Name: Withheld
Background: Undergrad at a New England college.
Cash: None. "I got compensated for subway fare. It was ridiculous, but
they warned me. They said, 'This will feel like a job not an internship.'
But this was NBC -- it's obvious they have money. I felt really used. And
we were not allowed to miss a day of work. Other interns could call up on
a sunny day and say, 'I'm not coming in.' But for us, even if you had a
fever and were throwing up through your eyeballs, you had to come in."
Method:
"I would come in at 9:30. There were two script interns -- me and Karen*
--
and the script coordinator, Deborah*, who was just always in a bad mood.
We
were there to deal with the changes to the script and pass them out to
all these people who worked on the show. There are changes so many times
through out the day -- at 10 in the morning, it's just the skeleton of
the
script.
"To make changes, a writer would creep over to Deborah's desk and give
her
the disk. She would keep saying 'Fuck' all the time and she has these big
angry eyes. Then, she slams the disk into the computer and types in the
change. Then she prints it out and says 'Go to the Printer!' and you
bring it back to her. She has to change the page number and put this
specific tape on the script.
"We would make like 75 copies and we had a list of people and that list
was our bible. We had to pass out copies to the writers, Chyron (the guys
who do the words and graphics that appear on the screen), and the
cameramen. They wouldn't read them -- we would go in and see the whole
week's pile just lying there.
"Then at 2-2:15, there was a rehearsal in the studio. Everyday we knew it
was coming. And this was the number one reason I quit: At 2 pm, Deborah
would sit and roll back from her desk and look at her computer. That was
the signal that I would have to unplug it and put it into her bag for
her.
"People are not going to treat you with respect if you put up with that
stuff.
"So then we'd go to the studio and wait for rehearsal to happen. We would
sit on the floor. There was this couch and the producer, Deborah, Andy
and
Conan would be there. But we would sit on the sidelines and try to be as
invisible as possible.
"Usually, we get changes during the rehearsal and every change has to be
on different paper -- first pink, then yellow, then green. And we still
had to bring it to all these different people. We wore sneakers everyday
because we were running all the time, right up until the show started. It
was like a heart attack. It was totally inefficient -- so much was done
just to keep up the atmosphere of last minute pressure. Every time I
tried to have a conversation with someone, I thought 'What if there's a
change? I can't talk now.'
"The show tapes at 5:30. One of us would have to check the jokes with
Conan and the other would have to do the cue cards, which meant you would
hand the cue cards to Deborah and she would hand them to the guy who
actually held them for Conan. Deborah would flip through them and you
would check for discrepancies. 'Checking the jokes' meant you would take
a list of 40 possible jokes and mark the 5 that Conan wanted to do during
the monologue. And then you would give them to the director.
"During the show one of us sat back stage and the other in the control
room where the director sits. Then you just hang out and watch.
"At the end, we had to get the computers from the control room and bring
them back to the office. Then we could go. So while everybody else is
sitting there, you have to go bending down and getting the plugs and
bringing the cords out and then walk out. I mean, they could bring their
own computers back down. That was the last insult of the day.
The Hierarchy: The writers were always around. Every night they chose two
interns to take their food orders, call it in, and get the food for them.
They had the 'honor' of doing that. [Karen and I] worked the hardest of
all interns but when we asked the intern coordinator if we could have
dinner with the writers, he said 'No,' because we had to be in the studio
from 5:30-6:30 when they had dinner. It was like Jesus, come on."
Work Environment: "We had these chairs in our office, but mostly we just
ran around. We never sat at Deborah's computer.
"We would always be at Deborah side. If we got up to go to the bathroom
she would bark, 'Where are you going?' If we were eating, she would look
at us and say, 'There's a change! Throw out your food.'
"She was 28. She had gone to NYU film undergrad. She had a great job at
HBO and she was pissed that she had left it go to Conan. She wanted to be
a writer, but she was a glorified secretary for the writers. I felt bad
for her. She'd been there 2 years. I think that's the worst thing, as a
writer -- to be surrounded by writers and not get to do it."
Co-workers: "All the other interns had to sit on this couch outside the
intern coordinator's office -- they weren't allowed to go into the
studio. Most of them had nothing to do. One girl was sent to Queens to
deliver a note from one of the writers to just one of his friends. Later,
she stood up to *George [the intern coordinator] and said, 'I won't be
delivering personal notes from the writers -- I'm here to learn about
TV.'
And *George said, 'That is TV.' And she quit."
Nice Moments: "They were fleeting. We would smoke cigarettes in the prop
room once in a while.
"One day, I was in a bad mood. Karen and I were backstage and I said,
'I'm sick of this. People treat us shitty here.' And Karen said, 'When I
stand here doing the jokes with Conan, it makes the whole day
worthwhile.'"
Lingo:
"Clutches" -- "That's when they do a graphic of Clinton's face and
somebody else's lips talking. The guy who wrote them, Robert Smigel (now
at SNL), came in late one day and wrote them in the last 20 minutes
before the show. People said to us, 'You're going to die when you get a
clutch.' Those were nightmare days."
Parting Shot: "We were told, 'If the interns make eye contact with the
celebrities, we could get fired.'"
* Names have been changed
©1998 FEED