My goal is to just write movies for a living. That's all I want to be doing. In the meantime though, I'm writing comedy for TV, which I can't complain about and do enjoy and pray continues so I can afford to eat and not watch reruns of "Dawson's" for the rest of my life. And since I am writing comedy for TV, it would be a dream come true to work on Saturday Night Live. I've been watching the show since the golden "Billy Crystal/Christopher Guest/Martin Short/Synchronized swimming sketch" days. Ah, those were good days. When we got a VCR I used to tape the episodes and watch them sunday morning. There were so many great sketches those days - jackie roger jr. $100,000 jackpot wad, auditions for Superman, kidnapping Mary Tyler Moore, I could go on and on. What I'm saying is, I'm a huge fan. It has been very common during the course of the show's run for people to jump on the snl hate bandwagon, but not me. i've always given it the benefit of the doubt, just because comedy is almost supposed to be hit and miss, and that's always been the nature of the show. But sometimes the show is so bad even i can't ignore it.
In my career as a fan, there have been 3 disastrous seasons. The first being the year Lorne Michaels came back, which featured a cast of Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Michael Hall, Randy Quaid, Joan Cusack, Nora Dunn, John Lovitz, Dennis Miller, Demetra Vance, and some gay guy, terry something. Great cast in theory (anthony michael hall in the '80's couldn't not be funny), but it just didn't work. i vividly remember watching the first episode of that season, it was hosted by madonna and was actually pretty good, but the rest of the year was embarrassing. Lorne got rid of almost everyone and stacked the show with dana carvey, jan hooks, victoria jackson, mike myers, kevin nealon, and the perhaps the greatest cast member of all time, the late great phil hartman. a golden run, perhaps the greatest run, even better than the original run, began.
the next disastrous season ocurred in the mid-90's, when the show was transitioning from that legendary cast along with the guys that had joined them - sandler, spade, farley, etc. - to the will ferrell era. they hired janeane garofalo, michael mckean, that guy from kids in the hall, nancy walls, and chris elliot. also, talented people. but for some reason it didn't work out. just seeing episodes from that season make me cringe.
and finally, the third horrible season i'm talking about ocurred way back in 2005. yeah, i think we can all agree this year was really bad. a huge part of the problem is that will ferrell is gone. actually, you can throw kattan in there too, and cheri oteri and molly shannon. all of these people left and they've not truly been replaced (in case you're wondering, it isn't unintentional that jimmy fallon isn't included here. hate that guy). it would be like the lakers losing shaq and getting brian grant, chucky atkins, and vlade divac in his place. imagine how shitty that would be. so now we have all these supporting people with no dominant presence in the post. everyone's standing around waiting for the funny guy to come in, but the funny guy is winning championships with the heat now. okay, maybe i confused that metaphor but you get my point. something must be done, and i am the man to do it. if i am ever to get hired by snl, here is my simple plan to make it good again (assuming that they give me lorne's job):
-Fire Horatio Sanz
-No more Appalachian Emergency Room or The Falconer (this isn't rocket science, folks!)
-Bring back Jeff Richards (the only great funny character in years has been drunk girl)
-Tina Fey must tell jokes that are funny to others
-More TV Funhouse
-Jimmy Fallon is never, ever allowed to host again
-Actually, get rid of everyone but Amy Poehler, Chris Parnell and Fred Armisen
-Go crazy and end a sketch with some funniness
-Change the format for once - do some short films, have an intersting standup, this is the show that used to put Andy Kaufman and Steven Wright on, for crying out loud. Stop being a slave to the structure
-Be mean. the show used to be edgy and piss people off. they get one phone call from eddie murphy after a hollywood minute bit and they're castrated for life
-actually hire me
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