BEST OF: SNL's Jim Downey

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Al Franken Podcast – BEST OF: SNL's Jim Downey

Release Date: December 29, 2024
Host: Al Franken
Guest: Jim Downey, Five-Time Emmy-Winning SNL Writer

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Introduction to Jim Downey

Al Franken opens the episode by warmly welcoming Jim Downey, highlighting his status as the "funniest SNL writer" during Franken's 15-season tenure on the show. Franken emphasizes the quality of this "best of" episode, ensuring listeners that only the top-tier content is featured.

[01:29] Jim Downey: "Hey everybody."
[01:54] Jim Downey: "End the year with."

Volume of Work and Writing Process

The discussion begins with an exploration of the sheer volume of sketches Downey and Franken collaboratively produced. They estimate that together they wrote approximately 300 to 375 sketches over their time at SNL, acknowledging that not all made it to air.

[03:32] Al Franken: "How many sketches do you think the two of us wrote together?"
[03:50] Jim Downey: "I'm gonna guess if you average two, it's a couple hundred for sure. 300 maybe."

Approach to Political Comedy

Downey and Franken delve into their strategy for political sketches, emphasizing their mantra: "Reward people who know stuff and don't punish them for not knowing stuff." They discuss balancing humor for both politically informed viewers and casual audience members.

[04:20] Al Franken: "You had a motto, which I'm gonna paraphrase because I'm not sure this is right. But it was reward. This was a maxim, I'd say. Reward people who know stuff. Right. And don't punish them for not knowing stuff."
[05:30] Al Franken: "He was sort of. He was the coolest guy. He was also ever president."

Iconic Skits and Impressions

The conversation shifts to memorable sketches, including impressions of political figures like Barack Obama and George W. Bush. They highlight the challenges of creating humor that resonates without alienating knowledgeable viewers.

[08:09] Al Franken: "Yes. Believe it or not. I'm very proud of that joke."
[12:14] Al Franken: "Yeah. And it made fun of him sighing in the debate."

Collaborative Creative Process

Franken and Downey share insights into their collaborative writing process, where they would refine each other's jokes and premises to achieve the perfect comedic timing and impact.

[30:55] Jim Downey: "And so we would refine each other's stuff, right."
[67:56] Al Franken: "Having the pad means writing down."

Challenges and Network Dynamics

The episode touches on the internal challenges faced at SNL, including interactions with network executives like Don Ohlmeyer. Downey recounts his firing from the show due to creative differences and the introduction of Norm Macdonald's "Update" segment, which superseded his contributions.

[55:21] Al Franken: "Explain that. So Norm again, I auditioned for that and Norm got it. And it was the best that happened to both of us and to America."
[62:35] Jim Downey: "And so what a testament. I know, it's great character."

Notable Sketches and Legacy

Several standout sketches are discussed, including the "Ebuzz Miller's Art Classics" and the infamous debate sketch between Will Ferrell as Bush and Darryl as Al Gore. Downey shares anecdotes about the creation and reception of these sketches, illustrating their lasting impact.

[08:20] Jim Downey: "Have you ever had your vision?"
[43:42] Jim Downey: "This is another example of someone explaining something that doesn't really need to be explained."

Personal Anecdotes and Behind-the-Scenes Stories

Downey provides personal stories from his time on SNL, including the dynamics during read-throughs, interactions with cast members like Dana Carvey, and the creative tensions that arose during high-pressure moments.

[19:43] Al Franken: "You can imagine Trump engender, like, rage among a lot of people the way his son did, you know, and especially Trump."
[25:42] Al Franken: "Talk about the advantage of having a small cast."

Technological Evolution in Writing

The podcast also touches on the transition from traditional writing methods to the use of word processors, highlighting how technological advancements influenced their writing workflow and collaborative efforts.

[67:30] Jim Downey: "You were a pioneer in that."
[69:28] Jim Downey: "You had to hit some Pete."

Final Reflections and Closing Remarks

As the episode nears its end, Franken and Downey reflect on their enduring friendship and the legacy of their work on SNL. Downey shares humorous insights into ongoing writing practices and the evolution of their creative processes over the years.

[70:03] Jim Downey: "Well, I'm writing now."
[70:17] Jim Downey: "Well, thank you. It was fun."

Al Franken concludes the episode by thanking Jim Downey for his contributions and celebrating the rich history of their collaborative work on "Saturday Night Live."

[70:21] Al Franken: "Well, I hope you enjoyed listening. That beautiful music is by Leo Kotke, the great Leo Kotke. I want to thank Peter Ogburn for producing this podcast. We'll talk again next week."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Jim Downey on Being the Funniest Writer:

  "[01:54] Jim Downey: End the year with."

• Franken on Political Sketch Strategy:

  "[04:20] Al Franken: Reward people who know stuff. Right. And don't punish them for not knowing stuff."

• Downey on Writing Processes:

  "[30:55] Jim Downey: And so we would refine each other's stuff, right."

• Downey on Firing and Network Relations:

  "[56:40] Al Franken: Oh, I did not know that. I didn't know that."

• Franken on Legacy and Collaboration:

  "[70:21] Al Franken: Well, I hope you enjoyed listening."

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This episode offers a nostalgic and in-depth look into the creative minds behind some of SNL's most memorable moments. Through candid conversations and personal anecdotes, listeners gain a unique perspective on the challenges and triumphs of shaping political comedy on live television.

Transcript

[Al Franken]

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[Jim Downey]

Hey everybody.

[Al Franken]

We got a great one today. You know, for a change, because it's a best of and we only repeat our very best episodes and not the dreck that we put up as an excuse for a podcast every so often. So today we have Jim Downey, for my money, the funniest SNL writer and at least during the 15 seasons that I was on the show. And if you haven't heard this one.

[Jim Downey]

Wait, are you saying that he's funnier than you?

[Al Franken]

Well, look, it's all subjective. There were a lot of great writers during these 15 seasons. You said that. For your money, he is the funniest writer I did.

[Jim Downey]

So he's funnier than you.

[Al Franken]

Yes, well, I agree. And this is a great episode to.

[Jim Downey]

End the year with.

[Al Franken]

Yes, it is a great one for a change. Jim Downey, Everybody, the funniest SNL writer during the 15 seasons that Al worked at the show. Yes, have a happy holiday everybody.

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[Jim Downey]

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[Al Franken]

How many sketches do you think the two of us wrote together?

[Jim Downey]

I was running some numbers and you figure we would do 20 to 22 shows a year. A year. And we would often have like three pieces at read through. We sometimes had three pieces on the show.

[Al Franken]

That's right.

[Jim Downey]

That happened more than once. So I'm gonna guess if you average two, it's a couple hundred for sure. 300 maybe.

[Al Franken]

And we, I gotta say, wrote some of the great. Yeah, we did.

[Jim Downey]

But occasionally we would even write things that wouldn't get on.

[Al Franken]

Yes.

[Jim Downey]

So there's. If you wanna throw those in, maybe like 375 or something.

[Al Franken]

Oh, I'm sure there's a lot of stuff that didn't get on, but let's talk about the stuff that people maybe saw. We did a lot of the political sketches.

[Jim Downey]

Sure.

[Al Franken]

You had a motto, which I'm gonna paraphrase because I'm not sure this is right. But it was reward. This was a maxim, I'd say.

[Jim Downey]

Yeah, a maxim that's good.

[Al Franken]

Reward people who know stuff. Right. And don't punish them for not knowing stuff.

[Jim Downey]

Don't punish our audience because they know something.

[Al Franken]

Explain this because.

[Jim Downey]

Well, for example, the other night we were talking about this and the example I gave was that you could have written, I think, a funny piece. It's possible to write a funny piece premised on Barack Obama being a huge drunk. You know, like him, like stumbling around the office.

[Al Franken]

But people who know anything about Barack Obama and politics.

[Jim Downey]

The more you know about Barack Obama, the more confused. Confused and not entertained he would be. Whereas if you didn't know anything about politics, that was hilarious, Michelle. Trying to help him stand on his feet and. Oh, that was great. But it would be the poor people who actually knew things who were in torment.

[Al Franken]

Well, because he was sort of. He was the coolest guy. He was also ever president.

[Jim Downey]

No, that's not a problem. He had. Yeah, you could do an impression of him, although he was a little tough in the sense that he had that rich baritone voice.

[Al Franken]

Oh, you can do that.

[Jim Downey]

Well, yes, but there were some very good impressions here.

[Al Franken]

There's a difference between impressions of celebrities and politicians and embodying them like Ackroyd would embody whoever he did. And Aykroyd one of the great cast members.

[Jim Downey]

Absolutely. I mean there's no better cast member ever. He's, you know, he's also, because it was so early on, I mean all the cast were very different. You know, Billy was a different kind of cast member. But Danny, in terms of the precision and the range, by the way, he could also do dead on sound alike impressions.

[Al Franken]

But then there are some impressionists who can do unbelievably great impressions but aren't sketch players.

[Jim Downey]

Jim Morris, the political impressions he would do.

[Al Franken]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jim Downey]

Well, Danny A. He created characters which were original.

[Al Franken]

Buzz Miller.

[Jim Downey]

Yeah. And sold a bag of glass impressions.

[Al Franken]

Remember Jane Curtin would interview him and he had dangerous toys.

[Jim Downey]

That's right. I worked on those. You guys, you and Tom did the Ebuzz Millers Art Classics. We occasionally would go do Ebuzz Miller. Okay, now do Erwin Mainway. That's right.

[Al Franken]

It was the same character. I get them confused. Cause I think Irwin Mainway did Bag of Glass. It was selling dangerous toys.

[Jim Downey]

Yes, that was Erwin Mainway.

[Al Franken]

Like a big plastic bag for kids.

[Jim Downey]

I remember one of my earliest jokes that I was very proud of was it was unsafe Halloween cost and it was Johnny Invisible Pedestrian. And it was a little black suit with black ski mask and black gloves.

[Al Franken]

Well, yeah, let's recall our best jokes.

[Jim Downey]

Oh, we'll be here all day. It'll be a five parter. I remember in Ebuzz Miller's Art Classics, which is one of my all time favorite pieces. I didn't work on the piece. You guys wrote it.

[Al Franken]

But me and Tom.

[Jim Downey]

Yeah, you and Tom. But he has a Titian painting there and it's like. And the artist's name. Honest to God. Titian.

[Al Franken]

Yes. Believe it or not. I'm very proud of that joke.

[Jim Downey]

That's a great joke.

[Al Franken]

I'm sure it was Tom. So I think it was Tom.

[Jim Downey]

And I remember the theme music.

[Al Franken]

Tom Davis, who I.

[Jim Downey]

Theme music was from a porno film, Right?

[Al Franken]

Wasn't it? Yeah. And his sidekick was Lorraine Christy.

[Jim Downey]

Christina. Yes. Who was a stripper. I saw Lorraine just a few months back in la.

[Al Franken]

I keep touch with Lorraine. So I think you elected. I've told you this. I think you elected George W. Bush.

[Jim Downey]

Oh yeah.

[Al Franken]

Well, okay, here's my theory on this. You wrote the debate sketch between Will Ferrell as Bush and Darryl as Al Gore in it. This is where strategery Comes from. I think people think that strategery was.

[Jim Downey]

Actually that he said it, that Bush actually said it. But no, it comes from that sketch. Right.

[Al Franken]

And it was sum up, I guess, your campaign, or what was the.

[Jim Downey]

Could you. Could each of the candidates, in a single word, sum up the best argument for your election and Bush strategery? And then, of course, says lockbox.

[Al Franken]

Okay, now, the reason that I say this is everyone knew that Bush was challenged a little bit in language, right?

[Jim Downey]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

My theory on this was that everybody knew sort of the caricature, and no one really saw sort of Gore's foibles.

[Jim Downey]

Well, Gore was also a more distinctive character. I mean, there was at least a tendency. Bush had already been portrayed on the show by Will. I didn't write those pieces, but in a couple of years preceding. And it did sort of fall into a, you know, dumb, kind of put up by Texas businessman as their, you know, not a. Whereas Gore had a little more intellectual heft and depth behind him. But Gore was also a much more interesting. I mean, he had a very distinctive speech pattern. And Bush, you know, you've seen a lot of people do Bush, and it's a kind of a generic, like, Texas accent. We had, like, five different people play George W. Bush on Saturday Night Live at various times, and everyone, you know, they were doing, I thought, a more generic Bush thing. Whereas, like, when Darrell did Gore, it was very.

[Al Franken]

What can you do him doing Gore?

[Jim Downey]

Well, I actually kind of taught him the Gore, because I just started. It's been so many years. Been 23.

[Al Franken]

Well, this is so interesting to me, because you think Gore would have been easier.

[Jim Downey]

Not easier, but more interesting.

[Al Franken]

More interesting to caricature.

[Jim Downey]

There were other reasons why it would have been better if he had won.

[Al Franken]

Well, that's why I blame the war in Iraq on you.

[Jim Downey]

That's not fair. But okay. But Gore, that was a bad idea, that thing where he talked like that. He had my plan. Jim is different in my plan. It was kind of breathy. Anyway, so I remembered working with Darrel. Darrell Hammond. Yes. I shouldn't do shorthand here. Darrell was a genius impressionist, but he tended to work from the. I don't know how I want to describe it. From maybe the inside out, like, with little tiny observations that he would, like, pile on one on the other and assemble it. It's like a quantilist painter, whereas I'm like a big stroke kind of cartoon, broad stroke kind of person. So I was working from the outside in, and he was working from the inside out to sort of. And the result was, I thought, a really good Gore impression. And that was one of the reasons that people were more surprised at the Gore than they were at the Bush.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. And it made fun of him sighing in the debate. Right?

[Jim Downey]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

And being supercilious.

[Jim Downey]

Is that the right word? Yes, a little supercilious. A little, know it allish. I remember there was one joke where they put up on the screen a quote from Bush that was so syntactically mangled and everything that even Bush didn't know what it meant. So they have the quote, and Chris Parnell is playing Jim Le. He reads the quote, and the joke was, you read this garbled thing, and he goes, what did you mean by that? And then Bush is kind of perplexed and could it be education? And then Gore steps in and explains what Bush was trying to say. And Bush goes, bingo. That was it. That was it. That's exactly. That's right. And there was some other little things that he liked to do. But like I say, I. And I think you and I both, when we were writing together, our prime directive was to be funny within that, not to be stupid. Right. It'd be funny to not confuse or unduly trouble the smarter audience by saying things that made no sense or weren't true. But on the other hand, bring along people who weren't particularly interested in politics. Right. Cause you knew whenever a political sketch came on, there was a chunk of the audience that was like, okay, not for me. It was the most narrow cast y stuff we did on the show.

[Al Franken]

I disagree. I think it was something that people really looked for. Because the thing about a live sketch show, and Saturday Night Live is basically the only live sketch show, is that you're the only people who can respond to what happened that week and comment on it or make it funny, which is, as you say, the prime directive. But make it funny in a way that what we prided ourselves was that we rewarded people who knew stuff and.

[Jim Downey]

Didn'T punish people who didn't maybe didn't punish them. We weren't trying to please them. We were just trying to make them laugh.

[Al Franken]

Well, like you pleased the Wall Street Journal editorial board. We were talking about this, and you said you did a piece with who was playing Timothy Geithner, Will Forte, and this was probably.

[Jim Downey]

Well, it would have been after this Hasselblum was elected. So it had to be, I'm gonna say, 2009.

[Al Franken]

Okay. Now, Tim Geithner was the treasury secretary, and you wrote a piece that rewarded. The Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial about it. No one remembers the sketch, but I.

[Jim Downey]

No one could, boss. I wrote it and I barely remember it. The basic joke was it was him proposing his plans for addressing the systemic banking crisis. And first of all, the joke was basically like, we're going to set aside a fund of, you know, something. A fund of $50 million that. That'll be raised. And he was explaining how they would, you know, offsets and how they would, you know, make room for that amount. And we will give that to the person who can come up with a plan to solve the systemic. But along the way, he was explaining the nature of it and about how the markets are tightening up. But anyway, you know, there was no money to lend because we were trying to control inflation and tighten the money supply. And therefore, you couldn't. You couldn't start.

[Al Franken]

Okay, this is a sketch.

[Jim Downey]

So the Wall Street Journal comedy sketch. Wall Street Journal wrote a little blurb saying the sketch was not particularly funny, but it was remarkably accurate in its description of the crisis and its causes. So I kind of. I have that somewhere in my little scrapbook.

[Al Franken]

Only you would get a review. They weren't singling you out.

[Jim Downey]

But by the way, I did want to mention one thing about strategery.

[Al Franken]

Yes.

[Jim Downey]

Because you made me remember this. It's true that, like, at one point, even George W. Bush thought he'd said it. And then it came. It became like a popular thing, I understand, in Washington. The Bush White House started calling their briefing or their meeting, strategic recessions and so on. And then there was point we got the show, got contacted, was contacted by the Oxford English Dictionary. They were considering putting it in there because they have a thing where they add new, like selfie stick or something, you know, But I don't think they ever. It didn't make the cut, but it was like, oh, man, almost made the oed.

[Al Franken]

Well, speaking of doing stuff that week, I mean, in other words.

[Jim Downey]

Oh, again. But this is an interruption. This is an amplification. But you were saying. No, but you were saying that it's so true that so many of the things about Saturday Night Live make it more difficult. You know, everything's harder. I mean, we do it live, so there's a lot of mistakes. We, you know, miss camera shots, blown lines, things like that. We don't have the time for rehearsal, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But one of the few advantages we have is that we can. Something can happen Friday night and we can address it on Saturday. Yeah, like One of the very few advantages.

[Al Franken]

Like Elders, Joycelyn Elders can say we should teach masturbation.

[Jim Downey]

I didn't remember, was that a Friday night thing?

[Al Franken]

That was a Thursday or Friday thing. And so Ellen Cleghorn played her. And so, you know, you go like, how can you not do a cold opening with Joyce and Elders if you're.

[Jim Downey]

Not taking advantage of your ability to do that weak kind of topicality?

[Al Franken]

It's like, why do you exist?

[Jim Downey]

Well, it's like having a first baseman who's a terrible hitter. You know what I mean?

[Al Franken]

It's just like, what's.

[Jim Downey]

Okay, what's the point with that? I remember having discussions where we'd be writing something, like, on a Friday night, and we would actually. Well, will people know it by tomorrow? We were almost worried about. I mean, Friday night wasn't necessarily the best. You're probably better off with, like, Wednesday, Thursday night.

[Al Franken]

Let's talk about Friday night. And let's talk about Dana Carvey and the crutch he was for us, which is his bush. Dana. We had to tell Dana something that I don't think any comedy writer has ever told any other performer is that we would write something about what happened that week. Or like, I remember one we wrote about drugs, and it was something like, you know, it was written like this vial of, you know, of crack was found. Crack cocaine was found, you know, in Lafayette park across the street from the White House. This hypodermic needle was found in the White House lawn. And this, you know, bag of coke, cocaine, was found three feet from my desk. It's bad.

[Jim Downey]

It's bad.

[Al Franken]

Okay, it's bad. So that was the progression. Something like that. He would get so many laughs along the way in dress and dress, doing his physical stuff, doing the hand going out like that, like that. And he would get so many laughs that you would lose the through line.

[Jim Downey]

Sometimes you could. Yeah, yeah.

[Al Franken]

And so we'd have to tell Dana, don't get so many laughs. Which no one's ever told anybody else. But Dana also knew exactly what to do.

[Jim Downey]

Yeah, he liked to use dress to sort of, you know, see what this baby can do. You know, Then you kind of, like, you know, pull it back in a little bit. He was a rare kind of fearless performer. Great improviser. I've shared a dais with him. This Phil Hartman thing at the Groundlings tribute to. To fill on the 25th anniversary of his death. And the evening devolved into Christopher Walken stories. I can't exactly explain how we got there, but the point is we would each share, like, some weird thing that Walken had said at the show. But you knew that when Dana spoke, it was gonna, like, blow everyone else's stuff away. Because his Walken impression, which I don't think we ever did on the show, I don't think we ever met him. But Walkin'of, course, but his walkin is pretty incredible.

[Al Franken]

What was the character that Tom and I wrote for Wyatt?

[Jim Downey]

I worked on that, too. The Continental.

[Al Franken]

The Continental.

[Jim Downey]

He actually suggested that he came in at the pitch meeting, and it was a show from the 50s that he remembered.

[Al Franken]

It was this very suave, suave guy.

[Jim Downey]

And the camera would. Playing to an unseen woman who was the camera pov. And then. But she was constantly running away. That was my little contribution to the thing. But you guys. But we sort of discovered in working with him, just the weird walk in the ness. And so at this point, he sort of celebrated for his weirdness. But, you know, this. I mean, I know you remember this when for your audience, we would have these Monday night meetings, pitch meetings, which were really. It was more like the opening of Parliament. It wasn't like a lot of substantive business was conducted.

[Al Franken]

It was in Lauren's office.

[Jim Downey]

When I was producing, I would sit in one of the two chairs facing Lauren's desk, and the host would sit in the other. And then you would have a place of prominence. And then people would go around and they'd pitch, like, fake ideas. You know, cavemen afraid of caves, stuff like that. And then. And they were funny.

[Al Franken]

But this was. Yes, you didn't have anything. But you.

[Jim Downey]

Yeah, but you were sort of. You want the host to sort of. Okay, but tomorrow it gets serious because everyone's in town and they're working. And so at the very end, Lauren would always ask the host, like, did you. And anything you wanted to say and give the host the last word after hearing all these ideas and. Cause the host wouldn't know that a lot of these were just sort of like. Some of them became sketches. But he turns to Walken and says, chris, did you have anything to add? He goes, ape suits are funny. Bears as well. And that was the first time we heard that. There was one thing I did want to. Well, if I can just introduce something. One of the things that we definitely experienced in the early years of the show, which just doesn't exist as a phenomenon anywhere, is, you know, we were operating at a time when there were three major networks, PBS and like, WPAX or something in New York. You know, basically a universe of like 6 maybe channels to watch. I remember we did a show with Cicely Tyson, which was the highest rated show of all time, which got a.

[Al Franken]

It was a blizzard.

[Jim Downey]

A blizzard. It was end of February. Talking heads with the music and people. I've heard theories about this. Like I've heard there was a cold snap around the country. Also the viewership is high in February because people, it's cold, they stay indoors. But also they've spent all their money over Christmas and so on.

[Al Franken]

I see.

[Jim Downey]

The point is that show got like a 17 rating, which is to say 17% of all television sets in the country, which includes people who go to bed at 9:00 at night, like my parents used to, you know. So you, you know, we got. Still got 17% of all the TV sets, not those that were on. And then a 42 share.

[Al Franken]

A 42 share, yeah.

[Jim Downey]

And what I'm getting at is back in the 70s, you know, Sunday brunch was a big thing and we would go to the party, come home, maybe like 5:00 or something, you wake up, you go to a restaurant. I'm sure you and I had brunch many times during that dozer. But you would be sitting at your table and you would get up to go to the bathroom or something. And along the way it was like crossing a stream by stepping on stones. You would hear people reciting sketches from the night before and you could actually. You'd hear different versions of the same sketch or different sketches from the same show or. But you'd walk by and you'd know exactly what they were talking about and it would be someone explaining the thing. And it was a real.

[Al Franken]

For you young people, this is the universe that it was right now, I'm.

[Jim Downey]

Sure that just simply doesn't exist anymore. There's no. It's so atomized the whole TV landscape and viewership, you know.

[Al Franken]

But I'm sure that people go to YouTube and.

[Jim Downey]

But not at the same time is the thing. There's not that moment of, you know, there weren't even really VCRs much.

[Al Franken]

Talk about the advantage of having a small cast. The first we had Jane Lorraine and Gilda Belushi, Aykroyd, Garrett Morris and Chevy. And then Chevy left after. And then Billy Murray came.

[Jim Downey]

Billy Iink arrived at the same time.

[Al Franken]

And you guys shared an office.

[Jim Downey]

Shared an office, yes.

[Al Franken]

Yep. Talk about the advantage of that.

[Jim Downey]

Well, the show was 90 minutes then, it's 90 minutes now. I'm sure it's roughly the same amount of commercial Time. They maybe allow a little more commercial time, I don't know. But the studio is the same. Literally the same studio. So you had the same space to work in, but then with this much smaller cast and also much smaller writing staff, not only could everyone appear several times a night, they had to.

[Al Franken]

Right.

[Jim Downey]

And so you had people like someone like Aykroyd who was like, we worked him like a rented mule. He would be in, like, five or six things. But people who would come to the show we'd give tickets to. And I'm sure you heard the same thing. One of the really exciting things, which we absolutely took for granted and wasn't part of the broadcast was the fun. They're sitting in the studio. They can watch the pieces off monitors that are strategically placed around, but they generally sort of watch the whole thing where they have this. Most of them have a bird's eye view and they're looking down, but they see, like, a typical thing might be if there was, like, a set, a piece that actually involved a complicated story that had different sets. So, you know, passage of time, and you might see, like, Bill Murray walk out of a room, like, very casually and with nice, cool attitude. And then the moment he's off camera, he's swarmed by two wardrobe changers. And as he's running through the studio to get to the other set, they're taking his jacket off, putting on a different jacket, maybe smudging up his face like it was in an explosion or something, let's say. And then he enters another room again, casually having raced from point to point and then composing himself. And there'd be this burst of, like. Sometimes they'd even get, like, applause. And people at home must have been like, I'm sorry, what did he just do?

[Al Franken]

But it was more exciting.

[Jim Downey]

And people would tell me how thrilling it was to watch the cast be, you know, run through the studio, thrown into wigs, makeup.

[Al Franken]

I feel bad for the cast members when they're 17 or 18 or 20.

[Jim Downey]

That is a problem. And they only appear, like, once or twice a night.

[Al Franken]

Or not at all.

[Jim Downey]

Sometimes. Not at all. Yeah.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. Because of the featured players. And I mean, that's okay if you're a featured player, I guess. But, like, during those first years, the waiter. If there was a waiter in a scene, it was played by a writer.

[Jim Downey]

Yeah, we often. I mean, you were a performer. You know, I had never had any performing ambitions, but even I would, you know, asking questions in a press. I would be, like, you know, a reporter in a press conference asking A question, you know.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. Okay. A couple things I want to discuss. I auditioned for Update, I think when Kevin Nealon left and there was an audition and I really wanted, you know, all. I had worked on the show for like 13 years at that point or something like that. And I really wanted to be the Update. And instead it went to Norm MacDonald, who was great. And it was the best thing that happened to the show because of it. I finally left the show and then I wrote Rush Limbaugh as a big fat idiot. And other observations. I remember when I told you the title and you went, okay, no, I.

[Jim Downey]

Thought it was funny. Yeah, yeah.

[Al Franken]

But Norm was unbelievable.

[Jim Downey]

You guys would have done very, very different types of updates.

[Al Franken]

Well, I think part of it was I was known at that time as a left, a liberal.

[Jim Downey]

I always thought of you as more partisan than ideological. So, I mean, I don't think you're hard left, but you're absolutely a Democrat. Democrat, yeah.

[Al Franken]

We should explain also that you were a. A Republican, but a Republican.

[Jim Downey]

No, no, I was never Republican. I was more. I started off as like a standard issue, you know, Harvard commie, you know, like not very thoughtful, hard left.

[Al Franken]

Oh, I did not know in the.

[Jim Downey]

Early years, but I. For a very long time, I guess I would describe my politics as like old school Democrat, you know, liberal, very lefty on economic issues. But we work together. Well, I don't think we.

[Al Franken]

No, I think it was a good combo. And you checked me if I wrote something that was partisan.

[Jim Downey]

Yeah, I think you became more highly political, more like in the early 90s as opposed to. I mean, but it didn't matter much because I enjoyed making fun of George H.W. bush. So did you.

[Al Franken]

But the Bush that we did was just very silly. Was a very. Well, that was Dana.

[Jim Downey]

Well, Dana kind of.

[Al Franken]

Well, here's the difference between, like a George H.W. bush and a Donald Trump. Bush, after he lost, invited Dana to the White House. Yeah, after Dana and Dana had dinner there and he and Paula stayed for the night. But it wasn't a mean.

[Jim Downey]

No, and it was. But can you imagine Trump engender, like, rage among a lot of people the way his son did, you know, and especially Trump. Right. I mean, there were not a lot of people who just hated Bush. That's true. And Barbara, Bush's wife was one of the most popular first ladies in terms of. She was like a sweet old granny type, you know. But, like, what Dana did with Bush, it started as an impression, but then took on a life of its own, actually.

[Al Franken]

He didn't have it the first time we. Or the first few times he did it. He didn't have the. Remember the debate sketch with Lovitz, And Lovitz is Dukakis and Dana is Bush. And I can't believe I'm losing this guy. Was this line that was you. Yeah, that was you. But it was all the setup.

[Jim Downey]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

So the setup was the Dana as Bush.

[Jim Downey]

But remember, we also didn't. He needed. Dana needed, like extended speeches to really get into that. His kind of Bush thing. And that was a more tightly scripted piece, the debate piece. Right.

[Al Franken]

But Jan Hooks as Diane Sawyer.

[Jim Downey]

That was, to me, the great element. I mean, she was so funny in that piece.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. So she keeps. He says, he gives an answer. Like, what was his cliche?

[Jim Downey]

Well, I could answer that, but it would take too long. And she goes, you have three minutes. And then he would go, well, and he's thousand points of light, you know, whatever. He would just say these catchphrases and you go, you still have a minute 40, President. And that's when Lovitz says the. I can't believe I'm losing to this guy.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. And that was a big laugh. But it was because of the setup.

[Jim Downey]

Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't the show making a big editorial statement.

[Al Franken]

Yeah.

[Jim Downey]

As much as it might have seemed.

[Al Franken]

We're gonna take a break for a moment. We'll be right back.

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[Jim Downey]

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[Al Franken]

Let's talk about some of the Jack Handy, who's a great writer.

[Jim Downey]

Yeah, he's brilliant.

[Al Franken]

Brilliant, unfrozen caveman lawyer.

[Jim Downey]

What are some of Jack's, well, unfrozen caveman lawyers? Well, just his deep thought stuff. You know, he and I have what we have good reason to believe may be the world's longest running practical joke. I think I've told you about this. But since like 1986 or 85, whenever we contact each other, we get on the phone calling as an attorney, suing each other. So when he answers the phone. And now he will just answer as an attorney. But this has been going on now for 14, 37 years. 37 or 38 years. And we still. And then he will send me emails like telling me that he took the liberty of canceling my COVID test or something, you know, and I'll. But it's all threatening. It's always just intimidating.

[Al Franken]

But Jack wrote a piece about a giant who lived next to some.

[Jim Downey]

I'm trying to remember the name of the piece, but it was Tom Hanks was a giant businessman and he's living.

[Al Franken]

Next door to some teenagers, I don't remember. And the teenagers threaten him.

[Jim Downey]

He calls to complain about the noise from their party and then they threaten him. Just. It's Tom Hanks with like a little tiny phone, a little tiny briefcase, calling the witness protection program for help. It was just a genius Jack Handy kind of thing.

[Al Franken]

And when I learned. And he set it up perfectly and when the punch came, which is that he was so scared of them, even though he was a giant, that he wanted to flee. I laughed so hard and for so long that I had to leave the read through.

[Jim Downey]

But. Yeah, but you, I would see you laugh. You were a great laugher. To have someone laugh.

[Al Franken]

Laughter is the oxygen of comedy.

[Jim Downey]

Now we did have. I've seen it. You've seen it. Sometimes there'd be like political laughter or non laughter and read throughs where like people would aggressively want to support a piece by laughing really hard. And then sometimes you just see people scowling if they disapproved of the comedy or something. Yeah, this is not about politics. It was about. Yeah, I mean office politics. Not. But, but you were, you were always a great laugher. Cause you had a very loud laugh. That kind of Minnesota Foghorn kind of thing that cuts tends to. No, it's, you know, it's not criticism the reason I brought that up is because my laugh is sort of quieter and I don't. So in other words, I. I don't help my fellow writers as much when I laugh at their stuff, I mean. Cause I'm very likely to just sort of smile to myself and it makes no sound. So if you're sitting behind me, you could think, well, I could be hating it. But anyway, it was Kevin Nealon wrote this piece where he's a businessman who's been kidnapped by Phil Hartman, who's this ex con named Mace, who's like, wearing a wife beater T shirt and he's got the tattoos and everything.

[Al Franken]

He's kidnapped, audience kidnapped.

[Jim Downey]

Kevin has him tied up to a chair and it's in like, some seedy, like, motel or something. And for listeners who may remember the piece, it's. Phil has this. The voice is like, listen, if you're real smart, you're gonna get that ransom, you hear me? Because I'm a bad, bad mother. I'm a bad, bad apple, and I'm rotten to the core. You see this gun? It shoots bullets. Bang, bang. And so Kevin's like, absolutely, I'm gonna do whatever you say, sir. I promise I'll do whatever. You're downright. You're gonna do what I say. And so the whole. The whole joke of the piece is Kevin keeps escaping, but Phil keeps forgiving.

[Al Franken]

Phil keeps leaving the room, and Kevin keeps.

[Jim Downey]

Instantly escapes, and he goes, what did I just get to deal with you? What did I just say? There's a gun. Don't you see what this is? It's a big bad gun. This is a gat. It put a big hole right through the head. You're absolutely right, sir. You're absolutely right. It was stupid what I did. I will not be repeated, I promise you. It better not be. It better not be. Then Phil would leave and Kevin would instantly try to escape. And then the whole cycle would repeat itself. Anyway, Phil happened to be sitting next to me. Lauren would sit at the. Had the whole end of the table, and then the host would sit to one side of Lauren. I would sit.

[Al Franken]

And this is because you're the producer.

[Jim Downey]

At this point and you were, you know, close by, but the cast would be seated along the table too. And so Phil just happened to be sitting next to me. And that voice I'd never heard before, none of us had. That was a brand new character. And it just. The intensity and the volume of it just. I started just completely losing my shit. And Lauren was looking at me like And. Cause I had never. And I was laughing so hard I convulsed. But I just. I remember that because I don't think I ever had quite that response to anything.

[Al Franken]

Did you have to leave the room?

[Jim Downey]

I had to leave the room. I didn't leave the room because it was probably too hard to get out. Remember those read through, they got bigger and bigger as the staff got mushroomed and mushroomed. It became incredible.

[Al Franken]

Did we ever have read through in Lauren's office? No.

[Jim Downey]

Yes, we did. We did. They were working in the early years of the show, which is not very big, that office. No. But we used to go down to the room above the studio, which is. Now they've redesigned it so it had a window onto the studio, but it was otherwise windowless. And there was a table there. It was very quiet. But as I remember, we were able to comfortably fit all the writers, all the performers and such crew members as needed to be there. But then they were working on it and we had a couple read throughs in Lauren's office, which is a capacious office, but we were on top of each other. Now, it's the last time I attended a read through because when I returned to the show. It's a long story, but I left the show really the same time you did in the sense of going to read throughs, that kind of thing in 95. And I went back to read through in 2008. I had been writing, but I was writing from home. And anyway, it was so crowded, there had to be 90, 100 people in a room that I'm sure the fire marshal would have said no more than 40. You know, it's. The show is.

[Al Franken]

But no one's ever gotten hurt.

[Jim Downey]

No, I never. There were no fatalities for sure.

[Al Franken]

I was gonna talk about Billy Madison.

[Jim Downey]

Okay.

[Al Franken]

That's the thing you're most famous for.

[Jim Downey]

Yeah. I mean, like I said, I never got into this in order to be famous, but of all the things I've ever done professionally, you know, Adam asked me to. I was actually up in Toronto working on a script that Lorne wanted me to participate on. While I was there, Adam, we were like staying in the same hotel and stuff, and he asked me to do this part and they let me rewrite it so that I could add some stuff into it. And I added. The thing that I used to say is, Farley.

[Al Franken]

The principle of.

[Jim Downey]

I was. Yeah. The premise was an academic decathlon where Adam's character, Billy Madison, is competing against Bradley Whitford of later of the West Wing, who By the way, was really funny in that movie. And I think later I saw him at the Emmys one time, and this is. He got an Emmy for the West Wing or something. And I went to the party for the West Wing people with Lawrence O'Donnell, who was my college roommate and everything. He looks across the room and sees me, and the first words out of his mouth were, that was a long time ago. Like, I think he was worried I was gonna go, hey, Billy Madison. Anyway, so I'm the principal, and I. And Adam's given a discuss, something about the Industrial Revolution. And then. And they do it with a dissolve. So he starts on this crazy thing where he's talking about a children's book or something. And then I just, you know, give this. The thing about. It's become a meme where I just go, Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I've ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent commentary were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber after having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. Okay, so that was that thing. But anyway, that. That. That thing has become a bit of a meme, and it. It resurfaces. People, you know, attach it to, you know, when someone says something stupid, you know, which happens a lot.

[Al Franken]

So. Well, what do we not cover that we want to talk about that you want to talk about. I want to talk about, like, Change bank or.

[Jim Downey]

Well, that was. ChangeBank was an ad that I did that I had actually written for Kevin Nealon because he seemed.

[Al Franken]

Tell people. Remind people what ChangeBank is.

[Jim Downey]

ChangeBank. There was this type of ad that was very big in the 80s where they started introducing.

[Al Franken]

I love that we're explaining.

[Jim Downey]

I know. Talking heads.

[Al Franken]

So 40 years ago, sort of like.

[Jim Downey]

A real person kind of explaining, like, whatever their business is, what we do.

[Al Franken]

I think they still do these things.

[Jim Downey]

Yeah. Cause they're cheap. They're cheap to do in any way. So the idea was a bank that all it does is actually make change. So you bring in, like, a $10 bill, and we'll give you two fives or. And Al, I think, Will, you've been one of the people who likes to point this out to me that one of my favorite tropes of comedy or crutches or whatever, is that I like the comedy of laboriously, painstakingly, at great length, explaining something to someone that doesn't need any explanation that they already get. This thing was a guy explaining. I mean, you could say, like, all the bank does is make change. But it's this sort of overexcited guy. Well, too excited for the material going. Like at First Citywide Change bank, you can. If you have a $10 bill, we can give you two fives. We can give you 10 singles. We can give you 25 quarters and five singles. And he's just going through. And you're way ahead of him is the point. And then. But he just, oh, we give you five twos, you know, and so it's the excited guy. So when I wrote it for Kevin, but when we were on literally, you know, talking about rehearsing it, I found myself being unusually aggressive in terms of giving him notes and Kevin very nicely. So, like, you know, Jamie, you know, why don't you do this? I mean, no offense. I mean, he wasn't. It wasn't like, okay, you do it. If you, you know, it was a very sweet kind of look. I'd be happy to be in it. I can be one of the people giving testimonials, but why don't you do it? And I sort of said, like, I.

[Al Franken]

Forgot that there were testimonials of people.

[Jim Downey]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I said, like, yeah, that's. Yeah. I mean. Cause, you know, I never, like, proposed myself to be in something.

[Al Franken]

We're not aggressive at all.

[Jim Downey]

This was something where it was sort of my lack of camera presence worked to my advantage. Right. You seemed to. Because I seemed like a guy who talks too fast.

[Al Franken]

You seem like an employee at the change.

[Jim Downey]

Yeah, like a regular sort of mid level kind of guy. And so the testimonies would be. Would be. Were our cast who performed very. They performed more. They had more of that presence. And it was like Nora had a thing where she goes, like, I was about to get on the New Jersey turnpike, and I realized I didn't have any change at all. Then I noticed up ahead, an exit with a sign for first citywide change bank. Let me tell you, it's a pretty good feeling. So. And then it was just me explaining, we can. If you have a 20, we can get. You know, and I'm doing more combinations. That was like the, you know, sort of a. I've done lots of pieces that you could sort of break down and go. It's another example of someone explaining something that doesn't really need to be explained.

[Al Franken]

Well, that was a perfect example of that. So tell them about blurry.

[Jim Downey]

Cause we wrote this piece, this is an early piece that you and I wrote. Probably, I'm gonna say 19. Yeah, it was 1977. And okay, so that's 20, 40 years ago, more than 46 years ago. It was a piece where as I remember, you think of cynical people, like kind of worldly wise, kind of like seeing it all kind of as they tend to be intelligent, you know, sophisticated, you know, kind of eye rolling, kind of oh really? Yeah, I've been there, not impressed kind of thing, you know. But we like the notion of a really dumb person who was very, very cynical. Like that combination of stupid and yet bitter, you know. And so we just started. I think it was your idea to do the idea of a guy who he basically has never bothered to have his vision tested, but he's gone through life. Just that all this stuff had a big buildup. When he checked it out, it was like, you know, because everything's all blurry. And so the thing is, it was a very strange thing. It's a bus. Jill Kleberg, the actress, the late Jill Kleberg was on a bus. It's like a cross country bus. And naturally when we had the idea, we went right to John Belushi for the casting. And so it begins with her saying to John Belushi, who's sitting, she's on the window, he's on the aisle seat. And she says to Belushi, you know what, I'm just gonna go doze off cause I'm really sleepy. If you wanna switch seats, you can have the window. It's like, why bother? There's nothing to see out there. She goes, oh no, we'll be crossing the continental Dubai at dawn. It's like I've seen it, just a blurry, shiny celestial object, you know, rising over fuzzily outline so that it gets into. And she doesn't quite follow the first. And he said, it seems to me there's. Seems like my whole life I've just been let down, disappointed by all this stuff that's supposed to be so great. I've been to Europe, been to the Louvre. So overrated. Just room after room of blurry, indistinct paintings and out of focus shapeless, formless sculpture, you know. And so it was just. And she gradually figures out, have you ever had your vision? Yeah.

[Al Franken]

Anyway, so that was blurry. That was blurry. But Belushi didn't want to do it, of course.

[Jim Downey]

Okay, well, so anyway, so we do the piece and it was, I mean we regarded that as a very eccentric piece of Writing that was what we would have called like a 1245 kind of piece. Meaning, you know, that was sort of our, like, you know, like a restaurant will have a downstairs jazz club. You know, kind of. That was our. That after 12:30, that last two sketches were where we would try more experimental stuff anyway, so that's what we sort of thought as. And then Lauren, it's picked for the show. And you and I had different offices, but maybe they were trying to get both of us, but they found me. So Lauren, I get a call from Lauren's assistant. Like, can you come talk to Lauren now? He needs to talk to you. And so I come in to Lorne's office. It was like, after reading through, it was like 7 o'clock at night or something, and Belushi's sitting there of cross of Lord. And Lauren goes, jim, John doesn't understand the penis. So I go, like, really? You know, he goes, yeah. And what's funny about it, he was kind of like a little, like, hostile. Sure. And so I go, like. I go, well, okay. It's just. You're just a dumb guy who you desperately need glasses. You have really like. Like, you need, like, Coke bottle glasses. I mean, you know, you, you. You just have terrible eyes. And instead of addressing the problem, you've just allowed yourself to become bitter about.

[Al Franken]

Everything, which is a very deep kind of understanding of human nature.

[Jim Downey]

He goes, I don't get it.

[Al Franken]

This has that dimension of.

[Jim Downey]

So he's kind of like. They go, well, okay. And Lord goes, well, all right. Well, okay. And so I go back to my office. Which you share with Bill. Which I share with Bill Murray. And so Billy had said. I should have mentioned this. Billy had said after read through. God, that piece was funny. God, I love that piece. That's so great. And I'm going, oh, well, thank you. And in a way, I felt sort of like, you know, because we'd written it for Belushi. And I go like, yeah, well, I mean, well, thank you. That's really great. And so then. And then. So then Billy, I said, like, he said, what was that about? And I go like, oh, and John doesn't want to do the piece. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll totally do it. I can do that. I can do that. I know how to do that. Let me do that. I know exactly how to play it. Let me do that. And I go, really? Great. So I go back to Loren's office and I go, hey, Lorne, I just talked to Billy and Billy, he doesn't have so much to do in the show that he can't. And he wants to do it. He's totally. He's eager to do it. So if John doesn't want to do it, you know, that's fine. And he goes, really? Okay, great, great. So I go back to the office and I tell Billy, hey, that's great. And Billy's all excited. And then two minutes later, exactly the amount of time it took Lauren to call Belushi and say, don't worry, John, we're giving it to Billy. Lauren calls. It's Lauren's office. No, John will do the piece. And it was clearly. He heard Billy. It's an actor thing, you know, he heard Billy and then he wanted to do it.

[Al Franken]

And it's a brilliant piece if I say so.

[Jim Downey]

I know that John Mullaney is a big fan of the piece, so that's. That's good for me.

[Al Franken]

Well, yeah, you. Speaking of which, you worked with so many great people that I didn't get a chance to work with.

[Jim Downey]

That's right. Well, yeah. I mean, I returned. I should explain. I did come back to the show. We both left the show in 95. You on your own. I was fired. And then you were fired because. Yeah, I mean, it was a big house cleaning. It was the right thing to do.

[Al Franken]

No, you were fired because of all Meyer. Right.

[Jim Downey]

Oh, that's true. No, Allmeyer was. I forgot. You're right. You are right. I was fired twice by all Meyer. But because. That's right. It was the OJ Jokes two times.

[Al Franken]

Okay, explain that. So Norm again, I auditioned for that and Norm got it. And it was the best that happened to both of us and to America. I think that Norm and you did a great update.

[Jim Downey]

Well, thank you. At the end of the 93. 94 seasons of May of 94, oh, Meyer had come to the network and he was very. Don Ohmyer, most aggressive network exec the show had ever dealt with. And he had lots of ideas. We were used to dealing with sort of genteel types like Brandon Tartikoff, who was really funny. And Lauren especially could sort of make Tartakoff laugh and schmooze him, whoever. Oh, Meyer was like, that's not funny. You know, he was more of a bully type. And so Omar, he came from sports. He came from sports. He was a sports director. And so he was a ruin.

[Al Franken]

Artilage.

[Jim Downey]

That's right. And he didn't like Update. And Kevin was doing Update. I don't think it was mostly Kevin's fault. But they basically said, he's out. Kevin Nealon is out. And Kevin was a beloved figure of the show. None of us would ever have wanted to move him off of anything. But they made the decision that Kevin was not going to be allowed to do update again. And so that was the thing where we was. Remember, Bill Maher had the backing of Bernie Brillstein.

[Al Franken]

Oh, I did not know that. I didn't know that.

[Jim Downey]

I thought it was a complicated thing. No, Norm emerged. Norm emerged late. It was the big competition was, was it going to be you or Bill Maher? And Bernie was very actively campaigning for Bill and against you. Okay, I thought you knew that. I'm sorry, I didn't know any of this.

[Al Franken]

I just know I didn't get it.

[Jim Downey]

But, but anyway, so. And I did. I was bitter. I did think Norm, but I didn't, you know, once, you know, it wasn't going to be you, I felt, well, then can it Please be Norm MacDonald and not Bill Maher? You know, not that it wasn't an anti Bill Maher thing. It was just definitely between the two of them, it was absolutely Norm. So it's the summer of 94, okay, when the final decision was made. And so that literally when I was out, I was summoned out to Burbank for a meeting with me and Lorne and around the table with Rick Ludwin and now deceased NBC, Zach and Warren Littlefield and Ohlmeyer. The meeting literally ended because it was very unpleasant meeting because Ohlmeyer like being very sort of bullying. He was telling us what had to change everything. And then the only thing that got us off the hook was visiting hours at LA county had started. He went to go see OJ who had just been, you know, and he.

[Al Franken]

Was roundy and OJ Were really close.

[Jim Downey]

Friends, very close friends from sports. They're big buddies. So the first Norm update was the fall of 1994. I was brought back as producer on Sufferance. They had read me the riot act, like, you better start being funny, you know. And so Norm, so we did, you know, because it was OJ Stuff. So it's pretty much give an example.

[Al Franken]

Of a joke that Norm told.

[Jim Downey]

Well, I'll give you some of my favorite. There was a. There was a certain type of OJ Joke we would do, which was usually OJ A self owned kind of joke, you know. So you have to understand, the trial lasted like the whole season that went on and on and on. So we were able to do at least one or two OJ jokes every week for all 20 shows of that scene. Okay, so here's the example.

[Al Franken]

And remembering that all Meyer and O.J.

[Jim Downey]

Are really okay. And so a typical O.J. joke would be like, this week at the O.J. simpson trial, F. Lee Bailey, Simpson attorney F. Lee Bailey, speculated, if only we knew Ron Goldman's last words, we might be close to finding the real killers. Well, I don't know, but personally, I think his last words are probably, hey, you're O.J. simpson. And another one was, was O.J. simpson high on drugs the night of the murders? Absolutely not, said an indignant Simpson. And a simple test of any of his blood found at the crime scene will prove it. You know, so it was those, you know, and so we did those. And then literally the verdict came down the Monday of the first show of the next season, the not guilty verdict. So then we did that for the next year, and then.

[Al Franken]

Until you were fired.

[Jim Downey]

Well, no. And then the third season.

[Al Franken]

Wow.

[Jim Downey]

Norm did update 94, 95, 95.

[Al Franken]

You got away.

[Jim Downey]

No, we did. We did OJ jokes. Oh. Then there was the civil trial. That was the third season of Update. And then finally, what Happened was Norm's fourth year, which began in the fall of 97. That was the fourth. It was 94, 95, 96. That's right. His fourth year of doing update. There was no OJ news. So we would have loved to do it because we had gone like 60 straight updates with at least one OJ joke, at least one, and often two or three. But suddenly he really wasn't in the news. The civil trial was over and done, and so there was nothing. And then literally, we do nine shows before Christmas, right? So we do shows one through eight. There's nothing. There was no OJ Jokes, and I heard no complaints, you know, and then finally there was a News story about O.J. had been asked. He was going to a restaurant in Brentwood, and the manager said, I'm sorry, Mr. Simpson, but several of the customers are uncomfortable with your being here, and would you mind? And so Simpson sued them and got like, you know, like 500 bucks or something. And then that same week, there was a story about Latrell Sprewell, who played for the Knicks, had gone, lost his mind at a practice, and started choking P.J. carlissimo, the coach, and he was represented by Johnnie Cochran. So that Update, after having done no OJ Stuff all season long, suddenly there were two. There was a. The OJ joke was the thing about the Simpson won $500 judgment. In addition, the restaurant Must now establish murderer and non murderer sections. And then the other one was Johnnie Cochran announced press conference and has vowed to find the real choker. Okay, so that was update the Christmas show. Update. And the next. Two days later. Two days later, I got the call that we were fired.

[Al Franken]

And I understand that at one point Ohlmeyer wanted you out that.

[Jim Downey]

Well, he actually wanted me out more. And they said the Norm, I only learned this much later from Ludwin, told me this real story, which was that the network had gone to Norm and said, downey isn't helping and we get him out. And Norm said, no, no, no, I'll quit if you fire him. I quit. And they said, it's crazy. No, you don't need him. We'll get you something better. And Norm refused. And he never told me that.

[Al Franken]

That's amazing.

[Jim Downey]

And so what a testament. I know, it's great character. And by the way, he. You know me, I've never been the most responsible person. I sort of. It was kind of fun. I mean, for one thing, the most positive love and feedback I ever got. You know, Chevy was calling all the time, Jerry Seinfeld, all these people. It was an incredibly unpopular decision that they made. And I think I can never tell if Ohmeyer truly believed this or he won it because the public thing was the segment wasn't working. It wasn't funny. And I remember, oh, Meyer saying in interviews, like, look, I don't know anything. I don't know everything. But sometimes if I'm not laughing, but the audience is laughing, okay, I can live with that. But when I'm not laughing and nobody else is laughing, then we got a problem. I would say that was not far from the case. So when they made that decision, this was the last. This is 1997. That was the last time there were still, like, newspaper clipping services, you know. Cause nowadays people go, what the hell is that? But no, there used to be. You'd pay to. Whenever they'd flag mention of you and the thing. And NBC had it. So at first they were forwarding all this stuff to us. Then they decided, no, no, we're not paying for that anymore. And I was getting it from a friend at cbs. We had there exactly one person in all of the entertainment world who thought. Who agreed with their decision. It was Marvin Kitman of Newsday.

[Al Franken]

Newsday, yeah.

[Jim Downey]

And. But. Which almost was perfect, you know, but no, no, we. It was great. I mean, the support was great, Norm. You know, it was personally much harder. You know, I had saved money and you Know. And Norm, but they wanted him to come and just do sketches, and Norm didn't want to do that, so he quit. My son's health insurance depended on my continued employment at that time, and so I had to write sketches for the show. They removed me from Update, and they wanted me badly.

[Al Franken]

Because you're Writer's Guild insurance and you needed to be vested and you needed.

[Jim Downey]

And at the time, they wanted me to quit, and they tried different ways, but I couldn't afford to quit. And so I agreed that I would turn and submit sketches each week to read through, you know, otherwise they would void my contract. So I had to turn in pages. But I wrote things that I thought were pretty funny but were also unusable for them.

[Al Franken]

Well, I think we should wrap up. But you're not. Are you writing now?

[Jim Downey]

Well, the last couple times, I'm. Occasionally. I know you have this thing, too, where something will occur to you, like, generally.

[Al Franken]

Well, we submitted a piece.

[Jim Downey]

Yes, that was your idea, really. But, I mean, I.

[Al Franken]

This guy on his deathbed in Pennsylvania, very old, his family's gathered around, and he's obsessed that if he dies before the election day, that his family call in and say that his absentee ballot doesn't count. They taped. Now the read through. Do you know this? They have a video camera, and, boy, did it die. Read through. They do.

[Jim Downey]

Oh, I didn't, man. See, I used to when I returned to the show, and, boy, that room looked crowded. In 2000, to write sketches, I worked from home, and I didn't go to the read throughs because at this point, it's so suddenly, I developed, like, claustrophobia. But the one time I went to a read through in 2008, it was like, man, it was almost scary how crowded that room was. And so I would. They gave me, like, an assistant who would work with me, you know, on Wednesdays to. I would dictate my pieces over the phone from Cooperstown. From Cooperstown or New York, but mostly from Cooperstown. And I just, like, you know, you and I came up writing late at night. We'd also write during the day, too, but. But when I came back to the show in the fall of 2000 as a staff writer again for the first time since my firing, I generally wrote early in the morning from 8 until 11:12. And then I would call it in and dictate it like noonish. And so I never. I went from. Well, I still write in legal pads, you know. And then, yeah, I was the first.

[Al Franken]

Writer on the show to have a Word processor.

[Jim Downey]

You were a pioneer in that. And I remember so many times sitting with you on a. Generally, it was scarier when it happened, like Wednesday morning, early. We were trying to get something in for read through. Cause it used to be when we first wrote together, it was like, say, you, me and Tom, either you or I would have the pad and we would, you know, talk the piece out.

[Al Franken]

Having the pad means writing down.

[Jim Downey]

What? Yeah, writing down, agreeing on the thing. But the way we would write together, we have the premise, we have the joke area, but it's choosing the exact wording of the joke which makes a huge difference. Right? And so we would, like. You might say something. Okay, how about. And then you go, oh, how about. And so we refine each other's stuff, right? And anyway, the problem with that stuff is some of it's so kind of wispy. You really gotta get it when you say it. You gotta write it down. Because if you don't write it down and you go, what was that thing you said a minute ago? And you try to recover it, and even if you do remember what you said, you don't trust that you remember it. And you go, no, no, it wasn't that you said something else. You would have the word processor, and we would be writing, and we'd be riffing and stuff, and then suddenly you go, no, no. And I go, what? You go, no, no, Al. What? What? What the fuck? And now. And then you would not want to tell me what had happened, but it had just disappeared. That thing we had just been working on for, like, three hours was, like, gone. And it wasn't like, oh, go to the wastebasket. It's crumpled up. No, it was in cyberspace. And I. And I would. Because I was always.

[Al Franken]

Normally, I remember it more that it just froze or that it had been filled.

[Jim Downey]

Sometimes you. And then you would lean out the door of your office, as we often worked in your office, and you would be yelling for the it person or whoever to come. And usually we found it. It was like, he. You had to hit some Pete. But there were times when, you know, I'm sorry, we're gonna. We're gonna have to re. I'm doing an impression of you, by the way. Yeah, I'm sorry. We're gonna have to re. And I go. And I would be. I'd get so pissed off, and I'd go, oh, this is really. You're sure this is the boy?

[Al Franken]

I can't believe how old we sound.

[Jim Downey]

Well, it's the truth. I mean, there you go. No, we're experienced. We're. This is history. When we pass, who will remember those days?

[Al Franken]

Well, thanks, Jim.

[Jim Downey]

Well, thank you. It was fun.

[Al Franken]

Well, I hope you enjoyed listening. That beautiful music is by Leo Kotke, the great Leo Kotke. I want to thank Peter Ogburn for producing this podcast. We'll talk again next week.

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[Jim Downey]

Before you go, tell us about yourself.

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