Fred Armisen and Paula Pell

Published May 5, 2014, 4:00 AM

Fred Armisen’s career has followed an unpredictable trajectory. Armisen spent nearly a decade drumming with Trenchmouth, a punk rock band remembered for its spirited cacophony. When he got tired of carrying his own equipment, Armisen picked up a video camera and began creating improvised characters. Fred relates stories from his years in the Los Angeles comedy club scene, drumming for the Blue Man Group, and working on SNL, where he met his idol, Steve Martin. And it’s true: Armisen really does love Portland.

Paula Pell was having the time of her life singing and dancing at a Florida theme park when she got a phone call from SNL creator Lorne Michaels. She moved to New York, and two decades later, Pell was the show’s head writer. She says she’s still baffled by her charmed life. Pell calls herself “Nanny SNL,” because of her lengthy tenure on the show, but she says having a good night at SNL makes you feel 20 again.

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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing, My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to hear their stories, What inspired their creations, what decisions change their careers, what relationships influence their work. We had so much laughter in our house, you know, despite any any dysfunction, as any family, we always laugh. I also feel like you want someone who you can be not great around, meaning I want to be able to be kind of boring sometimes or say something dumb and it's okay. My guests today are two brilliant comedians, one an actor, the other a writer. Both have made millions of people laugh, and both have done so from the show that has launched more comedians than any other. Saturday Night lad Writer Paula Pell and actor Fred Armison took unusual paths to S n L and Pell got the call that executive producer Lauren Michaels wanted to meet her. She'd been working at an amusement park in Florida, one with uniquely nighttime amusements Pleasure Island Welcome Come, Mickey has No Pants on. Before Armison was added to S and l's cast in two thousand two, he had spent over a decade behind a drum set professionally. Eventually, SNL hired Armison my first guest at this hour to play something else. On my first day in office, I said I'd closed Wanton and Mobbit. Armison has added to the show's distinctive line of oddly perfect presidential impressions. He's also nailed such disparate characters as Larry King, Steve Jobs, and Prince Attention Sexy Passengers. This grew jets about to take off, so please direct your attention to my co host, Ms. Beyonce. No. Fred Armison grow up in Valley Stream, Long Island with a Venezuelan mother and a German Japanese father. My mom really loved Saturday Night Life. She loved it. She I remember her talking about Chevy Chase, and she would say like, oh, Chevy Chase, He's so funny. You just look at his face and you want to laugh. And then made a huge impression on me. And even as a kid, I thought, yeah, what is that like a guy who just from looking at him right away, you know he doesn't have Armison is also co creator of Portlandia, a playfully subversive sketch comedy show on i f C, in which he co stars with musician Carrie Brown's team. That the thing of mc sweeney's was comparing CD tracks and album tracks and hearing that, Yeah, did you read that thing in Mother Jones about eco chairs and eco waste to sit? I did, Yeah, I did. About all the festivals. Armison's own musical roots run deep. He spent most of his twenties touring with his punk rock band Trench Mouth. I worked so hard on that band. We were in the van, we toward toward towards bokwacewards, booking places, booking, booking, booking, booking, and just trying to get slots and clubs over what area the states in Canada, And you were all floating and reloading your own equipment and we're your own roadies. Absolutely didn't bring any extra people to save money, up and downstairs, drums, symbols, amps, if it was a local show, flyers, records, getting them out to people, getting out to radio stations. It was NonStop. Was it successful? It depends how you look at That's what I'm saying. I want to know. You were Definition, but your Definition played in Europe, played in the States, so absolutely that all that stuff was like, that's a success? Was it what I wanted? I wanted much more, did much more? Why? Why? Why this is going to sound I'll just be honest about what I wanted. But I was wanted to be as big as the Red Hot Cheep a person. I was like, God, they're huge, They're huge. What we can do it? So because we never attained that, and I would see bands from Chicago kind of swooped right by us, I saw it as not a success and that's what kind of got me into doing comedy. Armison went to Austin, Texas for the south By Southwest Music Festival. Along with his drums, he brought a video camera. Somehow I got it in my head to interview people do different characters. You're down there and the and the whole, the whole experience down there was a musical one, but you start doing funny stuff and I don't even know why I did it. That tape this is sort of made the rounds. They wrote about it in this local Chicago paper and then I showed it at a club there that I used to play in trench Mouth. At this club, as many people turn out for that as with the band, the reaction was greater than when I was in a band. On that night, I thought, oh, this might be a way to go. I'm there with the Aluminum. I just wanted to know from you guys, who thought up in the name of the band? And I don't mean like originally, I mean like, who was the person who decided that that was going to be the name? And what record label are you on? Is it the same record label that you're on a couple of years ago or is the one that's going to be different? And is it the one that's going to be on in Europe? Did everybody in Trench Mount feel really sad than did they know you were gonna go? Um? Maybe, but they're my friends, so I think based you know they had they kept on going with another band. I called all of them and they said, they hate you and they'll never damn it. But hatred equals love. Yeah, it's a it's still an emotional not ignoring me. And then what happens after that? That's when I started doing comedy and then doing comedy where um, I started traveling the country, showing it in l A, San Francisco, New York. You took made it into a stand upack kind of. I would just you know, they'd write something in the paper, and people came out in all these cities. And then I went to l A. Played clubs, comedy clubs, um rock clubs, clubs. There was no music, no music, just showed this video and talked a little bit, and that's it. How long we're on stage. I mean total of like half an hour, forty minutes, something really short. Just people dug it. Absolutely, it's pretty Internet. So showing a video was more of an event or nouvelle. Yeah. There was no such thing as like sort of why don't you just watch it online? Um? And then someone from HBO was at one of the shows, and then I started doing these videos for HBO. And then I started making enough money that I didn't have to live in Chicago anymore. I was like, I can. I always wanted to live in l A. I moved to l A and then I started doing stand up like characters and stuff on stage where this is one club that I loved called Largo. I moved to l A and I just wanted to fit in. You know, I was on my own and I just wanted to perform there and I would just do different characters. Yeah. Did you make all new friends right away to fall into the comedy world, Yeah, I did. I just wanted to be part of it, you know what I mean. So I think it was and you were open to it. Yeah, and then I just and who became your pals there in l a Um Paul F. Tompkins, Bob owen Kirk really helped me out a lot. He had a pilot for a show called Next which had different characters and it was a sort of variety show, and he got me onto the cast for that. And from that is where I had like all um tape to submit to SNL. Hello, welcome to focus on talent. I am go hard lip shots and today my very special guest is the wonderfully simple Way Romano. Thank you so much for coming. This is really great and you begin instead up comedy and so and I think that your act was not so good. Yes, I had enough tape to submit to SNL. My agents and manager sent it to them, and then I was on the cast and two thousand two, so you show up to New York to do the show. I flew into do the auditions. You know, I was flipping out that I even got to do the auditions at all. Yeah, I mean I met Tina Favor for the first time worn and Tina was the head writer of them, I believe, So I think it hurt in Dennis McNicholas. I couldn't even believe I was in that studio. And then when you started, you were a featured player. And then how many years do you did you do that before you join? Two years? It was Will Forte and I was it frustrating to be a future player because again, no, no, I wasn't. I'm fresh from carrying drums. I'm fresh from just doing stand up at large. I can't there's a part of me that still is like, I can't believe it. A lot of people on the show don't sense that they leave and they don't realize how good they've had it. But people who have left the show have told me and I listened to them, and they say, it's the best job I've ever had. Yeah, it's going to be one of them. You know, you're not gonna have that much freedom and that much variety. I always tell people, don't leave the show and become the thing you made fun of on the show. Right. That's a real trap because you're gonna go out there and do with the jobs. And one of the greatest risks in my mind is that people will characterize you. Oh yeah, and I can see you doing a movie where you're with a really smart cast and a smart director and you like, lock everybody in the gymnasium and burn the gymnasium down to the ground. You either way, don't you think. I hope so straight acting? M hm. That's tricky, um, But if there's a way to do it, it's tricky because I don't want to look like I'm unhappy with comedy. I don't want to go out there and say, for lack of a better word, an audience, like, hey, this is what I really do. However, I think these days there are roles that are both comedic and dramatic. I like that that line is becoming blurry. So my answer is kind of like, I think there's a way that Peter Sellers did it was comedy? Was it not comedy? Somewhere? And then he occupies a very very distinct place. I mean, you have comic actors who made their reputations in comedic roles, who have tried to go over into dramatic films and it's worked to some degree or hasn't worked Billy Crystallin and Robin Williams and so forth. And I think you have a real opportunity, and it's never more vivid than it is in Portlandia that you could go both ways and do the comic and the dramatic. Do you feel that way, yes, because when we do the show, when we write the show, we don't always think about like what's the funniest thing, right, Like what what seems interesting to us? What what's gonna look It comes great. If it's not quite comedy, that's okay, that's that's something else in between tv um. If there's anything that you've done, then we won't do it. Okay, I get it. This is like a cool wedding, but also it doesn't come across as cooled. We don't want anything that reads as wedding. Okay, we're not marionettes getting up at the same time and dancing to and fro. There's divorce rate and I think that that should be in the forefront of people's minds at this wedding. The other voice you're hearing, that's Carrie Brownstein. She co created Portlandia with Armison. Before Portlandia, they made a series of videos as the sketch comedy duo thunder Aunt. Carrie met Fred in two thousand three late one night after an SNL show. Her band was like my favorite bands bands leader Kenny. I became friendly with them. We just had a lot of mutual friends. They came to New York to play. I just invited them to come to the show. They had a show that night, so they came to the after party and I met Carrie there and it was the strangest thing. Carrie and I just became instant friends. That happens, and she knew who you were from the TV show. Fully, it just worked cooked. Yeah, ever since then, and uh, we just made these videos. I'd go to Portland. It was like the equivalent of jamming, you know. So instead of doing that, which is just like so what you know, like, hey, we have this band, we just thought let's make these videos. There was no pressure on it. It's just like, let's just didn't like it, yeah for no reason. Let's just come up with characters, Let's make these tapes. And then we did it. And then we had just all these videos on this website and if I remember reading that you did about a dozen of them, correct, Yeah, that's about right. And then then we just had enough to pitch a TV show and then how does Portland become a show? Who buys the show? It was kind of a thing where I was just talking to my manager, what do you want to do next? What's something you want? Oker? And I thought, let's just turn and see if we can turn it into something. And then Carrie and I just thought, yeah, let's let's pitch it. We already she ready for that? Does she want that? Yeah? She seems like somebody who lived in Portland and lived on the fringe and was very very talented deliberately that she didn't want to be mainstream successful. Um, I think she just likes doing it, so she does what she wants. She's a perfect mix of like she just enjoys, you know, performing and isn't like so crazy ambitious that she's like, Okay, what's the next thing? What's the next thing? She's very like, let's work on some projects and a lot of it's our friendship. We just like working together. And then we pitched it to Broadway Video. So you know, Lauren and as a group. We pitched it to I f C. They said, go ahead and do a pilot. We did, and then the next thing we knew, we're doing the show. And you shoot the show in Portland. Obviously when you go there, I'm assuming to start the show. You've never lived there before, No, but I've gone there soul you had because you've spent so much time, so you knew what this Portland's head was. That's what also got us to doing this show there. I mean like I would visit carry all the time and thunder it for years. I've been going there, and she'd lived there for how long? Forever? For what I think she's she's originally from Washington State and then she moved to Portland whatever, you know, ten years ago or something. So what is your experience being in Portland? Do people say stuff to you? All the love it, They're so nice about it. And I really like it there, you know, I'm I'm a city guy. I'm from New York and and I still love it there. It's smaller, but it's still it's still a city and clean and nice and good food and somewhere really civil, really just physically pretty and and kind of overcast which I really like. Do you develop films now? Do you write films at all for yourself? I've too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I feel like when I when I try to write something for myself and it ends up in TV form. But still I want to try to expand that you would never do a TV series? Um, I do. I would do anything anything it seems interesting. I would. I would do anything it seems like something you know, good to be part of. So when you sign a contract like with Broadway Video for those people who don't know this, that's Lawrence Company, Rice Production arm and you have to deliver how many episodes? Ten? You just do ten? First one was six, second was ten. This one's gonna be tenned a. What do you do for fun? I just work all that time? Well, you do his work? Yeah, that's what you wanted. Yeah. This past season was Fred Armison's eleventh and final year on SNL, where he's performed alongside the biggest stars in the business. But Fred can still get star struck, like when he met Steve Martin. It's it's even weird talking about it because I feel like I know him somewhat, But the experience is greater than I ever thought it would be. And then on top of it, the way he's just the way he is. You know, that's part of the thing, that seeing how people are as people. That's another nice surprise. Coming up, we'll meet Paula Pell, a long time writer on SNL who Fred Armison has called a true genius, one of the funniest people he's ever met. I'm Alec Baldwin and here's the thing. Take a listen to our archive more in depth conversations with artists, policymakers and performers, people like Lena Dunham, who agrees with Armison, Paula Hell is funny. Paula Pell is someone who's funny and not mean. She's just a dreamy person. Take a listen to my conversations with Dunham, Lord Michaels and Kristen Wigg. I don't remember what I said. And here's the thing. Dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Departing SNL cast members are generally expected to springboard into a career in film. Maybe it's the punk rocker in him, but Fred Armison doesn't seem entirely at home with that tradition. Someday I want to invent a type of entertainment that isn't is really blurry between comedy and something else that doesn't have a name yet. But I do want to see if there's another way to another level of um fooling people as opposed to just doing a character something a little bigger than that. And I don't know quite how to do it yet. But do you think being famous has killed that opportunity for you personally and sometimes so that someone you have to get someone else to do it right and produce that yeah, because you couldn't do that because you minute you show up, they know something's going on. But uh, do you find that you find that when you walk up to people automatically like someone said something to me, They said to me, you're you're at a wonderful place which is also a terrible place, that place where people are going to laugh at you, whether you're funny or not, and you meant it as a dig. Do you find that's true with you that wherever you go, people are predisposed to you saying something yeah, Or if I do like a stand up show somewhere, I find that I want to put more effort into it. But sometimes I don't really have to, so that might not be a good thing. So what about it in your personal life? How is your personal life changed as a result of being famous? Um, it's everything I ever wanted. But there are some things about it that are just very new and just very interesting, you know, Like I love New York. I love writing on the subway. My subway rights an't as private as it used to be. That's when I start trying to think of ideas. I listen to music and that's just different now, and people say things to you, Yeah, perfectly nice, perfectly nice. I would have done the same how I met whoever, But that's that's changed, like a different kind of subway, right. What about your relationship with your family, your friends? I mean, do you still have the same friends? Yeah, kind of, but I've got, you know, got new friends, obviously, new circles of friends. But lad, yes, but I've maintained my friendships with the guys in the old band and Kirk yeah absolutely, he's in l alright, Yeah, let's text each other and yeah, so I do maintain relationship with this even if I'm if we're both busy, Paul F. Tompkins, whoever, I still try to keep those alive. This is the last thing I want to say to you, which you could say a million things to me. Well, but I'm saying that, uh, without getting too personal. You've been married twice. Yeah, and you find you were married twice, correct, That's correct. And and the first one was in Chicago before I was doing comedy, and that's someone who I'm still friends with, Sally. That was during the music days, yes, the Keith Moon days, and then you were married the secon in time. Yes. But would you say that like from things I've read, you find that because of what you crave and what you love, you speak very lovingly about Carrie and how you and to your just friends. But she's like you're you know, she's your last text of the day. Do you think that she's kind of your soul mate? Without a doubt. It's all the things that I've ever wanted, you know, aside from like the physical stuff. But the intimacy that I have with her is like no other, Like it's something that and it's only it's taking me a want to realize, Like wait a minute, I am super super close with her. I mean we work all day together on Portland and then we hang out afterwards. I mean, what is that? Because people don't understand in this business how important it is, Like do you have to be It depends on who the person is. I also feel like you want someone who you can be not great around, meaning you know, like I want I want to be able to be kind of boring sometimes or say something dumb. And it's okay that I like that pressure not to be there to have to be super funny and intelligent all the time. It's nice when I like I'm competitive, yeah, where I'm just like, the comedy world is very competitive, isn't it. I guess I haven't walked into that too much. I wasn't part of a comedy troupe or anything. And so and the stand ups I've become friends with, I've all been very you know, supportive, definitely. Portlandia Season three is now available on DVD. It enters its fourth season on i f C early next year. Fred call me. Can I play a customer in Portlandia? Can I come to a restaurant any time I come and do something? Who would I play? What would I order? Um? I think you would uh come from southern California and you'd order all kinds of meats a meat a fiction. People think of it as a veggi place, but it's actually a very meaty play. Yeah, it's very like cured meats and sausages there. But we haven't explored that one. Maybe it could be a meat salesman. Even better, maybe it could be a meat salesman of all kinds of charts and graphs of the loins and actually the sections of the pig and the cow and the organs, and yeah, I love it and the answers yes right, anytime I'll come see your important. Yeah, if Fred invites me, I'll do it. And most likely I'll do SNL the next time Lord Michael's calls. And that's due in large part of the brilliant writing of my next guest. 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, Tina Fey, and Kristen Wigg to name just a few. But there's been another woman at SNL, A woman who's been quietly working for nearly two decades, 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. Over the years, her sketches have ranged from Bobby and Marty and Debbie Downer to a personal favorite of mine, the Tony Bennett showing great Things fantastic. I guess what we gotta make just to talk show about the dastic show things? Yea. Tina Fey wrote in her memoir that one of her prouder moments as head writer at s NL was fighting for one of Pell's sketches introducing co Text. Classic Classic Code Text is a mercial for the feminine protection of yesteryear, featuring sexy women proudly encumbered with bulky pads connected to belts peeking out over their clothes. I always you can't hate the original Room Girls. Paula Pelle in person is genuine, charming and easy going, the kind of person you might actually talk to if you sat next to her on a plane, which is not a description of your 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 do a bit where I would go by him and drag my hand along the chalk line, you know, the chalk shelf, and then I'd come over and I'd say, you know, Mr Grocer's 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 do you know, he looked like Rob Briner and all in the family had the big bushy mustache and along there, and he just kind of looked at camera three, you know, nonexistent, and the audience would you know, the audience the class 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 what did he do for a living? 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 Claks. 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 that is the guy who works for the phone company and how does he and he becomes watch tinkerer? How was the funny in his life with he's just ungodly witty. He's really 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 thing. 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 to pay for that, 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 getting into that you didn't sign on to that program? What was wrong with you? Well, 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 eighty 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. But I was always a total hand. But my dad really taught me that he will just do a bit, that we'll just have us crank. And 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 cutting 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 him. So we're laughing about it and everything, and then I'm not getting Like an hour later, my dad just walked through. He had gone in my room and gotten a wig, put a long wig on with just his grass cutting stuff, and just walk through. He didn't stop, he didn't do a bit. He just walked through. But they also 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. 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 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 that 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 tho dollars. But it had this gig anna 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. 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 school, and 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, a cold little ass wipe to me. But you know that's right. Now we're friends. And and what was the difference for you in terms of the people if you can, if you can drinks 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 the other way. Everyone was so affectionate in such a crazy way that I remember saying, 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 it was 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 it 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 my art professor, Grady Kimsey, who I'm a really good friend with still, he had gone to UT years and years ago and he 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 them there because I'm such a nature freaking 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? 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 Dollar 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 panther on. It was New Year's Eve every night. Asure Island 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 is 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 Custer. 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 are because I was like a matron sort of character. And we used to have such a asked. 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'd meet, well, just guests, and you know, you'd meet some super super charismatic, handsome person. You'd be sitting there laughing and you being 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 dry 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 was the character 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, was kind of plenty of fun. It was. It was a beautiful It was a beautiful life. And then I got start 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. 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 were 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 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 and 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. 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 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 k He said, we've cleaned how house, we're starting over. You know, it's gonna rise again, We're hoping, and we're going to try to infuse it with new talent, and we would like to hire you to be a writer. And 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. You 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 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 from my high school in the auditorium, and I thought, I'm just gonna be sitting around with like, you know, ten Harvard dudes looking at me, going who hired Kathy Bates light and you know, and why is she here? And I adore Kathy Baits 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 manic. Seventeen years I've been there yet. And 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. The Internet has changed things profound. Yeah, its 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 create it 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 nervous in an audition, right right, right, that's the aims 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 Negress 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 gotta 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 into you know, isolated there in great ways, in 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 let me just put a finer point on that for our radio 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 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 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 riders 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'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, but like you know, host will come in with their people and 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. In a minute, Paula Pell shares her plans for retirement. I want to go live the leftbian life. I want to be on a lesbian far. I want to wear my dance go clacks. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. My guest, Paula Pell has been writing sketches at Saturday Night Live for almost two decades. She no longer works full time on the show. Lately, she's branched into both TV and film comedies as well. Even still, Hell admits that on Sundays she wants to curl up on the couch and watch something well not funny. Oh my god, you don't want to watch the sorrow in the pity now? My my gal of fourteen years. She watches a lot of TV, and she watches shows that I wouldn't and really watch, like Castle or you know, like Hawai Fi Bo or like Murder Shore and I mean, you know murder shows, C S I and C I S. She'll watch all She'll take She'll tape all these shows in 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 yet, this is ridiculous. I can't be bothered with this toastiness people to These people are all young, and they're all crazy and 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 the week, you know which like that thing where we have to do it now? Now you are you left to do a television show 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 lost huge amounts of weight a couple of times in my life. 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, Well, the biggest thing I learned was 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 the with them because I had known so many people that developed stuff that were like welcome to hell. 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 want 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 that. You know, rose Anne 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 then last summer I worked on my first full movie experience with This Is forty. I was the executive producer on that. I've finally kind of gotten my foothold in the movie thing now and it's 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 you find out. But so beautiful to be able to work at home with my animals and D and just like to be buddy, aren't you. Well you always come back to the same thing when I've spoken to you. When you left, I was despondent when you left because you know, you were such a great You're such a great writer. You're one of my favorite writers. So funny, but everything mean 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, to go live the lesbian life. I want to be on a lesbian fire. I want to wear my dants, go Clag's. 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 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 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 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 sister's uh the gene and they're in their mid twenties and ones a 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 here's that detective on television. I'm like my grandpa, Oh my god, Grandpa. They'll knock on the door and super 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. 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 I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna I would leave there on after a good show, I leave there. I'm gonna be a cast. Addition, now, Twitter, you kill me on Twitter, thank you, and 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 know, tging his close man like the Tony Ben 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 tamember, 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 you also say the thing about you if the guy does this. Yeah, the hey young girls 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 spart ching you want to talk about it? I mean I would just become this raving crazy woman looking at them like get 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 huts and yeah, the chaperone, Yeah, I'm the chaperone. That's that's uh, storrying my son away from the hoochie hoochie dance. It's ironic that Paula Pell has thrived in the notoriously cutthroat culture of SNL. You get a sense that she is by nature a maternal figure, often encouraging up and coming comedy writers. Like I've always said about us and L, it's like the funny rises to the top with it. And if somebody's super funny and has abandoned and enjoy 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 dirty, you know, then forget it, because there's got to be some class to my to my volvol of a joke does not have a class to it, 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 othern thing. I really would like to kiss Leo in a movie, right, I want to be as much as I think. You don't want to see anyone thinking too hard while they're you know, the the greatest auditions at SNL 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. Women have that the condition though, where it's like 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. Mean, they became the thing they made fun of, and you and you realize for women, that's a tough angle. Comedy 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 be um 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. Paula pell is working on a few side projects, but as a fan, I hope that Paula doesn't give up her night job and has another seventeen years of sketch writing ahead of her. Thanks Sugar, this is Alec Baldwin. You can hear more conversations in our archive from Nobel Prize winning economists to NFL quarterbacks. They are the apex of physical freaks. You know, there are some guys that are three pounds that are running faster than running than your high school running back. Listen to more at here is the Thing dot org. Here's the Thing is produced by Emily Botine and Kathy Russo with Chris Bannon, Jim Briggs, Wendy Door, ed Herberstman, Melanie Hoops, Monica Hopkins, Trey Kay, Sharon Macheehee, and Lou Okowski. Thanks to Larry Josephson and the Radio Foundation m

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Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin takes listeners into the lives of artists, policy makers and perfor 
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