...Sawyer knows, but what Sam Dawson knows, we're gonna know. This is going right to broke up.
What do they know that we don't?
We'll find out in a moment when Primetime Live continues after this from our ABC stations.
Primetime Live from New York continues.
The people who do it will tell you there's nothing funny about writing comedy.
One story we heard illustrates the point.
The actress Anne Bancroft came home one night and told her husband, the comedian Mel Brooks,
how difficult it was to memorize all her lines.
He listened to her and picked up a piece of paper, a blank one, and held it close to her face.
Think memorizing lines is hard, he asked? Try writing them.
Well, try to imagine how difficult it is to do that week after week.
Try to imagine writing a show like Saturday Night Live.
We wondered how they did it. So we went backstage there with a man who's been called
the second most famous church lady in America, Dana Carvey.
It's Saturday Night Live!
Okay, here's our opening montage, folks. I'm coming up. I'm gonna be there any second.
Here I am. There's me in my natural form, but I'm probably more recognizable in these different sort of transformations.
Well, isn't that special?
This crack was bought right here in the White House.
I am Hans. And I am Franz. And we just want to pump you up!
Saturday Night Live might appear to be a well-oiled comedy machine, but there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes.
The fact that it's live 90 minutes every week and we have about six days to do it before we humiliate ourselves
and we have the potential of humiliation. There's John. He's got something in his pants, apparently.
All right, it's Tuesday night and here we see a group of writers working on a Today Show sketch.
So it's gonna be sort of about the Deborah Norville, Jane Paulie flap, except it's gonna parallel the movie All About Eve.
We sort of want to keep the Today Show reality and just tip the All About Eve.
Remember the famous raincoat scene?
How do you do, my dear? I'd like anything Miss Channing played in. Would you really? How sweet.
Well, here's Saturday Night Live's version.
Oh, Molly, I'm so thrilled.
What about working in a bit with Gene Shallett?
It would be a crime to miss crimes and misdemeanors.
Crimes and misdemeanors! I loved it!
Oh, please, please, please, do the fabulous Baker boys.
They are very fabulous and I'm not bacon.
All right, wait a minute. I'm getting ahead of myself here.
The writing for the show is really, really painful.
Usually you work all night Tuesday and a lot of the writing happens like it's six, seven, eight o'clock in the morning. It's brutal.
Yeah, you know who gave us this t-shirt was Arnold.
Yeah, he didn't give you a t-shirt because you're a flabby girl.
Dana, oh!
You're a manly girl.
That's right. You are a girly girl. Like, that is a girly man, but without the man part.
Never try to keep John Lovitz away from a cookie or a piece of pie. It could be deadly.
Does that look like an alien on store?
Captain Kirk, Captain Kirk, surrender the Enterprise. Our brain matter is made of pasta. We are aliens.
Little character piece. They can't all be gems.
We work together and play around and try different ideas and even different characters and try to find the best one.
Write it up and hopefully it read through. It will work well enough so that Lorne will see its merits for the air show.
So John wants to do his Harvey Fierstein character. It's a gay talk show host who tries to pick up his male guests.
So we're trying to decide who I should do in this sketch.
I don't know why you want me to do George Burns. I remember you when you were so dirty you had to gaggle twice a day with granola.
Jimmy Stewart.
Yeah, yeah. There's no cry, only do.
Patrick Walther.
Yeah, this is like, you know, like so weird here.
Okay, it's Wednesday. The scripts have been turned in and this is a very intense time because we're waiting to see what our producer Lorne Michaels has decided to put in the show.
Every sketch that's been submitted is represented by a card and Lorne puts some of the cards to the right of the board. That means they're finished. It's over.
Then he places other cards in the shape he wants to put them on the show.
If you don't get the call from Lorne, you're not going to have a lot in the show. And if you do, that means your friends will talk to you on Sunday.
I haven't slept in 24 hours or more than 30 hours. So I look awful.
You got that right.
You weren't like six foot a wall down stage.
So once you know that the sketch is going to get produced, then the production team goes to work.
John's sketch is still in. All About Deborah Norville made it also.
Our host this week is someone you may have heard of, Kathleen Turner.
What about my knees, huh?
You're probably sitting there wondering about the fascinating conversations I have with the stars off the set.
Who do you kiss in the show? You kiss John. You kiss anyone else?
No, I don't think so. What have you got?
Most of the attractive female. Have you noticed that all the female hosts kiss John?
The thing I didn't include is all the male hosts kiss John too. But anyway, back to work.
Here John and I are working on the plugaway sketch. And it's decided that I'm going to do John Travolta.
You know, I've got a movie out that's called Look Who's Talking.
I want to be so let's get out of here.
I want to be so let's get out of here.
So it was an incredibly busy week and I didn't even get to see Billy Joel rehearse.
But I talked to a page who thinks they saw Christie Brinkley in the elevator.
So it's Saturday and it's dress rehearsal. Wardrobe wigs flying everywhere.
Sets are still being built. Yes, paint is drying.
Stagehand, dressers, prop people running all over the place like maniacs.
Alright, it's two hours before air. And look at these writers. They're still working on the script.
I think there needs to be one moment of just being, of like, ah, Betty Davis.
Slowly but surely it's all coming together.
So these won't break, will they?
So you throw these wigs on you and you're always trying to figure, you know, who do I look like?
Who do I look like? The guy in Dennis Maness, the father?
It's the hardest acting job that you'll ever have.
Except maybe playing a heroin addict murderer with a Zimbabwean accent in a movie.
Here's Lorne Michaels watching his dress show, making notes, and he's going to think about which sketches have to get cut.
And he has to cut five of them and it could be yours. It's terrifying.
Right, like look at this sketch. This is something you did not see last Saturday.
We feel we have much to learn from more modern communist civilizations.
Look at him. He's in a big aluminum costume. He's sweating in there and it gets cut.
So here are the people who are trying to get the changes on the cue cards frantically.
The show starts in 45 minutes. Here comes the audience.
Ladies and gentlemen, Ashley Turner.
We worked six days. We're totally exhausted, but there that theme comes on and the adrenaline starts flowing.
And it is showtime.
The show really came together great because Kathleen Turner was a real star that night.
I just really needed to talk to you.
It's especially satisfying when when Eggman lives.
What about my needs? I'm upset and you want to cut off communication.
And I managed to escape Harvey Fierstein for one more week.
Get out of here, you idiot. Get out of here.
It was like so weird.
More than 200 people worked on the show and in 24 hours it all starts over again.
So as they say in the movies,
It's going to be a bumpy night.
There it is. Saturday Night Live. See how easy? You can do it.
Well, let me tell you, what is the hardest thing that you have to do to prepare for one of those shows?
Learning a new character is probably the most brutal.
The first time I did Bush, they didn't inform me until Saturday morning.
You'll do President Bush tonight.
Well, how do you learn George Bush? I mean, a lot of people would like to know the answer to that question.
Well, you just think real vague. Like ask me a question. Anything.
Pretend I'm Bush.
Mr. Question. Mr. President, why did you wimp out on Panama?
Well, Sam, enough information to go down there in that area.
Wouldn't have been prudent at this juncture.
Go down there, center Mr. Manuel Noriega doing that whole dictator thing down there.
You ought to know better, Sam.
Have you ever heard from the president?
No, I haven't. I think he likes it.
I don't want him to watch my tape so he'll stop doing what I'm doing.
He won't go prudent and juncture and all that.
Now you do the church lady and you do hands of hands and friends.
Hands and friends. You know, Sam, when you're asking questions to the president,
don't be a girly man, you know. Don't be raising your little hand like this.
Well, I never used to raise my hand.
I know, like this.
You were very aggressive. Hands and friends would like that.
All right, where do you draw the line on Saturday Night Live?
Last Saturday, I mean, you started with a talking American flag.
And a lot of people, you know, the flag is a sensitive issue.
And you started with a guy you identified as Senator Jesse Helms.
He pulled out a pistol and he shot off an unmentionable but very explicit private part of a male statue.
You mean a penis.
You went ahead and said it.
It's medical. It's okay, right?
Okay, well, isn't that, seriously, isn't that a little too rough?
Isn't that a little too rough? Come on, Sam. You got to go to that cutting edge, you know.
You know, I don't know. I mean, did that offend you?
It didn't offend me, but I mean, what about a lot of viewers out there, I mean,
who think Robert Mapplethorpe in fact should be banned from all of our galleries?
Well, they should avoid NBC at 11.30 on Saturday is my answer.
Just stay away. Put goggles on, gauze tape over your face, get in the bed and go,
I don't want to see anything that might offend me.
All right, so nothing, I mean, Saturday Night Live has most guts of any show on the air.
And I'm ready to concede that. Where do you get all your ideas? Just from the papers?
Well, it's everything. I mean, there's original characters. There's things political.
Well, the church lady, for example, was something that, you know, I mean, I was a little upset
with the sort of moral majority and it was kind of a little poke at that.
So there was a political angle to it.
Yeah, I think it evolved in that. At first it was just about a personal thing,
like when our family would go to church and then miss a Sunday,
and then we would show up for church after missing.
We always, when we walked in, he always felt guilty because church ladies,
very self-righteous people, would kind of crane their neck and go,
well, apparently some of us come to church when it's convenient.
You know, and it felt like you wanted to say, lighten up, we had a barbecue, man.
But after a while, that evolved into sort of a political thing
about people who have the truth and are self-righteous.
Well, did it upset you when we identified you as the second most famous church lady in America?
I want to know who the first is.
Well, I think we had Tammy Faye Baker in mind, but I mean, if the pew fits, wear it.
Oh, well, yeah, Tammy Faye, little difference.
See, church lady never asked for money.
I mean, she didn't really like those characters anyway.
Daniel, what's in the head for you?
A lot of famous people from your show have gone on to the movies,
gone on to do things like that?
Well, I did a movie last summer called Opportunity Knocks.
Can I just plug this right now?
You just did.
Yeah, I just plugged it, and hopefully that will be out later this spring.
But, you know, the show really, you know, it sounds kind of corny,
but it has a lot of value, and I'm not in any hurry to leave it.
I mean, it was an incredible break for me, so.
Okay, do you know what's going to be on this Saturday night?
Of course you do. It's Thursday.
It's Thursday. We have James Woods, who's great, really intense, super nice guy.
And we have Don Hanley for music.
And we're going to have some really, really cool...
Oh, actually, we're doing Primetime Live, spoof, a parody of you and Diane,
but it's really kind.
You're doing a spoof of Diane?
No, and you're in there too, Sam, doing what you do.
But it's very kind.
In other words, being very calm and collected and above all...
Oh, yeah.
...daring, tight and sober, handsome.
Yeah, very handsome. Yeah.
Sexy. Kevin Nealon.
And all of those things.
All of those things, yes.
Who's going to play me? The same guy that always does?
The same guy, actor extraordinaire Kevin Nealon, who has you nailed,
and Jan Hooks will play Diane in a very sexy fashion.
Well, we'll watch.
You'll watch? Okay.
Thanks a lot, Dana Carvey, for being with us.
Thanks, Sam.
And thanks for telling us about Saturday Night Live.
And we'll be back in just a moment.
Finally tonight, we want to bring you up to date on a story we did last week.
If you were with us then, you saw a remarkable home video
shot at a daycare center near San Jose, California,
just as the earthquake struck the Bay Area.
Nothing we saw all week long captured the intensity of that moment
quite the same way these pictures did.
Fifteen seconds that seemed to go on forever.
The little girl in the videotape, Kiara Michelle, is all right.
She has no injuries, no apparent problems.
But the girl's mother, Carol Turner,
while physically uninjured, has been traumatized by the event.
Here is what she told us about it.
All I remember from what I saw, because it was so chaotic,
was that it seemed like the ground was at your face.
Everything is blurred. The kids are screaming.
The ground is shaking. There's movement, but you don't get anybody's face.
All I remember is seeing what was on the camera.
That's exactly what my eyes saw pretty much.
And by that point, it was pretty much over.
And that's when the fear started really setting in,
this feeling of absolute helplessness and complete terror.
I'm trying to find the answer to how to get rid of it.
Conquering this fear, however, is difficult,
particularly when one considers that Northern California
has experienced over 4,000 aftershocks
since last Tuesday's earthquake.
Just when I think I'm strong, there's another tremor.
And then I'm waiting to see if it's going to go into something else.
But instead of just waiting, Carol, a student at nearby De Anza College,
has sought counseling to help overcome the feeling that she's alone in all this.
The thing that I was pretty much looking for was somewhere
that I could hear other people say that they felt the same way that I did,
so I didn't feel so dumb.
I can't understand, and you can never know how you're going to react to something like this
until it happens.
And it's really shocking to me that I'm handling it like this.
The baby is so sensitive to my moods that I'm afraid that this kind of reaction
that I'm having may have a long-term effect on my daughter.
You want to run? Go see them. Go see the kids.
We're all scared. I'm not the only one.
The first thing about this is that all of a sudden you realize that you're not on solid ground.
You're not. Because last week, Tuesday afternoon, the earth started to shake.
And it didn't stop.
That's our show for tonight.
We'll remind you that tomorrow night the World Series returns here on ABC's.
Go Giants. I'm sorry, I had to do it. I'm Diane Sawyer.
You clearly know nothing about baseball. It's the A's for certain.
I'm Sam Donaldson. Watch Nightline later tonight.
Be with us again next Thursday for another edition of Primetime Live.
This has been Primetime Live from New York.
If you wish a transcript of Primetime Live, send $4 to Journal Graphics, 267 Broadway, New York, New York, 1007.
This has been a presentation of ABC News, where more Americans get their news than from any other source.
This is ABC.
Just ahead on News 7 Nightcast, the news of the murder of a well-liked local artist tonight is sinking in on the community that admired the man and his work.
The annexation dispute heats up in Socorro tonight. We'll take you there.
Also on Nightcast, Republican heavy Lee Atwater comes to El Paso with a recipe for GOP success.
It takes three things to win a campaign today, candidate, campaign and message.
And later in sports, we'll go live to the county coliseum where the fight is about to begin.
Don't go away. News 7 Nightcast is next.
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