Live saw my set. My manager was at the Brillstein company, and the legendary Bernie Brillstein had handled Saturday Night Live talent his whole career . . . from John Belushi and Gilda Radner all the way to Lorne Michaels and many in between. Now, to be honest, I was always hoping to get on a sitcom and SNL wasn’t even in my sights. I wasn’t a character guy and it was also too way, way out of reach so I didn’t bother thinking about it. Not that sitcoms were easy to get, but I could picture it more. But now I had a chance and I had better get mentally ready. You basically got one shot with them. Now was my time to strike. If I tanked, I wouldn’t get a serious second look for a very long time. This was for real.
Both Rob Schneider and I got SNL auditions out of the HBO Young Comedians Special . Rob and I were super tight at this point. We had traveled in the same stand-up grooves for years, out in the Valley. We lived close to each other and hung out a lot. So, even though I had a friend in tow, I was still twenty-five and freaking out about flying to New York and having the biggest audition of my life. But a few weeks later, we took our first-class flights from LAX to JFK and were put up at the Omni Berkshire Hotel, a hotel I had actually heard of because . . . they always PLUG IT ON SNL . This was all quickly becoming too much for me. It was a beautiful hotel and we didn’t even have to put our credit cards down when we got there, which was a good thing because I didn’t have a credit card. But I was hungry so this created a bit of an issue. I didn’t want to order food on my own dime, because it was so expensive. But I didn’t want Saturday Night Live to hear that I charged dinner to them, because I didn’t know if they were paying for it. And if they were paying for it, would they get mad that I had a club sandwich twice in one day? I kept warning Rob not to eat too much. He didn’t seem to care at all. The whole time I was like, “Rob, that soup is eight bucks . . . don’t get us fired before we’re hired.” (I hate that Lorne might read this book and realize Rob and I were drowning ourselves in soup and sandwiches and regret hiring us.)
The audition was scheduled at the famous Catch a Rising Star comedy club, where Rodney Dangerfield and many others started. I heard Michael Shoemaker and Marci Klein were coming to watch us. These were two of Lorne’s right-hand men, even though Marci is a chick. Marci is Calvin Klein’s daughter and played a big role in booking the hosts on the show. Michael Shoemaker seemed to be the number two under Lorne. This is what I was able to figure out just by asking around, trying to get some sense of what to expect with the audition. Most important, I knew that both had big votes in picking new cast members. I think Jim Downey, the head writer, was there that night as well. I found out later this was like jury duty to all these guys. They’d rather go to someone else’s kid’s soccer game. Dennis Miller even came as a show of support for Rob and me, which was very cool of him. Obviously we were both entirely panic-stricken at the notion of all these people in the audience. This was not a bullshit table read for Alf . This was SNL .
That night, there was another comic on after us, and the SNL troop was there to see him, too. Tom Kenny was very different from me. He was really funny and very high energy—in fact, he later wound up as the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants. He was a very cool guy, and I sort of got the impression that it was either going to go his way or mine that night. I went on first. We were each supposed to do fifteen to twenty minutes, and when I looked out into the room the first thing I noticed was that New York clubs were much smaller than I expected. I could never get spots like this when I came to the city in my dirty-couch/ottoman-surfing days. I could only get shitty one-nighters in the surrounding towns, so all of this was eye-opening for
Both Rob Schneider and I got SNL auditions out of the HBO Young Comedians Special . Rob and I were super tight at this point. We had traveled in the same stand-up grooves for years, out in the Valley. We lived close to each other and hung out a lot. So, even though I had a friend in tow, I was still twenty-five and freaking out about flying to New York and having the biggest audition of my life. But a few weeks later, we took our first-class flights from LAX to JFK and were put up at the Omni Berkshire Hotel, a hotel I had actually heard of because . . . they always PLUG IT ON SNL . This was all quickly becoming too much for me. It was a beautiful hotel and we didn’t even have to put our credit cards down when we got there, which was a good thing because I didn’t have a credit card. But I was hungry so this created a bit of an issue. I didn’t want to order food on my own dime, because it was so expensive. But I didn’t want Saturday Night Live to hear that I charged dinner to them, because I didn’t know if they were paying for it. And if they were paying for it, would they get mad that I had a club sandwich twice in one day? I kept warning Rob not to eat too much. He didn’t seem to care at all. The whole time I was like, “Rob, that soup is eight bucks . . . don’t get us fired before we’re hired.” (I hate that Lorne might read this book and realize Rob and I were drowning ourselves in soup and sandwiches and regret hiring us.)
The audition was scheduled at the famous Catch a Rising Star comedy club, where Rodney Dangerfield and many others started. I heard Michael Shoemaker and Marci Klein were coming to watch us. These were two of Lorne’s right-hand men, even though Marci is a chick. Marci is Calvin Klein’s daughter and played a big role in booking the hosts on the show. Michael Shoemaker seemed to be the number two under Lorne. This is what I was able to figure out just by asking around, trying to get some sense of what to expect with the audition. Most important, I knew that both had big votes in picking new cast members. I think Jim Downey, the head writer, was there that night as well. I found out later this was like jury duty to all these guys. They’d rather go to someone else’s kid’s soccer game. Dennis Miller even came as a show of support for Rob and me, which was very cool of him. Obviously we were both entirely panic-stricken at the notion of all these people in the audience. This was not a bullshit table read for Alf . This was SNL .
That night, there was another comic on after us, and the SNL troop was there to see him, too. Tom Kenny was very different from me. He was really funny and very high energy—in fact, he later wound up as the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants. He was a very cool guy, and I sort of got the impression that it was either going to go his way or mine that night. I went on first. We were each supposed to do fifteen to twenty minutes, and when I looked out into the room the first thing I noticed was that New York clubs were much smaller than I expected. I could never get spots like this when I came to the city in my dirty-couch/ottoman-surfing days. I could only get shitty one-nighters in the surrounding towns, so all of this was eye-opening for
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