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That brings us to the curious case of Mitchell Kriegman.
SNLs first head writer Michael ODonoghue recommended you to Jean Doumanian for season six.
How did that relationship begin?I was inMr.
Anything short and weird, they wanted; I fit the category.
They took three of my pieces forMr.
They ended up not airing it but put it in movie theaters.
It was ODonoghues treatise on how to upset the censor, his big enemy at the time.
He was a role model to me.
I loved how contrary he was.
He used to say, If youve hired me, you know you have a problem.
I was not that interested inSNL.It was not as cool as what I was doing.
To me,SNLwas showbiz, standard fare.
I knew some of the people there Hal Willner and Cabot McMullen, who was a set designer.
I worked with him a lot.
I remember meeting Belushi backstage, who acted like your normal bully.
What was your relationship with Jean Doumanian like initially on the show?I saw myself as an outsider.
I wasnt an aspiring writer who wanted to write comedy.
Im just a guy saying, Im going to do my crazy stuff on the show.
She gave me the best office,Tom Schillersbeautiful corner office, which I adored.
She saw me as an avant-garde Woody Allen.
I became someone she brought into auditions and special meetings in her gorgeously designed dark office.
She asked my advice on a lot of stuff.
I dont think she ever followed it.
She brought me in one day withAndy Kaufman.
He pitched a weekly video, every episode.
She turned him down!
He was a big deal already.
You mentioned Woody Allen, who was close with Jean.
Any truth to the rumors he was involved in season six?Letty Aronson is his sister.
But off-screen, you did get little appearances of Woody Allen.
One meeting with Jean, the phone rang.
She picked it up and said, Its Woody, whispering and pointing into the phone.
That meant I had to leave.
Woody Allen was never current forSNL,even when he was in his heyday and funny.
By then he had already become a serious filmmaker withInteriorsin 78 it was dreadful, and he disavowed comedy.
He was old-school hip in the days of Nichols and May but not Gilda.
I think this Woody AllenJean Doumanian group Zannella, Letty, Mason Williams really represented old-school showbiz.
Mike Zannela had been a talent coordinator onThe Johnny Carson Show very prime time.
He was Jeans Jean, who had casted for Lorne.
That mightve been the reason so many of the casting decisions were so poor.
Even Ebersol had trouble replicating the Lorne Michaels New York CityToronto vibe.
You were an eyewitness to the cast-audition process that year.
Were there any notable omissions?I was in shock every time there was an audition.
The people I thought were unbelievable, and who were later proven to be unbelievable, were overlooked.
Paul Reubens came in with a rack of costumes.
He tried on each one and would do the character.
They were all characters that becamePee-wees Playhouse, so that was already there in his head.
They passed on Paul.
There was a guy named Mark King he did eventually appear a couple of times onSNL.
He was hilarious, a Robin Williams key in of character.
They passed on him.
Marjorie Gross was a pretty well-known stand-up who was best friends withSandra Bernhard.
They came in together into Jeans office and did a shtick and were both hilarious and weird and different.
Jean passed on them.
Another person who was amazing was Mercedes Ruehl.
In those days, she did an intense one-woman show.
It wouldve been like hiring the new Lily Tomlin!
Instead of all these brilliant people, they made all the wrong choices.
Jean thoughtshewas brilliant, had picked all the right people.
She was cool and the only other Black person there.
Eddie hung out with her at the front desk a whole bunch.
In a disastrous situation, Eddie was better than the game.
He came in 100 percent knowing what he was dealing with.
Then you have Bass-O-Matic and the parodies.
By the time I hitSNL,they were basically only doing parodies.
So I had no place.
I wanted to do things like Who Is Watching Now?
and go with a crew around the country literally to find someone who was watching the show.
I wanted to do TheTopo GigioStory.
All this other crazy stuff stuff that kind of went toLetterman.
It bifurcated intoSNLparodies andLetterman-cool, oddball stuff.
It was just a downer.
I think the cast felt sad and punished.
I cant imagine they didnt feel humiliated.
It was a stupid idea.
Ill never forget, Joe Piscopo was sitting right behind me.
He says, I didnt hear anyone laugh at that.
That was the mentality.
The week before I got fired, everyone stopped talking to me.
It was not glamorous.
It was kind of lame!
I had one sketch called Dying to Be Heard.
It was a good, solid sketch.
I had to do the game-show thing, and I wasnt into that.
It was about all these terrible stories of feminist poets who became famous after they killed themselves.
I got fired during the Carradine show.
Dying to Be Heard was the show before I got fired.
Did Jean tell you the news?Oh, yeah, it was great.
I wanted to quit anyway, but couldnt.
The hilarious thing was it was the Christmas show, and my parents came.
They saw the show and in fact sat next to John Carradine, the host David Carradines father.
I was a zombie.
During Weekend Update, someone came to me and told me I have to see Jean.
Literally, while Weekend Update is being performed, I go to her office and I get my update.
And my update is: This isnt working out.
I had rehearsed how I would respond because I didnt want her to change her mind.
I wasnt unhappy about it.
I met my parents, who had gone to the Rainbow Room.
Theres my mother: Oh, it wasnt so bad.
We saw you in the film, you were so great.
I said, Its okay mom, I just got fired.
And she burst into tears.
There was a writer who was talking to the press.
Jean had terrible press.
This writer knewVariety, all the showbiz writers in town.
I was very good friends with this writer, who was spilling the beans on all the backstage stories.
My comedy was me being clueless as a person, making mistakes.
It was the first day I was there.
I did not really know how to write a joke.
I see on the desk a pile of white powder.
It was a really big pile.
I thought,This is too cliche.
It cant really be coke.
They dont really sit here and do cocaine all day.
Everyones being really funny, and Im not fitting in at all.
I look and decide to make a joke: Look!
And I blew it all away.
Brian leapt across his desk and started strangling me.
Should you be counted as an official cast member by the show?Well, yeah.
They did a picture, my cast photo!
Im eating an ice-cream bar against a wall.
I did the films.
Theres no doubt about it.
I dont know if it was a little bit of malice on Jeans part to erase me.
But thats part of the experience.
It was all such a mess.
Were not just talking about bad choices.
Were talking about poor organization, poor management.
Youve gone on to be a creator and showrunner yourself, includingClarissa Explains It All.
How did your experience atSNLinform that?
What did you learn professionally from Jean as a boss?…
I think its described as crickets.
Heres a lesson: There was a guy, the visual artist Teddy Dibble, that I worked with.
Really brilliant, really funny.
A little Belushi-like.Thatwas cool comedy.
I suggested at some point to bring in Teddy Dibble, showed them his work.
They said: We hired you torip offpeople like this.
I thought,Wow, thats really saying the quiet part out loud.
And not something Im into.
It was a crass crowd.
Theyre not the people that youd invite to Balthazar for dinner.
Jean had some idea about doing stupid comedy her line was always, Nowthatsfunny!
But she never laughed.
She would never spontaneously laugh.
She was in over her head.
