wrote that. I wrote that originally for Walter Matthau, who was hosting the show.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Al Franken]

And he didn't want to do it, so I gave it to Danny. And this is one of the few sketches that we cut after dress, because the. The first time we did it on the Walter Matthau show, but first time we did it, the blood didn't spurt. Right. It just wasn't. It wasn't. And we knew we had something on this piece. We knew this piece was. Was gold. And there was an insecticide sprayer that controlled the blood. There was a tube going up Julia's costume up through his sleeve, up to his hand, and connected to finger. They cut the dickens out of he said, or she is it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Al Franken]

Oh, I've cut the dickens out of my hand. My finger, you know, so we did it the second week, and it worked on air just perfectly. It just. And it was one of those things that, you know, you always hope your. Your bit peaks on air. And this was one that Danny was A master. He and like Phil Hartman were the two masters of. And, and Danny timed that one so perfectly. Every and every spurt. And Davis was the one controlling the blood. The blood.

[Interviewer]

Oh, that's so funny.

[Al Franken]

And that's actually a special effects. And the, and the union guys had to say it's okay for Davis to do it.

[Interviewer]

Oh, no kidding.

[Al Franken]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Oh, that's too good.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. The technical guys and those guys are at the read through. There's someone from there at the read through. They realize that it was better to have the writer underneath. So Tom was right underneath the counter.

[Interviewer]

Oh, that's so funny.

[Al Franken]

Pumping the insecticide.

[Interviewer]

How funny.

[Al Franken]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Okay. I want to ask you, snl, I think so many people have come to know it as, especially during Trump's first term, was politics, politics, politics, politics. Was the show always political from the jump?

[Al Franken]

Yeah, it was. And you know, I wrote a lot of that. Everybody wrote some of it.

[Interviewer]

So that, that's kind of what I wanted to ask is how did politics get introduced to snl?

[Al Franken]

Well, Chevy did it by being. Playing Ford and playing Ford in a. By not trying to look like him at all.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Al Franken]

By just being a clumsy idiot.

[Interviewer]

And

[Al Franken]

you know, Chevy was the star of the show for the first season and then he left in early middle of the next season to be, you know, a star in Hollywood. Wow. Yeah. And that's when we got Billy Murray.

[Interviewer]

That's right. Yeah, that's right.

[Al Franken]

Tom and I were very political. We had done, in our stand up act, we had done politics and Nixon, a lot of Nixon. We wrote the Nixon Final Days sketch. I don't know if you ever saw that. You probably haven't.

[Interviewer]

I haven't seen that one.

[Al Franken]

It was Nixon talking. Woodward and Bernstein wrote this book called the Final Days and it was about Nixon's final days. And there was a thing about him talking to the portraits in the White House. And so we did an Oval Office sketch with him and had the portraits in there. And you Kennedy people love you. But the President having sex in the White House. That never happened when Dick Nixon was president. And this was a diary that Madeline Kahn. You know who Madeline Kahn is, of course.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

Okay. Madeline Kahn was our host and she played Pat Nixon. So in the Final Days book by Woodward and Berdenstein, Richard Nixon was drinking a lot. So we played this from the book and Kissinger came in. So that was Belushi as Kissinger and David and Julie was played by Chevy. And Gilda, I haven't mentioned Gilda yet. She was just unbelievable. So Gilda. Okay, so my daughter Thomason. Have you met Thomason?

[Interviewer]

No, no. Spoken to her many times, but never met her in person.

[Al Franken]

That's right. Okay, well, anyway, my daughter Thomason was the first and she's named after Tom. Her name is Thomas and Davis Franken.

[Interviewer]

Nice.

[Al Franken]

So she was the first SNL baby born. There are people who had kids, you know, in the staff and stuff like that, but Thomason was the first baby born.

[Interviewer]

Oh, how interesting.

[Al Franken]

So Gilda held a baby shower for her and I worked out something with my wife where she, she went first to Gilda's and they're about, I don't know, 20 or 25 women or something like that. It was for some reason, that's how we did it in those days.

[Interviewer]

Sure, sure.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. And so I called ahead of time to talk to my wife and she, Franny said, I said, is there a place I can trip anything I can trip over? And she said, yeah, there's a pile of gifts on the floor after you enter the apartment, there's something you could trip over there. And I go, okay, thanks. So what I did was I swaddled a baby doll.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

And my sister in law was in town and I gave her the baby. She took the baby. And so when I came in, everyone starts cooing as soon as I enter just because I got this swaddled doll.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Al Franken]

And then I'm coming in and everyone's oh, oh. And. And then I trip over the gifts and I do a move where I just. Every ounce of my bodies, I do a flip where my shoulder and the baby are the first thing to hit the ground with a G force of eight. And everyone just screams. Yeah, 20 some women screaming. And then my sister in law, right. Right on my heels, came in with the baby.

[Interviewer]

That's great. That's a great bit.

[Al Franken]

It worked perfectly. It was it. And boy, were they mad at me.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I could see that they were

[Al Franken]

really mad at me that think I just killed the baby. Yeah, yeah, they were mad.

[Interviewer]

I could see them being mad. Yeah, yeah. So I also want to ask you about the music. And you've, You've talked about McCartney and some of the Beatles, but. And I thought that was really interesting about the sound checks and the rehearsals for that. But did you have any sort of influence over who got to play? How did bands come onto the show and any good stories from any musical acts?

[Al Franken]

Well, Tom and I were Deadheads and Lauren wouldn't have the dead on the first season.

[Interviewer]

Did they ever do the show?

[Al Franken]

Oh, yeah, they did the show twice.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. But then Lorne, after the first season, went out to LA and did a documentary on the Beach Boys.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Al Franken]

That was his summer project. He had a lot of rock stars like David Bowie and Mick Jagger and others talk about what the influence of Beach Boys was, et cetera. And one of them was Garcia. And he, you know, he was very surprised about just sort of how smart and thoughtful Garcia was. And so he had the Dead on.

[Interviewer]

Nice.

[Al Franken]

And we had him on twice. Both times. The laughter in the studio for the live show was not as good as it usually was. And it's because Deadheads had gotten tickets, and every. And so every Deadhead in New York knew somebody who knew somebody who was in sales at NBC and called them up. And so a good chunk of the audience was Deadheads, and they didn't laugh.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

So we had all these Deadheads in the audience, and they were not really that responsive to the comedy.

[Interviewer]

Oh, that's too funny.

[Al Franken]

And it took us two times to figure that out, actually.

[Interviewer]

So they didn't get a third trip back.

[Al Franken]

They didn't get a third trip back.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Yeah. I do want to ask you a little bit more because you talked about how you and Tom started it, but I want to hear a little bit more about your relationship with. With Tom Davis.

[Al Franken]

Well, Tom and I were best friends. We started together in high school, doing announcements in chapel, and that's how we got started. So we would do an announcement for the Chess club, if the chess club was meeting or something like that. And we started performing at a theater in Minneapolis called the Brave New Workshop. And we, like, there was a night you could. If you wanted to, you could go and. And try out. So that's what we did. And the guy, it was called Dudley Riggs, Brave New Workshop. And Dudley was the proprietor. It was the owner. And this was like the second city of. This was like Third City.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Al Franken]

And Del Close, who taught improv at Second City, came up to Minneapolis and also did some training. And Tom ended up being in the cast at the Brave New Workshop while I went to college.

[Interviewer]

Oh, wow.

[Al Franken]

Tom, in improv training, you're trained to find an object just out of the air if you got nothing else to do. And so Tom, because of his training, found an object, which was the phone in the set, in the. In the kitchen set. So we ended Julia Child by her going like, oh, the phone. Yes. Always call 9, 1 1. And. And then he hit. Hit the 9 1, 1. And he goes, it's a prop phone. Threw it down. And then that's when she died. Oh, that's right after that. Save the liver, I think was the last line. Save the liver again. That was one of these sketches that was 100% realized on air. Wow. And that's such a precious thing. And that ending, it's a prop. The phone was a brilliant thing. And that was because Tom had taken improv training and I hadn't.

[Interviewer]

How interesting. I don't know if I've ever told you this story before, but I fell in love with SNL in the, like, 89, 90, 91. That. That. That period of time when you were.

[Al Franken]

So that. That's Nealon and Farley. Farley comes on a little later than that.

[Interviewer]

Farley comes in a little bit later.

[Al Franken]

Yeah, but that's. That's Hartman.

[Interviewer]

Hartman Lovitz was in there.

[Al Franken]

And Dana.

[Interviewer]

Yep, Dana.

[Al Franken]

Dana Carvey and Victoria Jackson. Nora Dunn. Was Nora Dunn there?

[Interviewer]

Nora Dunn was on there.

[Al Franken]

And Jan Hooks.

[Interviewer]

Yep, yep.

[Al Franken]

Okay. I probably left somebody out, but that. Yeah, that's the cast.

[Interviewer]

Those are the ones that I remember. Chris Rock was kind of in there a little bit.

[Al Franken]

Chris came in a little later, and Mike Myers came in a little later.

[Interviewer]

Right, right, right, right. But. So I was never allowed to stay up late, but when I turned about 10 or so, I was able to go out with my dad and his friends into the Charleston harbor in South Carolina, and they would go shrimp baiting. And they didn't have a big shrimp boat, but it was just a regular boat. And they would put poles in the water, and we would throw bait balls and then cast the net and pull shrimp up.

[Al Franken]

I see. I was wondering how you.

[Interviewer]

That's how we would shrimp.

[Al Franken]

Shrimp. Okay.

[Interviewer]

We had a separate freezer that we would just stock with shrimp, and we would have shrimp all during the year. Fresh South Carolina shrimp.

[Al Franken]

Wow.

[Interviewer]

We would come home and we'd have to do, like, clean the boat up. And by the time that we finished, my dad and I would sit down and we would watch snl. And that's when I knew it was kind of out in the discourse, and people talked about Saturday Night Live. But that was when I started watching it. And it was such a powerful thing to me to be able to watch, stay up late enough to watch Saturday Night Live. So I think of that moment and I think of being able to talk to you about 50 years of this, and I just gotta tell you, man, this has been so cool. I'm so glad we were able to do this.

[Al Franken]

Well, this really touches me because I know your dad died a couple years ago.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

And how tough that was for you.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

And what a great memory to have.

[Interviewer]

It's one of my favorite memories ever. Going out shrimping with my dad and then coming back and discovering snl.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. That's beautiful.

[Interviewer]

So, you know, all this is to say that if I could go back and tell my 10 year old self that I'd be talking to you about the history of SNL, I wouldn't have believed it. So congratulations on 50 years of doing, you know, of being a part of

[Al Franken]

something that lasted that long. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

A huge piece of American culture.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. Well, this is. We're going to be celebrating that this weekend with Lauren. Yeah. So much of it is him. I mean, so much of it. He didn't do those five years that were Ebersol and Domanion, but other than that, he did 45 seasons or this is his 45th.

[Interviewer]

That's wild.

[Al Franken]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Well, congrats, man. That's really cool.

[Al Franken]

Oh, well, thank you. Congrats all the people who've come through. I'm going to be seeing them, seeing a lot of them anyway, this weekend. Well, I hope you enjoyed listening. That beautiful music is by Leo Kotke, the great Leo Kottke. I want to thank Peter Ogburn for producing this podcast. We'll talk again next week.

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