Writer Strikes Always Hit ‘Saturday Night Live’ First
Back in the fall, his famous SNL character “Pete Davidson” on May 6. When shows shut down, people invariably lose jobs.
A three-month writers’ strike in 1981 ended SNL’s season in April (shades of what we’re likely to experience this year). That was Eddie Murphy.)
Cast member sorrows are visible, but behind-the-scenes staffers suffer worse. During the 2007-2008 writers’ strike, 90% of SNL’s production staff was fired until negotiators could come to an agreement nearly four months later. The result: The shortest SNL season ever.
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Tina Fey, who had left for 30 Rock by this time, was torn between responsibility to her writers’ union and the pressure of knowing production people were out of work. Marching in picket lines that no one paid attention to seemed like ‘an exercise in insanity.’ “The picket lines in L.A. were comical,” Fey says in Live From New York: The Complete Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. “Everybody ripped and tan and holding a nine-dollar cup of coffee in their hand. It was not a great face of the Writers Guild.”
At least during that strike, Fey and friends decided to do something to help. Cast gathered at Amy Poehler’s Upright Citizens Brigade theater for an extra-live, no-frills presentation of something that looked an awful lot like Saturday Night Live, with proceeds going to the show’s out-of-work production staff. A live benefit version of 30 Rock followed a couple of nights later. “We’re like cranky trained monkeys if we don’t get to perform,” Poehler told The New York Times. “We’re treating this as an optimistic night. We’re celebrating all the hard-working people who have been laid off.”
If there’s some kind of miracle, writers and studios could come to an agreement over the weekend, but that doesn’t look like the way the union winds are blowing. So we’re likely saying goodbye to Saturday Night Live until the fall. We’d feel bad for Pete losing an opportunity to promote Bupkis, but the guy seems to do OK getting press on his own.