rant · moment 8 of 19
Bar Stories for Hollywood Executives and Why SNL Sucks
from The Advocate · #143
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
5 minTim describes regaling clueless young TV executives with stories from his rough drinking days at a bar called Lisa's Lounge, arguing that comedy writers from privileged, homogenous backgrounds (like SNL's staff) can't make anything good because they've never suffered or taken a public bus.
- 31:43Tim bought a $600,000 house at 23, coked up, with no income, and questions whether he's a victim.
- 32:28Real victims are old people who didn't understand mortgages; the guy on Main Street taking money he can't pay back is doing the same thing as Wall Street bankers.
- 33:20Tim tells room full of young executives a bar story about Lisa's Lounge, named after the owner's daughter who died in a drunk driving accident.
- 33:52Bartender Tracy forgot to get Easter baskets for her kids because they live with their father—the whole bar laughed.
- 34:21If these executives had lived through some of the nightmares Tim's experienced, everything they make wouldn't suck so much.
- 34:43Hollywood is making content for their friends—people with the same sensibility and life experiences—and it fucking sucks.
- 35:02Every time someone tells Tim something's great, he watches it and thinks at best it's fine.
- 35:27Some people making TV, like the guys at Feral, are fucking smart and present, which is why they make the best stuff.
- 35:40SNL sucks because very few of the writers, if any, have taken a public bus.
- 36:03Different life experiences are why Tim thinks comedians are funny, and why the group hanging out together works.