Paula Pell

Thing from my Heart Radio. Not long ago, there used to be two types of comedians, comedians and female comedians. Today there are so many women making us laugh that the qualifier has been rendered obsolete. Saturday Night Live deserves a lot of the credit for this development. The show has introduced us to Gilda Radner, Jan Hooks, Maya Rudolph, Teina Faye, and Kristen Wigg, to name just a few.

But there's been another woman at SNL, a woman who has been quietly working day after day for seventeen years, often without sleeping. To usher in this reality seventeen years, I've been there yet. Paula Pell was working at a Florida theme park when she got her dream job as a writer at Saturday Night Live. Because the show has such a wide comedic range, it's the perfect challenge for Paula. You've got the hard hitting news parodies and then on

the other end, you know, it's got fart jokes. It's got everything in it of the low parts of comedy, mostly me being responsible for Thailand albm of Eli Baldwin taking a taking a ship in a bed while he's sleeping. Tell Albim releases a gentle sleep aid into your system that allows deep, restless sleep for up to ten hours, so deep it turns off your brains need to control the bodily functions most likely to wake you. Rachel was like, did you yourself, I've slept like a baby? Done me?

Tell me? You tell me, you tell me. In her memoir Bossy Pants, Tina Fey writes that her proudest moment as head writer at SNL was fighting for one of Pell's sketches introducing co Text. Classic Classic co Text is a commercial for the feminine protection of Yesteryear, featuring the sexy women proudly encumbered with bulky pads connected to belts peeking out of your clothes. I always know it's there.

You can't take the original room Girls, old school. Paula pel In person is genuine, charming and easy, the kind of person you might actually talk to if you sat next to her on a plane, which, for those of you not in the industry, is not a description of the typical comedy writer. I was always a bit of a class clown. I was. I was a good Catholic girl, so I always wanted to be I never wanted to get in trouble. But I really pushed the envelope because I would be funny in class and I do things

like one of my teachers. I would um do a bit where I would go by him and drag my hand along the chalk line, you know, the chuck shelf, And then I'd come over and I'd say, you know, Mr Gracier, just a really great teacher, and I pat him on the back and I'd leave like a handprint.

He'd let me make him a little bit the fool for a moment, and then he'd do you know, he looked like Rob Briner and all in the family at the big bushy mustache and along there, and he just kind of looked a camera three, you know, non existent,

and the audience. Would you know, the audience the class would would crack up, or I'd pass notes and say when I sneeze, because I have a really good fake sneeze, and I would say when I sneeze, everybody fall up their chairs, and you know, I'd always be doing something. But I grew up with an extremely funny dad, and my mom is he worked for Ellinois Bell. We grew up in Illinois and then moved to Orlando when I was a teenager. But my entire childhood, my grandpa was

a watchmaker for West Clark's. So my dad always learned that from my grandpa. And then when he came to Florida, he worked for a T and T for many years, and then when he retired, he became a teacher of watch repair, watch making, all all of it. So how does the guy who works for the phone company and how does he and he becomes watch tinkerer? How was the funny in his life at home? He's just ungodly witty, he's really but never wanted to be in the business himself.

Where did he express? Probably did, But you know, I look at all the people in my family and all the relatives of different generations, and they all had their things. You know, my mom has a beautiful singing voice. They all had something that they wanted to do. But the way they grew up was you just you know, you have kids early, and you you kind of figure out what you need to do to pay for that. And and so they, you know, a lot of times didn't

have the luxury that kids have now. Even though it's hard to get a job to say, you know I'm doing this, that you didn't sign on to that program, what was wrong with you? Well, I they wouldn't just do what you were supposed to do. They knew that I was pretty hopeless. I mean at my confirmation where you get the Holy Spirit, I came down the stairs at my party and had torn like eight holes in my pantios and said I had the Holy Spirit and just would do things like that all the time, you know.

And this was before I drank or smoked anything. I was always a total hand. But my dad really taught me that he's the king of like. I will tell you that. One of the hardest times I laughed at him is my mom and I were watching die Hard on television. My Dad's cut in the yard and he's outside cutting the yard. He's got his little jean shorts on and his tank top and he keeps coming in and walking by and kind of half listening. He's a really good quiet half listener. But then he'll do something

based on what he's been listening to. I you know, I was listening to my mom and the terrorist had the long blond hair, you know, the big like kind of Nordic guy at the beginning. Yeah, And my mom says, you know, I don't know, but I don't like long hair, but that is pretty foxy, and she's like commenting on so we're laughing about it and everything, and then I'm not kidding. Like an hour later, my dad just walked through.

He had gone in my room and gotten a wig that I had of all my ship in my room, put a long wig on with just his grass cutting stuff, and just walked through. He didn't stop, he didn't do a bit. He just walked through. They also knew that rule like that you keep the ball in the air and play along. They were good, Yes, without the training,

they were good improv people. King of like a prop he'll just And what I love about it is my parents are in their seventies now, and you know, and my mom was always like you'd say, you know, you go, oh god, Dad is so funny to you, Thank god, thank god he's funny. We had so much laughter in our house, you know, despite any any dysfunction, as any family, we always laugh. Where did you go to college? I

went to college at University of Tennessee. I first went to a local college in Orlando, a community college for two years. So you moved to Florida. I moved to Florida. My dad went down for a T and T for at antitrust suit that they had. Um. Yeah, it was like seven at late seventies. You know. We had gone a few times down to Disney World with our little pop up camper and like that was a vacation place.

That wasn't a place you move. And my parents sent us a little brought back a little polaroid of the house they bought, and it was, you know, about seventy dollars. But it had this gigantic pool because in Orlando so many people have pools, even with you know, inexpensive houses. And we just thought we won the lottery. You know. It was just insane. But we got there and it was really hard the first year too. I just never liked to be I mean, I think being new is

a very important thing to do for growth. I think it really galvanizes a lot of stuff inside you, of who you are and everything. And I'm glad in hindsight, but I used to just wake up in the morning and just cry, and you know, just because I had so much familiarity and comfort with all the kids that

I went to school. It's just I was always quiet at first, you know, and then by my senior year, I got really involved in well in the girls you know, would go because I remember when you'd come in, you know, you came in your junior year and I'd say, oh, really really because I came in my sophomore year and sat next to you for an entire class and you were, you know, cold, little ass wipe to me. But you

know that's right now we're friends. And what was the difference for you in terms of the people if you can, if you can caracter from Illinois to Florida, I mean Florida. I mean, one thing that really helped me was I was always I always sang. So I went in immediately into a concert choir, and so that was wonderful because

then I had a social group pretty quickly. But the one thing about Florida that was so different that freaked me out was that, you know, I never thought I was growing up in Illinois and necessarily I mean a cold sort of atmosphere. It was emotionally warm. I had great friends, you know, my family warm. But when I

got to Florida, everybody hugged constantly. Everyone was so affectionate in such a crazy way that I remember sing it's I remember coming home and going stop cupping my nipples tenor I don't know you in the choir no, but people would um. I kept thinking it was our director's birthday or something. I was like, what the hell is going on in here? Everyone is hugging our teacher, hugging each other. I realized it was just that was just

the way everyone did, you know. And then my girl, my um, who eventually became my girlfriend of many years, was my best friend in high school, and we were very huggy, and that all worked out because that was the right person, not the teacher, not until after we graduated exactly. Then then you went to the college down there. I went to the college for two years down there, and I was, um, well, their theater department was amazing, their art department was incredible, and I was also an

artist Seminole Community College. But I mean the heads of those departments and the music department were so incredible that today they still are some of my favorite people that have gotten taught Because is my art professor, Grady Kimsey, who I'm a really good friend with. Still he had gone to UT years and years ago, just kept saying,

you gotta go check out UT. And then my girlfriend was going to North Carolina, so it kind of you know, I'd go up and visit, and I'd never been up in those mountains, and I just fell in love with us there because I'm such a nature freaking Yeah, I went crazy for it. And when you left there, what happened? And then I finished college and I came home and I worked at the theme parks. What's that? Like? How do you get the job at Disney? Like? Who's is

there somebody who's like a casting person? Well, yeah, there's talent people. And you know, I had worked with an improv group called sac Theater in Orlando. They at the time contracted out to Disney, so they did all the like in Apcott in Italy, the comedian doll Art too. You know. They would do all the comedy that's kind of the roaming, atmospheric comedy. And then they built Pleasure Island,

which was the nighttime Disney. You know, all the nightclubs Pleasure Island, Pleasure Island, Welcome Come, Mickey has no Pants on an entire island they built that had all these clubs. They had like a big discotheque. They had a country Western sort of music club. It was just kind of like a strip of nighttime establishments, but all in Disney. But it was late night and it kind of a downtown feel, like a cluster. And they would have like New Year's Eve every night, so they'd have dancers come

out and they dance. And it was really a fabulous place to work as a young actor because it felt cool and I could and I did a lot of improvisation. But then we also did like radio shows and singing. We could be kind of dirty. I mean, it wasn't filthy. I didn't I didn't go full till my typical filth that you know of. I didn't pell out, but you would interact with the guests, so there, you know, you'd be sitting there with some old British dude who's getting

drunk and just get into a conversation. And I played Pamelia Perkins, the president of the Adventurous Club, and it was kind of a Teddy Roosevelt era sort of place. And I had this big buffont and I could just be as body as hell. I mean I would get on guy's laps and you know, have my legs up in the air because I was like a matron sort of character. And we used to have such a blast. But then also during that time I went down Penis

Avenue for about two years. I was dating men for a little while, and I would hook up with people, I mean just meeting like different people I meet, well, just guests, and you know, you'd meet some super super charismatic, handsome person. You'd be sitting there laughing and you be in costume, and then they'd be like, what are you guys doing after you know the characters, what do these characters do next? And there was a restaurant and there were bars down the street that they would let us

after work go to. So you just take change all your clothes and you know, blow drive the ship out of your hair and go now I'm twenty five again. And I'd walk down there and and it was New Year's Eve. Every day it was New Year's but you vomited every day and lost your virginity every day. What Pamelion, Pamelia Perkins, Pamelia, Pamelia Perkins. Of course he's banging the guests two at a time. I mean for an actor.

At that time, I was making really good money and had full insurance everything, had a car, rented a little house. You know. It was kind, it was. It was a beautiful. It was a beautiful life. And then I got started crazy with it and that was just about when happened. But how does how does that happen? How did they find you? It was? It was a beautifully random, amazing thing. We'll be back in a minute. I had worked with

Sick Theater. They had a theater downtown. They would call me every so often and I go do a set with them where I do a character that I had written. And so they said, you know, we're going to do this sketch comedy pilot called chuckle Head. And they said will you be in it and do those characters? And I said sure, I mean I was doing, like I got beat up in America's most wanted, you know, all the local all the things that we're shooting in Orlando.

I would do, you know. And I did this lottery character for years in about three states that was played the Worlitz Organ. You know, sexy characters, ale, you know, but all from the Matron Handbook. I was born at fifty Alec. But um they called me. My agent called me one day and she said, are you sitting down? I said yes. She said, Saturday Night Live saw that

pilot Lauren wants to meet you. And I'm like, okay, for what And she goes, now, it is not an audition, but he wants to fly you up and talk to you. And I'm like, well, what is it? An orgy? Am I being summoned? What in the f And I said okay, And so I flew up there. You know, talk about vacating. I mean it was like emmodium city the entire two days of getting there. He was two hours, you know, or three hours late for the meeting, but he was

super nice. And I sat with Marcy Klein and Ayala in the talent room and I was so nervous that they ordered food and they said, um, we're ordering zen palette. You know, vegetarian, We're ordering zen palette. Do you want anything? And I said, just just like a couple of white rice would be good, just like rice. And I just got a dry cup of white rice and set and ate it. I went in and he said, we have just cleaned house. It was it was when well Ferrell

and everybody ken. He said, we've cleaned house. We're starting over. You know, it's gonna rise again. We're hoping, and we're gonna try to infuse it with new talent, and we would like to hire you to be a writer. When I was like, oh, well, I've never done that. I you know, I don't even I mean I didn't even use a computer at that point. And I said I can't, you know. And if you tell them you can't, then they will. He will keep saying well, and he said,

well we'll show you, you know. But it was so quick that it made me worry that there was something wrong, like there was a scam or something like this was all some kind of freaking joke, because I was like, this can't be. And how soon after that were you moving to New York? Um? I had five days to move, packed up my whole life, gave my animals to my mom, temporarily went up to New York City, and you know, just was just ungodly miserable and I mean with fear.

But Mike Shoemaker called me right before I left because I was starting to freak out to the point of going, I'm going to my dream place. I mean, I was obsessed with us. Now. When I was little, I used to audiotape it. I used to perform Rosanna, Rosanna Dana for my high school in the auditorium, and I thought, I'm just going to be sitting around with like, you know, ten Harvard dudes looking at me, going who the fund is? Who hired Kathy Bates Light and you know, and why

is she? And I adore Kathy Bathed by the way, but they were just you know, I thought that I would be so not of their world, of these writer early sort of people, and I didn't realize how many writers there are performers. And so Shoemaker called me, and I still thank him for this because he really is the reason that I ended up getting the balls to

get there. But he called and he said, some people want to say hi, and it was you know, Cindy Capanair and Lorina So and all these people that were new that were terrified, and they all got on the phone going, we can't wait to meet you. And I hung up the phone and I just burst into tears. I said, it's all gonna be okay. No matter what, it's gonna be okay. It's just a group of people. It's almost like of all the years of doing plays, it's like it's a new cast getting in a cast

seventeen years. I've been there yet seventeen And well, I think in general, comedy has gotten a little, you know, it's gone through its ebbs and flows in terms of things being more character driven or or you know, more conceptual. I mean, I think that show always has great amount of both. And I always loved the fact that that show had something for everybody. You know, I'd sit with a group of people that I'd love certain things and they'd love certain things, and so I, yeah, I love

the band. I love the balance, you know, I love the balance of it. Um. But one of the biggest things that's changed in general to me is the Internet. Because when I was growing up and you were an actor, you had to create a body of work by really doing it and getting hired, and then they would give you access to tape of it. You know, you couldn't just go on machines and videotape yourself and make a beautifully edited, great comedy piece and put that on the internet.

I mean, you just can't do it. I mean, my my real I just remember, you know, I do a tiny role in something and just love that. I was adding that to my real and you'd have to go to like a video place and pay the guy to sit there and do it on the gigantic machine. The Internet has changed things profound Yeah, it just and I think in a bad way. It gave people a sense of entitlement of there isn't as much awe of all

of it because they do it themselves. So it's like, oh, yeah, I have you know this, I've done, I've done my show. You know, they created themselves, which is very empowering and wonderful. And it's also getting a lot more comedy out there of hilarious people that would never usually walk into a

room in an audition, right right right. That seems to me to have been the condition for me, which is I've come to us and now and um, the signals that I picked up in Hooks and all that crowd back then was you know, my career wasn't that iconic to send up me and my career. And so it's not like I'm Stallone or Schwartz and neggrassing like that where we do that. So you come in and right away you pick up I've got to become like everybody

else and become a member of the company. And as soon as I got that, as soon as I kind of picked up that vibe from them, I was, you know, asked to come back and come back and come back. And what it does is it for me as a performer, it's killed everything else that's supposed to be funny. Well, and I wonder what that's like for you where you're in the world, where you work with the funniest people. No matter what people say about SNL, you know, it's not always gonna work, but when it works, it's I

think it's the best. What's it been like for you, Well, you get so you get so you know, isolated there in great ways and weird ways, because it's there's nothing like it. You cannot compare that experience with anything but

it really is so intense. And you you know, I started writing movies two years ago and working into that, I realized how stretched out the time is, to the point where, you know, I mean, we'll go between dress and air, and Lauren will say, I don't like the whole top of that, like add you know, a couple of new jokes, So you're you're coming up with new

jokes at eleven fifteen. And let me just put a finer point on that for our radio audience, our podcast audience, because um that SNL does a full dress rehearsal at eight o'clock on Saturday night with an audience with a lengthier show. And let's say normally they have seven sketches in the air show, they do like eleven sketches at eight, and they're gonna pick what worked best and then they're going to be right. So when that finishes at ten,

maybe ten fifteen, maybe ten thirty, who knows. It's a long show show, and then you've got an hour where you're sitting in a room and in that hour between shows, that's when Lauren and the producers and their VIDs edit that show and choose what they're going to do and ask for rewrites, and they're getting rid of that audience.

They're bringing in a new one. The band is warming up the new audience, and you'll walk through and have a task to change something, and you're walking by these people that are walking in to their seats looking like I'm so excited I'm here, and you're like, I don't know what we're gonna have for you, but we're gonna

do it right now. You know. I did a Bobby and Marty one time with Will and Anna, and they found out that we were losing time quickly, and so they said, you have to take like two minutes out of this. I mean it just and it was between the commercial break. So I went downstairs and I was kneeling down with the que card people. They were just putting tape over sections and we're like, okay, does that

make sense? Does it does? And go with children And I'm pretty sure that if like Dr Oz did my actual age, you know how they test you and you're actually I'm probably a hundred and eighty now because the stress of that. It's just such adrenaline and you know, but I mean the beautiful thing about S and L is hosts will come in and and you know, never you because you were always very approachable. Whenever anyone asked me about hosts, I always tell them that, you know,

you are always one of my favorite hosts. I'm not blowing air up here, coolo, I'm going to lose that. What is coolo? And yeah, well yeah, if you're blowing smoke. But obviously could you have men do have other holes. But like you know, host will come in with their people and they're very nice and very scared, but they have a little bit of that sometimes because they're fearful

and they have people protecting them. And by the end of the week, they just always at that after party, you know, they're sitting with everybody and laying across everybody because it feels like theater. It feels like I'm I'm in theater camp and this is what I miss doing. More from Paul Appell in a moment, This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. Paul Appell has been writing sketches at SNL for seventeen years, but like any of us, sometimes she just gets tired of comedy.

Oh my god, yeah, you don't want to watch in the pity now? My my gal of fourteen years. She watches a lot of TV, and she watches shows that I wouldn't generally watch, like Castle or you know, like Kawai Fibo or like Murder Show and I mean, you know murder shows, C S I and CIS. She'll watch all She'll take She'll tape all these shows and like Elementary, all these new shows, and I'll get totally hooked on things and realize that I just love I always loved

having drama and comedy together. I mean, that's the fun thing about writing movies now is you can have a moment that's just a heart wrenching moment in a comedy that's that's real. You know, that feels more three dimensional, because after seventeen years of sketches, you do get a little stir crazy with feeling like you're just writing something on the surface. I mean, it's great to make people laugh, but when I go home, I love to watch dramas or some reality things. I love to just not think

about comedy. I do the show and I go out there and it's really um and I'll say, I'm never doing this, this is ridiculous. I can't be bothered with this toastyiness people to these people are all young and they're all crazy and the little puerile and all they talk about his thoughts and brazils and so forth. And then I'm gonna go do as you like it in the park. Then of course, you know, Lauren calls me.

I'm like, okay, yeah, he'll call me like I get thrown off the plane on American Airlines for for playing words with friends. The phone rings like three or four days there it's Lauren and he literally he literally he literally goes, so perhaps we should do something. And I was like, oh my god, I can't believe you people are insane. This would be the week, this would be which would be the week, you know, which like that thing where we have to do it now, But you

can't say no to them. You feel like your family. You just forget how immediate it is. You know. Years ago I did a sketch with UM, with a little young, little sweet faced justin timber Lake when he was in in Sync. I used to write a sketch called UM six Degrees Celsius and it was like a boy group and Will Ferrell was their manager and he had to stay three feet away from them because clearly had done some inappropriate things. He had tinted glasses. Of course, you know.

It was Jimmy Fallon and Chris Catan and Horatio and they were and they were and Chris Chris Parnell and they were a boy group and then we'd have the host in it. Well, that week in Sync was there. We asked and Sync to be another boy group in this competition on the show, playing a fake boy group.

And so I wrote a song called hold the Pickle, and they were like McDonald's employees, and so in Syn came out with like McDonald's outfits on and saying hold the pit gull and they're so they were so crazy talented, Like they got there and looked at it for ten minutes and had full harmonies and full choreography. I mean they threw that ship together. I was just amazed they

came on. And then remember what was the MTV thing every Sunday, like the Big I can't think of the name of it, but the show the like show that they show all the videos and everything at that time. Do you remember what that? Okay, Well, anyway, it was it was a very you know, the big show that the kids used to dance to um. But the next morning, I'm in my little apartment and you know, I probably ordered four entrees from some to go things to eat

my pain, because you always did. On Sunday and I turned on the TV and Justin Timberlake was on TV on the show at noon in Times Square, and there were just hundreds of girls down there waving to him, and they had a banner with the words to the song hold the Pickle on the banner that they had painted. And I was looking at it, going that cannot be because we just did this, like I just woke up and we just and then I just remembered like I

used to get obsessed. You know, I didn't have the Internet, I didn't have videos, but back at the day, I mean, my god, if I would have grown up in the Internet era, I would have been the queen of like, you know, just having my own fans site. Yeah, because I just loved it and I wanted And we were having a funny conversation the other day. In my journals.

When I was young, I would talk about Rocky because I was obsessed with Rocky, Syvester Stallone and the very first Rocky movie, and I would talk about like in two weeks people magazine is going to have an article about him, and I would wait until we got that magazine and then I would take it home and I cut it out and put it in a script. You know, you you had to wait to get information or a photo of someone, or if you really loved a singer, you had to wait for their album to come out.

And now you just you just four years older than you remember. When I was a kid, there was no cable, there was no DVD. The trailers for movies and and the build up, the ramp up of a campaign to advertise a film was or at least it seemed so far reaching back then. I'll never forget. We went to The Godfather and I was underage and we we snuck in.

I forget how now we stood in line and it was like three screening, you know, like one o'clock, four o'clock, seven o'clock, and you go to the top of the line and didn't get in, so you waited another three hours, you know, reading Mad magazine or some crap we read back then. And I always say, now people wait to stream a movie and it's like, you know, four minutes to stream it in their tip and their foot and

going come on exactly. And the other thing is that they'll watch twenty minutes of it, then they'll pause and they'll go talk on the phone and play they lose interest in it. Yeah, now you are you left to do a television show? I left. I left about six years ago to do I wrote a pilot called Thick and Thin that was about too fat sisters that grew up fat and one gets really hot and thin and beautiful. Yeah,

we shot the pilot. It got picked up for like thirteen, but it was a bad year for multi camera sitcoms. It was kind of when they were getting phased out. And it was also about a subject that was a little weird still back in that era of you know, there wasn't a whole bunch of stuff with weight stuff, and I really wanted like real people that look fat, you know, that look fat because I had struggled with my weight all my life and huge amounts of way

a couple of times in my life. Sharon Glass and Martin Maull played the parents, and they played my parents, so it was their names. They did all of my dead stick. I mean, it was really a special thing. My parents came to the pilot, and you know, it was it was very emotional and wonderful and fun. But the process of developing a network show like that is so hard, and I really, in hindsight learned so, you know,

learned so many things after the fact. You know which one thing you learned that you can say, um, well, the biggest thing I learned was I'm I'm a people pleaser, and I always like to get to know people and see the good sides of them, and I wanted to have a lot of positive energy with with them because I had known so many people that developed stuff that we're like welcome to hell. You know, everyone just gets so negative about it. I thought, you know what, I'm

gonna go into this. I'm so lucky to be doing this. I'm so thrilled. But I befriended everyone so intensely, you know, especially like network people and everything. I befriended everyone, So then there was this sort of discomfort at telling them things they didn't want to hear, or me pushing back

in bigger ways. And because I had already established that we're all just friends and we're all having fun and we're laughing, then they would suggest things that were just show ruining, and I would just be like, okay, well, you know, and I just at the time didn't really have my voice as a as a creative person to lead something like that, you know, So I I regret that,

and I regret not um pushing more. I mean, casting was you know, a little brutal just because of the weight thing is they would they would bring people in that were I wanted real people that were you know, I wanted the other sister to be to be a real heavy person. And and when they'd audition heavy people sometimes i'd watch their faces when they're auditioning them, and they're kind of like looking at their bodies, and I'm going,

this is not good that they don't get it. That like the you know, Roseanne was freaking huge hit show. It's like, come on. I don't even remember who said this to me, but one of the network people pulled me aside during one of the castings and she said, did you audition this other girl for that part for the heavy sister? And I said, no, I auditioned her for the thin sister. And she said you couldn't pad her, could you. And I just remember walking away going, this

is so dead in the water. You know, now movies, you're doing a movie, now, yeah, I did. I worked a little bit on Bridesmaids. I just came a couple of different times and just you know, pitch jokes on the set, did that kind of thing. Had never done anything movie wise ever, and I really really had fun doing it. I really enjoyed it. And then I Judd started hiring me to do some rewrites on different movies and punch ups and stuff, and I started to see, you know, because I had tried to get into it

before in other eras of my life. Um. But at the same time, I had had an idea for a while about my journal, my childhood journal, of doing something with it. I wanted to do a little play based on it. I wanted to do something with it, and Tina had, you know, I'd read it to her many times in an s and L. I'd read it to people before I came up with an idea for a movie to do to pitch and I pitched it to Universal and they bought it with Tina attached to it

as a producer and potentially to be in it. And so I wrote that that's in the work that we're waiting to find out all the finals on you know, on that, what's happening with that? It's it's um, it's been you know, gone through its three rites and all that. So I'm excited about that about two sisters, and then jud and I just wrote a movie, and then last summer I worked on my first full movie experience with This is forty. I was then executive producer on that.

It sounds horrible, but do you ever wonder what it would be like if you and your wife were separated by something bigger, deaf like her death? I have given it a fair amount of thought, not any painful way, but just like a gentle floating off. It's got to be peaceful. I mean, this is the mother of your children. And then the new wife would be great. God, I can't wait to meet my second wife. I hope she

likes me better than this one. I've finally kind of gotten my foothold in the movie thing now and really fun. I really love it. I mean it's a lot of it's a lot of waiting around for news on things. It's a lot of you know, I can't plan anything because you don't know what your next year is going to be. A find out, but so beautiful to be able to work at home with my animals and d and just like to be aren't you Well, you always come back to the same thing when I've spoken to you.

I was despondent when you left because you know, you were such a great You're such a great writer, one of my favorite, so funny, but everything mean that and you And then when you left and you said the same thing, You're like, I always want to go home to d and my animals, animal animals, go live the lesbian life. I want to be on a lesbian fire. I want to wear my dance got clogs. I want to get a mag light and go under a dumpster

and get some feral cats out of there. I have a horse up there, I have, you know, just it's so beautiful and inexpensive up there in the Hudson Valley. It's like the amazing place. But also, um, just I'm realizing to just the finite amount of time, you know, I've I've spent more time since I've been doing the movie stuff the last two years, I've spent more time with my family. I've been down in Florida a lot to visit them. It's just feeling so much better for me.

And also I love like Lauren whenever I'm there, I did the Louis c. K Show, and I'm doing this next to here and um, and you know, Lauren will say to me, it's still fun, right, it's fun. You had fun, and I go, oh my god, it's amazing. But if I did it all the time now, I would be like a you know, a bitter hag because I just feel like I wasn't having time or energy to do other things. And also everyone is is very young.

I mean my nieces and nephews I saw delivered out of my sisters, uh the gene and they're in their mid twenties. And ones of physician's assistant ones. I mean, I've named myself at S and L nanny sn L because I'll sit at the real rate table, like what isn't the name of that hore's that detective on television. I'm like Grandpa, Oh my god, gonna Grandpa. They'll kno going to do and SEP we're ready and like Grandpa will be right there. It'll be right there. God damn it.

But if you have a good night there, you feel like you're twenty again. I mean, you know, if you have a night where you feel like I mean, last week, I had a really fun Scotch I wrote with Kate McKinnon for her and Louis c. K and it was funny and dirty and where they were at last call at a bar and they're just trying to find common ground because they know they're the only two people left. So they're like, wait, you're from Arizona. Oh my god,

I'm from northern California. That's crazy, and they were They made out in the most disgusting, face eating way you could ever imagine. And uh, I just went home on that old school SNL high, just a whole high, you know, like the whole weekend, just bouncing off the walls. And then you start going maybe I could do this all the time. I got like, no, I'm gonna do it. I would leave there on after a good show, I leave there's I'm gonna be a cast. Addition, I'll do

even even odd shows like the Gas Right. No, Twitter, you're on Twitter on Twitter, You're you kill me on Twitter? Thank you. I talked about like I was laying on a bed and I was having a great time and I was eating sacks and I was really cozy and everything was just I felt so great, and then security guard came up you ting his clothes. Man, it's like the Tony that routine. People always really respond to my

target tweets. Twitter is just another form for you. Twitter is really I got very addicted to it just because it's so simple and it's like a video game for comedy writers to just do a one liner about something. And I started doing these hey young girl tweets and I might do a little book of them, maybe um

an illustrated. You know, my nieces, I just used to drive them insane when they were growing up because I was you said that girls, Remember, hey young girls, keep your boobs in your shirt, you're button your pants, your eyes on your dreams, your head in the cloud. You know, like I can also say the thing about you know

if the guy does this. Yeah, but remember the hey young girl stuff just came out of my nieces because I would bring them tests and l and they were just these dropped gorgeous girls and they would have people I'm not talking about people just checking them out, but like at the if I brought them backstage or whatever, there'd be some some dude that would just end up coming up and saying, you know, really aggressive checking them out, And so they still imitate me how I would grab

them with my meaty, polish firm wife arm and she's fourteen. You want to talk about it? I mean I would just become this raving crazy woman looking at them like you know, and so I always i'd always be like, are your sexually active? I would always want to know all their details and everything, like a character out of a Rock Hutson movie. Yeah, the chaperone, Yeah, and the chaperone that's that's uh all sturrying my son away from

the hoochie girl houchie dancers. You know, Um, you're a woman, and you're a woman in comedy, and comedy has changed a lot over the last forty years, but I you know, I feel like it's changed a lot over the last fifteen years. It's even more. You've got people who are much more you know, they're just like the guys I mean Sarah Silverman and people who are much more in

living color. If you will, I want to ask you, you know, your assessment of that, how that's changed for women over your career, and also do you think that there's like certain glass ceilings still, like on late night comedy shows, like do you think they'll ever replace Letterman? Or like can a woman do that job? Because you have women hosting daytime shows, right and no one's on during the day, but the big three of the networks they don't have a woman doing that show. Do you

think that will ever change? I don't know. I mean, it's you know, I remember that era where a couple of them were doing it, Joan Rivers and different people were trying it, and they were you know, they were all stand ups, but they had been around for a long time, but not lately. So I feel like now a lot of those young funny girls are either getting their own show, you know, doing a show, a television show,

but not a talk show, you know. I mean Jimmy, he's such a fan of everyone and so enthusiastic and joyful about music and everything that that was like a perfect fit for him and hilarious. So he worked out so great for that. But I think with women it's also sometimes hard at s and l like with auditions now where you go, well you see people and you go where where are a lot of the super funny you know, super funny women and you know they're around, you know, they exist, but a lot of them do.

They they are young, and they they're aggressively getting their own shows and stuff like that. The second year I was at SNL, second or third, I remember having an agent say to me, Um, yeah, we gotta get you, uh you know, we gotta get a game plan for you and get you know, so you can get get out of here and and get a get a show going and all that. And I remember thinking, what are they talking about? Like, what are you talking about? You know,

this is like the dream job. So but I think I think for women it's just like I've always said about U, S and L. It's like the funny rises to the top with it. And if somebody's super funny and has abandoned and joy and they're not trying, you know, I don't like ever with a comedy person them acting like someone else or acting dirty just to be funny.

I'm the filthiest person on earth. But if it's not funny dirty, if I'm not being funny, you know, then forget it, because there's got to be some class to my to my vul A joke does not have a class to it to then forget it. But you know, for a while, there are some auditions I would watch where girls would come out and just try to just sex it up and be funny and dirty, you know, and it's like that's you feel like, not all of them, certainly,

but enough of them. They go out in front of a camera, a lot of them in the comedy world, and they think feel like, well, I don't want to go too far over this song because I don't want to lose this oven thing. I really would like to kiss Leo in a movie, right, I want to be something.

You don't want to see anyone thinking too hard while they're you know, the the greatest auditions at S and L were people that came in purely as themselves, came in, did a bunch of craziest characters, and you just went, this is a force of nature. What is this? What is this human? Like? They were making me laugh so hard and I don't even know what where they're getting

it from. When when women have that the condition that where it's it's like they sit there and they you know, I mean, I've seen women who they would make fun of actresses. I mean, I'm took a comedy. They would just tear apart. They would laceerate actresses who they thought were leaning too much on the sex button. And then those comedy actresses became stars and they popped another button and they put the makeup on their cleavage and they were like and they were just like they were camera ready.

I mean, they became the thing they made fun of. Yeah, and you and you realize for women, that's a tough angle. Comedy and comedy girls tended to grow up being the goofy looking, you know, the goofy looking ones that weren't getting the attention that way. So when they become famous and have a lot of money and people putting beautiful dresses on them, I think they do go They do

go that way, you know. I mean, I've got a lot of pretty sparkly pants suits I wear to the Emmy's now, and I really get up my own ass on it. Because Paula Pell will soon be stepping out in those pants for the release of This Is forty, a film she helped produce set to open December one. This is alec Old when Here's the Thing comes from w NYC Radio O