Howard Shore Quotes

If it weren't for The Groundlings, I would never be on Saturday Night Live.

Hosting 'SNL' was something I'd always wanted to do. The show allowed me to play to my strengths - mixing music with comedy seemed like a way into that world.

Without realizing it, I think I've wanted to do a sketch show since I was, like, 11 years old. Like everybody else in comedy, I grew up watching 'Saturday Night Live,' and I was doing characters with my friends.

I'm a singer and performer in a hybrid show that's standup, music and audience participation.

I hired Tina Fey for 'SNL,' which was certainly a good match. She took off right away there.

I would call it a comedy variety show. We have some people just doing straight standup. We usually try to have one musical act of sort. So its just people being funny in different ways, not just sketch, not just standup, not just characters, all of those things.

There's no job like 'SNL.' There's no other job you go to where you're like, 'Oh, this is like that live, late-night sketch variety-musical show that shoots in, whatever it is, 10,000 feet of sound stage.' There's nothing like it.

At the beginning of each week at 'Saturday Night Live,' we have a full cast meeting where Lorne Michaels introduces the upcoming host.

'Saturday Night Live' is a show that I think I could have a lot of fun on, just being different characters and maybe singing, too.

Comedy is really my passion. I started out way before television doing sketch comedy with other women. Very much along the lines of, at the time it was 'Sensible Footwear', but now it's 'Smack The Pony', 'French And Saunders', that kind of thing. That's how I started out.

'Saturday Night Live' is live television. Nothing can compare to that.

'SCTV' was the concept of a group ensemble doing satirical things. 'Saturday Night Live's sketches were broader than ours, more universal.

I was at Second City L.A., going through the conservatory, and I graduated in 2004 and I got 'SNL' in 2005.

You can go on 'Saturday Night Live' now and not even play live.

I grew up in Chicago and was a huge fan of 'The Second City', so when I moved to L.A., I was looking for anything that resembled that... then I started 'The Groundlings', so I went to a show and it was very much like 'Second City'. I was so impressed that that same night I went backstage and I went up to the funniest person there.

My stepfather had a connection with The Second City and told me I should go there. I woke up in a cold sweat one night and said, 'I'm moving to Chicago.' That's how I went to Second City.

I had been on this improv team at this really great improv theater. It's called iO now. It used to be called Improv Olympic. They have showcases for Lorne Michaels and other writers and people who work at 'SNL' usually about once a year, although I don't know if it always happens.

I wanted to be on 'Saturday Night Live' since I was ten.

My inspiration to do comedy came from many places. Saturday mornings, I would watch Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis movies. I later got into watching stand-ups like Eddie Murphy, who was my main inspiration.

There's [John Mulaney Show] jokes that I have in stand up that I wouldn't try to put in, I would try to have someone just speak extemporaneously in the middle of a scene about an episode of "Law and Order" or something.

I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell.

If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.

When comedy is good, it's jazz. The beats of it, the looseness, the improvisational part, the music-the way you hit the inflection, the high notes of a joke. It's all melody to me.

I got home, picked up my ax, turned on the four-track and just played it ... I played three solos back to back on Cemetery Gates ... the next morning, the second and third solos weren't bad, but the first had that first take magic ! .. I didn't touch it.