The life of a comic in New York: S.N.L. When the flu broke, people came out to see it again and realized why I wasn’t there
The seriousness of adulthood struck me as a kid when I saw parents getting their oil changed, filling out paperwork, and going to funeral services, the sheer silliness of S.N.L, and the fact that they spent their days getting their oil changed and filling out paperwork. If you were lucky, perhaps you could build a life around silliness. As it turned out, I did and I didn’t: I’m not a comedian, but as a novelist, I did build a life around making stuff up, reconstituting what the culture offers.
Many of us feel to varying degrees like outsiders — we’re not beautiful or famous or funny or coastal — and “S.N.L.” gives us access to beauty, fame, humor and New York. If I go to New York, I see the Prometheus statue outside Rockefeller Center, 30 Rock marquee and other things on television and that makes me feel like I am in New York. A few years ago, a jaded magazine editor asked if it annoyed me that my publisher puts me up in hotels in Midtown, where it’s congested with tourists. At the risk of sounding like a Midwestern stereotype, Midtown has never occured to me that it’s undesirable, and I still don’t believe a publisher pays for me to stay there.
The world witnessed a flu outbreak and as the months went on, I experienced personal challenges along with the global ones. I decided that the novel I was trying to write was too depressing and set it aside. Desperate to cheer myself up, I started a novel set at a show a lot like “S.N.L.”
I did a lot of research, such as watching a documentary about Saturday Night Live and listening to a million comedy shows, but it didn’t feel like work. By the time I finagled a ticket to watch a dress rehearsal of the show in March 2022, only two aspects of seeing it in person surprised me. The first was how often two or more cast members in the same sketch were on different stages (for instance, the cast member playing a mayor at a news conference and the cast members playing reporters).
“S.N.L.” is a fascinating subject because it’s been at the heart of American culture for so long that it has become a kind of mirror for the nation’s history and your own. I started watching Dana Carvy when I was a kid, which is still my favorite era. (This made it extra fun when I talked to Carvey for our catchphrases package and listened to him do George Bush, Ross Perot and all the other impressions I used to copy at school.) Now I watch the show with my daughter. If she’s lucky, she may one day talk to Bowen Yang about why his George Santos sketches were so hysterical. (And I’m sure Santos would be thrilled to be remembered.)
For better or for worse, I was given carte blanche access to TV at a pretty young age (I was allowed to stay up late, too). Is it any better for a kid to watch Saturday Night Live than it was in the 90s? My favorite sketches from those years involved Sprockets, the Spartan cheerleaders and Mary Katherine Gallagher, as well as any time Chris Farley or Will Ferrell was onscreen.