Jon Lovitz saved SNL, according to A. Whitney Brown
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Steve Timko
Jun 1, 2024, 5:09:47 PM6/1/24
to TV or Not TV
Marc Maron interviewed A. Whitney Brown on the WTF podcast and it was better than I expected. Many good anecdotes. The problem is, I listened a couple of weeks ago and delayed posting to the group until now, so I can’t remember most of them. Maybe others in the group can add some.
Brown said he joined Saturday Night Live the first year that Lorne returned and it was basically a bad year. The one breakout character was Jon Lovitz’s liar guy. Lovitz originated the character and Brown wrote the sketches. As Brown told it, Lovitz’s character was enough of a hit that NBC brass decided not to cancel the show.
Dennis Miller was on that season and I recall him as an asset for the show. Brown did not like Miller, said he was not funny. I wonder how much of that has to do with Miller’s conservative bent. Brown was fairly left wing.
For his second season back, Lorne tried a different approach, Brown said. Lorne hired someone he thought was talented and then asked that person who he or she worked well with. That worked better.
I was surprised at Brown’s background. Given his name, A. Whitney Brown, I assumed he was an Ivy League product like so many other SNL crew. Turns out he was a drop out and an actual criminal. He learned to juggle in prison and busked as a juggler. Busking led to telling jokes to help keep crowds and that led to his stand-up career. He said he made as much as $500 a day busking in San Francisco in the 1970s.
Brown glumly said he was the person who introduced Chris Farley to heroin.
Brown said he joined Saturday Night Live the first year that Lorne returned and it was basically a bad year. The one breakout character was Jon Lovitz’s liar guy. Lovitz originated the character and Brown wrote the sketches. As Brown told it, Lovitz’s character was enough of a hit that NBC brass decided not to cancel the show.
Dennis Miller was on that season and I recall him as an asset for the show. Brown did not like Miller, said he was not funny. I wonder how much of that has to do with Miller’s conservative bent. Brown was fairly left wing.
For his second season back, Lorne tried a different approach, Brown said. Lorne hired someone he thought was talented and then asked that person who he or she worked well with. That worked better.
I was surprised at Brown’s background. Given his name, A. Whitney Brown, I assumed he was an Ivy League product like so many other SNL crew. Turns out he was a drop out and an actual criminal. He learned to juggle in prison and busked as a juggler. Busking led to telling jokes to help keep crowds and that led to his stand-up career. He said he made as much as $500 a day busking in San Francisco in the 1970s.
Brown glumly said he was the person who introduced Chris Farley to heroin.
Tom Wolper
Jun 1, 2024, 6:32:49 PM6/1/24
to tvor...@googlegroups.com
For his SNL recollections Brown is dealing both with the cognitive effects of aging and his admitted heavy drug use at the time so I won’t hold him accountable for getting the details right about that time. Lorne left SNL in 1980 to take a rest and then produce for prime time TV where he could become more established and have bigger budgets. By 1985 it was clear that wasn’t going to happen and he took NBC’s offer to go back to SNL. NBC execs made it clear to him that he was getting a limited chance to bring the show back to relevance and that’s why he swung for the fences and brought in Downey, Cusack, Hall, and the other stars. They weren’t bringing what the show needed, but Lovitz was. Maybe Lovitz (with Brown writing) didn’t save the show but at least it bought Lorne another year and having Lovitz bring in Hartman and Nealon bring in Hooks as well as the other recruits got the show back on track.
I think Brown’s antipathy to Miller.is personal and not political. Behind the scenes SNL has its share of rivalries and this was one. Miller has a specific comedy style and it’s not one that Brown likes.
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Mark Jeffries
Jun 1, 2024, 6:49:03 PM6/1/24
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The Cusack here was Joan. John supposedly auditioned for "SNL" in that 1985 year of Lorne's return, along with fellow members of the LA theater company the Actor's Gang Tim Robbins and Kerry Armstrong (an Aussie expat, she was known in the U.S. if at all for her role on the soap "Prisoner Cell Block H" as a whiny girl in for alleged attempted murder who was always proclaiming her innocence--turned out she was right). The only one Lorne offered a gig was Armstrong, who turned it down because she had come to America to do classical theater. By the end of the 80s (and a semi-regular role as the Princess of Moldavia on what she would pronounce as "DIN-as-ty"), she returned to Australia and has had steady work since, if not necessarily starring roles.
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