'SNL' Turns 50: Aykroyd, Franken, Zweibel & Lovitz

Speaker 1 Support for NPR and the following message come from 20th Century Studios with Ella McKay, a new comedy from Academy Award-winning writer-director James L.

Speaker 1 Brooks, starring Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis with Albert Brooks and Woody Harrelson. See Ella McKay only in theaters December 12th.

Speaker 2 This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianco.

Speaker 2 NBC's Saturday Night Live is celebrating its 50th anniversary this weekend with a triple header of special events.

Speaker 2 Tonight, Peacock streams a live music concert featuring scheduled performances by everyone from Bad Bunny and David Byrne to Lady Gaga and the Roots.

Speaker 2 On Saturday, in its regular late-night slot on NBC, SNL repeats the first-ever episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by George Carlin and introducing the original not-for-primetime players.

Speaker 2 John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Lorraine Newman, and Garrett Morris.

Speaker 2 And on Sunday, NBC presents a three-hour live anniversary special, preceded by an additional hour on the red carpet.

Speaker 2 Today on Fresh Air, we're noting that anniversary by replaying interviews with some of the performers and writers who were there at or near the start, when producer Lauren Michaels created and shaped the show's first five seasons.

Speaker 2 After a five-year hiatus, Michaels returned and has been there ever since, presiding over many decades of cast changes, musical trends, and political shifts.

Speaker 2 Even though Michaels and NBC are celebrating the 50th anniversary of SNL this weekend, the very first episode, then called NBC's Saturday Night, actually premiered on October 11, 1975.

Speaker 2 Michaels had selected a cutting-edge counterculture comic as the show's host, but the comedian, George Carlin, suggested he do only the first one, making room for guest hosts from then on.

Speaker 2 Michaels agreed, establishing a template that still works, while Carlin established another one, taking the stage at Studio 8H to deliver an opening mono.

Speaker 3 Telling on a live show.

Speaker 3 Nice to see you. Welcome, and thanks for joining us live.
I'm kind of glad that we're on at night so that we're not competing with all the football and baseball games.

Speaker 3 So many, man.

Speaker 3 All the time. And this is the time of year when there's both, you know? Football is kind of nice.
They changed it a little bit. They moved the hash marks in.
Guys found them and smoked them anyway.

Speaker 2 One other noteworthy element from that first show, still part of the format 50 years later, was a TV news parody called Weekend Update.

Speaker 2 Chevy Chase was the first update anchor, and thanks to that showcase, the first star to emerge from SNL. It helped that he started most updates with the opening line, I'm Chevy Chase and you're not.

Speaker 2 But the jokes he read, written by original writer Alan Zweibel and others, helped too.

Speaker 6 The Post Office announced today...

Speaker 7 Just a second, I lost my plate.

Speaker 6 Oh, the Post Office announced today that it is going to issue a stamp commemorating prostitution in the United States. It's a 10-cent stamp, but if you want to lick it, it's a quarter.

Speaker 2 On today's show, we'll hear from Alans Weibel and cast member John Lovitz, and also from Al Franken, a writer and performer who went from the halls of Saturday Night Live to the corridors of the U.S.

Speaker 2 Senate.

Speaker 2 But let's start with an interview Terry Gross conducted in 2004 with Dan Aykroyd, who broke out on the show impersonating Julia Child and Tom Snyder, co-anchoring Weekend Update after Chevy Chase left, and introducing a range of unforgettable characters, including the outer space alien Beldar Conehead, one of the wild and crazy guys opposite Steve Martin, and most famously, Elwood Blues, one of the musical, energetic Blues brothers alongside John Belushi.

Speaker 2 Terry asked Dan Aykroyd about his love of music and more.

Speaker 9 What were the first records you bought? Can you remember?

Speaker 8 Well, the first records, of course, were, you know, the Beatles and the Stones.

Speaker 8 And then I think the seminal record for me was the East-West record that Paul Butterfield did in the late 60s with Elvin Bishop and Michael Bloomfield.

Speaker 8 And from then on, I began to go out and try to search the bins in the record stores for blues artists, and then started listening to John Lee Hooker. And we had a tremendous

Speaker 8 booking

Speaker 8 agent in Ottawa, Canada, where I grew up. That's the capital of that great, great nation.
And my parents worked for the government up there, and I was a kind of a son of government workers up there.

Speaker 8 And there was a club called Le Hiboo, which was right on Sussex Drive near where the Prime Minister lives.

Speaker 8 And we had a booker there named Harvey Glatt, and he brought in all of the great blue stars of the age so that as a teenager, I jammed behind Muddy Waters when S.P. Leary refused to take the drum kit.

Speaker 8 And he said, is anybody out there that's a drummer? And I walked up and I started to play. And Muddy turns to me and he goes, keep that beat going, boy.
You make Muddy feel good.

Speaker 8 I mean, this was part of my early exposure. And then I saw Paul Butterfield and Charlie Musselwhite and

Speaker 8 all these great players. And it was, I guess, just through the insight of this guy who was booking for the college crowd up there.

Speaker 8 And then listening to the black radio stations in Boston and Detroit and New York. This was, you know, these were sort of all part of my exposures, I guess.

Speaker 9 So what was in your parents' recollection? What did they listen to? And how did that affect what you liked or didn't like?

Speaker 8 Well, my dad used to pour over the newspapers and look for

Speaker 8 record collections that were used. So he would go and he'd see that some guy in Ottawa or Hull or where we were living there would be selling 100 records.
He'd just go out and buy them all.

Speaker 8 So we were listening to anything from

Speaker 8 Glenn Miller to Mario Lanza,

Speaker 8 lots of Broadway soundtracks and stuff. But I think my father really influenced me when he started to get into the Jack Hilton, Ray Noble, Freddie Gardner, English swing band music.

Speaker 8 That was really something because the value of horns was there.

Speaker 8 And then later, as I started to buy, of course, was the Beatles and the Stones and the Animals and then the Paul Butterfield record.

Speaker 8 But my dad was into the swing band music, as many people were in Canada at that time.

Speaker 9 Now, I've read about you that you had a pretty strict Catholic upbringing, that you went to Catholic school.

Speaker 4 Seminary.

Speaker 9 Seminary. Whoa, okay.
So you're growing up in Canada. You're going to a seminary

Speaker 9 and listening to blues and rock and roll and rhythm and move.

Speaker 8 And seeing guys on stage in my high school imitating McJagger. Right, okay.
Imitating the animals.

Speaker 4 Okay, that's where I'm heading.

Speaker 9 Were you, did you, long before you became part of the blues brothers and you developed this kind of alter ego for yourself, did you have a pose when you were in high school?

Speaker 9 Did you want to be black? Did you want to be a blues musician? Did you want to be somebody who you weren't and and kind of take on that pose in real life?

Speaker 8 Sure. I wanted to be Paul Butterfield and Charlie Musselwhite.

Speaker 8 And I used to walk around in a long trench coat, a long brown trench coat with shades, and I'd slick my hair back, and I'd try to find any little band up in the bars up in the Gatineau and up in Ottawa and Hull and where I was living.

Speaker 8 And I would get on stage with them, and they'd be country bands, and I would turn to them and say, well, can you do it like this? And I would kind of show them a basic, you know,

Speaker 8 8, 10, 12 bar blues pattern, and then we'd just take off from there. And of course, I was posing as Paul Butterfield.
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 8 And then my friend Gary O'Dwyer, who is now a school principal up in Coburg, Ontario, he was pretending to be Eric Burden.

Speaker 8 And I had, you know, the math whiz in class in grade 11 was pretending to be Mick Jagger. So everybody was posing.
And it was all based on rock and roll and music and blues then, all of it.

Speaker 9 Did you sing then? Or I know you played drums.

Speaker 8 I played harmony mostly and sang.

Speaker 8 Yeah, the drumming was sporadic, but

Speaker 8 I filled in for bands now and again when I was

Speaker 9 how did you and Belushi start the whole Blues Brothers routine?

Speaker 8 In 1973,

Speaker 8 John came up to Canada to recruit for the National Ampoon Radio Hour.

Speaker 8 And I was in Second City with Gilda Radner and with John Candy.

Speaker 8 And John came into Toronto, and he joined us on the set

Speaker 8 of the Second City stage and we did an improv set. And then we went back to my very famous speakeasy called the 505,

Speaker 8 which opened after 1 o'clock after the liquor control board of Ontario closed most of the bars in the province.

Speaker 8 We had a bar at the corner of Queenan River at 505 Queen Street, and all the streetcar drivers and cops from like outlying regions and waiters and waitresses and dancers would come to drink.

Speaker 8 And I had a record on by the Downchild Blues Band out of Toronto, Donnie Walsh, an incredible seminal artist out of Canada. And John and I were listening to it and John said, what is this?

Speaker 8 It's a great record. I said, oh, it's just a local blues band.
Blues? I'm from Chicago. I hear the blues now and again, but I'm into heavy metal.
He says,

Speaker 8 I said, well, John, you show me heavy metal and I'll show you the blues. So we started to kind of talk about it and listen.
And Howard Shore was there that night.

Speaker 8 He's, of course, the great Oscar-winning composer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy music.

Speaker 8 He was the original musical director on Saturday Night Live, and he was in Toronto at that time and had dropped by the bar.

Speaker 8 And he said, yeah, you guys should start a band, and you could call it the Blues Brothers. And we just went bink, bink.

Speaker 8 And we started to correspond. I didn't go back to New York with John.

Speaker 8 He'd managed to get Gilda to go back with him, but we kept in touch on the phone and we started to look at material and develop material. And we did our first gig in New York in the Low and Star Cafe.

Speaker 8 And our backup band was Willie Nelson with Mickey Raphael, one of the greatest harmonica players ever. And Willie understood what we were trying to do, like so many that came along and joined us.

Speaker 8 They understood that, okay, these guys aren't the greatest musicians or singers or dancers, but what they are are great front men and they love and respect the music.

Speaker 8 So the hat and glasses are from the John Lee Hooker album House of the Blues. He wears those shades and that hat on the cover there.
The suits, the black

Speaker 8 jacket and thin tie and white shirts were because,

Speaker 8 you know, a lot of artists in the 60s kind of you know who were progressive and maybe were getting in trouble with the law like Lenny Bruce wanted to look straight and so it was kind of trying to get that IRS look together to kind of fool the straights was where that that came from.

Speaker 8 One of my first jobs in broadcasting was working for CITY-TV in Toronto, which was this whole new concept in urban television that really

Speaker 8 basically today your news desk, your news desks across America, Channel 7, 4, or 2, wherever you want to be in network, with the graphics and the presence,

Speaker 8 the seemingly sort of active presence of the newscaster. This is from Moses Nymer's C-I-T-Y-T-V.
He basically changed the whole format and the whole delivery of news in North America.

Speaker 8 And I worked for his station. I was a game show announcer.
And I also did

Speaker 8 the...

Speaker 8 you know, the shot box announcing. So I actually had to do that fast wrap stuff for, you know, for

Speaker 8 car companies and beer companies and all that. So sure, I was actually doing it professionally when I first started out.

Speaker 8 I was hired by none other than Ivan Reitman, who we went on to do the Ghostbusters thing together.

Speaker 9 Well, so you were doing the real thing before you did the parodies?

Speaker 8 I was, yeah. I was a mailman in Toronto when I first moved there.
I knew I wanted to go to Toronto, work with Lorne Michaels again. I had gone there to do a special with him when I was 19.

Speaker 8 Went back to Carleton University. couldn't concentrate, you know,

Speaker 8 had to be in show business, dropped out of school, much to the chagrin of my parents. I got a job driving Mail truck in Toronto, and then I shifted to the broadcasting.

Speaker 8 And, yeah, I was a shock box announcer for about a year there with City TV and hired by Ivan Reitman and recommended by Lauren. Lauren said you should hire this kid.

Speaker 8 So Lauren Michaels has been instrumental in my career from, you know, basically age 17.

Speaker 9 Let me ask you about one of the...

Speaker 9 parody commercials you did and this is this is a a terrific video compilation of your best or some of your best sketches from Saturday Night Live and this is this is the one for the Basomatic.

Speaker 9 It's like a blender that turns fish into a delicious shake.

Speaker 8 People remember.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Tell me how you came up with this and if it relates to a real ad that you ever did.

Speaker 8 Oh, yeah, no, no. No, my aunt, my aunt, the late Hélène Goujon,

Speaker 8 she was a lovely woman, my mother's sister. She was, in fact, the Julia Child of Canada.
Really? She had, yep. She had a television show and

Speaker 8 a cuisine shop in Montreal during the

Speaker 8 60s. And

Speaker 8 I went to her house for lunch, and she was a

Speaker 8 master gourmet chef, and she was very well known for, she was on the

Speaker 8 network, the TV up there. And she said she was making a fish soup, and I saw, she dropped the whole fish into the blender.

Speaker 8 I said, with the bones and everything, you know, she said, oh, no, no, no, the bones. You pick the bones out like you're eating a filet.
Don't worry about it. And I never forgot that.

Speaker 8 And then, you know, many years later, I was sitting with Paul Simon and Lauren Michaels and Elaine and Chevy and John and I were there.

Speaker 8 Belushi, Simon, Paul Simon, me, Lauren and Chevy, and we're sitting there. And, you know, and

Speaker 8 we were just kind of laughing over things and I was thinking about that. And, you know, we were eating a meal and I thought, yeah, I got this idea for, you know, a scene, you know, basomatic.

Speaker 8 And when I said that, Paul Simon, you know, who's probably one of the most brilliant people ever in entertainment, he started to really laugh.

Speaker 8 And it was, it's hard to get Paul to laugh, you know, because he's so intellectual, so smart. You know, you got to be at a certain certain level.

Speaker 8 When he started to snort, I said, man, I got something. If I can make Paul laugh, this easy.
And I went away and

Speaker 8 I wrote

Speaker 8 the scene based upon that night and my aunt's real experience with the fish in a blender. And I remember a woman wrote me a letter.
She's very upset that I would change the molecular state.

Speaker 8 of the fish from solid to liquid on, you know, on television. She was really, really upset about that.

Speaker 8 And I wrote her back and I said, well, you know, this was actually the way that my aunt made fish soup.

Speaker 9 Well, let's hear Dan Dan Aykroyd advertising the Basomatic on Saturday Night Live.

Speaker 10 How many times has this happened to you? You have a bass. You're trying to find an exciting new way to prepare it for dinner.

Speaker 10 You could scale the bass, remove the bass's tail, head, and bones, and serve the fish as you would any other fish dinner.

Speaker 10 But why bother now that you can use Ravco's amazing new kitchen tool, the Super Bassomatic 76? Yes, fish eaters, the days of troublesome scaling, cutting, and gutting are over.

Speaker 10 Because Super Bassomatic 76 is the tool that lets you use the whole bass with no fish waste without scaling, cutting, or gutting. Here's how it works: catch a bass, remove the hook, and drop the bass.

Speaker 10 That's the whole bass into the Super Basomatic 76. Now adjust the control dial so that that bass

Speaker 10 is blended just the way you like it.

Speaker 10 Yes, it's just that simple.

Speaker 2 Dan Aykroyd spoke to Terry Gross in 2004. One of the original writers on Saturday Night Live was Alan Zweibel.

Speaker 2 In 1989, he told Terry about how he collaborated with Gilda Radner on several of her characters. Together, they wrote such still memorable comic creations as Emily Lutella and Roseanne Rosanna Dana.

Speaker 11 She was a great writer, undisciplined in that she wouldn't sit down at a typewriter and stay up all night, you know.

Speaker 11 However, whenever we would write together, it was usually by virtue of me taking a legal pen and a pen, and the two of us go into a restaurant.

Speaker 11 And I would basically interview her on whatever we were going to do that week, whether it was Roseanne, Roseanne Adana, Emily Lutella, any of the other things that I'd written for her, I'd say, okay,

Speaker 11 how do you feel about this? What would Roseanne say about that?

Speaker 12 So you co-created the Emily Lutella character with her?

Speaker 11 That was a, yeah.

Speaker 11 That was based on a character that

Speaker 11 was a nanny that was very, very

Speaker 11 important in Gilda's upbringing. Her name was Dibby.
And spoke like that.

Speaker 11 The character first appeared in a sketch that either Franken and Davis wrote or Rosie Schuster and wasn't named as such. And then we started using it more and more.

Speaker 11 And then ultimately, Gilda and I hooked into it and put her in Weekend Update. And the character evolved into what it was.

Speaker 13 Tonight's commentary is very important

Speaker 13 because I hear that President Ford wants to make Puerto Rico a steak.

Speaker 13 Now, why does he have to make them a steak? I didn't think those people even liked meat.

Speaker 4 Now, let me. What's all this fuss I keep hearing about violins on television?

Speaker 13 Now, why don't parents want their children to see violins on television?

Speaker 13 I say there should be more violins on television and less game shows.

Speaker 7 It's terrible the way things work. Mr.
Teller, that was violence on television, not violins. Violence.

Speaker 4 Oh,

Speaker 13 well, that's different. Yes.

Speaker 13 Never mind.

Speaker 12 Can you describe the creation of the Roseanne Rosanna Dana character?

Speaker 11 Well, there was once a sketch called Hire the Incompetent that I believe Rosie Schuster wrote where Gilda appeared with that wig. And Hire the Incompetent was

Speaker 11 interviews with three people who were clearly too incompetent to have any job anywhere.

Speaker 11 And it was successful. And months later, I was having dinner with Gilda and I said, you know, remember that character?

Speaker 11 I said, why don't we give her a name, put her in weekend update, and why not give her,

Speaker 11 you know, let her be a consumer advocate, not unlike, and there was a local ABC newswoman called Roseanne Scamradella in New York at the time. I said, not unlike Roseanne Scammerdella.

Speaker 11 And Gilda said, well, okay, can we call her Roseanne Roseanna Dana? And I said, why?

Speaker 11 And what Gilda had done, remember that song, The Name Game, you know, Johnny, Johnny,

Speaker 11 Gilda started singing it. And if you sing it with the name Roseanne, somewhere in there, Roseanne Roseanna Dana comes out.
And I go, okay, fine, let's name that.

Speaker 11 So every week she would get a letter from a Richard Fader from Fort Lee, New Jersey, who's my brother-in-law. He was my best friend growing up.

Speaker 11 Then he married my sister, and it was my way of saying hi to him every week.

Speaker 11 So we made him the letter writer.

Speaker 11 And basically, we lapsed into a formula where we would take a celebrity and we would take something topical and we would put the two together and come up with sweat bowls at the end of Dr.

Speaker 11 Joyce Brother's nose or nasal hairs from Bo Derrick or whatever we did.

Speaker 13 So, what does she do?

Speaker 13 She opens her perfect little purse and takes out a perfect little Kleenex and draws her perfect little fets and then throws a perfect little Kleenex into a perfect little Tiffany trash can.

Speaker 13 But what this cutie didn't know was when she wiped off her nose, she didn't push back in this one little perfect little nose hair.

Speaker 13 It just stuck out there, and it was long and it was black and it was perfect, and I thought I was gonna die.

Speaker 13 Plus, between you and me, Roseanne, Roseanne, Dana, I felt like yanking down two more hairs, braiding them, and putting a bead at the end.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 I know you don't look like her hat, but I yell, hey, ball, shove that hair back up your nose. Go on, go.
Maybe it's sad. Some think you're so neat, not the hair.

Speaker 2 Alan Zweibel spoke to Terry Gross in 2004. After a break, we'll hear from SNL writer-turned U.S.
Senator Al Franken and cast member John Lovitz.

Speaker 2 And Justin Chang reviews a newly released movie that's actually more than 25 years old. I'm David Biancoole, and this is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 We're celebrating 50 years of Saturday Night Live, featuring interviews with early cast members and writers. Al Franken was one of the show's original writers along with his partner Tom Davis.

Speaker 2 He worked as a writer and occasional performer during the show's first five years, then returned in 1985 as both writer and performer for another 10 years.

Speaker 2 Terry spoke with Al Franken in 1988, and she asked him about how he dealt with the network sensors.

Speaker 12 What's your system of pushing for something when you're arguing with a sensor or with a producer about your material?

Speaker 12 You make a strong case about why

Speaker 12 it's really not in bad taste. Explain what the joke is.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you know, people think we really don't like the sensors, that they're our enemies. And the fact is, I spend more time with the sensors at NBC than with with

Speaker 5 anybody else other than our staff. So I know these guys real well.

Speaker 5 It's adversarial, but it's friendly, and we don't really pull anything off over on them. We just make our argument.

Speaker 5 I lost a piece last year that I really cared about. It was called What's My Addiction? And it was a game show in which

Speaker 5 you know, the celebrity panelists were Johnny Cash, Liza Minelli,

Speaker 5 and David Crosby, and the host was Betty Ford.

Speaker 5 And all the

Speaker 5 guests would come on, and the panelists would ask them questions like on what's my line,

Speaker 5 and try to guess what their chemical dependency was. And the point of the show was that all chemical dependency is the same thing, whether it's barbiturates or

Speaker 5 speed or alcohol, you know, street drugs or prescription drugs, or it's all the same thing, and it all has very, very very similar

Speaker 5 tragic consequences and I was more proud of this piece than of any I had written that year and they showed it on the air it was it went on the air once and

Speaker 5 it went over great and they decided not to run it in the repeat why not

Speaker 5 because it dealt with drugs and it got laughs

Speaker 5 and there is this prejudice against comedy which is if if you do comedy therefore it isn't serious.

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 5 they're just two separate things.

Speaker 12 But let me just ask you, when a sketch of yours is killed, either before it airs or in this case, it was a very good thing. That was very unusual.

Speaker 4 It was killed for the rerun.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that was unusual.

Speaker 12 What do you do? I mean, do you just accept it or do you go in and make a big argument about it?

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 5 we're beginning to try to make an argument higher up.

Speaker 5 We're thinking maybe this is something General Electric will understand, that we're in competition competition with cable and Saturday Night Lives on at 11.30 and at least at one time had a reputation of being on the cutting edge.

Speaker 5 And that some of the censorship that we've had this year and in the last couple of years has really been silly.

Speaker 5 We wrote a sketch called The Jew Not a Jew. It was a game show

Speaker 5 in which

Speaker 5 you know it'd be like

Speaker 5 there'd be like a big board with the you know, and someone's pictured come up and it'd be like family feud and there'd be two families and Penny Marshall's face would come up on it

Speaker 4 and you go, she was,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 star of Laverne and Shirley, now a director, married to All in the Families meathead one time, Penny Marshall, Jew or not a Jew? And then ding, ding, ding, ding, take it knoplers.

Speaker 4 You know,

Speaker 5 she looks, she's from New York or something. She's got a big nose.

Speaker 5 We're going to say Jew.

Speaker 5 Sorry. Penny Marshall is Italian of Italian descent.
But anyway, the point was that NBC, our censors said, no, you can't do this because some people will take it the wrong way.

Speaker 5 And we're just saying, well,

Speaker 5 yeah, but it's not intended to be anti-Semitic. I'm Jewish.
I wrote it. I'm Jewish.
This is what we used to do at home when we were sitting at home. We'd

Speaker 5 email Farrar on TV and go, you think he's a Jew? I don't know.

Speaker 5 And my dad would go, you know, Leslie Howard is Jewish, Alan.

Speaker 4 Really?

Speaker 5 Yes, he is.

Speaker 12 I think it's a preoccupation that a lot of Jewish people have trying to figure out who's Jewish and who isn't.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Yeah.
So it's sort of a living. We made it into this game show.

Speaker 4 So that never got on the air?

Speaker 5 No, it never got on the air. And it's just stupid, you know? I mean, I think at one point they, like, asked some rabbi if it was okay to put it on or something.

Speaker 12 It's taken it to the top.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 12 You started on Saturday Night Live the first season it was on,

Speaker 12 and you've been in and out of the show several times, right?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Tom and I have worked, we're called Lorne Again.

Speaker 4 We've been there whenever Lauren's there.

Speaker 5 Lorne Again writers. And so we've been there from, we were there for the first five years, and now we've been here or there for the last three.

Speaker 12 First show this season that I saw you on Saturday Night Live, you had revived the Al Franken decade.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 12 How did you first come up with that?

Speaker 5 Oh, the Al Franken decade. Okay, basically what happened was I was in 1979.
I was at the end of 1979. Remember the 70s was the Mi Decade?

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 everybody was sort of saying, well, the Mi Decade's over. What's the next decade going to be about?

Speaker 5 And there'd be some guy who would write a thing, My Turn, in Newsweek, and he'd say, this is going to be the

Speaker 7 pull together

Speaker 5 generation revolving around how we use our energy resources. And then at the bottom would say, Ted Hudnutt is an energy resource consultant.

Speaker 5 And I realized that everybody was saying basically that the 70s was the me decade, but the 80s is going to be about this thing that I'm involved with.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 5 I figured I'd just make it the Al Franken decade.

Speaker 12 Al Franken, thanks a lot for talking with us.

Speaker 5 Okay, well, thank you.

Speaker 2 Al Franken speaking to Terry Gross in 1988. And by the way, his Jew not a Jew sketch did eventually get on the air later that year with Tom Hanks playing the game show hooks.

Speaker 13 10 points, 10 points. Okay, let's continue.
Hands on buzzers.

Speaker 13 Mayor of New York.

Speaker 13 Yes, yes, he's a Jew, Bob. Yes,

Speaker 13 that's right. Headcuts is a Jew.

Speaker 4 10 points.

Speaker 2 We'll hear another one of their conversations after a break. This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 When Al Franken spoke to Terry again in 1992, he was a more prominent performer on Saturday Night Live. He satirized the recovery movement through his character Stuart Smalley.

Speaker 2 Stewart was a caring nurturer who was addicted to 12-step programs and dispensed advice on how to keep a positive attitude.

Speaker 2 Franken even wrote a book of Stewart's daily affirmations and released an audio tape of his guided visualizations.

Speaker 2 Both of those works were titled, I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Dog on It, People Like Me.

Speaker 7 I'm going to do a great guided visualization tape and I'm going to help people because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.

Speaker 7 Hello, I'm Stuart Smalley and welcome to You're Good Enough, You're Smart Enough, and Dog on It, People Like You. A healing journey through the dysfunctional forest and other guided visualizations.

Speaker 7 It's a long title, but that's okay. It's appropriate.

Speaker 7 Now, before we go any further in this tape, I do want to start with a little warning.

Speaker 7 Guided visualizations are powerful stuff, and hopefully the visualizations on this tape will transport the you inside of you or whatever, and free that inside person to be the best you inside of you that you can be.

Speaker 7 But I think I would be remiss if I did not not tell you that I am not a licensed therapist, and while I am being paid to do this, I am not a professional in the therapeutic sense.

Speaker 7 And I do worry that I will misuse this power and really screw somebody up, you know, accidentally.

Speaker 12 How did you come up with the kind of whiny voice that you use for the character?

Speaker 5 You know, the voice, it's funny, sometimes when you write something, it comes with a voice, and this just did. And I don't know why exactly, other than maybe there are a few people.

Speaker 5 I actually belong to

Speaker 5 one of those groups. I belong to an anonymous fellowship for

Speaker 5 friends and

Speaker 5 family members of drunks or recovering alcoholics, too.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I think there were a number of people in rooms that I that I've met who sort of remind me of Stuart.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I guess the reason I came up with Stuart and the way he is is that one of the great things I learned going to this fellowship is

Speaker 5 that I can learn stuff from people who I never in a million years thought I could.

Speaker 5 And so I sort of deliberately made Stuart

Speaker 5 pretty silly and lame in a lot of ways, but

Speaker 5 very kind of courageous and sweet and vulnerable in his own way.

Speaker 12 I think that's one of the things I really love about the character is that you do kind of have it both ways.

Speaker 12 You know, it's like really funny and you're really mocking the character and at the same time you can tell you have a real kind of affection and caring for him too.

Speaker 5 Well, actually,

Speaker 5 people who know me very well know that there's a lot of Stewart inside of me.

Speaker 5 A lot of the insecurity and a lot of the

Speaker 5 self-doubt and... all that stuff.
And I think it's in a lot of people because I think there are parts of all of us that are very vulnerable and very

Speaker 5 you know, can be stupid at times. And I think it's o you know, it it's it's fine to give yourself permission to do that and not, you know, beat yourself up.

Speaker 12 How do you deal with some of the language of the recovery movement, which you mock a lot,

Speaker 12 but also probably have some respect for too? Like Stuart's always saying, you know, that, well, this isn't my best show, but that's okay.

Speaker 12 So there's all this affirmation in the language.

Speaker 5 Well, affirmations are,

Speaker 5 first of all, a program has this incredible amount of jargon.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And the jargon is usually just a shorthand for

Speaker 5 some concept.

Speaker 5 So all it really is, is just a way for someone to grasp, hold on to a concept. And most of these concepts are pretty sound.

Speaker 5 And so, but the jargon can get pretty grading and silly. And yet,

Speaker 5 when the concept has helped you so much and the the way you got to the concept was through the jargon, you kind of hold on to the jargon.

Speaker 5 So that's Stewart is a program junkie, so he is a jargon junkie. So actually, people

Speaker 5 send me these things.

Speaker 5 I got one the other day, which is

Speaker 5 fear is a dark room where negatives get developed,

Speaker 4 which is

Speaker 5 a gift through the mail.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 5 if you're listening and you got good ones, send them to me. Stuart will use them.

Speaker 12 What are some of your other favorites?

Speaker 5 Another one someone sent to me was:

Speaker 5 it's easier to put on slippers than to carpet the entire world.

Speaker 12 Yes, I like that a lot.

Speaker 5 And there's one I'm doing that I heard in program that I'm using this week because Stuart is going to be, I think, is going to be on the show this week.

Speaker 5 He's apologizing for yesterday's show, which is what he always does. And

Speaker 5 he evidently took Madonna's inventory. And

Speaker 5 he he says,

Speaker 5 which is a good thing to remember. When you're pointing a finger at someone else, remember there are three fingers pointing back at you.

Speaker 12 Now, tell me your reaction to this aspect of the recovery movement, the people who say humor is a good recovery tool.

Speaker 5 Well, Stuart believes that.

Speaker 5 He says, one of the affirmations is, today I will laugh at least once.

Speaker 5 And I've already laughed today, today, so

Speaker 5 I'm fine.

Speaker 12 There are some people in the recovery movement who really do believe that humor is good therapy.

Speaker 12 So, although they are humorless themselves, they have taught themselves like little jokes and little ways to be humorous, and they're very proud of it.

Speaker 12 And it's a kind of like prescription for their health. Do you come across people like that? And I wonder how you react to them and how they react to you.

Speaker 5 Well, you know, that's funny. As you said that,

Speaker 5 it's true, and it's the first time I've realized that,

Speaker 5 which I can't believe that's the first time I realized that. Thank you for no, it is true.
There are people who I

Speaker 5 because there are laughter in these rooms. By the way, there's much

Speaker 5 I've gone to some open AA meetings and there's a lot more laughter in

Speaker 5 Alcoholics Anonymous than in Al-Anon. which is really unfair if you think about it.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 5 no, there are you're absolutely right. There are people who, just by nature, have no sense sense of humor, but know that it's a good thing and are working on it.

Speaker 5 And it's a really, really ugly thing to observe.

Speaker 5 But I, you know, God bless them.

Speaker 2 Al Franken, speaking to Terry Gross in 1992. He left Saturday Night Live in 1995 and 14 years later was elected as the Democratic Senator for Minnesota, where he served until 2018.

Speaker 2 We'll end our Saturday Night Live tribute with a brief visit with one of the cast members who became a star during Franken's second stint with the show, John Lovitz, who was part of the repertory company from 1984 to 1990.

Speaker 2 The characters he created included Tommy Flanagan, the pathological liar, and Master Thespian, the pretentious actor. In 1992, he told Terry the story behind the creation of Master Thespian.

Speaker 16 I went to a college at UC Irvine and there was a professor of mine, William Needles, who taught me Shakespeare. And when he would do it, though, himself, he'd always go, he'd say like,

Speaker 16 the opening speech from Henry V, the chorus, was, oh, for the music fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.

Speaker 16 And he would say, like, oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention, like that. And I thought it was very funny.
I thought it was very good, but very funny, too.

Speaker 16 And I used to imitate him and then

Speaker 16 I kind of put it together with, you know, and then I wanted to be an actor. And an actor is a, you know, that's what a thespian is.

Speaker 16 So I was like the master thespian. You know, I just joke around my friend and say, I'm the master thespian, because I just wanted to be a great actor.

Speaker 7 That was my goal.

Speaker 12 One of my favorite sketches of the ones that you've done on Saturday Night Live is was Harry Hanukkah.

Speaker 4 Oh. Did you write that?

Speaker 16 No, Al Franken and Mike Myers wrote it.

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 16 but I based it on they wrote it and it was really funny. And then I based it on this actor, Ned Glass.

Speaker 16 Ned Glass, he talks like this. And he was the father on Bridget and Bernie.
He was the Jewish father.

Speaker 7 He was in

Speaker 16 he's probably Westside Story. He was Pops, who I guess who runs the drugstore or the candy store.

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 16 when I was 15 years old.

Speaker 4 What's wrong with you kids?

Speaker 16 Well,

Speaker 16 if you see these movies, you know who he is. When I was 15 years old,

Speaker 16 I was at my best friend's house, and his father is a doctor, and

Speaker 16 Ned Glass was one of his patients.

Speaker 16 And I was 15, and my friend's father says to Ned Glass John wants to be an actor and he says you want to be an actor he goes what would you do if you hurt your toe and I said

Speaker 16 I'd say ouch he goes would you say ouch if you were Hercules

Speaker 4 and he goes you know what you have to do

Speaker 16 He goes, you know what you have to know to be an actor? You have to know everything. You think you could know everything? You have to know everything.

Speaker 16 You know, so as if he knew everything. And then he goes, you know, there was only, and he was literally he was the same in everything

Speaker 16 he played. And he was, you know, he was a good actor and he was funny, but he was always, he was just himself.
He was exactly the same. And he says, you know,

Speaker 16 there was only two actors who were never typecast. Me and Paul Muni.

Speaker 16 Anyways, I never forgot him. So I, that's why.

Speaker 16 And he was good. He was a funny actor, you know, he's funny.

Speaker 16 You know, he never, I guess he always thought he played all these different characters, and really he was just always, hello, how are you?

Speaker 16 I mean, mean, in Julius Caesar, in the movie with Marlon Brannell, he's in the opening market scene, and everyone's going, my lord, come here and hither.

Speaker 16 And he's in the market scene, you want to buy some oranges, my lord?

Speaker 5 You know.

Speaker 12 Were there any jokers in your family? Did you have a father who'd sit around the dinner table and

Speaker 12 tell jokes?

Speaker 16 Yeah, he used to goof off, and he used to make prank phone calls. And

Speaker 16 I mean, a look for annoying man I got from him. He used to comb his hair forward and wear his glasses low.
He didn't act like that, but that's where I got the look from. And he used to

Speaker 16 do something. He used to come home and tell us he was his twin brother Howard.
We would be like seven or eight and a

Speaker 16 half but he would play it so straight for like a half an hour and just insist on it and then he would leave and then like 20 minutes later come back.

Speaker 16 I guess he would just wait in his car. And then we'd say, Howard was here.

Speaker 4 He goes, he was?

Speaker 16 You know.

Speaker 9 So he really had a twin brother, Howard?

Speaker 4 Huh? No, he didn't. Oh, he didn't?

Speaker 16 No, he just said he did.

Speaker 4 I see. Okay.

Speaker 16 We were young, and he would do stuff like that.

Speaker 2 John Lovitz, speaking to Terry Gross in 1992.

Speaker 2 The 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live is being celebrated all weekend, with a live concert streaming on Peacock Tonight, a repeat of the very first episode of SNL in the show's regular late-night Saturday time slot on NBC, and a three-hour live special on NBC Sunday night.

Speaker 2 Coming up, Justin Chang reviews a new movie that's also an old movie.

Speaker 4 He'll explain after a break.

Speaker 2 This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 This week sees the belated release of The Annihilation of Fish, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 1999, but is only now opening in theaters for the first time.

Speaker 2 It's a romantic comedy starring the late trio of James Earl Jones, Lynn Redgrave, and Margot Kidder, and was directed by Charles Burnett, best known for his 1978 classic, Killer of Sheep.

Speaker 2 Our film critic, Justin Chang, has this review of The Annihilation of Fish.

Speaker 4 The 80-year-old Charles Burnett is often thought of as one of American cinema's last true independents.

Speaker 4 His movies, most of which focus on working-class black families in his home city of Los Angeles, have been underseen, underexposed, and sometimes misunderstood.

Speaker 4 In the past couple of decades, he's been rightly recognized as one of the greats. His 1978 first feature, Killer of Sheep, was released in theaters in 2007 and widely hailed as a masterpiece.

Speaker 4 Burnett himself received an honorary Oscar in 2017.

Speaker 4 Critics have played their part in Burnett's rediscovery, though some have been blamed for burying his work in the first place.

Speaker 4 His 1983 feature, My Brother's Wedding, was never properly released, for reasons often attributed to a mixed review in the New York Times.

Speaker 4 And this week brings the overdue arrival of Burnett's 1999 comedy, The Annihilation of Fish, which, because of a pan from variety, as the story goes, never landed an American distributor.

Speaker 4 That we can see it now, nearly 26 years later, is due to the remarkable efforts of the UCLA Film and Television Archive, the Film Foundation, and Milestone Films, which worked together to restore the movie.

Speaker 4 It's now getting a limited theatrical release. There are a lot of reasons to seek out the Annihilation of Fish,

Speaker 4 especially since it's a rare chance to see three late, great actors on screen together, Lynn Redgrave, Margot Kidder, and James Earl Jones, who died just last year at the age of 93.

Speaker 4 Here, a 60-something Jones plays a Jamaican-American man who goes by the name Fish, and who's just been released from a 10-year stay in an L.A. mental institution.
Fish isn't a danger to anyone.

Speaker 4 He's honest and unfailingly polite. Every so often, though, he gets into an aggressive wrestling match with a demon that only he apparently can see.

Speaker 4 Around the same time, we meet Redgrave's character. a San Francisco woman named Poinsettia, who, like Fish, has an active fantasy life.
She believes she's being romanced by Puccini.

Speaker 4 Imagine if Miss Havisham from Great Expectations were an opera buff, and you're halfway there.

Speaker 4 Through a strange turn of events, Poinsettia moves to LA and rents an apartment in a boarding house just across the hall from Fish.

Speaker 4 The house otherwise appears to be empty, except for their watchful landlady, Mrs. Muldrun, played by a lovely Margot Kidder.

Speaker 4 One night, Fish finds Poinsettia passed out drunk outside his door and brings her inside his apartment so she can sleep it off. From this odd encounter is born an equally odd friendship.

Speaker 4 Despite some initial wariness, they soon take a liking to each other and spend their days together playing cards.

Speaker 4 While Puccini's ghost is pretty much history at this point, Fish's demon is still very active.

Speaker 4 During one of their wrestling bouts, Fish asks Poinsettia to referee, even though she, of course, can't see the demon herself.

Speaker 17 I am, believe me. Oh, okay.
Um no biting, no gouging. Um, what I say goes, and um, are you ready, Fish?

Speaker 4 Oh, I'm ready.

Speaker 17 What's his name?

Speaker 4 Hank.

Speaker 4 Hank.

Speaker 17 Hank, whoever heard of it? Demon named Hank!

Speaker 4 Pleasetcha, that's his name, all right. Let's get down to business of fruitcake.
Alright, ready, Hank.

Speaker 4 While he clearly isn't afraid of broad comedy, Burnett has no use for strained quirkiness. He doesn't deploy his characters as cheap comic relief, or treat their strangeness as a problem to be solved.

Speaker 4 He finds the loopy logic, even in their most illogical behavior. I think he wants us to look at fish in Poinsettia pretty much the same way the landlady, Mrs.
Muldroon, does.

Speaker 4 Although a touch stern at first, she comes to accept and even appreciate them in all their eccentricities.

Speaker 4 Whatever may ail fish in and Poinsettia, friendship and love appear to be the only medicine they need. Fish cooks Poinsettia Jamaican food.

Speaker 4 She takes him to the park, and in time their bond turns romantic. At one point, Fish worries that the two of them have nothing in common, to which Poinsettia replies, Old is what we have in common.

Speaker 4 It's one of many lines I laughed at in the Annihilation of Fish, which doesn't shy away from the realities of aging or the fitful complications of an interracial romance.

Speaker 4 But it doesn't inflate those things into obstacles either.

Speaker 4 What finally makes Fish and Poinsettia seem like an ideal match is simply the chemistry between the actors themselves, the way Jones's gravitas tempers Redgrave's intensity, and the way her wild energy brings out his own.

Speaker 4 Burnett has made a simple yet beguiling film about how two imperfect people can find a kind of perfection in each other's company, and how sometimes in life, and in the movies, good things do come to those who wait.

Speaker 2 Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed Charles Burnett's The Annihilation of Fish, now playing in selected theaters.

Speaker 2 On Monday's show, we devote President's Day to understanding the scope of President Donald Trump's power as he continues to potentially break laws, use billionaire Elon Musk to dismantle the government, and circumvent Congress.

Speaker 2 I hope you can join us.

Speaker 2 Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Brigher is our managing producer.

Speaker 2 Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Diana Martinez.

Speaker 2 Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yacundi, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram.

Speaker 2 Our digital media producer is Molly C. V.
Nesper. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David B.

Speaker 4 ⁇ Cooley.

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