Inside Late Night With Mark Malkoff Ep 28: Hugh Fink

When Harvard University went looking for someone to teach comedy sketch-writing, Hugh Fink was an obvious choice. 

An Emmy-winning, seven-year veteran of Saturday Night Live’s writing staff (from 1995-2002), Fink was responsible for scores of memorable sketches, including “Larry King’s News and Views,” and Mr. Peppers (which was based on a character Chris Kattan developed at The Groundlings).

Fink went on to  create and executive produce The Showbiz Show with David Spade, and served as founding head writer on Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show. 

This week on Inside Late Night, Fink recounts his SNL journey, which included a return trip to the legendary sketch series 15 years after he left when he was asked to guest write on two Season 44 episodes. He also discusses his stand-up career, which landed him four appearances on Late Show with David Letterman, three on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and a gig opening for Jon Stewart at Carnegie Hall.

Click the embed below to listen now, or find Inside Late Night on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Be sure to check out Hugh Fink’s website at hughfink.com, where you can sign up to receive information about his sketch writing classes and more.

Show Transcript

Mark Malkoff:  Hugh Fink, thanks for talking with us. 

Hugh Fink: Sure, this’ll be fun. 

Yeah, it’s been a while. I’m really, really excited. You know, I think a lot of people that know your Saturday Night Live work for me personally, and I’ve talked to other people and maybe just comedy writers in general, the news infused with Larry King was one of the funniest recurring, uh, sketches with Norm Macdonald. And I remember as a kid, cause my parents would subscribe to USA Today, all of those, he would, he would just do random sayings. And you, you, you told me it would just be basically he would take press releases and just kind of cut and paste. 

You summed it up very well. I, I discovered his column in USA Today at the time, which of course was a different side of Larry King than people were used to seeing, right? Cause they knew him as the television radio host, but this was the most self serving narcissistic bullsh*t.. Where my theory was that he was paid by publicists to promote their mediocre TV shows and movies and books. He also would just state things that were obvious and sort of pull people’s heartstrings. I would say it was virtue signaling. So I decided to convert that into a sketch. And the fun of it, Mark, was it’s the essence of joke writing. It was just one-liners, one after another, after another. And at the table read, when I take Norm Macdonald to it, we’d probably have like. 25 jokes, but then we’d whittle them down as the week went on to what you saw on the air.

Yeah. One was about the equator, the new appreciation for the equator. 

Oh, it was, um, the more I think about it, the more I appreciate the equator. 

Yeah. The thing is, is, I remember reading this and reading the column and it’d be like, doesn’t Dom DeLuise have the best studio audience on candid camera out of any other show?

Thank you. So the equivalent of the one you said was, I wrote. Tiger Woods has got to be one of the seven or eight best black golfers in history. 

Yeah, and what about Robert Urich? 

Robert Urich, um, said that he’s one of the greatest figures of the 20th century. I think we called John Larroquette. Yeah. 

The thing with Norm is, is that if you could get him to commit to something, he was amazing. He would always, it was either 100 percent or he wouldn’t try, I would feel like on camera, but when he did commit like a Quentin Tarantino, or he played Larry King or Dave Letterman, I mean, you got a home run, uh, an amazing performance. 

Right. And in this case, because Norm and I knew each other from the LA standup scene, we were friends and trust each other.And I was convinced that Norm would do what I still consider to be the greatest Larry King impression ever, but I had to slightly convince him to do it. I go, Norm, I’m telling you, you don’t know how good your Larry King is going to be. And he trusted me. And of course. He completely nailed it. 

Yeah. And it was one of those things where I heard later, and I’ve heard you talk about it, but I want to get a little bit more inside, if you know things is that Johnny Carson was a huge fan of your, of the sketch and he, um, I heard this from a bunch of people and, Norm being Norm, and I love Norm, told the story two different ways. One is that he, Johnny Carson asked to meet him and he did go. And the other one is he, Johnny Carson asked him to meet up with him and he did not go. I do not know which one, this was after Carson’s death, which way it went. Um, but that Carson wanted to meet him, which I wouldn’t be surprised about. And that he, I could, I could see that happening. Um, but do you have any insight? 

And to that question, I don’t. All I can confirm to you is Norm did. More than once, meet Larry King, and do his Larry King impression in front of Larry, so you knew that. 

Yeah, I talked to Larry about that, he thought it was funny, or he like, at least pretended, but it was one of those, it was a funny, funny sketch. Now, is the first thing that you got on, other than Spade in America, which we’ll talk about in a little bit, was the David Schwimmer monologue? Is that the first thing you got on? That was show three. 

Yes, you could be right. So let me think about this because I did all the Spade in Americas that first fall, my first fall of the show, then Schwimmer hosted in the winter of the spring season, right?

I am so sorry. I’m so nerdy about this. This was the third episode. It went Mariel Hemingway and Blue’s Traveler. Second was Chevy Chase. And Lisa Loeb. Third was David Schwimmer and Natalie Merchant. 

Oh, Schwimmer was really? He was that early? Wow.  

He, he was. I, I, there’s a problem with me that I know all  this, but.

Oh my God. Well, then you’re right. I’d say that’s accurate, that that would have been my sketch other than Spade in America. Mm hmm. 

Why possibly, I’m not going to mention the person, if you want to, you can, that there would be somebody near the top, not Lorne, that did not want you to write sketches. They wanted you to just focus on Spade in America, because you had a skill set where you could do it, and I would think you would want as many options as possible.

Well, thank you. The truth is that it’s not a matter of naming names. It’s just that. I think that Lorne and the show itself felt like I was Spade’s guy, there were all these other writers being paid to do Weekend Update and sketches, and that they didn’t know my work, really, other than Spade saying that I would be really good for the show, but I was, you know, confident and aggressive enough to want to show them I can do more than write for Spade 

Smart thing. Because you have Sebastiano, Frank Sebastiano and Ross Abrash over doing Update. And it wasn’t, there weren’t the amount of writers that there are now on SNL. I mean, it was definitely more than I believe when Jim Downey might’ve been there. And it, it increased. It’s increased a lot. But I would just be like, and I know Fred Wolf, Wolf put in a good word for you too. Would just be like, I want as many options is possible. So you do the Schwimmer monologue and I was there for the dress rehearsal. I remember this very well. It was so surreal. So can you talk me through it? And I know you had to get on the phone with some of these people to try to talk to 

These people, right? That’s right. And by the way, I had already worked with Gary Coleman. So that was an easy one. But, um, I came up with the concept. You’re familiar with the concept. I wanted to pick the most sort of iconic TV stars from yesteryear sitcom stars, probably now the one joke that didn’t make it mark only because he declined, but would have killed I had Tom Brokaw cast in that monologue as himself. So after the joke would be like, after seeing Barry Williams from The Brady Bunch and Gary Coleman and, um, all these other sitcom people in the middle of it, Tom Brokaw was going to stand up, and  instead of hearing the theme song to a sitcom, you would just hear the NBC news, which was, but, um, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. And Tom Brokaw would have come on stage and that would have killed. But we asked Tom Brokaw to do it and he respectfully declined, even though he thought it was funny. 

And then Gabe Kaplan. I know you were on the phone with trying to talk him into it. 

I’d written for Gabe for his radio show, Sports Nuts in L.A. So we were friendly. Gabe wouldn’t do it only because his daughter was like graduating. She had some school event, so he just didn’t want to come to come to New York. And though he said, I may regret this because this could be hilarious. 

Can you explain the premise for the listeners? You have David Schwimmer come coming out and Friends, this was only like the second year of friends. It wasn’t it wasn’t what it was, but there was this buzz. I mean, there was unmistakably 

Right. So the premise Mark was that. There had been a friends monologue, I feel like, or a Cheers monologue, maybe someone from Cheers where they came out on stage and they played the Cheers theme and all the Cheers cast. It was very schmaltzy and kind of cute. I wanted to mock that and undermine it. So my premise was Schwimmer would come out and say very, you know, head over heels like, Hey, you know, it’s time like this when. You could use a friend or two to help you. So the expectation, right, is that all the cast of Friends is going to come out. So I tricked the audience. I did have Lisa Kudrow and Jennifer Aniston planted in the crowd and they played the Friends theme and they came out and they said, I’ll be there for you, David, just like the lyrics of the Friends song, I’ll be there for you. Now, anyone would assume that next it would be, Matthew Perry or Matt LeBlanc. Instead, I completely undermined it and started having random past stars from seventies sitcoms come out. So JJ Jimmy Walker from the Good Times, Barry Williams from Brady Bunch. So I think the fun of it was, Oh, wow, this is going in a totally different direction. And who’s the next star we’re going to see.

We have to talk about, and I know some people know this. People didn’t want to host the show. 

That season, they did not. 

The musical guest, I mean, that show’s all about famous people hanging out backstage. And they’re really, um, I mean, I said this, I was at show number one. Martha Stewart was there with Bob Morton. Second show, I think Jon Stewart was hanging out backstage. And I think that, that’s it. 

And then  remember Mark that the season debut, which was my first show, uh, the musical guest was Prince, but then he canceled four days before cause he was in a fight with his record label and who replaced Prince? Blues Traveler.

Yeah. I remember that. 

How do you go from Prince to Blues Traveler? 

They were pretty hot at the time. That’s what 

But they lacked the hip factor, right? That was what was lacking. 

I want to jump. I want to go all over the place, but one thing I wanted to ask you about is you were one of the rare people that got a sketch on when Norm came back to host the show, he had got hired and he came back and he brought in Fred Wolf, um, Andy Breckman, Sam Simon, Robert Smigel contributed some, but for the most part, I mean, I think Norm didn’t appear in any other, uh, I think Tina wrote a sketch, um, that was like Anna Wintour or something, or like, I forget what, who it was, but it was Helen Gurley Brown, I think, and Norm wasn’t in that sketch, but you were, I think the only one that got it, got him in something. I could be off on that. 

That’s flattering. I mean, Norm did love my Larry Kings and I think Norm’s felt it would be fun to revive it. Arguably, Mark, I think that was the funniest Larry Kings I ever wrote for him, because here’s the difference. The others had all been pre taped. 

I didn’t know that. 

That one was a live sketch. And we did two of them. I think one was on, you know, in the first three or four. Then after a Weekend Update. And so Norm was live, live doing Larry King. 

So funny. Do you think Andy Breckman, and there’s any truth in what he said in the book? book, the, the Tom Shales, Jim, uh, Andrew Miller book that when he came in with Sam Simon and with Fred Wolf, that they didn’t feel welcomed by the other writers. Could you see that? 

I don’t recall it, but I’ll tell you this. I would believe it because the show is so competitive and everyone’s so stressed out. The last thing writers wanted. Were more writers coming as guest writers, and I can definitely say that that was the vibe of any week when a guest writer would come. And listen, during my tenure, Stephen Colbert was a guest writer for two weeks, and it’s not like people were, yay, we got Stephen Colbert. It’s like people are just very into their own work and not wanting to have more competition. 

What are your memories, what stands out, especially backstage with Norm’s monologue, with, um, Lorne did not want him to do it, the host has a lot of say, when he basically says, I haven’t gotten any funnier, the show’s just gotten really bad, so I haven’t gotten any funnier, but um, what stands out to you backstage at all about anything?

What I recall is that I admired Norm. For doing that monologue. And I really did respect Lorne Michaels for allowing him to do it. It showed how Lorne is such a comedy purist that it may not be his taste and it may not be something that he likes, but he respected Norm. He respects the institution of the show. So the fact that he let Norm come out and do it, I thought was great. And I, I did think the monologue was hilarious. Some writers, by the way, I do remember some of my colleagues going, that’s not cool. He shouldn’t be crapping on our show that way. 

I know two of them. I’m not going to mention who they are, but people that were really, uh, uh, bothered by it, but I did want to ask you about the booing, which did not come from the studio audience when Norm says the show hasn’t gotten any, uh, I’ve just got, um, the show’s just gotten really bad. There’s booing that comes and it’s not from the studio audience. I have been told… Norm said it was from, uh, some writers. Do you have any, I don’t want you to name names, but do you know if that did In fact, come from the writers, because it didn’t come from the audience. 

No, until you bringing it up right now, I didn’t even recall that there were boos.

There were boos, and it wasn’t from the audience. 

I will tell you the loudest boos I’ve ever heard, and it did involve Norm MacDonald. You may not have heard this story. 

Oh, I do know this. The Woody Allen thing? 

Yes, 

Please continue. 

So Frank Sebastiano, brilliant joke writer, wrote a joke for Norm where he said, this week in the news, pop culture news, uh, Woody Allen has a new girlfriend. And then they were cutting to a photo of the infamous, uh, girl in Cambodia or Vietnam fleeing, um, Napalm bombs. That’s one of the most infamous photos in American history. So I was at, it wasn’t dress rehearsal. It was at the tech rehearsal at like six o’clock pm where we just go through everything. And what happened is Norm did that joke and immediately an employee of SNL who worked as like a, um, a tech director or something, he stormed out of his own booth and came down to the floor and said, I’m a Vietnam vet. That is disgraceful that you would do that. You got to remove that joke right now. And I witnessed that confrontation. Well, Norm did not listen. And he insisted on doing the joke. We go to dress rehearsal. He does the joke. I guess you’ve seen the tape or you were there. It got, it’s, it felt like a Yankee stadium booing a player. It was resounding like, Oh, and boos. And then the joke was cut. 

I was told by another writer that there were multiple female cast members that said that they wouldn’t do the show if that joke got on. 

Wow. Again, that I never heard before. And curiously, I don’t know why that joke, like, to me, it wouldn’t offend women any more than men. You know what I mean? Because it was more just, it was a child. And it’s an infamous photo, but the fact is, Frank wrote it, Norm loved the joke, he did it, but Norm is an entertainer, and I think Norm recognized that it was not worth doing that joke to get all boos. 

And Norm gave Lorne all the credit, and he did a print interview and said, Lorne was absolutely right, he warned me not to do it, and he, he was, you know, it’s one of those things where, like, people, you grew up in Indiana, and it’s like, how was your week last week, Hugh? And, you know, other people are talking about going. Barbecuing with their family. And you’re like, I’m talking to JLo, trying to convince her not to phone Madonna to try to get her permission for this sketch. I remember you telling me about this. What, what happened? You’ve done your homework, Mark. I like that.

Yeah. I was so bummed about that because that sketch would have crushed of JLo playing Madonna. And I remember, the album. Was it called Music that had come out? That was Madonna’s new album. 

It’s I think that might’ve been it. I’m not sure. 

Yeah. And I had JLo singing a song about, I think Madonna had just given birth to her son Rocco or one of her kids, but I had JLo playing her, and I met with Benny Medina at the famous manager at the time, and he was like, JLo, you shouldn’t do this. It’s just going to cause an… I being, you know, the kind of like, I disagree. She should do it because it’s going to get big laughs and it will show that she’s not afraid to make fun of celebrities. So I convinced JLo to do it. Well, I left two days later. I think to go produce the ESPY awards, which Lorne had me do. So I wasn’t there for her decision to change her mind and say she refused to do it. 

She wouldn’t do it at dress. She like before that, 

That  never made it. No, she cut it like on a Thursday. 

And didn’t she call Madonna to try to run? Like, maybe I keep this part or not keep this part. 

I think she did do that. I think you’re right. Which of course, that’s a bad solution because a celebrity is never going to go  Yeah, I love it. Do it. Yeah. Is that the same week if you recall that the XFL preempted Saturday Night Live for like 40 minutes, which I don’t think ever happened on a live show. 

Wow. 

That, um, yeah, I couldn’t believe it.

They just came in in the middle of, of, of, yeah, Jennifer Lopez, um, hosting the show. 

That could be, but because I was in, I think I was in Las Vegas producing the ESPY Awards. I wasn’t there for that show live. 

Yeah, she, she was a really good host. 

Good host. Yeah. I wrote her monologue that night, remember it was the one where she wore her, that infamous Versace dress and then she was doing her monologue, then she ripped off her fake dress to reveal the Versace dress. 

You were so good with the monologues. I mean, Britney Spears came in and that famous moment, that famous monologue was you, right? Can you explain, set up the premise? 

Yeah. The premise was there were two things Britney had been mocked for before she hosted one was that her boobs were fake. That was the rumor. And the other huge rumor was that she lip synced and didn’t sing. So when I met with Britney. In my office, I said, Britney, if it’s okay, I want to have a monologue where we tackle those two rumors and make fun of them and she’s like, yeah, be my guest. That’s right. So the joke was that we had that remote controlled device built by her boobs, where they would start swirling around as she was talking, which was hilarious and implied that they were fake. And in terms of lip syncing, do you remember this, Mark? In the middle of her monologue while she’s delivering it, her lip syncs, it became clear that she was lip syncing the monologue itself, that killed, and it was just a great way for her to start the show, showing that she makes fun of herself. 

Yeah, no, it absolutely killed.There’s, there’s certain hosts. I know that you’ve done interviews. I’ve heard you in interviews, talk about where, you know, some people are a game for anything, and it’s just like, let’s do this, and then there’s other people, like Nathan Lane, I heard you do an interview about, and I, you know, to his credit, he was discreet about it, you didn’t know him, did you? I never met him in my life, no. It read through it when he’s playing Charles Nelson Reilly for, is it in the actor studio sketch with James Lipton? Is that? 

Yeah, but just so you know, it never got that far, Mark. I pitched it to him Monday night. Oh, when the beats with the writers, I just wanted to, I was so excited. I thought he’d go, Oh, that’s great. Instead he did the opposite and he, he’s and keep in mind, this was at a time when Nathan Lane had not come out of the closet yet. And I think I really hit a nerve. Pitching him playing a flamboyantly gay guy. And he didn’t like that. Now, in fairness, a few years later, he brought me on stage at the Montreal Comedy Festival and couldn’t have been warmer and nicer, but he was definitely pissed at me. For pitching that Charles Nelson Reilly sketch 

And I’m surprised that he actually um, I mean he was polite about a bit terse But he actually did come up to you because I would think a lot of hosts just wouldn’t say something. 

That’s right. I think it just for whatever reason it really unnerved him, so.

There’s another guy that came up to you that hosted um a bunch of times, was one of the greatest ever, which was Alec Baldwin. And you wrote a monologue about him and he was getting knocked by some of the New York newspapers for he had gained some weight and what happened? 

Right. So my premise was Alec, as you, as you say, had hosted many times would come out and say, Hey folks, I thought tonight, instead of doing an original monologue, I would just show you highlights of my past SNL monologues. Let’s go to the clips. Well, the joke was that I would have fake clips where every other appearance he did, he’d be wearing a fat suit. So he’d appear obese in half the clips from yesteryear. So that’s what I put on paper. He read it Tuesday night. The table read’s the next day. When I show up to the office, the SNL receptionist said, Alec Baldwin is in your office waiting for you. He’s pretty mad. So I quickly thought, okay, I know where this is going. So I walked in as my own office mark and Alec is there and he goes, Hey Hugh, let me ask you something. Do you think I’m fat? I said, do I think you’re fat? No, I don’t think you’re fat. Why’d you write this monologue? You obviously think I’m fat. And just like a teenage girl, I had to sweetly tell him, Alec, you’re a good looking guy. Of course you’re not fat. You’re handsome. Women love you, you’re not fat, and I was just having fun with the fact that maybe you have occasionally gained a little weight, but it’s all a cartoon. So I basically had to talk him off the ledge, because he was ready to, like, throw down if I had been like, screw you, you’re fat. But I talked him down, he sort of apologized, and to his credit, Mark, he did read the sketch at the table read that afternoon, and it got big laughs. And it was cut. So he was professional enough to read it and let me get my laughs. It did not get chosen as the monologue. 

Rosie O’Donnell. When she came in, I heard, I think it might’ve been, I don’t want to say, I think it was Molly Shannon actually, um, did an interview saying that Rosie only wanted to do sketches with the women. She was very, is that true? She did the cheerleaders with, with the will. They’re only, she did. 

It’s honestly kind of ringing a bell and I’m lucky because I had good relationships with people like Rosie. Because of my standup career. Right. So she liked me and trusted me. Now she had me write her something that never aired simply because it didn’t go over well at dress. She wanted to play Roseanne Rosannadana. Oh, but with the twist we came up with is that it would be Roseanne Rosanadana’s daughter. So we had a different name, but talk the exact same way. So I had to write it because Rosie wanted me to. And, um, it went to dress rehearsal at Weekend Update. Didn’t do well. And so it was cut. 

Yeah, I think she did two sketches with, um, she did one with Will, the cheerleaders, and one with Mary Catherine Gallagher, but I think everything else was, um, the ladies, and Penny Marshall was around that, but, um, yeah, I wasn’t sure. When Steve Buscemi was there the first time, it was one, I thought it was like one of the funniest shows.

Has he been there since then? When you say the first time, I thought that was the only time. 

I think he’s done it twice, but the first one, when he came in, I I thought it was like one phenomenal show. Who wrote the Mad Hatter sketch? John Hurt was in that. I don’t know if you remember that. 

Oh, I don’t. But, you know, I wrote his monologue. 

Oh, wow. Yeah, it was a really strong show. The whole thing. I remember. Yeah. The job is not a lot. 

Remember, the premise was, Hey, everybody, I’m I play a lot of bad guys and weirdos, but a lot of these didn’t know this. I come from The Groundlings. I used to do improv, which, of course, was complete bullsh*t.

No, he was a stand up. But yeah. 

And then the joke was, Every single thing he came up with on the fly involved murder and violence. 

Playing with his character. A sketch went on air that just made me laugh, and I couldn’t stop with Hanukkah Hymns. Now, this sketch was Alec Baldwin, and it was one of these sketches where Lorne gave you an order, he, he basically said, um, what are you doing with this at read through?

Right.

And he was upset, but you went with your instinct, and I heard Will Ferrell defended you, and he was like, no, let’s do it this way. What was the premise, why was Lorne upset, and how, how did it actually wind up being your…

That’s a great question, and I want to add to that, Mark, that I used the sketch, Hanukkah hymns you were talking about. For my advanced TV writing class at Harvard University. And I, we show it as part of my curriculum. So here’s the premise. The premise was that unlike Christmas songs, all Hanukkah songs are depressing and boring with that sort of ancient Hebraic melody wailing that’s just so sad. So it’s a commercial for Hanukkah hymns as if these are great songs. You may not know this Mark, but when I first wrote it, Vince Vaughn, it was the host. And it killed, it killed at dress rehearsal, but Lorne decided that the Christmas show was two weeks later, because Vince was there for the Thanksgiving show. So Lorne said, Hugh, I want you to wait for a few weeks. We’ve got Alec coming. He’ll be great. So I said, fine. So Alec comes two weeks later, the exact same sketch. I don’t change a word. Alec’s really funny in it. We do it. And then I think like Friday night, not the table read, but after the table read, Lorne calls me in his office and he tells me what kind of, what you were saying is Hugh, you’ve got this wrong. You need to have all the people in the sketch smiling and looking happy, because that will be funnier when you play that against how depressing and sad the songs are. And my argument, Mark, was no. What helps the joke is that everyone in the entire sketch looks miserable. They’re all wearing black, like, downtrodden Hasidic Jews. They’re miserable. There’s a little kid in the sketch. I wanted a little kid to just be stoic and not smiling. And Lorne said, no, you’re wrong. You need to tell the cast that they all need to smile. So I tell all the cast, this is from Lorne. And as you said, Will Ferrell and other people like, No, that is so wrong, Hugh, you’re right. It’s funnier if we don’t smile. If you go back, Mark, and watch the sketch now, you’ll see that there’s probably like eight people in the final shot singing. Six of them are doing what I said. They’re not smiling. The only two people who are smiling are Cheri Oteri, And the five year old girl who I had to cast as an extra. So I’m happy that most of the cast followed my instructions instead of Lorne’s. 

You wrote a sketch. Uh, I don’t know how many people are going to know who this person is, but Mark Russell was this political. You know, he would play the piano, was famous on PBS and you did this. Um, I think when Mark McKinney maybe played Mark Russell and I know Adam McKay was in the audience.

Um, Adam McKay and me, right? Yes. McKay and I are together. Yes. 

And basically your, your take was that this guy can just get laughs saying Ross Perot’s name in different, just different ways that there wasn’t much. 

Yeah. My promise was that he does stupid rhymes, elementary rhymes. 

Yeah, that’s how he gets his stuff. You never heard from him or any, I’m sure he actually liked getting the attention. 

I mean, he was probably did, I mean, when you said, have I ever heard from someone? I must tell you that the sketch that I heard something loud and clear that had ramifications for SNL was what my sketch mocking Sex in the City when Jennifer Aniston hosted and Jennifer Aniston did a brilliant impression of Sarah, Jessica Parker. However, we had prosthetics build her a gigantic nose. And when Sarah Jessica Parker saw our sketch and it aired, she was so angry and hurt. She called HBO and said, I want you to deny SNL any requests for using clips from HBO, any graphics, logos. And by the way, HBO relented and did what she said for a few months. Saturday Night Live could not get use of any HBO footage. Because of my sketch. 

How did that not get leaked to the media? That’s pretty amazing. 

Now it would be. You’re right. It was a different time. So it’s like pre social media, there wasn’t as many gossip rags about Hollywood. Had that happened now, it definitely would have made news. I was so proud of the sketch and Jennifer Aniston was hilarious playing Sarah Jessica. 

You did a commercial parody. I think people really forget when they’re looking back at Saturday Night Live history with Tracy Morgan. How long it took him. I, I really do feel like if he came along maybe last year or the year before he, they, they were really giving only people like a year. It took him at least, I would say two seasons for the audience… 

At least two seasons. Right. And the sketch, I did write his first appearance on the air, which was Caribbean Essence Bath Oil.

That’s what I was going to ask about. Yeah. Yeah. Ana Gasteyer did an interview a long time ago. I believe it was Ana saying, um, I’m not going to mention who, but there was another, uh, cast member that was not, I guess, happy about doing that because they didn’t have a lot on. Were you aware of that? Or is it one of those things like back then, you know, they, uh, some of the ladies might’ve felt like they had to do it and they just maybe just like, didn’t speak up?

I mean, I was aware of this, that it obviously required. The men and women to be wearing like nude suits as they’re called. 

Yeah, Will Ferrell did it and I know Ana would do that with Martha Stewart. 

I remember that I think maybe because it was Molly Shannon, Cheri Oteri and Ana Gasteyer in my sketch. I think that Cheri had expressed some misgivings about, do I really have to do this? And I was respectful. I’m just like Well, I’m hoping you’ll want to do it because you’re not actually nude. It makes you look like you’re nude and we’re going to shoot it on the set with a movie director and it was all very professional, but, um, so it wouldn’t shock me to hear that maybe a cast member or two wasn’t crazy about it.

It got over very well. I feel like for Tracy that, um, and then maybe when he was doing the Sprite thing, ordering Lorne around, it just, the progression, Dominican Joe, I remember Dominican Joe, when I was going to college, getting protested by somebody, writing a column about NYU, and though, what was it that, you went to NYU, Washington Square News or whatever, somebody wrote an op ed or something, about that, about complaining, 

Did you know that I wrote the original Brian Fellows, but he wasn’t, he didn’t work at a zoo.

I didn’t know that. I thought that was Tim Herlihy.

That’s correct. Well, here’s what happened. I worked with Tracy on the Brian Fellows character, and that was the name of the character Brian Fellows. He didn’t, was not a zookeeper, he was a sports commentator and the joke was he knew nothing about sports. And seemed like he was gay. And that was the premise. And we did it as a weekend update piece where he would just talk about sports in a really ignorant, stupid way, but his name was Brian fellows. So it didn’t go over that well, but Tim Herlihy, being a talented writer, came to me a few weeks later and said, Hugh. Only with your permission, can I take that Brian Fellows sports guy that you did with Tracy and do something else with it? I have an idea. And of course, I respect Tim Herlihy. He, he was very kind to ask me. I said, sure. So Tim took it and went with it. 

That’s incredible. And I think T. Sean Shannon then took maybe over after Tim Herlihy. I could be off on that. Can you tell the story about Tim Herlihy casting you as an elf in a sketch? And it is one of those things when you are a writer on that show. I mean, it is your baby. Um, and you are sometimes, you know, Lorne Michaels has notes and sometimes there’s going to be disagreements, but you’re dressed as an elf. And what happens? 

My recollection is that I’m dressed as an elf for Tim Herlihy’s leprechaun sketch that Sting Sting was the host and I had at least a sketch or two on the same show as a writer. So, of course, I’m dressed as a leprechaun, but I’m also having to assert myself as a writer producer of my own sketches. So I’m underneath the bleachers with Lorne watching my monologue with sting that I wrote. And Lorne and I are starting to argue, as we often did, over how this should be done. And he just looks at me and says something like, You must be proud in that costume. Which is, of course, so humiliating, like, Yeah, I’m wearing the f*cking costume because I’m on your show and one of your writers cast me. I didn’t show up to work dressed as a leprechaun. It’s not Halloween. 

And then didn’t, wasn’t there something on the intercom being like, Hugh Fink to set and Lorne’s like, you have to go now or something.

Yeah, he goes I guess your, your little, your little performance, they’re calling you. Right. It’s like, Lorne, you’re, you’re the boss. If you don’t want me playing the leprechaun, I think you have the power to say, don’t be a leprechaun. 

Speaking of that, what was that like putting in such a crowd pleaser to the audience, which was Mr. Peepers? And it being a sketch that Lorne just, for whatever reason, it wasn’t his thing. I mean, for comedians, he thought it was hacky. Um, every week he puts, will put stuff on that is not his taste, because he knows the audience will like it. What is your instinct on why Lorne did put that in so often? Just the audience? Is that just… 

Yeah, I think you said it is, it was a crowd play. Listen, Steven Spielberg told Chris Kattan it was his favorite sketch at the time that we’d watch it. Jon Stewart told me it was brilliant. Jon said, just, it’s so creepy and weird. With that said, there were plenty of great comedy people who hated Mr. Peepers and thought it was hack and thought it was stupid. I’m a hired gun at Saturday Night Live. I’m being paid as a writer. Kattan came to me with the idea because it was a character that he had from The Groundlings. And I just went with it and came up with sort of a template that would work to do a bunch of times and it did work well. But I think that Lorne, this is sort of a funny aspect of Lorne, is that when he wants to like get your goat or just, um, demoralize you, he can use any, anything in his arsenal to do it. So in this case, yeah, he probably wasn’t a huge fan of Peepers, but he would just, it was sort of a love-hate thing. He recognized that the audiences really liked it, but he also thought that it was probably, um, infantile and adolescent, which in some ways it was. So. Yeah, that’s that would explain it.

In read through. There were certain sketches. I was just wondering after they did a few times, would they get genuine laughs at the table like Mango? The eighth time they do mango because you know what’s going to happen, right? Something like a Goat Boy. Is it? I mean, I know the audience likes it and it gets on, but is it really doing well at the table normally?

It’s the law of diminishing returns, Mark. So by the eighth time. You’re seeing a Mango or a Cheerleaders or a Goat Boy. Generally the laughs are getting less and less. And it’s what’s unfortunate is for the guest hosts, if they’re closely paying attention to laughs. They might think it reflects on the writing or a prediction of like, Oh, this sketch is gonna bomb. Obviously, that’s not true when you’re dealing with a Mary Catherine Gallagher or something like that. Yeah, writers in a good way are fickle and judgmental, and the more they hear the same premise or sketch being done, the less they’re going to laugh for sure. 

I have said this before, but in Will Ferrell’s defense, Molly Shannon doing those characters, I saw them speak and they were talking, um, Will Ferrell was saying Scott Wolf was there hosting that week and he wanted to do cheerleaders and he did not want to do it. Yeah, I remember that. And you, you have a host who comes in who basically just has so much sway and it’s like, I guess we’re doing the cheerleaders. 

I totally remember that. And by the way, Mark, yet again, I wrote Scott Wolf’s monologue. 

Yeah. 

That I was proud of. Do you remember it? 

Oh, gosh. I’m, I’m so, I’m, I’m not Arthur Meyer would, who’s a former Fallon writer who knows everything. I’m blanking on it. Can you please? 

Sure. So  remember, he was from New Jersey. So the premise was, He just came out and said, I’m from New Jersey. And immediately he was accosted by cast members as Jersey idiots in the audience, standing up like Jim Breuer, going Jersey, Cheri Oteri is wearing a Bon Jovi, you know, cutoff t shirt. So it became just. animalistic Jersey people taking over his monologue, not shutting up. And that was it. 

That’s really funny. You were one of the people that helped Breuer. Um, I know it’s public now. I don’t know how many people listening do know this, but I think in the history of the show, Breuer with Jim was the only one that was forced upon, um, By NBC, Lorne didn’t want Jim Breuer. It was, it was a year where they, uh, were doing transitions and, uh, Don Ohlmeyer and this other gentleman had a lot of, of pull. Did you, you know, as a cast and writers, it seemed like Steve Koren, I’ve said this before, saved him with Joe Pesci, um, which happened around Christmas and that like solidified him. Did you guys, did you know that going in? 

I did know that. In fact, I know that my friend Dana Gould, the comedian. 

Oh yeah. He auditioned for SNL. He should have gotten it. Maybe. 

It was between him and Breuer. To get that cast spot. 

Oh my goodness. And then NBC, um, was very much in Lorne gave Breuer one sketch at the premiere and it got cut. Um, so he had nothing other than he was an extra in the first, the cold open. And he said hi to Mariel Hemingway. And it was just, it took him a while. 

The other thing I want to plug Breuer that I thought was great was his heavy metal character. Right. And I did the heavy metal news for him. 

That did very well.

It did very well.  And so I liked working with Jim Breuer. But he was definitely more, um, physical and silly than a lot of SNL humor, no doubt. 

What was it like when you, um, played Carnegie Hall and you had the violin and Jon, you’re opening for Jon Stewart and he has to follow you because I know you killed.

I thank you. Truly, Mark, truly one of the most magnificent moments of my career, because if you think about it: I was a trained classical violinist, not good enough to be a professional, but a very good amateur. And I’d studied for years and I know classical music. It never in my wildest dreams occurred to me I would one day be standing alone on Carnegie Hall’s stage, getting to play my violin. But it happened because My standup was, got really good and I used violin as part of my act. So when Jon Stewart and his manager, um, Jim Dixon were  kind enough to say, we want you to open for him at Carnegie Hall. I was, this is a dream come true, but it was better than the dream because it was a packed audience, my parents flew in from Indiana, Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch were in the and lo and behold, Mark. My friend, the most accomplished violinist in the world, maybe Joshua Bell. 

Oh yeah. He went on, he went on Carson. I mean, he was, he’s a huge deal. 

Josh came to my show and hung with me. So that was such a cool night. It was part of the Toyota comedy festival. 

No, I remember it very, very well. And I remember seeing you on the A&E shows doing the Henny Youngman, um, getting older. And that’s amazing. You got to do that. Are you the only, to your knowledge, are you the only one in Letterman history, stand up, that Dave would make you do the same joke every time you went on? Because he loved it so much.  

He loved it so much. I mean, I would like to think that’s true. And my final appearance on Letterman to see, you know, the facts, I didn’t get a request to do it, but I decided I would do a callback to it, even though the audience would have no clue what I was doing. So in the middle of my standup, I did the bit. Waited for the laugh and then went, “come on, Bobby.” I looked over at Dave and he busted up laughing. 

That’s amazing to get, uh, Dave. I don’t, yeah, I wonder, uh, talk to maybe Eddie Brill or something, but just the fact that Dave and you, I mean, I, I know somebody that knows Brian Regan, I’ve met him before, but Brian Regan, basically people have really like, what’s the Letterman like? He’s like, I have no idea. Um, is that basically with you? I mean, you don’t…. 

I had a different relationship. Because I’m from, I’m the only standup from Dave’s hometown. 

Oh, wow. That makes sense. 

So Dave was so warm to me and talking about Indianapolis and wanted to know what neighborhood I grew up in. And so I had a very unusual. Uh, rapport with him, but even other people much more famous told me that when they’d go on the show, they wouldn’t get anything. 

Oh, it was routine. I mean, it was, it was people that would, would go in and, um, I get it because Dave Letterman took what Johnny did, which is you don’t see anybody beforehand if you can help it, save the energy for when it’s on. Johnny occasionally would see people in makeup or if it was like a Letterman or somebody who was close to, a Rickles, come by. But, um, yeah, that. It was for, for people that were like, I get to meet Dave. It’s like you’re on stage and that’s the only time, uh, you’re going to see that guy. In terms of, um, I know this wasn’t the best experience, but you were there from the launch, which was Craig Ferguson, The Late Late Show, what happened? I mean, I know that from people that were there, they were not, and I’m not talking about Peter Lassally, who I became friends with, I’m just talking about some of the people that were there. It just didn’t seem, um, uh, at least when you were there, it just didn’t gel a little bit, maybe?

Well, what I would tell you, Mark, is my experience in some ways was really fun and not unpleasant. I was his first head writer, but the issue was when I got the job writing for Craig, I had already sold The Show Biz Show, my series starring David Spade. So I was waiting for the series to be greenlit. Knowing that as soon as my series was green lit, I was bailing. So after six months at Ferguson, they liked me, they wanted to renew my contract. That’s when I got the word that Showbiz Show was going to officially go on the air. So I had to quit and that did not go over well with Craig or Lassally. Cause they felt like they were, you know, building consistency. Now, to address what you said creatively, I think the problem at the show was, Craig is, like any of these hosts, very controlling creatively. He ultimately didn’t really respect writers. If you could give Craig Ferguson a 90 minute show where it’s just him talking to camera, he would do it. Believe me. He didn’t really feel like he needed sketches or jokes. So for him, it was sort of an inconvenience to have to deal with writers. So it was a constant battle of him shooting down ideas that were being pitched by writers. If you recall, he got rid of a traditional monologue and just started telling stories. So anything that Craig could do that would allow him to be in control of the content, that’s what he preferred. And the ultimate example to tell you is I instructed the writers. I said, guys, he’s Benny Hill. He just wants to put on wigs and do weird accents and step on punchlines. And I think that that’s a really accurate analysis of what, of what Craig liked to do on his show. 

Yeah, the show definitely evolved. I had heard this and tell me if I have this right, I might not, is that there was a writer when you were there, Lori Nasso, that she did some comedy pieces at Ferguson. And I don’t know if any, did any of them get on? 

Pieces at Ferguson or at SNL? 

I thought that they were at Ferguson. Do you not? 

Here’s the story. Laurie and I worked at Saturday Night Live. She was there three years. I was there seven years. We were friends. When I took over Ferguson, I decided he’s a good guy to do some sketches if it’s the right sketch. So Lori came up with this concept that I helped her with, called Fiona the Scottish Stalker, where she did an impeccable Scottish accent. I would honestly Mark compare it to Baby Reindeer. Wow. If you know that series. 

Lori is a Second City alum, so she has that. 

Correct. So it  was sort of like a crazy over sexual stalker. Her tagline was Craig. I will not be ignored. Like really creepy Ferguson loved it. Mark. He loved it because he said he almost thought that she was from Scotland. She, her, her performance was so good. So we would do this Fiona, the Scottish stalker sketch. We probably did it five times and it killed, but I think what happened is, anytime someone started getting as big a laughs as Craig, it was time for them to leave the show. 

Carson was the same way with sketches. I mean, it is one of the things when your name is on that show. I mean, Jack Benny definitely had a different approach. 

Right. 

Maybe because he’s Jack Benny. 

And Conan had a, Conan was fine allowing people to get big laughs in sketches, but most hosts aren’t.

So, uh, tell me about teaching. I know you’re doing something with Harvard?

Yeah. So during COVID, as you’re well aware, we couldn’t write or produce television or do stand up. So I’m like, what can I do creatively? So at first I started teaching my own online TV sketch classes, but they were successful. That led to offers to now, I teach advanced television sketch writing at Harvard, and I also teach the similar class at Chapman University, Dodge college of film and media arts. And, you know, Chapman’s a top four film school in the country. So I’m at these two great universities. And for your viewers of your podcast, the Harvard class, I do one in the summertime where they allow people who aren’t officially Harvard students to take the class.So it’s pretty great. And it’s an intensive and What I said, advanced television sketch writing. It’s how to write sketches, particularly for television. 

That’s amazing. At hughfink.com, you have, um, a great website and taking classes. I don’t know if I have this right or not, because the internet, you just never know. But did you go back like maybe five years ago to guest write for SNL? 

I did. 

What were the circumstances? 

So the circumstances were Steve Higgins and I are friendly. And Higgins said, Hugh, wouldn’t it be cool for you to come back for just a little bit and like, you’re a senior writer, uh, you can help the youngsters, you know, so I’m like, I love that idea. So I went back and I wrote on the, uh, Sandra Oh show and I wrote on the Kit Harrington show. Just those two. And of course people have asked me, well, how was it different than when I was there, I’d say the biggest difference Mark, two things. One is that so much of the content at SNL now is pre taped, right? Like what? 30 percent of the show maybe is not live. 

It seems that it’s like about at least three pieces. 

There you go. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of. The other big change is just NBC is much more corporate. The offices are not… they don’t feel like crazy artists anymore. They feel like an accounting firm. So it’s just like very quiet and corporate. And so that was a, that surprised me as a vibe. And the other thing I would say is different is I’ve appreciated you asking me about all these monologues that I wrote for SNL, because I feel like there’s been a real change in the style of monologue that Saturday Night Llive does these days. It seems to me that the monologues now are less about being hilarious and more about just warming up the crowd, making the host seem likable. Maybe they tell a true story about their past or they just talk about how Saturday Night Live means something to them. When I was there, that wasn’t the case at all. I would just come up with, you know, outside the box, sometimes weird, um, concepts like the Friends one that we talked about.

Yeah, it definitely changes. Like, for example, um, I know the first year you were there, the sketches, they were doing a lot of premise pieces. And then the, the next year was pretty much all character pieces until at least Update. It could definitely like, um, definitely they would push the big Groundlings people, um, and they don’t really do that now. The big over the top characters now. So it’s a little bit. Um, so, but I’m just saying it goes in different, different ways. They don’t do catchphrases. They haven’t done that in years. 

Right. No catchphrases. Exactly. 

They haven’t done that in years Before we go. One quick question. What was the circumstances that Rick Ludwin, the late Rick Ludwin called you?

Oh my God. Yes. 

He was the vice president of NBC vice of late night 

The late Rick Ludwin,  who, you know,  was responsible for Conan  O’Brien. He championed, he was a great guy. So. I wrote a sketch, Mark, for myself. This is the year that I did some Weekend Update appearances where it was me, Hugh Fink on Weekend Update, responding to an article in  all the trades that NBC was cutting back its budget for Christmas parties, for its staff and shows. So I wrote this angry editorial in a funny way, talking about how, Hey, NBC, that’s great that you can save 200 on potato chips at a Christmas party. How about saving money by firing the head of your programming, considering that you’re last in the ratings. So I was just like, you know, in a funny way, making fun of NBC’s failures. So I did it at the table read, it got huge laughs. I assumed I was going to get to do it that Saturday night. I get a phone call from Rick Ludwin, who had been my champion and liked me a lot. And he was furious, Mark. And he goes, Hugh, I just read your sketch because they sent the West Coast all the material. He goes, let me say this to you as a friend. Seriously, please don’t do this sketch. Because if you do, It could seriously damage your standing at NBC. And I said, Rick, I’m stunned. Is this a threat? Are you telling me not to do the sketch? He goes, Hugh, I’m telling you because I like you. That’s why I’m calling you. It will not help your career if you do this sketch. Then he proceeded to tell me that, Hugh, when you say they should fire the head of programming, He goes, you’re talking about my friend Garth Ancier. That’s who you’re talking about. Mark, little did I know, a week after this conversation with Rick Ludwin, Garth was fired.

Oh, wow. 

Yeah.  So talk about me hitting a nerve about NBC corporate politics that I didn’t even know I was hitting. 

I do want to say that I knew Rick and Rick was very nice to me. That was, he did not do that routinely calling up people. People at SNL and um, he was known as a champion of people’s works and stuff. So I feel like that was probably the one time. Um, that maybe he, I mean, he definitely tried to get the Johnny Carson sketches. Um, please cancel. 

Yes, but exactly. And just so  you know, Mark, I was very upset and I went to Lauren and told him the story and Lorne. You know, he was somewhat supportive. But the fact is, we did not do the sketch.

Yeah, it’s just what’s what it is. But it’s just what it is. It does say the people that love the show sometimes. And I was talking to somebody else. Not that the funniest stuff doesn’t always get on. It’s just it’s 

I’d say a lot of times, right? 

Yeah, it just happens. Will you come back sometime? We’d love to have you back here.

Oh yeah, Mark, I would  love to do part two to this interview. 

Oh, I have so many more questions. How did this go? I know you do these, uh, you do these sometimes. How was this? 

Yeah, but I like the laser-beam focus you have on certain shows that I was a part of and think that’s really cool. So let’s definitely do a part two.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I was, I was doing, um, research, the, how much press you got when you did that, the Hanukkah, so this is Hanukkah. Oh my good. Talk about a firestorm of, um, protests and.. 

Talk about, Mark, if that sketch had aired now. How much it would be amazing

When we do this. We’ll, we’ll leave with that. When we do another episode, Hugh, thank you so much. Good luck. Hughfink.com, Hugh’s classes. You have a lot going on and, um, yeah, just thank you for your kindness. 

You got it. Thanks. Bye.