September 30, 2020 • 34 mins
For as long as humans have faced challenges, humor has helped us get through. But given what's been happening in 2020, is it even okay to laugh right now? Or is humor more important than ever? Saturday Night Live's Colin Jost speaks to Pete about the role humor can play during these troubling times, when puzzling real-life events go beyond parody, the dark side of the comedy world, and why he's considering leaving SNL.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, I'm Pete Buddh Jedge and this is the deciding decade.
Like everyone else, A big part of how I unlined
is through laughter with friends, but also watching comedy on
TV or the Internet. It's always been a strange relief
to see political events that upset us parodied. It's a
(00:25):
reminder of how absurd reality can be. But the Trump
era has brought us to a point that is almost
beyond satire. Just look at Sarah Cooper's amazing, hilarious viral
impersonations of President Trump. Truly comedic, genius, but also disturbing
because most of their basis is the actual, undoctored audio
of the words of the President of the United States.
(00:47):
It makes you wonder is it even okay to laugh
right now? But laughter is part of how we make
sense of what's happening around us and part of how
we get through it. And nothing in American culture has
played that role more consistently over the years than Saturday
Night Live. Over the last few years, they've helped a
lot of people, myself included, come to terms with the
world around us through comedy. Of course, one problem you
(01:09):
have as a presidential candidate, and this is admittedly A
very good problem to have is you also find yourself
a little anxious going into Saturday evenings about how you're
probably going to be made fun of on national television.
Reflecting on the role of humor in our changing lives,
I wanted to talk to someone about the role that
it can play to simply help us move through the world,
and to think about how that role may be shaping
(01:30):
the years ahead. My guest today Colin Jost, who most
of you probably know from Saturday Night Live or from
his recent release of his very funny and very well
written new book, A Very Punchable Face. And I'm not
going to comment on how accurate that description is that
I'm looking at him right now on zoom, and what
(01:51):
I will say is that he's a smart guy. He's
a Harvard graduate study the history and literature of Russia
and Britain, rose up the ranks at SNL, became a writer,
and is now the very well known, hilarious co host
of SNLS Weekend Update along with Michael cha He's won
four w g A Awards, a Peabody Award, and has
been nominated for multiple Emmys. Colin, welcome and congratulations on
(02:16):
the book. Thank you very much. Thank you for that
wonderful introduction. I like your I like your radio voice.
I've been I've been practicing. It was I was convincing.
I should begin by disclosing that that we knew each
other in college, so we were in the same dorm.
In fact, I wouldn't say we were close, but I
definitely remember kind of seeing you and I had a
lot of mutual friends. I should probably begin just by asking,
(02:37):
do you ever think back to what, like a sophomore
Colin Jost or a junior year Pete would have thought
about the idea that twenty years later you would be
on SNL and enlisted to do an impression of me
as a presidential candidate. Uh, none of those thoughts crossed
my mind, Like, not a single one of those layers
(02:58):
crossed my mind at the time. And I remember when
Lauren talked to me about playing you on the show,
he was like, I think he just kind of has to, like, like,
I think it just makes too much sense otherwise, and
I was like, yeah, okay, And Uh, it was a
very surreal experience and it's the most you know, close
(03:19):
to home that I've ever been in terms of first
of all, I never do any impressions, as you can
tell from my oppression, but it felt very personal in
terms of choosing even lines to say, or you know,
working on some of the scripts because it you know,
I wanted to do right by you. But your job
(03:40):
is to make fun of the person that you're doing
a fresh right. So do you feel like, does I
feel like ethically complicated or how do you approach that?
I guess it feels commedically complicated sometimes like you're just
part of the decisions are complicated at our show because
it's so it moves so quickly, so you don't always
have the ability to look back at some thing and say, Okay,
(04:00):
is this really the line we want for this person,
or is this really what we want to take away
of this sketch to be used. Don't always have that
luxury for for everyone. We try to think is this
there is this a fair comment on this person or
a fair angle of attack on someone? So how did
you process the experience of just becoming very visible? That
(04:22):
must have happened pretty suddenly. I mean, you were doing
stand up and you were a head writer ort S
n L. But then you flip over and you do
weekend update and suddenly like you're not just part of
this very famous thing, you're a very famous face. And
as you write about in the book, very honestly, at first,
it's not going very well. So, you know, how did
you process all of that, How did it change your life?
(04:44):
And how did you make sure you're still yourself? You know,
it was very It was very weird because you know,
as I'm sure you experienced, for the vast majority of
my life, I had been completely unknown outside of my
family at friends. And you don't really think about who
you are in the way how you're presenting to the world.
(05:07):
You think about who you are as a person, and
you try to work on yourself as a person, but
you don't think about how you present to society, or
how you come across on TV, or how you come
across in the media. You just don't think about that. Ever,
you suddenly get criticism, and you suddenly get notes on
how you look or how you smile, or you get
(05:29):
like very specific comments both from friends and from strangers
on the internet, and you're suddenly thinking of yourself in
a whole different way. You're like, what's wrong with me?
Why aren't I better at this? Why don't I present
better or something? Why why does everyone hate me? You know,
you have those feelings, and the weird party is it
(05:49):
almost makes you question who you are as a person
beyond how you present to the world. And then you
just get used to it, and you get used to
a certain norm or a certain level that is criticism,
which is both healthy, healthy and constructive and not. And
you get used to trusting your own instinct and finding
out what your instincts really are in the face of
(06:10):
what everyone else is telling you to do, and that
that takes time and you kind of have to build
the courage to do that. And that was actually my
favorite thing about writing this book. I did it all
in a vacuum. I didn't show it and I showed
it to some friends, but I didn't show it to
anyone I you know, an NBC or run it by
anyone in that way. And I feel like it's the
purest form of what I set out to write and
(06:32):
worked really hard at it, and and that was it.
I didn't really care about what how it was received,
and it's probably it probably made it a lot better
that I wasn't worried about. That's a great book. Thank you.
But how I had a question for you, though, the
same question kind of which is you had the same
experience of your local fame when you were in South Bend,
and then going to the national level is a whole
(06:53):
other scrutiny, and also level of fame which must have
been jarring at times or required some kind of adjustment, right, Yeah,
it was really in many ways it was disorienting, and
for the same reasons you describe. I mean, as a mayor,
you're walking around your city. Everybody knows you, right, and
they'll come up to you and they'll talk about a
pothole or a hot local issue where it's going on
in the schools or whatever. But especially in a place
(07:16):
like South Bend, where I was on local TV all
the time and most residents knew who I was. But
it was just in the city, right, So I could
go anywhere else. I could drive an hour and a
half to Chicago, and I'm some dude, and I can
go about life in a very normal way. And suddenly
what happens is there's that same kind of visibility, but
it's literally everywhere you go. Now. I didn't really have
(07:37):
to confront it that much because I wasn't doing many
things other than campaigning. Right, it's such a total takeover
of your life that you know, I never really felt
that much the difference in being able to like go
to the grocery store, because you know, every minute of
my time was programmed. It was unlikely I didn't be
in that scenario. I wonder too, when you're talking about
being mayor and people coming up to you problems versus
(07:58):
on on a national camp and pain where people are
also probably coming up to you with problems. But a
lot of things you're faced in, say debates, are really
about larger ideas or large and I wonder is it
harder or less satisfying to deal in large abstract ideas
when you get into foreign policy or economic policy versus
(08:21):
when someone's telling you a specific problem locally and you're like, Okay,
I know, I know this problem. We've got to solve
this problem. It seems like that is a more satisfying
way to do politics, which is just a problem solved,
versus having to have sort of sweeping ideas that aren't
necessarily changing anything. Yeah, I think it's true. I mean,
(08:43):
it's more satisfying when you have cause and effect, Right,
It's why to get away from from work. I took
in my first couple of years to a lot of
home improvement because like, you know, you paint something and
then it's painted, and it was that kind of immediate
reward of solving a problem. And it's the same thing locally,
Like it feels great to like, you know, get a
pot fill fill them. Sometimes I would literally go out
with the cruise mostly just to thank them, but also
(09:03):
it was like very satisfying to literally just like scoop
this asphalt in there and you tamp it down to
this big kind of weight and you're like, oh, that
problem solved, you know, ago whatever. But the other thing
that you would confront is the really big things are
landing on your desk too. If it's like just fix
this stop sign, that's one thing. But when they're like
just fix racism or just fix homelessness or the crime rate.
(09:26):
Sometimes you wonder if some commentators in the media think
that there's some big knob in the mayor's office that
you could dial up or down on how much homelessness
or a crime there's going to be, and you just
forgot right. And so these big, almost cosmic and painful
issues that you're confronting are by their nature like tied
in with the national issues that we're facing, right, And
I think that's part of what's happening now with basically
(09:48):
the hostility between the White House and a lot of
local leaders who should be working in lockstep, whether it's
dealing with with policing issues, you're dealing with public health,
and when you don't have that, it all kind of
spins apart because it turns out even the most immediate, backyard, concrete,
little problem is connected up to this big picture. As
part of Iran was realizing over time as a mayor
(10:09):
that the big things were affecting my ability to solve
the things that were in front of me. That makes sense, yeah,
I mean yeah, the connecting because things get connected in
a way that you don't know exactly what will solve
the problem meeting. If you're talking about solving the problem
of homelessness, obviously, so much of it is tied to
other shifting factors like the economy and our two people
(10:31):
have jobs, and is their mental health treatment? What one
thing I don't understand and maybe you can enlighten me
on this. Why isn't there just a massive public works
push that just gets people jobs in America and build
rebuilds all the things that are physically broken about the country.
(10:52):
Gives people employees, people, makes everyone's neighborhoods, cities look better,
feel better to be in, have better transportation. Why why
does NAT not get done? Because everyone seems to agree
that that's good, Everyone seems to even even people on
candidates on both sides, seemed to talk about this a lot,
(11:14):
Trump talking. It just doesn't feel like it happened. Like
one of the few things I thought Trump would actually
do out of his campaign totally was this talk about infrastructure, right,
because you know, he seems to want it. Everybody likes
it to be good for the economy to be nice
to run. And even that didn't happen right right, or like,
you know, even like Obama when we were coming out
of the recession, I remember there was going to be
a huge infrastructure push and I kept hearing there's gonna
(11:37):
be these high speed trains in California and New York.
And what hapened? Nothing happens, And you're like, where does
it go? Why does that get defeated? Is that just
held up in congressional ways? What happens? And frankly, a
lot of it is because it turns out that there
was not the political will to pay for it. Right.
Sometimes people talk about taxes and then the programs like
(11:58):
they're completely unrelated, like you're gonna raise or lower taxes.
It's like, well, taxes for what? And if you're gonna
lower taxes, what are you gonna cut? But when you
get to Congress, then they say how are you going
to pay for this? Now today, of course they're not
saying how are you gonna pay for this? As we're
literally just sending out cash just to keep everybody going.
But still that's been an obstacle. This is why you
and I have to start a go fund me to
build that wall. What could go you know what? What
(12:20):
could possibly go off the top? Maybe a little off
the top, but most of it goes to the wall.
That's why we got to do this, this kind of stuff. Well,
and you know the thing that gives me about that
is we've seen this pattern with with that thing for
the wall that that Steve Bannon has been indicted over
and the n r A, which turned out just remember
the n A technically a nonprofit right where the owner
(12:40):
is like being jetted or that the president is being
jetted around the world and as his giant home funded
by these contributions. That the graft that's going on there
is not that different in my view from what the
president's doing to the entire country, which is, you know,
he seems to believe his supporters or suckers who will
just send their money or send their votes into this
and then they're laughing all the way to the bank.
(13:00):
It's really funny that there was a whole other scandal
that wasn't even on anyone's radar that then Bannon was
involved in. It was like finding up. It came out
of the Lost City in the Amazon or whatever that
was untouched and you're like, wow, these still you can
still find new things incredible. So with production on hold,
(13:36):
as these things are happening around the world, you know,
as a comic, do you think like I have to
go satirize this or do you feel like a lot
of us do now that it's kind of beyond parody.
I mean, how does comedy and satire even respond to
the moment we're in, Having now extended time away from it.
I think it's healthy that for our show that in general,
that we have a summer hiatus because you know you're
(14:00):
definitely here. There's moments where you're itching to be back
on and you have something you want to say about
whatever is happening that week. But it's nice to take
a break because you also realize how cyclical things feel
and how repetitive things feel. And you know, people always like,
oh my god, can you believe you're you're missing this
(14:21):
scandal this week? Are and you are, and you killing
yourself that you're you know you're missing this, And then
you realize there's gonna be another one the next week,
and there's probably going to be another one the week
after that. And the strange thing now, I wish we
could get a ranking of level of scandalousness of all
the things that have happened, because I feel like I'm
(14:41):
going crazy a little bit. I have no I've lost
all perspective on in the scheme of history, which which
events over the last four years will actually resonate in
years and how many. I mean, there's certain things that
are clearly don't matter at all, like where people were
making fun of Trump because he was walking down the
stage airs in a weird way after his speech at
(15:02):
West Point, and everyone talked about that for a week
and you're like, well, that doesn't matter at all. It's
the dumbest thing. Who cares? That doesn't matter. But then
you're like, he was impeached. That takes a backseat to Rampgate.
And but well that you assume that's going to make
it into a history textbook, but who knows. I don't
really feels like it's not even in the top five
(15:23):
events of surrounding the presidents. Yeah, that you could be
impeached and it's not in your top five scandals is
really really funny. You have actually spent time with Donald Trump.
I've never met him. Um, he guest hosted s NL.
You write about this in the book, and maybe you
could share a little bit about first of all, what
that was like, and then how you kind of resolve
(15:43):
having interacted with him in a professional environment for a
show that went pretty well and the disaster that his
presidency goes. Yeah, I mean the show itself, on just
a comedy level, I would argue was pretty bad independent
of anything else. I mean, if you watch it. He afterwards,
I remember Trump kept saying that he improvised the whole show,
(16:05):
and I was like, it's been insulting to a writer.
Thank you know, I was like, please get that out there.
You know, you have uf hosts that SNL who were
from all walks of life, who have all kinds of
political views. I mean we had already had on the show,
like you know Juliani and Mike Huck Coulbee and you
(16:26):
know Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and and when you
look at the musical guests and hosts that are non
political to come on, they're really all over the political
spectrum too. I mean people have all kinds of you know,
and I think that's a nice thing about her. Did
you even think of him as a political figure when
he came on? I mean, this is two thou fifteen, right.
Did it feel like he was there as a politician
or that he was there as an entertainer or something else,
(16:48):
I don't know, something in between. It really didn't. It
was very surreal. I mean, one thing she always says,
like that it's Donald Trump on television makes sense. Donald
Trump in politics makes most sense. Like that's the weird part.
It was very very strange experience. And I that week
ended up writing kind of around him, I would say,
(17:10):
and I wrote, I would write these drunk uncle character
for Bobby moynihan, and so we wrote one of those
where he was basically the platonic ideal of a Trump voter,
which was kind of a we're kind of a fun
thing to have in the show where he hosted. Uh,
and then Cecily and Vanessa and I wrote these porn
(17:31):
star characters, and so we tried this idea for the
table where they were porn stars who were endorsing Donald
Trump for president. Um, this is before obviously all the
Stormy Daniel stuff came out, and very surprisingly at the time,
but maybe in retrospect less surprisingly. Uh. Donald Trump was
(17:51):
way into that idea, and that made it on the show.
And so I think the last sketch of the show
ends with Cecily and Vanessa as porn stars endorsing Donald
Trump for president, and then Donald Trump turns to Cecily,
who was blonde, and says, didn't you used to be
a brunette? And I'm pretty sure that's the last line
(18:13):
of the show, which is God and right. Again, watching
in retrospect is so complicated to look at given everything
that's happened, because I remember, even in college, I was
pretty upset by the Iraq War, what was going on
with the Bush administration. I remember the Daily Show at
the time being a real kind of almost a relief.
(18:33):
And then I remember, also, I want to say, not
long after we graduated, I remember the White House Correspondence
Center when Colbert, standing a few feet away from George W. Bush,
gives this amazing, searing just skewering of the Bush administration
and feeling like I'd never seen anything like that happened.
It was it was as if Voltaire had mocked the monarchy,
(18:55):
you know, in the Court of Louis the fourteenth or something.
And yet it feels like all of those things that
we're kind of rewarding to watch then kind of harder
to take any comfort or pleasure and relief in today
because things are so in many ways disturbing and frightening
in our political landscape. And I wonder, especially because you
don't just, uh, you know, right for us now you
(19:17):
right for the part that is most topical, we kind
of update, like, how much do you think about humor
as a relief from what's going on in the world
versus humor is an important part of how we deal
with what's going on in the world. I think when
you're thinking even back to George W. Bush, I mean,
whatever anyone thinks about his policies or people that were
working with him while he was president, it's pretty hard
(19:40):
to argue that he's not a compassionate man and a
decent man. I mean, even if you might say, like
whether it was applied to all these things while he's
president or whatever, and who knows what he looks back
on and has regrets about or or not. I don't know,
but you you sense there's some moral center in George W. Bush,
I think, and you when you look at Trump, I
(20:02):
think you just don't see that in the same way
you don't you know, even what his own family is saying,
you know about him, And I think that makes a
lot of things that you're talking about harder, like in
the co Bear way, or because it doesn't feel like
it's um it's just sort of going into a strange
vacuum or something and not affecting anything, or yeah, it's
(20:22):
like pushing on a string. There's no tension there because
there's no possibility of experiencing shame. Maybe that's yeah, yeah,
there's no shame. I mean I also think things like
that trickle down from whoever is the leader in your country.
If you're if your leaders not paying taxes, and your leaders,
you know it doesn't mind exploiting the system to get
wealthier than why would anyone else. I mean, I can't
(20:43):
believe people in America are and like, why am I
paying taxes? This guy's not paying Our president doesn't pay taxes.
You know, that stuff trickles down, It becomes a mindset.
And I think the other thing is just some sort
of compassion for people and trying to figure out what
how to help, even if it's people just immediately around
you and I have to be some big sweeping political thing.
It can just be how am I helping family members?
(21:04):
How am I helping people in my community? How might
help educate people? Even you know, whatever it is, those
small things I think make a difference over time. Turning
into the book, one thing I want to ask you
about is uh, A lot of the really funny moments
of the book are also very self deprecating many cases,
And that's a big part of comedy, right, It's a
big part of humor. One of the more interesting specials
(21:25):
I saw recently, I think got a lot of people's
attention was Hannah Gadsby, who obviously is coming from a
different perspective, but was talking about how, in her case,
the kind of self at least I took it to
be saying that the self deprecation involved in humor kind
of crossed the line into abuse or self abuse. And
you know, the psychology of comics, I think, is something
(21:47):
that's always kind of under the surface. And we're in
a moment where I think people are talking more about
mental health, talking more about kind of how they relate
to the world, and being more open about these things.
And I wonder do you see comedy changing in that way,
and especially being in a very intense community of comic
(22:08):
actors and knowing that SML has a history of some
of the best comedy the West has ever produced, and
also like a history of a lot of, you know,
bad things happening to people who are on the show. Yeah,
I guess the question I'm asking is, like, is comedy
bad for you? It's great for us sometimes. I mean,
I think the vast majority of comedians wildly fluctuate between
(22:31):
periods of confidence, sometimes extreme confidence, and then debilitating depression
and debilitating self doubt. You know, and you see people,
even people that look like they have a ton of
bravado on stage. So many of those people are the
most vulnerable people you'll meet, and you know off stage
(22:51):
are constantly worried about whether they're funny, are they any
good at it? And meanwhile you think they're the most
confident person in the world. You get someone like David Letterman,
and you always talked about how every show he was like,
I think I'm not I'm just not funny. I don't.
I can't do this anymore, Like I'm terrible. I don't.
And I think part of that is healthy, because part
(23:12):
of it makes you try to keep getting better and
pushing yourself to find some kind of new level or
challenge yourself to to get out of a rut um.
And then some of it is not healthy, and some
of it is just makes your your your life miserable
and prevents you from enjoying even the successful moments in
(23:32):
your life, where the things that feel like victories, which
are usually few and far between, even for someone who's
very successful. And I think that's just the reality for
for a lot of people in comedy, And that's why
I have a lot of empathy for comics who go
through lots of different things because you I know that
that's you know, there's lots of comedians who are alcoholics
(23:54):
or I think so many are either alcoholics or recovered
or sober now because that's one way of dealing with
the wild swings of you know, when you're on stage
and it goes great, you want to keep that feeling
going and you're like, I'm gonna have two to twelve drinks.
And then you're when a set goes horribly, you're like,
I want to drink to forget that I just had
(24:15):
a horrible set, and that becomes a way of life.
And then say you have a few drinks before you
go on stage and you do well. You know, there's
not only a superstition, but almost a feeling like maybe
I need that every time. Maybe I need to be
a little drunk before I go on stage, like people
go through. And then then you're like, I will drink.
And then you have a bad set and you're like,
damn it, and I do need to and people you
(24:36):
get into all these habits that you have to be
really you have to be really vigilant to break things
like that and really have you know, have help of
therapy and also have and do self reflection, which is
hard to do. And sometimes that's the last thing you
think about, is mental health. And that's the nice thing.
Now I do think people are talking about it more
(24:56):
and giving each other a little more leeway, or I hope,
I mean that's the goal. Another pressure that you mentioned
(25:18):
in the book is when uh, and I've never thought
about the this way, but when you become headwriter, you
take on this responsibility of basically over the careers of
the people that you work with, deciding whether to go
to bat for a certain sketch, worrying not just about
how to reflect on you if it doesn't go well,
but you know it will be bad for them. And
it just reminded me of so many of the pressures
(25:39):
that I think people go through when they first find
themselves with responsibility. Yeah, it's where it's where my my
Catholic guilt really kicked in from every angle, because I
feel guilt about what if my own sketches on is
that bad? Should I be trying to get somewhere? You
know it is? It feel like um and promoting my
(25:59):
own thing, which I always try not to do. Uh,
if I'm going out on a limb and for our
young writers at the show and saying, Hey, this sketch
is really good, we should put it on the show.
And then it either doesn't do well or Lawrence doesn't
like it for some reason. Then I almost feel like
I'm jeopardizing a writer's career. And it's sort of strange balance,
like you almost feel like you have to, uh, you
(26:21):
have to trust your instincts, but you also have to
pick your battles. A little bit. That makes me think
about just how powerful of a name or an institution
SNL is. And one of the things that was important
in my life was it was part of a lot
of institutions that had very powerful names, Harvard, Oxford, the
United States Navy. But one of the most important steps
(26:42):
in my life was when I kind of left the
warm embrace of a lot of institutions that spoke for me,
left my job and went out to run for state
treasure in Indiana, where nobody had heard of me. I
wounded up getting clappered. I lost like sixty was a
Democrat in Indiana, not a great year to be running statewide.
But it was that up that put me in on
the kind of the path to being able to serve
(27:03):
my city as mayor and then eventually run for president.
Yet I found even running for president that often, as
people were figuring out who I am, the shortcut to
that was good or bad was looking at any kind
of big name I was connected to, whether it was McKinsey,
the consulting company I worked for, or Notre Dame, even
though I wasn't an alone because it was connected to
(27:23):
my hometown. And so one thing that you're very open
about in the book is you're thinking about what comes
after SNL, which feels to me like it kind of
rhymes with that sort of moment, which is frightening and
full of possibility. And I wonder, first of all, why
do you decide to share that, because you know, usually
don't telegraph career moves in very public ways. When you're
(27:45):
very visible, especially with a book, you don't know the
timing of exactly how to come out or when in
your way, it's hard to put the data. So what
made you decide to be open about that? And then
how are you thinking about this process? Well, first, when
you're talking about the different institutions, I mean, it's a
very strange thing because you have to be you know,
first of all, I didn't. Maybe you were the same way.
(28:05):
You know, I grew up in Staten Island. I certainly
didn't grow up assuming I could go to Harvard or
or that I could work at SNL, Like those just
weren't things that I thought I could do. And then
going to these, you know, Harvard definitely being an institution,
and even SNL sometimes feeling like an institution, I think
you have to you have to approach when when you're
(28:27):
at a place like that. I think you have to
have a healthy skepticism about the place you're at. I
think you have to be examining the institution you're at
and just trying to figure out the ways in which
it's it's broken or the ways in which it's it
just needs to be updated or I don't know, or
(28:48):
or better run or whatever. You have to. There's everything.
You know, things are around for a long time, and
so that means there's probably something there that's worth keeping.
But you also have to keep examining or else it
doesn't function right anymore, or you know, things have to
keep evolving. I guess it's the word that I'm looking for.
And unless they do that, then they think they wither
(29:10):
and they die. And I think that's why you have
to always I think it's good to be an outsider
and come in and look at something and say, all right,
I want to do things a little differently, even if
it's my part of it. It starts with that, because
when you start as a new writer, or you start
as a freshman at Harvard, you're not going in and saying, now,
let's let's restructure this institution. You're you're more like, I
(29:33):
want to figure out how I want to do this
as much as possible, and and be aware of some
of the downsides of it. You talk about it. It's
kind of search for belonging. It's a theme that comes
up in the book that resonated for me because it's
a big theme of my campaign too, was trying to
respond to this kind of issue or even crisis of belonging.
That thing is playing out for different people in different ways.
But it sounds like you you found it at the Lampoon,
(29:55):
the humor magazine that that you were part of it Harvard,
you found it as a member the SNL cast. I
wonder how you would think about building a sense of
belonging when you do go walk out from being kind
of in the embrace of something is big and famous
and and just tighten it as a place like U
s or know. That's that's absolutely the scariest part about leaving.
(30:17):
And I'm I'm realizing. I mean, part of it was
writing the book, and part of it was just you know,
thinking reflecting back on SNL and growing up in Staten Island,
and so much of my life is so community oriented,
Like my favorite parts of life are community oriented. Are
feeling like I'm with friends, I'm with people who I
can joke with and work with and and live with,
(30:39):
you know. And that's that's I think, um of the
most valuable thing. And again, there are medical studies that
show when you're part of a community, you're physically healthier,
You're happier, you're healthier. It actually relates to life expecting Yeah, totally,
it totally relates to life expectancy, heart disease, all these things,
because you feel like you belong somewhere. You know. One
(31:01):
other thing I noticed in the book, it feels to
me like you go out of your way to mention
to name some of the people you worked with, people
who influenced you, other writers, other communic actors, so very
curious looking to the future. If there are two or
three names of people that most of us haven't heard
of who you think might be shaping comedy or satire
entertainment in the next decade, Uh, well, I think you know,
(31:24):
at s NL, I think right now there's a group
of writing supervisors who I think they're going to be
very important both at our show and beyond our show
in their careers, which is Um Frank Gillespie and and
a Dressen and Sudie Green and Street or side L
Sam j who's a writer a SNL just had a
special that came out that people should check out too.
(31:45):
It's really funny. And uh, you know, stand up is
so hard now because I haven't been in a club
whatever six months to see who who's coming up and
who who look out for Our Norman was, you know,
super funny. Andrew Schultz are those are guys that we
came up with together. We're all Um Jay being someone
(32:08):
that I loved as a stand up and then getting
to work with as a writer and then getting to
work with for update has been has been a very
very cool journey. And you know, I think we'll look
back on a lot of those those years and what happened,
and be very happy that we got to go through together.
You know, we're weeks away from an election is going
(32:28):
to change American history one way or the other. Do
you think that humor is going to have a different
role in our lives in the decade ahead? Or is
this just variations on a thing. You never know exactly
how how comedy is going to change until it does,
and then you look back. You know, we were talking
about Steve Martin the other day and how much his
(32:51):
comedy was a reaction to coming out of the Vietnam
War in such a heavy political time, and then his
comedy was so absurd ist and and so just fun
and an escape in a whole different way that was
completely a political And so I could certainly see something
happening in that way and people needing an escape from
(33:11):
everything feeling very overly scrutinized politically at every turn. I
could definitely see that happening. But the biggest thing is
you don't exactly know where the next generation of stars
is going to come from. You know, I think I
think that each generation makes the previous one either relevant
or or irrelevant, and so I don't know what the
(33:32):
I don't know what it's going to do for comedy
quite yet. Yeah, I'm struck by how Colin and I've
basically lived across the hall from each other in college
about twenty years ago, but didn't know each other that well,
and are now we're encountering each other in what feels
(33:55):
like a different life for each of us, having a
really substantive, fascinating conversation. It also shows you how you
never know how you're going to cross paths with somebody
again in the future, and with every part of our
society changing right now, I'm wondering what role humor is
going to play going forward. For as long as human
beings have faced major events, humor has helped us process
(34:17):
and think through it all. There's a case to be made.
It's actually gonna be more important than ever in the
years ahead, and I'm really grateful for people like Colin
who are bringing their talent for making us laugh into
our lives. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(34:39):
listen to your favorite shows.
Hi, I'm Pete Buddh Jedge and this is the deciding decade.
Like everyone else, A big part of how I unlined
is through laughter with friends, but also watching comedy on
TV or the Internet. It's always been a strange relief
to see political events that upset us parodied. It's a
(00:25):
reminder of how absurd reality can be. But the Trump
era has brought us to a point that is almost
beyond satire. Just look at Sarah Cooper's amazing, hilarious viral
impersonations of President Trump. Truly comedic, genius, but also disturbing
because most of their basis is the actual, undoctored audio
of the words of the President of the United States.
(00:47):
It makes you wonder is it even okay to laugh
right now? But laughter is part of how we make
sense of what's happening around us and part of how
we get through it. And nothing in American culture has
played that role more consistently over the years than Saturday
Night Live. Over the last few years, they've helped a
lot of people, myself included, come to terms with the
world around us through comedy. Of course, one problem you
(01:09):
have as a presidential candidate, and this is admittedly A
very good problem to have is you also find yourself
a little anxious going into Saturday evenings about how you're
probably going to be made fun of on national television.
Reflecting on the role of humor in our changing lives,
I wanted to talk to someone about the role that
it can play to simply help us move through the world,
and to think about how that role may be shaping
(01:30):
the years ahead. My guest today Colin Jost, who most
of you probably know from Saturday Night Live or from
his recent release of his very funny and very well
written new book, A Very Punchable Face. And I'm not
going to comment on how accurate that description is that
I'm looking at him right now on zoom, and what
(01:51):
I will say is that he's a smart guy. He's
a Harvard graduate study the history and literature of Russia
and Britain, rose up the ranks at SNL, became a writer,
and is now the very well known, hilarious co host
of SNLS Weekend Update along with Michael cha He's won
four w g A Awards, a Peabody Award, and has
been nominated for multiple Emmys. Colin, welcome and congratulations on
(02:16):
the book. Thank you very much. Thank you for that
wonderful introduction. I like your I like your radio voice.
I've been I've been practicing. It was I was convincing.
I should begin by disclosing that that we knew each
other in college, so we were in the same dorm.
In fact, I wouldn't say we were close, but I
definitely remember kind of seeing you and I had a
lot of mutual friends. I should probably begin just by asking,
(02:37):
do you ever think back to what, like a sophomore
Colin Jost or a junior year Pete would have thought
about the idea that twenty years later you would be
on SNL and enlisted to do an impression of me
as a presidential candidate. Uh, none of those thoughts crossed
my mind, Like, not a single one of those layers
(02:58):
crossed my mind at the time. And I remember when
Lauren talked to me about playing you on the show,
he was like, I think he just kind of has to, like, like,
I think it just makes too much sense otherwise, and
I was like, yeah, okay, And Uh, it was a
very surreal experience and it's the most you know, close
(03:19):
to home that I've ever been in terms of first
of all, I never do any impressions, as you can
tell from my oppression, but it felt very personal in
terms of choosing even lines to say, or you know,
working on some of the scripts because it you know,
I wanted to do right by you. But your job
(03:40):
is to make fun of the person that you're doing
a fresh right. So do you feel like, does I
feel like ethically complicated or how do you approach that?
I guess it feels commedically complicated sometimes like you're just
part of the decisions are complicated at our show because
it's so it moves so quickly, so you don't always
have the ability to look back at some thing and say, Okay,
(04:00):
is this really the line we want for this person,
or is this really what we want to take away
of this sketch to be used. Don't always have that
luxury for for everyone. We try to think is this
there is this a fair comment on this person or
a fair angle of attack on someone? So how did
you process the experience of just becoming very visible? That
(04:22):
must have happened pretty suddenly. I mean, you were doing
stand up and you were a head writer ort S
n L. But then you flip over and you do
weekend update and suddenly like you're not just part of
this very famous thing, you're a very famous face. And
as you write about in the book, very honestly, at first,
it's not going very well. So, you know, how did
you process all of that, How did it change your life?
(04:44):
And how did you make sure you're still yourself? You know,
it was very It was very weird because you know,
as I'm sure you experienced, for the vast majority of
my life, I had been completely unknown outside of my
family at friends. And you don't really think about who
you are in the way how you're presenting to the world.
(05:07):
You think about who you are as a person, and
you try to work on yourself as a person, but
you don't think about how you present to society, or
how you come across on TV, or how you come
across in the media. You just don't think about that. Ever,
you suddenly get criticism, and you suddenly get notes on
how you look or how you smile, or you get
(05:29):
like very specific comments both from friends and from strangers
on the internet, and you're suddenly thinking of yourself in
a whole different way. You're like, what's wrong with me?
Why aren't I better at this? Why don't I present
better or something? Why why does everyone hate me? You know,
you have those feelings, and the weird party is it
(05:49):
almost makes you question who you are as a person
beyond how you present to the world. And then you
just get used to it, and you get used to
a certain norm or a certain level that is criticism,
which is both healthy, healthy and constructive and not. And
you get used to trusting your own instinct and finding
out what your instincts really are in the face of
(06:10):
what everyone else is telling you to do, and that
that takes time and you kind of have to build
the courage to do that. And that was actually my
favorite thing about writing this book. I did it all
in a vacuum. I didn't show it and I showed
it to some friends, but I didn't show it to
anyone I you know, an NBC or run it by
anyone in that way. And I feel like it's the
purest form of what I set out to write and
(06:32):
worked really hard at it, and and that was it.
I didn't really care about what how it was received,
and it's probably it probably made it a lot better
that I wasn't worried about. That's a great book. Thank you.
But how I had a question for you, though, the
same question kind of which is you had the same
experience of your local fame when you were in South Bend,
and then going to the national level is a whole
(06:53):
other scrutiny, and also level of fame which must have
been jarring at times or required some kind of adjustment, right, Yeah,
it was really in many ways it was disorienting, and
for the same reasons you describe. I mean, as a mayor,
you're walking around your city. Everybody knows you, right, and
they'll come up to you and they'll talk about a
pothole or a hot local issue where it's going on
in the schools or whatever. But especially in a place
(07:16):
like South Bend, where I was on local TV all
the time and most residents knew who I was. But
it was just in the city, right, So I could
go anywhere else. I could drive an hour and a
half to Chicago, and I'm some dude, and I can
go about life in a very normal way. And suddenly
what happens is there's that same kind of visibility, but
it's literally everywhere you go. Now. I didn't really have
(07:37):
to confront it that much because I wasn't doing many
things other than campaigning. Right, it's such a total takeover
of your life that you know, I never really felt
that much the difference in being able to like go
to the grocery store, because you know, every minute of
my time was programmed. It was unlikely I didn't be
in that scenario. I wonder too, when you're talking about
being mayor and people coming up to you problems versus
(07:58):
on on a national camp and pain where people are
also probably coming up to you with problems. But a
lot of things you're faced in, say debates, are really
about larger ideas or large and I wonder is it
harder or less satisfying to deal in large abstract ideas
when you get into foreign policy or economic policy versus
(08:21):
when someone's telling you a specific problem locally and you're like, Okay,
I know, I know this problem. We've got to solve
this problem. It seems like that is a more satisfying
way to do politics, which is just a problem solved,
versus having to have sort of sweeping ideas that aren't
necessarily changing anything. Yeah, I think it's true. I mean,
(08:43):
it's more satisfying when you have cause and effect, Right,
It's why to get away from from work. I took
in my first couple of years to a lot of
home improvement because like, you know, you paint something and
then it's painted, and it was that kind of immediate
reward of solving a problem. And it's the same thing locally,
Like it feels great to like, you know, get a
pot fill fill them. Sometimes I would literally go out
with the cruise mostly just to thank them, but also
(09:03):
it was like very satisfying to literally just like scoop
this asphalt in there and you tamp it down to
this big kind of weight and you're like, oh, that
problem solved, you know, ago whatever. But the other thing
that you would confront is the really big things are
landing on your desk too. If it's like just fix
this stop sign, that's one thing. But when they're like
just fix racism or just fix homelessness or the crime rate.
(09:26):
Sometimes you wonder if some commentators in the media think
that there's some big knob in the mayor's office that
you could dial up or down on how much homelessness
or a crime there's going to be, and you just
forgot right. And so these big, almost cosmic and painful
issues that you're confronting are by their nature like tied
in with the national issues that we're facing, right, And
I think that's part of what's happening now with basically
(09:48):
the hostility between the White House and a lot of
local leaders who should be working in lockstep, whether it's
dealing with with policing issues, you're dealing with public health,
and when you don't have that, it all kind of
spins apart because it turns out even the most immediate, backyard, concrete,
little problem is connected up to this big picture. As
part of Iran was realizing over time as a mayor
(10:09):
that the big things were affecting my ability to solve
the things that were in front of me. That makes sense, yeah,
I mean yeah, the connecting because things get connected in
a way that you don't know exactly what will solve
the problem meeting. If you're talking about solving the problem
of homelessness, obviously, so much of it is tied to
other shifting factors like the economy and our two people
(10:31):
have jobs, and is their mental health treatment? What one
thing I don't understand and maybe you can enlighten me
on this. Why isn't there just a massive public works
push that just gets people jobs in America and build
rebuilds all the things that are physically broken about the country.
(10:52):
Gives people employees, people, makes everyone's neighborhoods, cities look better,
feel better to be in, have better transportation. Why why
does NAT not get done? Because everyone seems to agree
that that's good, Everyone seems to even even people on
candidates on both sides, seemed to talk about this a lot,
(11:14):
Trump talking. It just doesn't feel like it happened. Like
one of the few things I thought Trump would actually
do out of his campaign totally was this talk about infrastructure, right,
because you know, he seems to want it. Everybody likes
it to be good for the economy to be nice
to run. And even that didn't happen right right, or like,
you know, even like Obama when we were coming out
of the recession, I remember there was going to be
a huge infrastructure push and I kept hearing there's gonna
(11:37):
be these high speed trains in California and New York.
And what hapened? Nothing happens, And you're like, where does
it go? Why does that get defeated? Is that just
held up in congressional ways? What happens? And frankly, a
lot of it is because it turns out that there
was not the political will to pay for it. Right.
Sometimes people talk about taxes and then the programs like
(11:58):
they're completely unrelated, like you're gonna raise or lower taxes.
It's like, well, taxes for what? And if you're gonna
lower taxes, what are you gonna cut? But when you
get to Congress, then they say how are you going
to pay for this? Now today, of course they're not
saying how are you gonna pay for this? As we're
literally just sending out cash just to keep everybody going.
But still that's been an obstacle. This is why you
and I have to start a go fund me to
build that wall. What could go you know what? What
(12:20):
could possibly go off the top? Maybe a little off
the top, but most of it goes to the wall.
That's why we got to do this, this kind of stuff. Well,
and you know the thing that gives me about that
is we've seen this pattern with with that thing for
the wall that that Steve Bannon has been indicted over
and the n r A, which turned out just remember
the n A technically a nonprofit right where the owner
(12:40):
is like being jetted or that the president is being
jetted around the world and as his giant home funded
by these contributions. That the graft that's going on there
is not that different in my view from what the
president's doing to the entire country, which is, you know,
he seems to believe his supporters or suckers who will
just send their money or send their votes into this
and then they're laughing all the way to the bank.
(13:00):
It's really funny that there was a whole other scandal
that wasn't even on anyone's radar that then Bannon was
involved in. It was like finding up. It came out
of the Lost City in the Amazon or whatever that
was untouched and you're like, wow, these still you can
still find new things incredible. So with production on hold,
(13:36):
as these things are happening around the world, you know,
as a comic, do you think like I have to
go satirize this or do you feel like a lot
of us do now that it's kind of beyond parody.
I mean, how does comedy and satire even respond to
the moment we're in, Having now extended time away from it.
I think it's healthy that for our show that in general,
that we have a summer hiatus because you know you're
(14:00):
definitely here. There's moments where you're itching to be back
on and you have something you want to say about
whatever is happening that week. But it's nice to take
a break because you also realize how cyclical things feel
and how repetitive things feel. And you know, people always like,
oh my god, can you believe you're you're missing this
(14:21):
scandal this week? Are and you are, and you killing
yourself that you're you know you're missing this, And then
you realize there's gonna be another one the next week,
and there's probably going to be another one the week
after that. And the strange thing now, I wish we
could get a ranking of level of scandalousness of all
the things that have happened, because I feel like I'm
(14:41):
going crazy a little bit. I have no I've lost
all perspective on in the scheme of history, which which
events over the last four years will actually resonate in
years and how many. I mean, there's certain things that
are clearly don't matter at all, like where people were
making fun of Trump because he was walking down the
stage airs in a weird way after his speech at
(15:02):
West Point, and everyone talked about that for a week
and you're like, well, that doesn't matter at all. It's
the dumbest thing. Who cares? That doesn't matter. But then
you're like, he was impeached. That takes a backseat to Rampgate.
And but well that you assume that's going to make
it into a history textbook, but who knows. I don't
really feels like it's not even in the top five
(15:23):
events of surrounding the presidents. Yeah, that you could be
impeached and it's not in your top five scandals is
really really funny. You have actually spent time with Donald Trump.
I've never met him. Um, he guest hosted s NL.
You write about this in the book, and maybe you
could share a little bit about first of all, what
that was like, and then how you kind of resolve
(15:43):
having interacted with him in a professional environment for a
show that went pretty well and the disaster that his
presidency goes. Yeah, I mean the show itself, on just
a comedy level, I would argue was pretty bad independent
of anything else. I mean, if you watch it. He afterwards,
I remember Trump kept saying that he improvised the whole show,
(16:05):
and I was like, it's been insulting to a writer.
Thank you know, I was like, please get that out there.
You know, you have uf hosts that SNL who were
from all walks of life, who have all kinds of
political views. I mean we had already had on the show,
like you know Juliani and Mike Huck Coulbee and you
(16:26):
know Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and and when you
look at the musical guests and hosts that are non
political to come on, they're really all over the political
spectrum too. I mean people have all kinds of you know,
and I think that's a nice thing about her. Did
you even think of him as a political figure when
he came on? I mean, this is two thou fifteen, right.
Did it feel like he was there as a politician
or that he was there as an entertainer or something else,
(16:48):
I don't know, something in between. It really didn't. It
was very surreal. I mean, one thing she always says,
like that it's Donald Trump on television makes sense. Donald
Trump in politics makes most sense. Like that's the weird part.
It was very very strange experience. And I that week
ended up writing kind of around him, I would say,
(17:10):
and I wrote, I would write these drunk uncle character
for Bobby moynihan, and so we wrote one of those
where he was basically the platonic ideal of a Trump voter,
which was kind of a we're kind of a fun
thing to have in the show where he hosted. Uh,
and then Cecily and Vanessa and I wrote these porn
(17:31):
star characters, and so we tried this idea for the
table where they were porn stars who were endorsing Donald
Trump for president. Um, this is before obviously all the
Stormy Daniel stuff came out, and very surprisingly at the time,
but maybe in retrospect less surprisingly. Uh. Donald Trump was
(17:51):
way into that idea, and that made it on the show.
And so I think the last sketch of the show
ends with Cecily and Vanessa as porn stars endorsing Donald
Trump for president, and then Donald Trump turns to Cecily,
who was blonde, and says, didn't you used to be
a brunette? And I'm pretty sure that's the last line
(18:13):
of the show, which is God and right. Again, watching
in retrospect is so complicated to look at given everything
that's happened, because I remember, even in college, I was
pretty upset by the Iraq War, what was going on
with the Bush administration. I remember the Daily Show at
the time being a real kind of almost a relief.
(18:33):
And then I remember, also, I want to say, not
long after we graduated, I remember the White House Correspondence
Center when Colbert, standing a few feet away from George W. Bush,
gives this amazing, searing just skewering of the Bush administration
and feeling like I'd never seen anything like that happened.
It was it was as if Voltaire had mocked the monarchy,
(18:55):
you know, in the Court of Louis the fourteenth or something.
And yet it feels like all of those things that
we're kind of rewarding to watch then kind of harder
to take any comfort or pleasure and relief in today
because things are so in many ways disturbing and frightening
in our political landscape. And I wonder, especially because you
don't just, uh, you know, right for us now you
(19:17):
right for the part that is most topical, we kind
of update, like, how much do you think about humor
as a relief from what's going on in the world
versus humor is an important part of how we deal
with what's going on in the world. I think when
you're thinking even back to George W. Bush, I mean,
whatever anyone thinks about his policies or people that were
working with him while he was president, it's pretty hard
(19:40):
to argue that he's not a compassionate man and a
decent man. I mean, even if you might say, like
whether it was applied to all these things while he's
president or whatever, and who knows what he looks back
on and has regrets about or or not. I don't know,
but you you sense there's some moral center in George W. Bush,
I think, and you when you look at Trump, I
(20:02):
think you just don't see that in the same way
you don't you know, even what his own family is saying,
you know about him, And I think that makes a
lot of things that you're talking about harder, like in
the co Bear way, or because it doesn't feel like
it's um it's just sort of going into a strange
vacuum or something and not affecting anything, or yeah, it's
(20:22):
like pushing on a string. There's no tension there because
there's no possibility of experiencing shame. Maybe that's yeah, yeah,
there's no shame. I mean I also think things like
that trickle down from whoever is the leader in your country.
If you're if your leaders not paying taxes, and your leaders,
you know it doesn't mind exploiting the system to get
wealthier than why would anyone else. I mean, I can't
(20:43):
believe people in America are and like, why am I
paying taxes? This guy's not paying Our president doesn't pay taxes.
You know, that stuff trickles down, It becomes a mindset.
And I think the other thing is just some sort
of compassion for people and trying to figure out what
how to help, even if it's people just immediately around
you and I have to be some big sweeping political thing.
It can just be how am I helping family members?
(21:04):
How am I helping people in my community? How might
help educate people? Even you know, whatever it is, those
small things I think make a difference over time. Turning
into the book, one thing I want to ask you
about is uh, A lot of the really funny moments
of the book are also very self deprecating many cases,
And that's a big part of comedy, right, It's a
big part of humor. One of the more interesting specials
(21:25):
I saw recently, I think got a lot of people's
attention was Hannah Gadsby, who obviously is coming from a
different perspective, but was talking about how, in her case,
the kind of self at least I took it to
be saying that the self deprecation involved in humor kind
of crossed the line into abuse or self abuse. And
you know, the psychology of comics, I think, is something
(21:47):
that's always kind of under the surface. And we're in
a moment where I think people are talking more about
mental health, talking more about kind of how they relate
to the world, and being more open about these things.
And I wonder do you see comedy changing in that way,
and especially being in a very intense community of comic
(22:08):
actors and knowing that SML has a history of some
of the best comedy the West has ever produced, and
also like a history of a lot of, you know,
bad things happening to people who are on the show. Yeah,
I guess the question I'm asking is, like, is comedy
bad for you? It's great for us sometimes. I mean,
I think the vast majority of comedians wildly fluctuate between
(22:31):
periods of confidence, sometimes extreme confidence, and then debilitating depression
and debilitating self doubt. You know, and you see people,
even people that look like they have a ton of
bravado on stage. So many of those people are the
most vulnerable people you'll meet, and you know off stage
(22:51):
are constantly worried about whether they're funny, are they any
good at it? And meanwhile you think they're the most
confident person in the world. You get someone like David Letterman,
and you always talked about how every show he was like,
I think I'm not I'm just not funny. I don't.
I can't do this anymore, Like I'm terrible. I don't.
And I think part of that is healthy, because part
(23:12):
of it makes you try to keep getting better and
pushing yourself to find some kind of new level or
challenge yourself to to get out of a rut um.
And then some of it is not healthy, and some
of it is just makes your your your life miserable
and prevents you from enjoying even the successful moments in
(23:32):
your life, where the things that feel like victories, which
are usually few and far between, even for someone who's
very successful. And I think that's just the reality for
for a lot of people in comedy, And that's why
I have a lot of empathy for comics who go
through lots of different things because you I know that
that's you know, there's lots of comedians who are alcoholics
(23:54):
or I think so many are either alcoholics or recovered
or sober now because that's one way of dealing with
the wild swings of you know, when you're on stage
and it goes great, you want to keep that feeling
going and you're like, I'm gonna have two to twelve drinks.
And then you're when a set goes horribly, you're like,
I want to drink to forget that I just had
(24:15):
a horrible set, and that becomes a way of life.
And then say you have a few drinks before you
go on stage and you do well. You know, there's
not only a superstition, but almost a feeling like maybe
I need that every time. Maybe I need to be
a little drunk before I go on stage, like people
go through. And then then you're like, I will drink.
And then you have a bad set and you're like,
damn it, and I do need to and people you
(24:36):
get into all these habits that you have to be
really you have to be really vigilant to break things
like that and really have you know, have help of
therapy and also have and do self reflection, which is
hard to do. And sometimes that's the last thing you
think about, is mental health. And that's the nice thing.
Now I do think people are talking about it more
(24:56):
and giving each other a little more leeway, or I hope,
I mean that's the goal. Another pressure that you mentioned
(25:18):
in the book is when uh, and I've never thought
about the this way, but when you become headwriter, you
take on this responsibility of basically over the careers of
the people that you work with, deciding whether to go
to bat for a certain sketch, worrying not just about
how to reflect on you if it doesn't go well,
but you know it will be bad for them. And
it just reminded me of so many of the pressures
(25:39):
that I think people go through when they first find
themselves with responsibility. Yeah, it's where it's where my my
Catholic guilt really kicked in from every angle, because I
feel guilt about what if my own sketches on is
that bad? Should I be trying to get somewhere? You
know it is? It feel like um and promoting my
(25:59):
own thing, which I always try not to do. Uh,
if I'm going out on a limb and for our
young writers at the show and saying, Hey, this sketch
is really good, we should put it on the show.
And then it either doesn't do well or Lawrence doesn't
like it for some reason. Then I almost feel like
I'm jeopardizing a writer's career. And it's sort of strange balance,
like you almost feel like you have to, uh, you
(26:21):
have to trust your instincts, but you also have to
pick your battles. A little bit. That makes me think
about just how powerful of a name or an institution
SNL is. And one of the things that was important
in my life was it was part of a lot
of institutions that had very powerful names, Harvard, Oxford, the
United States Navy. But one of the most important steps
(26:42):
in my life was when I kind of left the
warm embrace of a lot of institutions that spoke for me,
left my job and went out to run for state
treasure in Indiana, where nobody had heard of me. I
wounded up getting clappered. I lost like sixty was a
Democrat in Indiana, not a great year to be running statewide.
But it was that up that put me in on
the kind of the path to being able to serve
(27:03):
my city as mayor and then eventually run for president.
Yet I found even running for president that often, as
people were figuring out who I am, the shortcut to
that was good or bad was looking at any kind
of big name I was connected to, whether it was McKinsey,
the consulting company I worked for, or Notre Dame, even
though I wasn't an alone because it was connected to
(27:23):
my hometown. And so one thing that you're very open
about in the book is you're thinking about what comes
after SNL, which feels to me like it kind of
rhymes with that sort of moment, which is frightening and
full of possibility. And I wonder, first of all, why
do you decide to share that, because you know, usually
don't telegraph career moves in very public ways. When you're
(27:45):
very visible, especially with a book, you don't know the
timing of exactly how to come out or when in
your way, it's hard to put the data. So what
made you decide to be open about that? And then
how are you thinking about this process? Well, first, when
you're talking about the different institutions, I mean, it's a
very strange thing because you have to be you know,
first of all, I didn't. Maybe you were the same way.
(28:05):
You know, I grew up in Staten Island. I certainly
didn't grow up assuming I could go to Harvard or
or that I could work at SNL, Like those just
weren't things that I thought I could do. And then
going to these, you know, Harvard definitely being an institution,
and even SNL sometimes feeling like an institution, I think
you have to you have to approach when when you're
(28:27):
at a place like that. I think you have to
have a healthy skepticism about the place you're at. I
think you have to be examining the institution you're at
and just trying to figure out the ways in which
it's it's broken or the ways in which it's it
just needs to be updated or I don't know, or
(28:48):
or better run or whatever. You have to. There's everything.
You know, things are around for a long time, and
so that means there's probably something there that's worth keeping.
But you also have to keep examining or else it
doesn't function right anymore, or you know, things have to
keep evolving. I guess it's the word that I'm looking for.
And unless they do that, then they think they wither
(29:10):
and they die. And I think that's why you have
to always I think it's good to be an outsider
and come in and look at something and say, all right,
I want to do things a little differently, even if
it's my part of it. It starts with that, because
when you start as a new writer, or you start
as a freshman at Harvard, you're not going in and saying, now,
let's let's restructure this institution. You're you're more like, I
(29:33):
want to figure out how I want to do this
as much as possible, and and be aware of some
of the downsides of it. You talk about it. It's
kind of search for belonging. It's a theme that comes
up in the book that resonated for me because it's
a big theme of my campaign too, was trying to
respond to this kind of issue or even crisis of belonging.
That thing is playing out for different people in different ways.
But it sounds like you you found it at the Lampoon,
(29:55):
the humor magazine that that you were part of it Harvard,
you found it as a member the SNL cast. I
wonder how you would think about building a sense of
belonging when you do go walk out from being kind
of in the embrace of something is big and famous
and and just tighten it as a place like U
s or know. That's that's absolutely the scariest part about leaving.
(30:17):
And I'm I'm realizing. I mean, part of it was
writing the book, and part of it was just you know,
thinking reflecting back on SNL and growing up in Staten Island,
and so much of my life is so community oriented,
Like my favorite parts of life are community oriented. Are
feeling like I'm with friends, I'm with people who I
can joke with and work with and and live with,
(30:39):
you know. And that's that's I think, um of the
most valuable thing. And again, there are medical studies that
show when you're part of a community, you're physically healthier,
You're happier, you're healthier. It actually relates to life expecting Yeah, totally,
it totally relates to life expectancy, heart disease, all these things,
because you feel like you belong somewhere. You know. One
(31:01):
other thing I noticed in the book, it feels to
me like you go out of your way to mention
to name some of the people you worked with, people
who influenced you, other writers, other communic actors, so very
curious looking to the future. If there are two or
three names of people that most of us haven't heard
of who you think might be shaping comedy or satire
entertainment in the next decade, Uh, well, I think you know,
(31:24):
at s NL, I think right now there's a group
of writing supervisors who I think they're going to be
very important both at our show and beyond our show
in their careers, which is Um Frank Gillespie and and
a Dressen and Sudie Green and Street or side L
Sam j who's a writer a SNL just had a
special that came out that people should check out too.
(31:45):
It's really funny. And uh, you know, stand up is
so hard now because I haven't been in a club
whatever six months to see who who's coming up and
who who look out for Our Norman was, you know,
super funny. Andrew Schultz are those are guys that we
came up with together. We're all Um Jay being someone
(32:08):
that I loved as a stand up and then getting
to work with as a writer and then getting to
work with for update has been has been a very
very cool journey. And you know, I think we'll look
back on a lot of those those years and what happened,
and be very happy that we got to go through together.
You know, we're weeks away from an election is going
(32:28):
to change American history one way or the other. Do
you think that humor is going to have a different
role in our lives in the decade ahead? Or is
this just variations on a thing. You never know exactly
how how comedy is going to change until it does,
and then you look back. You know, we were talking
about Steve Martin the other day and how much his
(32:51):
comedy was a reaction to coming out of the Vietnam
War in such a heavy political time, and then his
comedy was so absurd ist and and so just fun
and an escape in a whole different way that was
completely a political And so I could certainly see something
happening in that way and people needing an escape from
(33:11):
everything feeling very overly scrutinized politically at every turn. I
could definitely see that happening. But the biggest thing is
you don't exactly know where the next generation of stars
is going to come from. You know, I think I
think that each generation makes the previous one either relevant
or or irrelevant, and so I don't know what the
(33:32):
I don't know what it's going to do for comedy
quite yet. Yeah, I'm struck by how Colin and I've
basically lived across the hall from each other in college
about twenty years ago, but didn't know each other that well,
and are now we're encountering each other in what feels
(33:55):
like a different life for each of us, having a
really substantive, fascinating conversation. It also shows you how you
never know how you're going to cross paths with somebody
again in the future, and with every part of our
society changing right now, I'm wondering what role humor is
going to play going forward. For as long as human
beings have faced major events, humor has helped us process
(34:17):
and think through it all. There's a case to be made.
It's actually gonna be more important than ever in the
years ahead, and I'm really grateful for people like Colin
who are bringing their talent for making us laugh into
our lives. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(34:39):
listen to your favorite shows.
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