Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I definitely knew I wanted to be an actor in high school. I was doing plays and musicals, and I loved 'Saturday Night Live' and thought that was what I wanted to do - funny sketches and comedies. So I knew then, but I didn't know how to go about it, but I found my way.
I didn't do so well at 'Saturday Night Live.' It was a very hard experience for me, for a lot of reasons that have to do with the kind of person I am and the personal issues I had at the time. I was very alone in New York, and the show has a lot of stress related to it.
I was meant to date the captain of the football team, I was going to be on a romantic excursion every Saturday night, I was destined to be collecting corsages from every boy in town before prom, accepting such floral offerings like competing sacrifices to a Delphic goddess.
I had just left 'Saturday Night Live' when I came to 'The Daily Show,' and it just felt like Jon was on my side. I'll always be grateful to him for that. I just got the impression he wanted me to succeed, and then I wanted to succeed for him. I think that's good leadership.
You know you're getting older when - well, first off, when you read almost any story that begins 'You know you're getting older when.' But you also know it when you not only never heard of the musical guest on a given 'Saturday Night Live' but never heard of the host, either.
I do feel like anything benefits from character logic. That can be from the dumbest ad to the greatest Shakespearean drama to the silliest 'Saturday Night Live' sketch. There is a certain specificity in detail, which you can get when you're paying attention to stuff like that.
I'm a God-fearing man, go to church every Sunday, and have since I was a boy. But if I ever found out that God cared one way or another about a borderline illegal fist-fight on Saturday night, I would be so greatly disappointed that it would make rethink my entire belief system.
You know, you grow up with the image of John Travolta being super cool - 'Saturday Night Fever,' Brian De Palma, handsome young god... he, in reality, is a very silly man. And I mean that in a good way. He'll walk around the set talking in little weird voices, making people laugh.
I love these sort of documentaries, which you might turn on late on a Saturday night - like, say, 'The Alma Cogan Story.' But they are ripe for spoofing, because the presenters are always so serious and anxious to make themselves look like rather attractive and interesting people.
People are out of their home on a Saturday night or they're at the movies or they're at dinner and a lot of the people who flip on the television are doing just that. They may have never seen your show before and you can't count on to your audience to be there week in and week out.
On 'Saturday Night Live,' I never really wrote. You know, I would just - I would let the writers cast me into the show. So my strength - and I put all my energies into performance. I just couldn't deal with the rejection, you know, getting your sketches cut, and it was hard for me.
Tina Fey, a performer and head writer for 'Saturday Night Live,' has deftly adapted Rosalind Wiseman's nonfiction dissection of teenage girl societal interaction, 'Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence.'
I went to see the Go-Go's on a Saturday night in '78 and had the best time. I was so serious about the way I played but they were having a blast. They weren't quite ready, but man there was something special. The girls just needed someone to push 'em a little and I eventually pushed.
Basically, we used to have a rule at 'Saturday Night Live' that you're not allowed to bring up 'The Simpsons' at the rewrite table, because 'The Simpsons' has done every joke there is. Every week there would be guys going, 'The Simpsons did that.' I go, 'C'mon.' And 'South Park,' too.
We'll serve, on a good Saturday night six or seven thousand people in all the restaurants, and it's like, the percentages are that maybe one person's not going to like what they get. And I can't be there to fix it. I hate that. We're in this business to make things that please people.
I was always a silent comedy nerd. I would stay up late and sneak downstairs to watch 'Saturday Night Live' and 'Kids in the Hall,' and things like that. Very early on, my parents realized that I was not going to be an engineer or a doctor. I just don't have those inclinations, at all.
I started on 'Saturday Night Live' the same time Conan started on Late Night. We just had a relationship because I would be upstairs in the studio and whenever he couldn't get a guest - which was often back then since he was just starting out - he would just call me down to be a guest.
A lot of the original people on 'SNL' came through Chicago - and Toronto, I'm sure - but Chicago was the center of it all. When I was there, Chris Farley - I knew him; we hung out and stuff - he went off to 'Saturday Night Live,' it was like, 'It's possible to be from here and make it.'
I recently saw this home video where my brother is playing this character Arsenio Grimley, who is a mix of Arsenio Hall and Ed Grimley - which, clearly, is my parents' doing, because he's, like, 10. He's the host, I'm every guest, and then my dad is Elton John. That was a Saturday night.
During 'Saturday Night Fever' at the end of the first act dance number I tried to perform a split-jump, only I can't do them so I ended up on my ass followed by the most unsightly backward roll out of it, followed by the cast falling over in laughter and a good portion of the audience too.
Arguably, the first five years of 'Saturday Night Live' were some of the most radical things ever seen on television. When NBC said, 'Okay, you can do a show from 11:30 to 1 on Saturday night,' they didn't think anyone would watch. It was like giving a piece of the candy store to the kids.
I learned that the hardest party to pull off successfully is Saturday night dinner. This meal is expected to be elaborate: appetizers, first course, dinner, dessert, and coffee. People arrive at 7:30 or 8 p.m. and stay for hours - definitely past my bedtime - and they all go home exhausted.
I don't think we were shy so much as we were terrified. Especially when we did 'Saturday Night Live' on live TV. We looked really animatronic because we were scared, but it came off as being this alien sort of attitude, which served us well, because people were like, 'Whoa, this is so weird.'
Who made me laugh when I was growing was Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, and then moving on, there were so many that I was a writer for for many years: I was a writer for the Smothers Brothers, Lily Tomlin, then I started on 'Saturday Night Live' as the head writer the first year we started it.
One week before my 17th birthday, I had a blind date with June Rose, a television actress on network soap operas, a model, and a regular on the popular Dick Clark's Saturday night 'American Bandstand' show from New York. We were married five years later, one week after my graduation from Columbia.
Heinrich Heine once imagined the exiled Israelite as a dog who regains his stolen manhood only when he embraces the Sabbath bride. I see western swing performing a similar function in hardscrabble Texas, turning dirt-poor hired hands into Dapper Dans with magic feet at the Saturday night hoe-down.
I got the call to play Tony Manero in 'Saturday Night Fever' in Madrid, a role I'd always wanted, as it's such a well-constructed show, and my background is in musical theatre. I'd been travelling back and forth between London and Spain for auditions and had been borrowing money from friends to do it.
I measure success in terms of the connection with the audience, which we've been able to do in spades. I mean, it's very hard to do that. You think about it, you go back in time, you can say, 'Well, there's, like, 'Saturday Night Live' and 'Rolling Stone' or 'MTV.' I think 'Vice' is in that category now.
I did two matches for WCW, for 'Saturday Night' and for 'WorldWide.' Scott D'Amore was booking the extra talent. I remember I was really torn about it. I was like, 'Hmm... I don't want to do that. I don't want to just be an extra guy. I want so much more than that,' but I was flat broke, and it was 500 bucks.
I wanted to be the next Dana Carvey. This was my ultimate goal. If I ever cut into a birthday cake and made a wish, I would wish to be on 'Saturday Night Live.' If I threw a coin into a fountain, I would wish to be on 'Saturday Night Live.' If I saw a shooting star, I would wish to be on 'Saturday Night Live.'
I was into the Mets because my Dad worked at IBM where he got free Mets tickets, so I was into the Mets... then I got to 'Saturday Night Live' where my boss has unbelievable N.Y. Yankees tickets, so he invites us to the games. I'm going to all the games, so I might as well root for the team I'm gonna go sit with.
I'd love to become like Bill Murray, who was so funny on 'Saturday Night Live' and has gone on to do some of the landmark comedies people like. And then to add this whole other phase to his career with 'Lost in Translation' and 'Rushmore.' I always felt to be able to have something similar to that would be great.
I've done movies with Oliver Stone and Michael Mann. And I've done quite a few dramas in my time, from the theatre to film work. I just think the audience is used to seeing me on 'Saturday Night Live,' and 'K-9,' and 'Curly Sue' and of course, 'According to Jim.' I think that my comedies have been the most popular.
I think women have always been funny. But when Tina Fey became head writer at 'Saturday Night Live,' the culture shifted, and women gained a bigger voice in comedy. It's not as if Hollywood producers are feminists. It's more that Hollywood said, ''Bridesmaids' made us so much money, all we want now is funny women.'
I have found that people who really want to work at 'Saturday Night Live' and pursue it get pretty close. You have to be funny - but everyone who works there, it was their dream to work there. So it's kind of nice in that way - there's a lot of people who say, 'I just always wanted to do this, and now I'm doing it.'
I used to sneak up to the 8th floor and watch Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo rehearsing 'Saturday Night Live' and could only wonder if I would ever have the chance to be funny. It took me five years to go up the two stories, but it is such a sense of fulfillment to be able to show what I can do on national television.
I'm not a child star, but you could say that I've grown up on TV. I went from being an unknown, down-and-out comic from Brooklyn and the Bronx to being a regular character on a major network comedy called 'Martin.' From there I went on to become the most notable black comic on 'Saturday Night Live' since Eddie Murphy.
The first 'Saturday Night Live' season I was heavily interested in was the one with Martin Short, Billy Crystal, and Christopher Guest. There was just something about Martin Short in particular. I really related to him and hung on his every word and mannerism, so I started impersonating all of his characters as an 8th grader.
I've only really had one period when I lost myself and felt like I was going to lose my career, and that was when I first began presenting 'X-Factor' spin-off 'The Xtra Factor' two years ago. I was worried if I did a rubbish job live on Saturday night TV that my music career was going to get affected and I would lose everything.
I think people overplay the 'Saturday Night Live' schedule. I mean, yeah, it can be some late hours. But the late hours are usually only one or two nights out of the week. You might have a crazy six-day week, but you'll work three weeks, and then you get a week off work. I'd take most jobs if it was hard work and then I got a week off.
'Saturday Night Live' is a whole different arena. It's great fun and I love it and that's what we do in the Practical theater. I believe in it wholeheartedly and will do it the rest of my life. But there's also legitimate theater, be it comedy, drama, classics or modern plays which I think is important and something I want to be involved in too.
Roseanne was a huge groundbreaking comedian. Margaret Cho. Ellen DeGeneres, and then on 'Saturday Night Live,' the era of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler sort of helped to bring in an awareness of a new generation of women comedians, often women who were feminist in their comedy, who were unafraid - and this came from the genre of show that was emerging.