IN MY SHOES: What It’s Like To Write For “SNL”
The New York Times interviews James Downey, 55, who has been a writer for “Saturday Night Live” for 32 years, about political humor and his reaction when Hillary Clinton cited a recent skit during a debate with Barack Obama:
“If anybody saw ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ” she said, “you know, maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow.”
Most comedy writers are loath to admit that their work has any lasting value or influence. But after receiving several congratulatory phone calls from friends and colleagues that evening, Mr. Downey realized he had struck a chord.
“It tells you that you might have articulated something that was vaguely out there, but had yet to be stated in a comedy form,” he said in a telephone interview. “Some things make you laugh because they’re funny, and other things, the effect is: ‘Hey, that’s right. That makes sense.’ ” …
“My approach is to do something that’s funny and not politically idiotic, as opposed to saying something profound,” he said. “Something that passes muster as a common-sense understanding of the state of play.”
At times his work has been prescient: in a 1984 skit about the war room of Walter Mondale, the Democratic presidential nominee, the candidate fastidiously plots a victory in Minnesota (the only state he carried that year). …
[W]hen Mr. Downey has taken aim at the presidential debates, he has consistently defined the candidates before they could define themselves: his send-up of the 2000 debates between Al Gore and George W. Bush coined the Bushian malapropism “strategery,” an invention that is sometimes attributed to Mr. Bush.
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