Original subtitles

Whenever you get into explaining comedy, there's nothing funny about it.

We all respected each other. That comes before love.

The five of us were very well matched.

We quickly, quickly gravitated toward each other.

There's very, very few I look back and go, oh, that was a real dud. We did

pretty good.

Building those relationships, it's kind of like you don't want to fall in love

too fast because maybe it's not real.

Oh, no.

This isn't happening.

What isn't happening? We're out of coffee.

The idea for Just Shoot Me came from when I was working on the Larry Sanders

show, and I had an idea for an episode that never got shot.

My idea for the episode was that Larry is dating a supermodel, and she comes by

after the show to pick him up, and he gets called into an emergency meeting.

he asks Janine Garofalo's character, you know what, sit and talk to her, keep

her company for a while while I'm in my meeting.

I thought that...

would be the most interesting conversation.

You know, I've always thought of models as, I don't know, the enemy?

But it might be a really hard thing, schlepping all these magazines, being

under such heavy scrutiny, always being judged, hoping someone will hire you.

And there have been times when I didn't know if I could make the rent, so I

think I know what you must be going through.

I made $2 million last year.

I thought, well, what's it like for people to work around...

This absolute beauty every day. What does it do to their own sense of self?

what role does beauty play in our society?

And then at the same time, I kept hearing stories about these older men

new families.

When are you going to accept the fact that Allie and I are very much in love?

Very much in love. Is there a special room where the models go to throw up?

And then I heard another story about a man who...

this German businessman who bought his daughter the Wilhelmina Modeling Agency.

So I thought, there again, there was another place where the family got mixed

with business, and someone who maybe didn't absolutely deserve to have

got placed into a power position, and what kind of feelings of resentment

other people have, and it all just sort of built from there. And then finally,

we got the go -ahead to start casting it, and then those characters came to

life.

Look what I just got.

Oh, no, not another gadget.

It's a laser pointer.

Now if I need to indicate something, I just point at it like this.

Wow, it's just like a finger, only $200 more.

The original idea for Jack was that he was much colder than the character that

came to be.

And then George walked in the room, and he's about the warmest man on the

planet. Well, you ask an actor about the character that he's playing, and he's

going to say, well, it mainly comes from inside. I don't know where that guy

comes from.

People talk to you, Levitan talks to you, the script talks to you, all these

things talk to you, and then people tell you, that's too much, come back on

that, just be more real, keep it real.

All these things come in, and slowly, because I didn't have the guy much at

beginning.

And then the writers start to respond to you and the escalating relationship.

I can do this.

I mean, how hard is it to assemble a few pieces of plaque?

I'll cancel the rest of your week.

I think in another actor, people really could have hated Jack Gallo because he

had a lot of flaws.

But George made him sweet.

and lovable.

And somehow, he just can give you that little smile, and he can get away with

murder. This is like retirement acting, sitcom acting, because the hours are so

great, and you really only work one day a week, and the rest of the week, the

four days, you're finding it. This, you get a week to make it right.

That's a real luxury.

He died.

I wanted him to be happy with... What I do.

I was in constant need of his approval.

And every time he'd give it to me, it was worth all the gold in China.

How long you been with me?

Eight years.

No kidding.

That's longer than any of my marriages.

I think George wound up being a real fatherly figure because he was in the

as Jack Gallop.

We hung out so much, and I never saw that coming. I didn't really know him,

I knew his stuff, and he always made fun of me. He goes, who's afraid of

Virginia Woolf, mother?

All right?

You want to see that?

What are you, a Tommy boy in black?

Is it the International Labor Board?

Mr. Lee, please. It's Maya Gallo.

Yes, I called earlier about the garment workers' piece. Maya, come quick. Yes, I

know he's busy, but this is important. Maya, Maya.

Sorry? Maya, Maya. Yes, thank you. Maya.

Oh, hi, Dad. I was just pretending to have a very important conversation on

play phone.

In Maya, we needed somebody who could embody a sense of purpose and

righteousness, self -righteousness.

But also have a sexy side that's just in there, deep beneath the surface. That

part of her, that's what Jack gave to her. Who had a sex dream? I want

My idea about Elliot.

You people are thick.

Certainly in the first couple of seasons, it was a very...

heavily, the story was very heavy father -daughter.

And so I did feel a great responsibility.

And also, the people who do this medium, this sitcom medium, they do it well,

they make it look easy, and it's not that easy.

You really showed me something today, the way you stayed focused.

Well, in college, I was the only one coherent enough to order the pizza.

I'm going to choose not to understand that remark.

Well, it was such a pleasure to be able to go delve into this father -daughter

relationship. I felt like we tried to make it as real as possible and really

after each other. And it was very alive.

It was very real.

And I always felt this sense of relief when I was going in that office.

As an actor, something really interesting is going to happen here.

Maya is so important to Just Shoot Me because she's...

The center of it. She's the grounding of that show.

She's the sort of the touchstone that the audience could say, yeah, well, I

where she's coming from. These people are crazy.

And Laura, you know, brings a real sense of reality to it. On a scale of nine to

ten, how much did you miss me? If nine is not at all, then four.

Laura is this tough, not so tough, but this girl from New Jersey who has a body

of work that makes you go.

I need to be on my toes, and I need to take this serious, and I need to bring

what I consider my best to the table because my company is awesome, and I

not be the weakest link.

Laura and I had worked together before. We did a play together in New York ten

years before that, and I adored her, but she was the only one I knew.

You know, dear, you can understand why I didn't recognize you. I mean, there is

virtually no resemblance. Go away.

Ah, there it is.

She was...

my little sister, and I will always think of her that way.

Hello, smelliest.

I ran into Krista at the Mizrahi reception.

She says she hates you.

Krista?

Doesn't ring a bell.

Oh no, tall, brunette, gorgeous, hate your guts.

I meet so many models.

She said she'd like to tie you to a post and beat you with an old rubber hose.

Oh, Krista.

Elliot is an artist. He thinks in visual terms.

That brought up the whole subject of beauty and why is it okay to want a

beautiful woman. And for him, he's saying, well, that is okay because I

visually. At its core, here was a guy who cared about his art. And that, in a

nutshell. This is Rico. Well, good luck with those resumes.

Oh, me?

Back to the thong mines.

I had just finished a show for NBC that was short -lived.

And this show came right at its heels.

And it was the character of Elliot that was so wonderful because he was the

exact opposite of what I just played.

Look, we all know the only reason you get girls is because you're a big

photographer.

Oh, yeah, if that helps you sleep at night.

What is it, your uncanny resemblance to an aging Charlie Brown?

Rico wound up being a good buddy of mine because he is so sensitive and such an

actor and so touchy -feely and all the stuff you would never expect.

And I'm not really like that. He'd always come and hug me and make me hug

He goes, I know this track's crazy. I gotta hug you, I gotta hug you. But he's

great actor. He would do plays during the show and we'd all go out and see

He'd go, Davey, you don't have to come.

It's Hamlet or it's Shakespeare.

And I'd be like, no. And I'd go and I'd sit in the back and get on my pager.

Honey, I don't know who your agent is, but you need to grow six inches, lose 20

pounds, and find a hairdresser who gave up cocaine with everyone else.

Somewhere at home, I still have my original sheet of casting ideas on the

page of the pilot, and it says, you know, Nina Van Horn, think Wendy Malick,

older. Because I thought that Nina should have been past her prime.

What it turned out is that it was so much better that she wasn't.

past her prime, that she was still sexually viable, that she was still

attractive, because otherwise it would have been sad, I think.

I was in Phoenix doing a movie in the desert and got a phone call from Steve

Levitan saying, I'm doing this strange little pilot and I'm looking for an

Wendy Malick to play this role of Nina Van Horn.

And I'm not sure this is something you want to do because she is a woman who is

kicking and screaming her way into middle age.

And he said, would you be at all interested in that? And initially I

I'm not sure that's where I want to go right now.

I was the Noxzema gotcha girl.

You know, he gotcha.

Yeah, well, ask your parents.

I remember that there was this point, we did this scene together and we got

these huge laughs and we were screaming like after the scene, girls rock, girls

make comedy.

Because sometimes comedy is such a boys club.

Listen, if it's okay with you, I would really love to throw you a birthday

party. Really? I was thinking hammer hands might be fun.

Oh, uh -huh. Kind of like the way pink eye might be fun.

Or we could go to the box. Oh, that place that all the hobos live in.

Or I could give it a little more thought.

Or any thought.

So we were very happy when we would get paired together.

It would be like, ooh, we get to work together this week. Because it was kind

rare that they would let us have a storyline where we were on the same

where it wasn't just her jabbing me and me making moral judgments about her

life. To me, she was someone who...

was still living in the 70s in her mind. She just never quite got past that

time. It was her favorite time, and she just carried on as if it were still

about 1975.

I resent that.

I slept around because I was promiscuous, not ambitious.

I do remember that very early on we made the conscious decision that Nina is not

going to be politically correct.

She is going to drink. She is going to sleep around.

She is going to be a symbol of the...

disco party lifestyle of the 70s when she was in her prime.

I just asked Jack a question about the cover, and you know what he said?

What? He said, ask Maya.

Oh, well, you know, so unfair. I've worked here for nine years, three of

practically sober.

When we first went on the air, NBC was known as the Family Network.

And when I started, when I first came to this, I asked Steve, I said, look, are

you going to keep this woman as edgy as she was written in the pilot?

That's what drew me to this. I mean, I am a living example of what you should

not do as a woman. And he said, no, if we go down, we're going down in flames.

But I'm not compromising on this. And the network had some real problems. At

point, they went up to him and said, we're concerned about Nina's drinking

problem. And he said, what problem? She just likes to drink.

Hey, you.

You're an intern, right?

Yes. Sir, I came here to learn the magazine business.

I go to school in Wisconsin.

Go think, Buck.

Actually, we're the Badgers.

Oh, imagine my embarrassment.

Now give me your tie.

In the original pilot, there was an assistant, but it was a really small

And I kept thinking to myself that we're a character short.

I mean, really, we looked at it and we're like, we really only have four

characters. It just feels like there would be a fifth person in the mix.

And then one day, Brad Gray, called me up and said, well, what would you think

of David Spade?

I was just finished Saturday Night Live.

I came back to California, and my manager, Brad Gray, had this show.

And Brad said, why don't you watch it, and I don't know what you're doing next,

now that Saturday Night Live's over, but why don't you check it out? And I

watched about five minutes of it, and I'm like, yeah, you know, I could fit

right in there. So we set up a meeting, and it only took really about 17, 18

meetings.

To get David to commit.

But eventually, finally, David committed to the project.

And we just basically started writing Dennis Finch for David Spade.

Hi, Dennis Finch. Let me take a little look -see through your book -see. Maybe

can help you out.

Ooh, nice body.

Not that nightmare -before -Christmas look that's going around.

Ooh, I like the pout here. Very naughty. Shows you can be a bad girl.

Whoa! Nude shot.

Bad idea.

He really is a combination of some of the characters that David has played in

the past and who David is.

I couldn't believe what it was like. I'm like, they're writing me jokes. And

even if they're not right for me, I can just make them up. That's actually the

best thing I do is make up stuff right there. So I just show up. Boop, boop,

boop. Say my jokes. Hey, Nina, you're slutty. And hey, Laura, your

boobs are large.

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

Why did you come in here?

I had to hug you in a sweater.

You know, craft service, where you get coffee and everything, was right by the

door. And I remember David, like, entering the threshold of the stage, and

were all sort of near the door and coming over the door and...

He hadn't even entered the stage, we hadn't started working, and we were

all doubled over laughing hysterically.

And that's the way our day started every day.

Whenever I think of David, I just sort of think of him. He fits like right here

under my armpit, especially when I have high heels on. So he would just come in

and sort of climb in there and get safe.

And said he sort of felt like a koala bear and I was the eucalyptus tree.

When he's saying the koala bear and the tree, it's a little more G -rated than

I'd say. So let's just stick with that one.

All right. I need the Versace layout, the circulation numbers, and who wrote

this month's sex quiz. It's too easy.

Well, when you've been cramming for it your whole life.

Ah, yeah.

Surprise.

Yeah, sure is.

Come on in.

Don't you have a birthday coming up?

Yeah, in about 11 and a half months. Good. I was afraid I missed it.

So we shot a first pilot, and there were some things wrong.

Number one, David Spade wasn't in the first pilot.

It was already a show. It was already shot.

Everyone was in it but me.

They took it to New York for the advertisers to say, we're NBC, here's

our new shows. And when Laura got out there to do that, they got cold feet at

the last second.

And boom, they decided at the last minute to put suddenly Susan.

instead of us. She was bummed, so they were like, it's just, there's something,

it needs a little more, we're not quite sure.

So they let him rewrite the pilot, reshoot it, got through some bumps there

because it was a little goofy at first, but it was better with five people. It

made sense, more to bounce off of, this and that.

Jack had someone to play off of, Wendy, it was great.

This shot's perfect.

Let's see.

Uh -oh, nipple.

Give it.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's Waldo.

Basically, it was just hard for me to figure out where to go in the show. So

putting me as the assistant in the front was strategic so I could make fun of

Laura, Wendy walking by, George when he comes in, and anybody that came in the

office. So it worked out great.

The first pilot, which was the pre -David Fade pilot, I had this really

staircase, and I was really attached to it. It was absolutely beautiful.

And I bitched about losing that staircase for seven years because I

really thought it was... I mean, I made the greatest entrance of all time. I got

to descend a spiral staircase, much like Loretta Young.

And they took that away from me when they changed the set.

So I had a little problem with that.

They try to get innovative, as you do. You say, well, this is going to be

any other series that's ever been done.

Well, that proved, among other things, impractical. And I'm sure there were

other things that I was not privy to. But that set changed, and it became like

other sitcoms. It became like office sets. There are certain things you have

do, but you have to make those discoveries yourself.

They made it better.

The difference was like, first there's night, and then there's day.

I couldn't be...

clearer and then i don't know what happened between that and davy coming on

board but suddenly having him on the show well it took the pressure off

everybody else to be funny first of all

what are you guys doing

we're deciding which of these women we'd like to sleep with really well i

thought we were saying which women we'd already slept with

Our first season was only six episodes.

So it's strange when you're working in a vacuum. You have something, you don't

know what it is exactly.

We have no feedback yet, really, other than from the audience that comes.

And they don't really know the characters at all. So you don't really

good character jokes, those jokes where they know, oh boy, this is going to be

good because he's walking in because they don't even know who he is.

I mean, we tried some really daring shows for the first six.

I mean, there are...

I mean, we did that thing where Finch falls into the monkey cage at the zoo. I

mean, that's pretty bold, and the whole cast accidentally gets pretty wasted.

That was something for the first six.

But ultimately, really, really funny episodes.

Lemon Wacky, hello?

It's supposed to be delicious. My cab driver told me about it when I

inadvertently tipped him a year's salary.

What's in it?

Well, I could tell you what we used.

It was dry mango.

What was in the candy?

Some sort of hallucinogen, I believe.

PCP. It was heroin.

Angel dust.

Or maybe LSD.

Maybe. I think lemon wacky hello is a combination of acid and ecstasy and top

ramen noodles.

Oh, we should have been dead.

It was a kind of psychedelic, but you can't say that on...

but I assume we played it like it was a psychedelic. Okay, okay, okay, okay.

What's going on? I don't know. I haven't felt this way since 1969 to 1978.

I think Nina tells us exactly what was in it. It was like a five -syllable

and Wendy could not get this. I'm sorry, Wendy.

It's a funny story. It's not about you not being able to get your line.

But she had to have it written down somewhere.

So there was a word that was like eight syllables that was one of the

ingredients in lemon wacky, and I just couldn't get it, so I finally had them

write it down.

It's a hallucinogen, probably in the opium family, most likely affecting the

dopamine neurotransmitters in the cerebral cortex.

I used to date Timothy Leary.

But I didn't have things written down nearly as much as George did.

Oh, I shouldn't have said that, should I?

They did not want to show that episode.

And I remember they were going to show five out of the six of them.

And the ratings were so good, they squeezed it in as the last, I think it

the last one or the fourth one or something.

But they didn't know how to deal with that one.

Does anyone else feel weird?

I feel fine.

My God, your pores are gigantic.

We had to find this tone that wouldn't be offensive to censors, but would still

tell the story.

So we did a lot of thinking on our feet and a lot of collaboration with the

writers, and also it was the birth of our first in -joke as a cast.

Now it's perfect!

Which was Rico saying... Maya?

Yes? Board fell.

Board fell.

Board fell. Board fell.

Board drop. Maybe that was Rico saying that.

Again, we'll all remember differently.

Uh -oh! What?

Board fell!

So Board Fell went on for about a year after that, and there's something about

when you have your first in -joke, then you're starting to become this

cohesive sort of amoeba of a cast.

You know, in hindsight, it probably was a really great...

you know, third season episode.

But we had the idea then.

So let's do it.

9 .45, it's official. We now have a crisis on our hands. Dennis, what's the

update? Still no word on where your bagel is.

But the deli said somebody did leave an hour ago. It's one block away. What are

they doing, rolling it here?

Well, I was saving my breakfast until later, but I don't mind sharing.

We all respected what each of the other of us could do. You make room for

everybody. Well, that's ideal. It happens very rarely in life, and it

very rarely on sitcoms. There are sitcoms, as we all know, where there's a

of friction and conflict going on and envy and all the green things.

So this worked really well.

It's really a compliment that people still come up to me and say, I watch the

show every night.

It's a stress reliever for me. Thank you so much for making me laugh.

And that's really great.

I think we all will always feel good about these seven years because we did

really good work and we played really hard together.

And we have an incredible mutual respect, all of us, including the crew.

Of course, it's hard to single out one thing because I'm proud of the

friendships and I'm proud of the longevity of the show. But the whole

taught me how to have fun, to not take oneself so serious.

and to acknowledge the responsibility that you have as a performer.

I'm just really glad that I got on something where I kind of thought it was

funny every week, you know? I think it's a combination of things.

I'm probably most proud of that the show is considered a hit, that we set out to

do what we wanted to do, which was do a good show and be able to do it for a

long time. But I'm just as glad that...

For seven years, people had a fantastic place to go to work.