[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking The ‘80s! I am Meg.

[00:19] Jessica: And I am Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982! We went to middle school and high school together here in New York City, where we still live!

[00:29] Meg: And where we are podcasting about New York City in the '80s. I do rip from the headlines…

[00:33] Jessica: And I do pop culture!

[00:35] Meg: And, Jessica, I'm so excited about my story. I kind of just want to jump in, if that's okay with you.

[00:39] Jessica: Are you kidding? This is wonderful!

[00:53] Meg: So we've lived in apartment buildings our entire lives because we have lived – well, actually, I lived in a townhouse growing up in the ‘80s, but you lived in an apartment building your whole life.

[01:03] Jessica: Yes.

[01:03] Meg: I've certainly had issues with neighbors starting in the '90s, but I didn't have so much of a neighbor issue when I was younger. And I was wondering in the '80s if you or your parents ever had some, like, neighbor – apartment neighbor issues?

[01:22] Jessica: First off, the people who lived right across the hall from us wound up being like my grandparents. So, Molly and Douglas Ryan. We did New Year's with them, we did Christmas with them. They were the people who introduced me to publishing. The best! And they both looked like they were straight out of the 1940s, like they had never changed their look. And I've already told you about the kid from my class who lived all the way down the hall. I could hear him screaming with his mother.

[01:53] Meg: I can't remember.

[01:55] Jessica: He had the speech impediment. We made him sing “la, la, la, la, la, la.”

[01:59] Meg: I don't remember.

[02:01] Jessica: I don’t think you should tell me this…

Meg: Should you tell me this!?

Jessica: I'll tell you. I'll tell you some other time. It was... It was just… Kids are not nice. But anyway, so. No. And everyone in the building, it was strange. At the same time, it was all the parents were my parents age, and there were tons of kids my age and John's age. So it was actually really lovely.

[02:18] Meg: That sounds wonderful! Cool!

[02:22] Meg: Cool. Alright, well, my story today. My sources: Vanity Fair, page 6. Wikipedia.

[02:30] Jessica: Okay.

[02:31] Meg: At the end of the iconic movie After Hours about the horrors of getting lost in Soho, Paul Hackett – played by Griffin Dunne – is completely encased in papier mache like a frozen mummy. When Martin Scorsese was filming the scene in the summer of 1984, Griffin Dunne indeed did have to hang out all day in a body cast with only a tiny breathing hole and two peepholes.

[03:03] Jessica: Wow.

[03:04] Meg: All day. All day.

[03:04] Jessica: That’s horrible.

[03:05] Meg: It was also the summer. Can you imagine?

[03:07] Jessica: No, I cannot.

[03:09] Meg: On that day, Marty had invited Ric Ocasek of The Cars. I used to say “OKAY-SICK”. I just listened to a podcast, and they said, “OH-CAH-SECK”. Well, I'm gonna go with “OKAY-SICK”.

[03:19] Jessica: What makes them right?

[03:21] Meg: OK, I agree. I always heard “OKAY-SICK”, and then I was correcting myself. I'm more comfortable with “OKAY-SICK”.

[03:27] Jessica: So Ric Ocasek – actually, I will tell you this: I have friends who were in a band that was managed and produced by Ric Ocasek. And they call him “OKAY-SICK”.

[03:37] Meg: Then that absolutely is legit.

[03:40] Jessica: Okay.

[03:40] Meg: Okay. So he visits the set, and Marty introduces him to Griffin.

Jessica: Who's in the cast?

Meg: Who is in the cast. The Cars was Griffin’s - just happened to be his favorite band. So he's, like, beside himself… Jessica: Inside the cast?

Meg: Inside the cast! And Ric is chatting with him for a while, in spite of the fact that, like, Griffin Dunne cannot move or really be heard through the cast.

[04:09] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[04:11] Meg: The reason he was on the set was because he was thinking about writing a song for the movie, which I did a little bit of research. I don't believe he did end up writing a song for the movie. But he at that time was also living in a walk-up on West – sorry on East 12th Street, close to Electric Lady Studios.

[04:32] Jessica: Oh, sure.

[04:33] Meg: Where he was recording a new album. And that's on West 8th.

[04:36] Jessica: That's on St. Mark's, a little farther west.

[04:37] Meg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Further west between McDougall and 6th. And do you know who commissioned…?

Jessica: Wasn't it Jimi Hendrix?

Meg: It was indeed! You're great. And some of the people who recorded there… fancy people.

[04:51] Jessica: I mean, it's one of the ultimate destination places.

[04:55] Meg: Blondie, Hattie Smith, David Bowie. Yes, yes. All great stuff. Oh, and to give some more just context for Ric Ocasek's life at that point, Heartbreak City, iconic album for The Cars, had just come out in March. So we are the summer where just a few months after Heartbreak City came out, some of the songs on Heartbreak City, you might think “Magic”, “Drive”, “Hello Again”.

[05:20] Jessica: So everything that had a video on MTV, every single – every single single had a video that went with it. So that was massive.

[05:30] Meg: Ma-ssive. All right, so Griffin Dunne just happened to be looking for an apartment in New York. Griffin had grown up in Los Angeles, the son of Dominick Dunne and Ellen Dunne, and nephew of John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, who wrote The Year of Magical Thinking about her grief following her husband's death.

[05:50] Jessica: Well, and the documentary about her was done by Griffin Dunne.

[05:54] Meg: I didn't know that.

[05:54] Jessica: Yes.

[05:55] Meg: Griffin's sister, Dominique Dunne – [Jessica: Died?] – starred in Poltergeist, and the year the movie came out, which was 1982 – so that's just two years before where we are right now, in time -- she was strangled to death in her LA driveway by her estranged boyfriend, John Sweeney. And because I just cannot escape this rabbit hole, I will just talk about this for a heartbeat. Even though it's not the core of the story. Sweeney had been hounding her after their breakup and their relationship was violent. You can see the bruises on her face caused by Sweeney in an episode of Hill Street Blues.

[06:33] Jessica: Wow.

[06:34] Meg: Yep. When he showed up on her doorstep, he persuaded Dominique to talk to him outside. And her scene partner, David Packer, with whom she was running line, heard them arguing, then smacking sounds, then two screams and a thud. He called police, but they said that the home wasn't in their jurisdiction.

[06:56] Jessica: What?!

[06:56] Meg: Yep. Packer left through the back door. Cause he actually thought he was going to be killed. And he circled around front and when he came out front, he saw Sweeney on top of Dominique. And she never gained consciousness. And she was taken off life support five days later. She was 22 years old.

[07:14] Jessica: Oh my god. Disgusting.

[07:15] Meg: Ultimately, Sweeney was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and served three years and seven months.

[07:22] Jessica: What!?

[07:23] Meg: Yeah. Tina Brown, who would go on to be editor of Vanity Fair, encouraged Dominick Dunne, who until this very moment had been a TV and movie producer, to keep a journal during the trial of his daughter's killer. And that ended up being “JUSTICE: A Father's Account of the Trial of His Daughter's Killer”, which was featured in the March 1984 issue of Vanity Fair. So March 1984, the spring before. We are right now in the summer of 1984. This is the spring right before. And that launched a second career for Dunne as a chronicler of crime and society. But again, here we are, the summer after that article came out and Griffin Dunne…

[08:07] Jessica: Is in his body cast, having Ric Ocasek talk at him.

[08:10] Meg: And looking for an apartment in New York and trying to have a conversation with this man who he has…

[08:17] Jessica: This enormously tall man.

[08:20] Meg: Enormous. Describe Ric Ocasek.

[08:22] Jessica: He is. He was - he's a “was” - over 6ft tall, maybe five pounds, and he looked like a pencil with an Adam's apple.

[08:29] Meg: Mmm, and wore dark sunglasses.

[08:33] Jessica: He had dark, spiky hair, big ears, [Meg: really black hair] and was, you know, with Paulina Porizkova.

[08:41] Meg: Yes. Which we're getting to.

[08:43] Jessica: Oh, okay.

[08:44] Meg: So Ric tells Griffin that there's an apartment available on the top floor of the apartment that he's living in. He and his new girlfriend, Paulina Porizkova, were living on the ground floor. Now, Ric was still married to his second wife, Suzanne. But when Paulina was hired as the lead in the video for The Car's song Drive.

[09:05] Jessica: That's how they met?!

[09:06] Meg: They fell hard for each other. Paulina was 19.

[09:11] Jessica: Oh, good lord.

[09:12] Meg: From Czechoslovakia and already well on her way to becoming a supermodel. Oh, by the way, guess who directed the video of Drive. You are never going to get this, but it's crazy.

[09:23] Jessica: Tell me.

[09:24] Meg: Timothy Hutton.

[09:25] Jessica: What? That is bizarre.

[09:28] Meg: There you go.

[09:28] Jessica: Timothy Hutton, dark horse.

[09:30] Meg: Earlier that year, Paulina had been 18, a model fresh in the city. She'd been watching MTV and saw Ric Ocasek and fell for him on the spot.

[09:46] Jessica: Aw.

[09:46] Meg: She described him as, quote: “A combination of Mister Spock, David Bowie, Jesus Christ, and Chopin”. Just her type.

[09:54] Jessica: Well, that's very specific.

[09:58] Meg: Quote: “Little did I know then that only a few months later, that smile would be mine. It would be for me. It would be mine for 30 years”.

[10:06] Jessica: Oh, my good lord.

[10:09] Meg: I know! But that summer, their romance was new, and Griffin Dunne soon moved upstairs from them. Delighted to have new friends in the city. Griffin said, “I don't think I've ever seen a couple more in love than those two. They hung on each other's words and laughed uproariously over things an outsider couldn't possibly understand. They spoke a language all their own that made you feel like you were eavesdropping on dolphins”.

[10:33] Jessica: Okay, that's a little fruity. Okay.

[10:36] Meg: I think it's lovely.

[10:39] Jessica: Well, you know, I'm in a little bit of a mood today.

[10:41] Meg: You are!

[10:42] Jessica: Okay. I'm gonna try not to be crusty.

[10:44] Meg: No, actually, no. I want you to lean into the crustiness, because this is going to be kind of an interactive part of the story coming up. And your crustiness will definitely come in handy, because life in the apartment building wasn't all that blissful. In the first week after moving in, Griffin ran into the woman who lived between his apartment and Ric and Paulina's. So Ric and Paulina are on the ground floor, Griffin's on the top floor, and there's a woman on the floor between them. As he was walking down the stairs, a short, frizzy-haired, angry woman blocked his way. And now, Jessica, we're going to do a little scene.

[11:23] Jessica: Oh. Oh, my God. You have sides here.

[11:25] Meg: Yes.

[11:26] Jessica: This is very cool.

[11:27] Meg: I handed Jessica her script. You play “Angry Woman”. Okay, so again, we are on the stairs in this walk up apartment on 12th street. Angry Woman says to Griffin Dunne…

[11:42] Jessica: “You left the fucking door open last night”.

[11:44] Meg: “I did?”

[11:45] Jessica: “You turned the bolts on the bottom two locks, but you didn't do the top one. How fucking hard can that be? Someone could have come in and killed my husband and I in our sleep”.

[11:55] Meg: “I didn't realize…”

[11:57] Jessica: “You didn't realize? You people from Hollywood and that asshole rock star downstairs don't realize anything about anyone but yourselves. I have to put up with that ‘Dick’ Ocasek leaving the door open and the paparazzi and groupies hanging out front. And now I have another selfish asshole risking my life!”

[12:20] Meg: Very well done. Thank you.

[12:21] Jessica: That was a catharsis. Thank you.

[12:23] Meg: Now, Griffin claims he never saw photographers or groupies outside the apartment, but there was no point arguing with the angry woman.

[12:34] Jessica: Clearly I wouldn't argue with cuckoo bird.

[12:35] Meg: After that, he was sure to bolt the door behind him and tiptoe past the Angry Woman's apartment on his way up to the top floor. One day, he crept into his apartment, still a little rattled from the encounter with his neighbor, when he saw on the floor in the middle of his living room a single slice of individually wrapped Kraft cheese. Inside the plastic of this lone slice of cheese was a scrap of paper with a drawing of a skull and crossbones. When he removed the paper from inside the plastic of the cheese slice, he saw written…

[13:20] Jessica: “Get out of the building now! You have been warned”. Oh, she's totally out of her fucking mind.

[13:31] Meg: So Griffin took the cheese and the threat –

[13:34] Jessica: “Who moved my cheese?”

[13:38] Meg: – to Ric and Paulina's place and told them about what happened with the Angry Woman on the stairs. And Ric said…

Jessica: “Yeah, man, that lady's really crazy. It's gotta be her. How'd she get into your apartment?”

Meg: Ric handed back the cheese and said…

Jessica: “You're gonna have to confront her with this”.

Meg: But Griffin was scared shitless, so he didn't do anything about it for two days, until he discovered another slice of cheese in the middle of his apartment.

[14:12] Jessica: Why is the cheese the vehicle of doom?

[14:14] Meg: With another drawing of a skull and crossbones and this note.

[14:19] Jessica: “What are you still doing in the building? Get out now. This is your last warning.”

[14:25] Meg: So now Griffin is, like, shaking in terror. He goes back to Ric and Paulina:

Jessica: “This is bad…”

Meg: says Paulina.

Jessica: “That lady is one crazy bitch”

Meg: Ric poured Griffin a vodka to help him get his courage up. Then Griffin went to the angry woman's apartment door with the cheese slices and knocked. Apparently, she was cooking meatloaf, and he could smell the meatloaf, but she didn't come to the door. So he went back to his place, and as he opened the door, he felt a breeze come in through the floor to ceiling sliding glass window that he kept open. It was summertime in New York. As he went to shut the window. He glanced down into the courtyard and saw Rik Ocasek tossing a slice of cheese aimed right at his open window with Paulina Porizkova next to him, doubled over in hysterics.

[15:31] Jessica: They are so awful, those shitheads.

[15:41] Meg: So Griffin Dunne wrote this story for Vanity Fair on the occasion of Ric Ocasek's death. And I could, as an epilogue, talk about what happened after he died and everything with Paulina and all of that but…

[15:59] Jessica: Let's not sully the moment

[16:01] Meg: Let's not sully it!

[16:03] Jessica: Because at that moment, it was pure and hijinks born of love.

[16:08] Meg: Exactly. Yeah. You know, I was writing out sort of, you know, the aftermath and everything, and I'm like, you know, they were together for many, many years. They had two beautiful sons, Jonathan and Oliver. It didn't end great, but it was great for quite, quite a while.

[16:26] Jessica: And that's relationships for you. But I love that. What jerks. That's – Isn't that the perfect encapsulation of how the people who will be the biggest jerks to you usually are your friends? It's just like, what's the word I'm looking for? It's irresistible when, you know, like, “Oh, my God, this is the thing that will drive this person out of their mind”.

[16:54] Meg: I think it's so funny!

[16:55] Jessica: And I am now going to like – And what an arm on him that he could get a slice of cheese.

[17:02] Meg: It's true!

[17:03] Jessica: Up three stories? Yeah, that's really good. That's impressive.

[17:08] Meg: Three floors! Good, aim too.

[17:09] Jessica: But it also explains the cheese because that can really travel like a frisbee.

[17:14] Meg: So instead of having a paper airplane, he was just like, “Well, we've got this. This will give it more momentum”.

[17:20] Jessica: Yeah, it's quite brilliant in a way. And if he wasn't trying to show off for his new girlfriend, [Meg: his 19-year-old girlfriend] Exactly. That is really – and so how old was Ric Ocasek at this point? Is he in his 30s?

[17:34] Meg: 39.

[17:35] Jessica: 39. Okay. And Griffin Dunne is, like, in his late twenties.

[17:40] Meg: Yeah, exactly. He's 29.

[17:42] Jessica: Oh, what a bunch of morons. That's really beautiful. Although the lady in the middle apartment really was a nutball.

[17:49] Meg: Yeah. Oh, no, that was awful.

[17:50] Jessica: But she wasn't actually trying to off him, right?

[17:55] Meg: She wasn't psychotic. She wasn't a psycho killer.

[17:59] Jessica: Oh, man. No, that's pretty… Actually, I did have a crazy neighbor once. I moved to Williamsburg in 1999 with my husband, Anthony, and we lived in a building that was one story. It had been a glass factory. There's this amazing.

[18:17] Meg: Sounds cool.

[18:18] Jessica: It was very cool. There were no windows to the street because it was just this one. We were on the ground floor, and it had glass bricks. And instead, there were six gigantic skylights.

[18:30] Meg: Okay.

[18:31] Jessica: And it was like. The space was, like, 1200 square feet. It was insane. But the space had been split in two. There was another side. So when you walked in, you're in this little vestibule, and you could go to the door on the right or the door on the left. I was the door on the right. The door on the left was a lunatic, an absolute lunatic named Berndt. Or Bernd?. B-e-r-n-d Naber. N-A-B-E-R. He was German. Reportedly had been, you know, a hanger on at the factory. He only wore white. His glasses were white. He painted his bicycle white. Everything was white. [Meg: Was he an artist?] He was an artist, and he had these gigantic canvases. And he would paint layers and layers and layers of paint and then use a sandblaster to, like, you know, like, get through to the different layers and what have you. The sandblaster, the music, and the girls. And he was old. He must have been in his sixties. And I remember one time, I was just like, this fucking guy and this music. And I was banging on his door and he – I'm not joking, it was like something out of Absolutely Fabulous – he fell out of his own apartment with two, like, 20-something girls hanging on him. You know, he had paint all over him and was like, “What’s the matter?”. I was like, “You are”. But the problem was I couldn't really get too saucy with him because he was also – I was subletting from him – he was my landlord.

[20:00] Meg: Oh, yeah. No, you can't complain to your landlord.

[20:03] Jessica: I was just like, “Oh, God, Bernd, just don't get high tonight, okay? Like, I have something to do tomorrow. Could you just, like, keep it down a little, Bernd?” No, it was like something out of After Hours. He really was.

[20:19] Meg: It actually sounds very much like After Hours.

[20:22] Jessica: And his side of the space was, like, double the size of mine. But he had – mine was finished very nicely – His – And by the way, all white. It lookedl like, my apartment was, like walking onto the set of 2001. His apartment had no upgrade to it at all. It basically looked like a garage and had all of his painting stuff and equipment all around and a mattress on the floor. And I was like, you're really working hard, man, to, like, get the right vibe, aren't you? So when you get your 20-something chicks back from the bar, they're like, “It's for real!”. Anyway, he was a real banana and could be really sweet, but such a pain in the ass. So that –

[21:11] Meg: I wonder if we could look up his artwork and post it.

[21:14] Jessica: I'm gonna look right now, [Meg: Bernd], and see what I can find for Bernd. Immediately what comes up when I start typing that in is Bergdorf Goodman, which tells you a lot about me… Bernd Naber. What do we have here? Yes. Yes. Artist. Here he is. Look! Look! Here he is.

[21:32] Meg: Oh, my God. He's very white.

[21:34] Jessica: Yes.

[21:35] Meg: So did you like the interactive quality?

[21:37] Jessica: Oh, my gosh. I loved it. I haven't done a scene work in a very long time. It was marvelous.

[21:42] Meg: I'll try it.I’ll look out for something…

[21:43] Jessica: And that was cold reading. I can do better. I can do better. That was cold.

[21:47] Meg: It was! Look, you were typecast.

[21:49] Jessica: Hey. Hey. Why, I oughta. Why I oughta.

[MUSIC PLAYS]

Jessica: Hi.

Meg: Hi.

Jessica: Okay. Although it is rare, I have an engagement question for you, today.

[22:12] Meg: Okay.

[22:13] Jessica: All right. When you were a kid, after the age of, let's say, eleven.

[22:18] Meg: Okay.

[22:19] Jessica: So when you were tween. Meg: Yes. Jessica: And older, what was your favorite tv show?

[22:26] Meg: Dallas.

[22:28] Jessica: Really?

[22:28] Meg: Yeah.

[22:29] Jessica: Why?

[22:31] Meg: I loved the dramaaaaaa.

[22:35] Jessica: I never got into any of the soap operas, daytime or nighttime.

[22:39] Meg: Also, you know, I grew up in Austin, Texas, until I moved to New York when I was seven. So I think it might have been a little bit like, “Oh, I miss Texas”.

[22:47] Jessica: Like, you felt like the Ewings were your family?

[22:49] Meg: No, just it was. I think it was. Felt like. Why do I think it was filmed at the time? I think I thought it was filmed in Texas.

[22:57] Jessica: Interesting…

[22:58] Meg: Probably.

[22:59] Jessica: Well, funny enough, there's a tie-in to what you liked to watch today, although I did not know that and did not expect it.

[23:08] Meg: Who shot JR? No spoilers. I bet you don't even know Who Shot Jr.

[23:12] Jessica: I didn't watch any of it.

Meg: That was a big deal.

Jessica: I know who shot Mister Burns on the Simpsons, which was their parody of it.

[23:22] Meg: Who shot Mister Burns on the Simpsons?

[23:24] Jessica: Baby Maggie

[23:25] Meg: Yeah. No. No correlation.

[23:27] Jessica: No. When I was still at Fleming, so it must have been around 1980 and 1981. The boys in the class were always talking and obsessed about what they had watched on Saturday Night Live.

[23:45] Meg: Oh, okay.

[23:46] Jessica: That weekend. And, you know, I sort of felt the same way about it as I did about Monty Python.

[23:52] Meg: Yeah.

[23:53] Jessica: Like, I liked it. It was fun, but I didn't need to repeat every single thing that was said.

[24:01] Meg: And honestly, in those days in particular, it was very bro-y.

[24:07] Jessica: Indeed. It was. It was super bro-y and stayed super bro-y for a really long time. What I really, really loved was before Saturday Night Live and no one called it SNL?

[24:22] Meg: No. When did that start? I still won't do that. I think it's silly?

[24:26] Jessica: Ridiculous. No. But the lineup was very important to me because my parents – did your parents go out a lot at night?

[24:32] Meg: I'm not sure.

[24:33] Jessica: Were you left with your brother?

[24:34] Meg: I mean, my brother was older, so I don't even know. I don't know if I really noticed.

[24:39] Jessica: Well, my parents went out and John was there to look after me.

[24:43] Meg: Yeah.

[24:43] Jessica: And the excitement of Saturday night was The Love Boat, Fantasy Island lineup.

[24:49] Meg: Oh, my God.

[24:50] Jessica: Love those shows that then slid right into Saturday night.

[24:55] Meg: Fair enough. And I will say about Love Boat and Fantasy Island, which I love.

[25:00] Jessica: I mean, if you didn't love them, there was something dramatically – Aaron Spelling. Genius.

[25:06] Meg: Quality. Quality television. Yeah. There's just no way to improve on that.

[25:10] Jessica: No, it was ideal. If you ever need to know who the real stars of yesteryear were at the time, who is big, in the thirties and forties, just look at the guest stars. All you have to do is go on Wikipedia and find a list of all of the guest stars.

[25:29] Meg: Oh, my God.

[25:30] Jessica: From The Love Boat. And it's like Milton Berle and if she had been alive, Lupe Vélez.

[25:36] Meg: But they also did current people, like, they would have people who were on current sitcoms and stuff.

[25:41] Jessica: I was very, very excited that they had Scott Baio on. It was Scott Baio and Kristy McNichol, I think, on the same, the same show.

[25:49] Meg: That's exciting.

[25:50] Jessica: Yes. It was a thrill.

[25:51] Meg: My father thought it was trashy.

[25:54] Jessica: Of course he would.

[25:55] Meg: So the only time I got to watch it was, in fact, when they were not in the house. So, yes, they must have been going out. To answer your first question.

Jessica: There you go, a little deduction. Meg: Because there was no way that I would have been allowed to watch that. And I definitely watched it.

[26:09] Jessica: It was truly a slice of heaven, even though it was the same thing every time. It was like, you know, people reminisce.

[26:15] Meg: With the, like, woman in the wraparound dress looking to the moon on the lido deck.

[26:21] Jessica: On the lido deck, yes, yes.

[26:23] Meg: Like pining away for the guy. Like she came with some guy, but that really shouldn't be the guy that she ends up with. And she ran into the guy like, she probably was friends with him and in high school, but she didn't give him the time of day. But now that there are a few years…

[26:40] Jessica: Because he was a nerd.

[26:43] Meg: He was a nerd, yeah. It’s different. And frankly, that guy that she came with is treating her pretty poorly.

[26:47] Jessica: Frequently, the guy who is the nerd comes to her with a wrap.

[26:51] Meg: Of course!

[26:52] Jessica: Because it’s cold on the lido deck

[26:53] Meg: It is so cold with the full moon on the lido.

[26:55] Jessica: Exactly. And then there is also always the hijinks of the staff. So, like, Isaac the bartender and Gopher and Doc would be like bumbling around.

[27:06] Meg: And Doc was the womanizer, which was a little creepy because he was a doctor.

[27:10] Jessica: He was a doctor. And he was, I mean, they were.

[27:13] Meg: And he was talking about feeling women up while he was giving them exams.

[27:17] Jessica: Well, this is different time.

Meg: That doesn’t age well.

Jessica: It doesn't age at all. But we loved it. And, [Meg: Ugh! Perfect. Perfect television.] you know, Merill Stubing, captain Stubing in his knee socks, always very special. For the kids out there who don't know what we're talking about; there is such a cornucopia of madness ahead of you. Just go on... go on YouTube and check it out.

[27:43] Meg: I'm going to. I cannot wait to rewatch these.

[27:45] Jessica: Maybe we need to have a viewing in the pit.

[27:47] Meg: Yes. Of Love Boat and Fantasy Island.

[27:50] Jessica: Like, do a whole lineup night.

[27:51] Meg: Are you going to talk about Fantasy Island? Is this what you were going to talk about? Okay, sorry, no more tangents.

[27:56] Jessica: This is like, I was going to talk about what I'm about to talk about, but no, no. I realized as I was doing this preparation that it was really about the lineup. Like Saturday night lineup was so thrilling. And even if you were at someone's house for a sleepover, there was no question, like, that's what you were watching. That's what you were doing. But if you could stay up and your parents didn't mind or if there was a TV in your room, then you watched SNL.

[28:26] Meg: Saturday Night Live.

[28:29] Jessica: Exactly. The '80s was really like, John Belushi was already gone. So the '80s was the second team. It was really the second cast.

[28:38] Meg: Yeah, which cast are you focusing in on? Are we talking about, like when those teen stars…?

Jessica: No, no, no, this is – [Meg: That was '90s]

[28:44] Jessica: No, no, no.

[28:45] Meg: Like Anthony Michael Hall? That’s pre-that?

[28:47] Jessica: No, no, no, that's the '90s. It’s pre-that.

[28:49] Meg: Eddie Murphy.

[28:50] Jessica: Yes, it's Eddie Murphy. Joe Piscopo, people you've never, you don't remember, like Charles Rocket. It was weird because a lot of them were only on for like a year and then moved on. I remembered how even as a child, I was aware of how subversive it was. Like it was just… to even have watched it was considered risqué as a child and we were kids who were watching Channel J. So I was like, why is that? And then I realized that it's because of what happened off-screen as well as on-screen. Right? Are you remembering this? And that there were all kinds of. Well, I mean, obviously we all knew about – well, we didn't all know – but there were drugs and parties and excess and all of that. Do you remember that stuff?

[29:40] Meg: Yeah, I do. I mean, but it's so weird. Did I know it at the time? I think so?

[29:47] Jessica: Did we?

Meg: Like, I don’t know…

Jessica: I remember there was a, and this is, I guess it was, this is really a seventies thing, but I remember watching a skit where John Belushi – so, yeah, this is in the late seventies – John Belushi was doing like a news report and it was about how bad cocaine was. And he was covered in cocaine.

[30:08] Meg: Okay.

[30:09] Jessica: And then at the very end, he took out a powdered donut to take a second bite and that was like, “Oh, my God, it's a cocaine joke!”

[30:18] Meg: And honestly, I think I would have gotten that.

[30:21] Jessica: Yeah, no, no, that's my point. We did get it.

[30:25] Meg: Yeah. Oh yeah yeah yeah.

[30:26] Jessica: And so, yes, it was, it was.

[30:28] Meg: When was, when did he die? Oh, you know what? It was in the '80s and I was looking into doing it, but he died – he was…

[30:34] Jessica: Didn't he die in like 82? He died early.

[30:35] Meg: In LA, though.

[30:38] Jessica: Right! At the Chateau Marmont, everyone's favorite place to overdose. Yay! So, yeah, so I was, I was looking into that and I was looking at this early cast who people don't really remember. Like, do you remember Brad Kroger?

[30:52] Meg: No. There was another Brad, though.

[30:54] Jessica: Brad Hall.

[30:55] Meg: Yes, I remember him! Yes.

[30:58] Jessica: Who was with Julie Louis Dreyfus on the show, and they got married and are still married. So. And a lot of the people on the show at that time were actually the writers who migrated out to being the cast and then – [Meg: sort of like the office.] Jessica: Yes! Lorne Michaels left the show and handed the reins over to Dick Ebersole for a little while. And I think that was also like part of the whole switch-up. But anyway, so I was looking into this and I was like, you know what? I remember that about this time with Saturday Night Live. But was there anything so risqué or crazy really on the air? I was talking to my dad a couple of days ago, and we were talking about the podcast, and he was talking about how entertained he is by it and all that, which is always so nice. And then he was gearing up to say something and I knew exactly what it was going to be just from his body language and the sort of clearing of his throat. My father, my father – even more than my mother did it – but my father has been on me my entire life about my dirty mouth. That I have a propensity to curse. And I don't think that I curse more than…

[32:16] Meg: Me? No, I don't think so!

[32:21] Jessica: … or our peers.

Meg: He doesn't like the language on the podcast?

Jessica: He doesn't mind when I do it in person. I don't know. You know what? I don't know.

[32:25] Meg: So what did he say? I'm interrupting you.

[32:27] Jessica: So that was it? No, I was like. I said, “Dad, don't even start. It's the cursing.” And he was like, “Yes. You know, it's just maybe not the best way to…” Well, what I found was that the number one way for someone to get fired on Saturday Night Live was to say “fuck”.

Meg: On the air?

Jessica: Yes! And it happened so. Many. Times.

[32:51] Meg: That’s a nice little connection.

[32:52] Jessica: Yes. See that? See how I did that? So the number of people who were fired because they said “fuck” or were banned from the show if they were guests was quite large.

[33:05] Meg: Well it cost the show lots of money because it was live.

[33:07] Jessica: Yes.

[33:08] Meg: And the FEC. Right?

Jessica: FCC.

Meg: FCC. FEC is like air traffic or something? FCC. FCC.

[33:15] Jessica: The two of us live in a bubble of not knowing. We're just like, “Life is pretty, and I don't know. But, we don't drive…”

[33:23] Meg: No.

[33:24] Jessica: Yeah, that's not a joke. Like, that whole thing was actually entirely true –

Meg: Neither of us drive.

Jessica: Funny enough, one of the people who was fired for saying the “f” word – dad – was this guy, Charles Rocket. And we'll put something about him online, but you'll recognize him instantly. Very good-looking guy and played a lot of jerks in a lot of things. He did a skit ‘cause Charlene Tilton was on.

Meg: From Dallas!.

Jessica: Yes! This is all connected.

[33:58] Meg: Oh! Charleeeeene.

[33:59] Jessica: Charlene Tilton, who – that's a whole other conversation about sex symbols through the ages and how the aesthetic changes. Because she was this little, tiny, petite, kind of little zaftig, busty blonde. Not a great beauty for the ages, just like a cute girl next door, button nose kind of thing.

[34:24] Meg: She was a sex pot on the show.

[34:26] Jessica: She was a sex pot on the show. And she was the end all, be all of sexy in that time, the early '80s. But on the show, in the skit, she was having an affair with whoever Charles Rocket was playing.

[34:43] Meg: Okay.

[34:44] Jessica: And there's all this stuff.

[34:45] Meg: Well, that's what she did on Dallas, too. She had affairs with everybody even though she was a teenager.

[34:49] Jessica: And the joke was that every. She was having an affair with everyone else on the cast, in the cast. And so everyone was jealous and everyone was going crazy. And then someone comes out and you don't know who it is, and shoots Charles Rocket.

Meg: Of course!

Jessica: Right. And someone says, “Do you want to know who did it?” or “Do you know who did it?” And without thinking, he says, “I've never been shot before. Of course I want to fucking know who did it.” Career. Over. [Meg: Oh, that’s such good answer!]

Jessica: Career over. Done. Buh! Career over. But bye bye. No more on this. And as a really weird postscript, and this is more your ball of wax than mine, but in the strange but true category that includes gore, Charles Rocket killed himself.

[35:38] Meg: Oh, no.

[35:39] Jessica: By cutting his own throat with a box cutter.

[35:43] Meg: Awful.

[35:44] Jessica: How crazy is that? Like…

[35:46] Meg: Oh, I'll look into it.

[35:49] Jessica: Look into it. I think this is for you. I'm lobbing.

[35:52] Meg: Yeah, I appreciate it.

[35:53] Jessica: I'm lobbing it to you. And he was found in a field, and it was definitively not murder. So weird.

[35:59] Meg: I will definitely do a follow-up on that.

[36:01] Jessica: Very weird. So, yeah, so saying “fuck” was the number one way. My favorite story – and this actually encapsulates what I thought Saturday Night Live and the cast were all about. But apparently this actually really upset them. In 1981, Penelope Spheeris – [Meg: The director?]

Jessica: She directed Wayne's World. Anyway. But the thing that she was really, really well known for was this documentary that came out in 1981 about the hard rock scene in Los Angeles. And it was called “The Decline Of Western Civilization”. And it showed some really messed up stuff. And John Belushi, who had already left the show, saw the film and was taken with it and also really taken with this one band called Fear that was highlighted in the film. And he wanted to give them a cameo in a movie that he was shooting, but it didn't work out. So he got in touch with Lorne Michaels and asked if he could get them a guest spot.

[37:17] Meg: Wow.

[37:17] Jessica: And Lorne Michaels said no. And he was like, “But what if I come on the episode, I'll be in it in some way”. And he was like, “Okay, no problem”. So little did Lorne Michaels know what he was getting into because not only did they come to the show, but they brought with them a little bit of their fan base. What happens is one of the famous, most famous, and to use exactly the right language, “fuck ups” in Saturday Night Live history. So the thing about Fear is that unlike everyone else in Penelope Spheeris’ movie, they were not a metal band. This performance in 1981 was basically the day that punk came to America and entered their living rooms because that's what Fear was. They're a punk band. And John Belushi, knowing who they were and what their whole deal was, got a bunch of kids to come up from Washington, DC, where there was a really active punk culture to come up to New York City and slam dance. Remember when, like, just the, like, when was the last time you heard the phrase the word “slam dance”? Right? So to come up and do that. So they had maybe 15 people that they were going to have, like, make up a mosh pit. But little did they know that as the vans were coming north from DC to New York, they started picking up other punk kids.

[38:59] Meg: Oh, God.

[38:59] Jessica: So by the time they arrive in New York, there are four dozen punks looking for, at minimum, a mosh pit to get crazy in. The country did not know what they were looking at at this point, right? The band sets up on stage and they start by antagonizing the crowd, saying, “Hey, it's great to be in New Jersey”. They start playing, and the kids instantly swing into a psychotic mosh pit. So four dozen people slamming. And remember how they used to dance? Like, they were stomping around and flailing and they would just start beating each other up. And it was – it was…

[39:38] Meg: I mean, there's a way to safely do it, I believe, but it doesn't sound like this kind of crowd was into the safety of it all.

[39:45] Jessica: No. And in fact, there were people in the crowd in the mosh pit who were really big in the punk scene themselves. There was, let's see, Ian MacKaye from Minor Threat, Tesco Vee from The Meatmen, John Brannon from Negative Approach, and Harley Flanagan and John Joseph from the CRO-MAGS. So these guys were definitely part of pushing the envelope, right? So they're all going totally berserk. The cameramen – and Dick Ebersol, who is the stage manager at this point – they've never seen this before. They think there is an actual riot happening on the set, on the stage. And so they start freaking out and they try to corral the kids. The kids won't move. It is now an actual screaming fight with Fear still playing. What to – I'm sure the stage manager…

[40:34] Meg: Oh god! Can you see this on TV?

[40:36] Jessica: You can absolutely see it now on YouTube because Saturday Night Live tried to make it – to disappear it.

[40:43] Meg: I can imagine they did.

[40:43] Jessica: And obviously the east coast saw it. I don't know if they cut it for the west coast, which would have been interesting. Yeah. It was never put into rotation into any of the syndication. They later estimated that it was – there was – and think, this was 1981 – $20,000 worth of damage to the studio. And later on, when interviewed, the lead singer of Fear said that it was more like half a million dollars. But who knows if that was just grandstanding. And the thing to get back to the original point of “What is the worst thing you can do on Saturday Night Live?”. After all of this chaos? Fading the crowd with welcome. You know, “We love New Jersey”. And there was a song called, like, something like “Be in New York, if you love saxophones”. Like, all kinds of nonsense. The thing that got them banned for life was at the very end, someone came and grabbed the mic and it wasn't even a member of the band. It was one of the other punk guys from a different band who came on and said, “New York fucking sucks!”. That was it. That was what actually was the final blow for them. Anarchy was less an issue than the “f word”. Anyway. So that is one of my favorite SN – Saturday Night Live – see, I've been poisoned by the young people.

[42:05] Meg: No! Let's take it back.

Jessica: It's one of my favorite –

Meg: Saturday. Night. Live.

[42:08] Jessica: Saturday. Night. Live.

[42:10] Meg: We have the energy to say the entire phrase.

[42:13] Jessica: And I think that one of the next things I’d like to research is there were some very notorious cast parties because, you know, on Saturday night they would wrap for the week. And then there was one particular bar that they all went to that was right near the studio. I know that there are some very, very freaky stories out there about those cast parties. So that is my next research.

[42:35] Meg: Next time.

[MUSIC PLAYS]

Meg: So what's our tie in? Griffin Dunne, Ric Ocasek, Paulina Porizkova.

[42:57] Jessica: Pranks? Meg: Pranks! Jessica: So they pulled a prank and John Belushi and – I don't know if it was really a prank – but they got one over on the Saturday Night Live executives for sure.

[43:11] Meg: All right, that works for me.

[43:13] Jessica: I think it's a prank.

[43:14] Meg: Cool. All right, till next time. Thank you, Jessica.

[43:16] Jessica: Adieu.