Kent Sublette: I grew up in a time when there was no internet, so you couldn’t have information about the show. As a child, you don’t have a idea of how it happens. You just assume that Chris Farley goes out there and does that and then I watched it and I loved it, but then getting into the Groundlings, that was my channel into it, but it never seemed like… And I was a guest writer for two weeks, and I was like, “I’m just going to be here and have fun. This is not going to be a job for me. That’s crazy.”
Alison Gates: Yeah, I was just a big SNL fan. Embarrassing. And also, they’d come through Chicago every year, so you’re thinking about it. The path at least is laid out in a way because they always come by, and to keep embarrassing myself, I was just a big fan of the SNL writers because with the internet, you know who they are. So here I am getting starstruck with frigging Kent Sublette.
Streeter Seidell: Mr. Soup.
Alison Gates: Mr. Soup.
Streeter Seidell: Mr. Soup himself.
Alison Gates: When you come in, you have access to the server of every sketch that’s ever been submitted at SNL, which is so cool as a fan, and you can look up all your favorite sketches and see who wrote them, and it was just so cool that they were all written by totally different people. And you can look up the first draft and what they changed and try to learn from that, so as a big loser, I enjoyed getting to look at that and I learned from that.
Greg Iwinski: I totally understand that feeling though because I remember in early Twitter when it was good and fun, anytime someone who wrote late night would like a tweet of mine, I was like, “Oh my gosh.” It was like this world had changed, and I always try to keep that in perspective when I go to shows or work on shows or whatever, then I’m like, oh, this is so cool to get to write that stuff. And I think that’s the cool thing about, like what you’re saying, about being able to dive in and see all of that writing. That’s an amazing library to have though because you get to see how much it’s changed, but it’s probably the same in the sense that when you show up at Second City and they teach you sketch, it’s pretty much the same as UCB teach. It’s say Hello, do three weird things, end the sketch, get out.
Streeter Seidell: Don’t give the secrets away.
Greg Iwinski: I’m so sorry. Delete this. Delete the podcast. That costs money and you have to get [inaudible 00:25:25] from Second City to be able to know it.
Streeter Seidell: Now we got to change the whole format.
Greg Iwinski: It’s four weird things and then [inaudible 00:25:33].
Streeter Seidell: Yeah.
Greg Iwinski: I love joke writing and I’m a joke nerd. I have a couple of questions about Weekend Update.
Streeter Seidell: You’re talking to the wrong crew. We’ll try.
Kent Sublette: We’ll try our best.
Greg Iwinski: This is part of my first question, which is how much is that like its own thing inside the thing? Is it that you show up on Thursday or Friday or Saturday and you’re like, “They’ll have something,” and they roll out and they go, “We do have something and it’s this many minutes”? How much crossover is there?
Streeter Seidell: They have their own writing staff. It’s four or five writers who just write Weekend Update jokes. We write the features, so when a character comes on, one of the cast members comes on to do something, that’s usually from the sketch writing team. And you can write update jokes if you want. Every week, they send around packets every day with their prompts. I personally tried to do it for a season and realized how bad I was at writing one-liners. It would take me four sentences to get to the same joke that one of those guys could do in one, and I was like, “This is a completely different skill. I’m not good at it.” And so from then on I just said, “Well, let them do it.”
Kent Sublette: Yeah, I did the same thing. I did it for a year and I got one on and I was so excited, and retired after that. And then they shape it on Friday typically. I don’t know how they do it actually, or they’re like, “We need these many jokes and this is where…” I don’t know anything really about how they craft that together.
Streeter Seidell: They do a great job though. It’s fun because Update, we’re so deep into the sketch world and stuff, so then when Update comes on at dress rehearsal, we get to take a little break and watch a show that we haven’t seen before and we don’t know what the jokes are going to be, and get to be legitimate, watch it like a viewer does. I suppose we could go in their office and see what those jokes are going to be, but usually too busy for that.
Kent Sublette: And the features will be read. We’ll usually read six features at a read through on Wednesday, so they’ll be performed and then they’ll pick the ones that they want to do.
Greg Iwinski: And then with you writing the features, how often is that coming up with a host? Because I know that sometimes you have a host or a musical guest cameo in a feature come in and do something like that. Is that something that they generally bring up or something you guys throw out to them?
Streeter Seidell: That usually comes from them, I would say, or from a cast member. If a cast member’s like, “I have a great impression of the host,” maybe they could come out and we could do it together, something like that.
Kent Sublette: Or if they have a character that a host loves, they’ll be like, “I could be the movie guy’s sister,” that kind of thing.
Greg Iwinski: My only celebrity lookalike is Jeffrey Wright, which I get.
Streeter Seidell: Oh yeah, that’s a good one.
Greg Iwinski: We have the same hairline and not the same career. Sometimes you guys have these runs of two, three episodes, sometimes four in a row, which means you have this very tiny window of time off, it seems like from whenever you wake up Sunday to whenever you have to be at work Monday. How do each of you maximize that time to stay a human? Alison is just shaking your head.
Streeter Seidell: Alison made the most sour face I’ve ever seen, like you just asked the most offensive question. Why would you say that?
Alison Gates: No, you reminded me. No, I sleep all day and then the day’s over. Kent, you’re up and on a train living your life. It’s so impressive to me.
Streeter Seidell: Well, I was going to say that I have two little kids, so I usually don’t get to sleep as much as my brain needs to. But I’m also, when I’m awake on Sunday, a very, very bad father. I try to not leave the couch if I can. I scheme to figure out when my wife won’t be there so I can eat a cheesesteak, because she doesn’t like to see me like that. And then I’ll try to come up with games for my kids that I can engage with them where I don’t have to get off the couch. So it’ll be things like treasure hunts and physical challenges for them to win prizes, things like that. So I’m still staying creatively engaged. I’m just also laying on my couch eating cheesesteak.
Kent Sublette: This year felt like it had no breaks. We had them, but they didn’t quite amount to anything.
Streeter Seidell: This is from people who only work 22 weeks a year, complaining we don’t have enough time off.
Alison Gates: Life is so hard.
Greg Iwinski: I think we did 268 episodes a year at Colbert, but only 12 minutes of it is jokes. The rest of it is Anthony Scaramucci trying to stab Steven or whatever.
Kent Sublette: But doing the simplest thing during a show week becomes like, “Oh my God, I have to call my mother,” and she can wait until May.
Greg Iwinski: This is a more technical question, but do you run your writer’s room more like 30 Rock or Studio 60?
Kent Sublette: I never saw Studio 60.
Alison Gates: For me, Studio 60. Walking around, yelling.
Streeter Seidell: With a very clear view of what you want.
Alison Gates: Of what’s funny and what’s not funny.
Streeter Seidell: Yeah, very rapidly being able to assess whether a sketch is good or not.
Alison Gates: Yes.
Greg Iwinski: Telling each other, “That’s where the joke was,” in a sketch.
Alison Gates: I love the moment that was like, do you remember this? One of the writers comes up and I think it was like, what’s the funniest number? And he’s like, “17,” and he just keeps moving.
Greg Iwinski: I had to ask the Wizard of comedy what the funniest number was.
Streeter Seidell: 17, obviously.
Greg Iwinski: Everyone knows that.
Kent Sublette: I need to watch that. I never saw it.
Streeter Seidell: Oh my God, you would love it. It’s so funny.
Greg Iwinski: I own it both digitally and on DVD. I’m so obsessed with it. Every time I run into someone who was on it, I say how much I love it, and almost exclusively, their answer is, “What?”
Alison Gates: Oh my God.
Streeter Seidell: Well, it’s beloved within the very small world of people who wrote on shows like that.
Greg Iwinski: I told Bradley Whitford, I said, “I don’t love it because it’s accurate. I love it because it’s intense.”
Streeter Seidell: I would say I guess it’s more like 30 Rock than anything. There’s not so much comical high jinks though, but a lot of chaos. Not that by design, just chaotic things happen during the week. Someone gets sick and they’re not there or whatever. Some big news story breaks and you scrap everything and start over.
Alison Gates: It’s definitely funny starting and having actual 30 Rock plots happen around you, but for real, and you’re like, “Oh, I saw this one. Oh my God, this is an animal handler. Oh, wow.”
Greg Iwinski: And it’s got to be… Alison, you talked about going in with all the scripts, but you’re walking around a place that has so much history. I think about, for me, I was at Ed Sullivan and Paul McCartney came and played music, and I was like, oh my gosh, this is insane that he’s playing on the same stage, blah, blah, blah, and the history of the building. But is there a moment for any of you where the history of these 50 years of the show have come back while you’re working there?
Streeter Seidell: All the time, yeah.
Kent Sublette: Yeah, it’s true. And people will come back that you really admire, and then it’s fun to see them suss out how the show is working now versus how it did when they were there, and they’re usually like, “They’re allowed to do that?” But yeah, but you constantly… You can be working and working and being crazy, and then you’re like, “Oh, shit, this thing is here that I forgot is here,” like Mary Katherine Gallagher’s costume is in a glass box over here where no one sees and things like that.
Streeter Seidell: Or you’ll find just stacked up on the floor outside Lorne’s office is a handwritten note from Belushi or something, and you’re like, “Oh, this is just here.” And they’re like, “Oh, yeah, we were supposed to hang that up. We got to hang that up somewhere.” Just crazy stuff like that. But you are working like a dog, so sometimes you do get those little moments of like, “Oh, yeah, right. I’m working like a dog in this place with so much history.” I remember my first season that they had not redone the bathrooms on the 17th floor where the writers offices are, and I remember going in that bathroom and being like, “Ooh, the legends who have been having intestinal troubles in here, I can’t even imagine. All of my heroes probably were in here dealing with a stomach ailment at some point, and now I’m in here doing that. Look at me, in the company of Gods.”
Kent Sublette: My desk had a pullout little panel, and it had one of those old-timey logs of what people’s phone numbers were, and it was Mike Myers typed out, and I don’t know where that went. I should have stolen it, but [inaudible 00:35:33].
Streeter Seidell: Oh yeah, that’s great.
Alison Gates: Yeah, I feel like you were perfectly teeing us up to talk about the 50th, but it just happens in little ways so often. In my desk, there’s this weird old stapler that all the Lonely Island guys signed.
Streeter Seidell: I believe my office is, and if you read that Live from New York book, is the office where all the bottles of piss were.
Greg Iwinski: They’re not there now.
Streeter Seidell: No, no. We have new bottles of piss that we’ve filled in to leave for the next generation.
Kent Sublette: James Anderson was obsessed with ghosts and things, and he would buy a ghost tracker thing or some weird… And it had dials and it would say words, but we went around and then we were in an office and it was like, “Eddie.” And then they were like, “This is Eddie Murphy’s office.”
Streeter Seidell: But he’s alive.
Kent Sublette: Well, the ghost is dead. The ghost was a fan.
Alison Gates: Oh my God.
Kent Sublette: So that was exciting. Ghosts are real, everybody.
Greg Iwinski: Just a little early.
Streeter Seidell: But if you want us to talk about the 50th.
Greg Iwinski: It doesn’t matter when the nostalgia happens. It can happen at the-
Streeter Seidell: It is definitely hitting pretty hard at the 50th, because my first season was the 40th and I was not involved in it at all but I got to go, and I remember being overwhelmed that I was even invited to this thing and had nothing to do with it, and just how crazy it was. And then this was twice as big and I was working on it. And that party, every five feet, you’re bumping into some legend, and it feels awesome to just be one little piece of that machine. And then you just see, wow, this thing that Lorne created has this magnetic pull over half a century, just pulling in talent and notable people from every quadrant, like politicians, musicians, actors, writers, just the cultural people. It is just one of the last things I think that can do that.
Greg Iwinski: Yeah, I think one of the cool things about SNL is it’s still watched by a lot of people, and there’s all this conversation that comes up every, I don’t know, five years, 10 years of is late night dead? And I am very optimistic about late night. I had to be one of the negotiating committee people during the strike for late night, and so I was very deep in the weeds on it. But even with SNL, there are so few places on TV that if you can sing good two times, you’re famous. If you can do two good things, you’re crazy famous. Adele did that and before she landed in London, she was famous. Sam Smith did it, all those places like that. So the impact of it is enduring and enjoyable, and I think continues to make me optimistic.
I have a personal writer question, which is that sometimes there’s this lucky talent, luck, timing lineup where you get a joke straight through, straight to prompter, straight to cards, and it just goes from your keyboard to America. Do you have one of those that you remember or are proud of or that stuck with you?
Streeter Seidell: As in a sketch that just breezed on?
Greg Iwinski: A single joke that you got in that you love?
Alison Gates: One joke.
Streeter Seidell: I feel like I have sketches like that, that just plopped out and then just cruised right on through. That Washington’s dream sketch just popped out from Mikey and my brain, got past table, got into the show, went on. It had its journeys and changes along the way but it was never hard work. It was never a struggle. It felt almost like it already existed.
Kent Sublette: And also a cool thing is when you write something that you really like, but then you have no idea. I think we’ve all had things where we’re like, you had no idea how big they would suddenly become or be appreciated, and they’re like, “Oh, wow, they love that thing that I love too,” which is cool.
Streeter Seidell: Yeah, it’s always nice when the audience lines up with you on something, because it don’t always happen.
Alison Gates: It’s also fun that you get to pitch jokes on so many other sketches, like a cold open will be good but your one joke you said will be great, and it’s just that came from you and that’s just a little thing that you have.
Streeter Seidell: You make it sound like there’s a lot of roadblocks in the way of a typical late night joke getting on, and there are not that many roadblocks at SNL. What you’re seeing is I would say 90% of the writer’s personal preference and 10% the producers giving them not even huge notes to change what the piece is, but just producorial notes of like, “The set should be like this,” or, “I wouldn’t go for that side game. Just focus on this one thing.” So I think at SNL, it happens quite a bit that you just have your idea, you wrote it, it got past table, it got past dress, and there it is on TV.
Kent Sublette: It has to work pretty well at the read through to get to dress, so it has to be almost there. You can add and tweak and fix, but there’s few things that are like… Every once in a while, they’ll be like, “Well, that scene took place in the woods and that would look cool,” so that will happen every once in a while.
Streeter Seidell: You have to rewrite the entire scene, but we like it that something in the woods this week.
Kent Sublette: Yeah. We haven’t done woods in a while.
Streeter Seidell: Yeah, you’re right.
Greg Iwinski: Allison, did you have-
Alison Gates: Did I have a comment on sketches in the woods?
Greg Iwinski: Oh, no. Did you have a favorite joke? Yeah, I will say, in talking to younger writers, we were talking about either intentionally breaking them down or protecting them. I think one of the things to remind people too is to hold onto the times that it is good and you do get something on. Because so often, you run into people who they got one or two rejections in a row and they think it’s over. And it’s like, well, when you get two good ones in a row, you don’t think you’re going to run the show. Just keep it in the middle.
Streeter Seidell: It’s a long season, and over the course of the season, everybody has runs where they’re doing incredible and they’re getting multiple things on and everyone’s responding to their writing and stuff, and then you have periods where you’re just in a slump and nothing you’re trying is working. And that’s usually when you go, “I’m going to try some different stuff instead,” and that can get you out of that.
Kent Sublette: We’re also really lucky that we have a really good staff right now. So I’ve been there for years where the same four or five people it felt like wrote the show every week. That’s not the case now. It’s very evenly spread around the group, which is really cool.
Streeter Seidell: Yeah, there’s definitely no dominant voice in the show right now, I would say.
Greg Iwinski: Which like you said, being a variety show, that’s what’s so great. I think when people talk about if they like an SNL episode or not that are watching it, if there’s two sketches they laugh really hard at, they’ll say, “That was a great show.” And it could be two totally different sketches than someone else, but if it’s two, then they’re like, “Wow, that was so good.”
Okay, last question because almost out of time, but it is summertime now. You guys are off until the fall. What do you do with your summer? Is it recovery and do something different and get it out of my head, or is it time to finish a writing project that you’ve wanted to do but not been able to? What is the plan summer wise?
Streeter Seidell: Tell us about what meetings you’re taking. Do you have a general?
Alison Gates: [inaudible 00:44:01]. It’s a mix. Sometimes people will take a totally different summer job. Sometimes people who are standups will do shows all summer. Sometimes you work on a personal project. You definitely try to remind your family and friends that you exist on any level, and then some recovery. And then also if we’re being honest, a little bit of thinking about sketches, because sometimes what you can think of when you’re rested is of better quality than what you can think of when you’re stressed.
Streeter Seidell: You better hope Lorne doesn’t listen to this. I don’t think of a single sketch. I can’t. It’s like that part of my brain just shuts off.
Alison Gates: Can you imagine him listening to this?
Kent Sublette: When is it going to be on? I want to listen to them talk.
Alison Gates: I love them. What do they think? I miss them.
Kent Sublette: Is that interview out yet? You said it would be out today. Every summer’s different. Sometimes you have 10 weddings to go to, and sometimes you go work on a movie, things like that.
Streeter Seidell: Yeah, I think it’s a mix of just projects. And then for me personally, I have to re-engage my children and be like, “I’m here now. Dad is part of your life,” and they don’t like it because I make them eat healthier food than their mom does, so they’re like, “Oh, no, what are we having?” So they knew this day was coming. Tonight’s going to be our first night of dad dinner in a while.
Alison Gates: What’s it going to be?
Streeter Seidell: Going to be cod.
Alison Gates: [inaudible 00:45:50].
Greg Iwinski: That whole Magic Johnson diet? Is that it? A pile of cod?
Streeter Seidell: Yeah. We’re going to do some lightly seared cod.
Greg Iwinski: Wow. I need to see some gains.
Streeter Seidell: They’re in for it.
Alison Gates: And gains.
Greg Iwinski: Thank you all so much for talking to me about writing the show and working on the show, and congrats on season 50.
Streeter Seidell: Thank you.
Greg Iwinski: It was three of you. As you’ve said, just you guys.
Alison Gates: Yeah.
Streeter Seidell: Just us. No one else really. They tried to help, but really, ultimately, it was the three of us who wrote every single thing. Yeah.
Greg Iwinski: The parts that were good.
Streeter Seidell: Yeah.
Greg Iwinski: But yeah, thank you so much for coming on.
Alison Gates: Thank you for having us. It’s great to talk to you.
Kent Sublette: Yes, thank you so much.
Streeter Seidell: Thanks for having us.
Greg Iwinski: OnWriting is a production of The Writers Guild of America East. The series was produced by WGA East staff members, Jason Gordon, Tiana Timmerberg, and Molly Beer. Production editing and mix by Giulia Hjort. Original music by Taylor Bradshaw, artwork designed by Molly Beer. To learn more about the Writers Guild of America East, visit us online at WGAEast.org or follow the Guild on all social media platforms, @WGAEast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe to the podcast and give us a five star rating. Thanks for listening. Until next time, write on.
