In the late summer of 1975, I received orders to report to the Rockefeller Center offices of NBC's new late-night gamble, Saturday Night Live. After two formal auditions, there was one more rite de passage that would either certify or cancel my acceptance into the advance guard of North American satirists: encountering a handler of the more finely hammered steel in the trade, Michael O'Donoghue.
My disadvantage was owning a Harley-Davidson. Not that Mike didn't like machines. He loved his BMW, and more than once I heard him say, "Boy, those Nazi bastards still build a great car." No, that day I wore vulnerability on my back. Having ridden down from Canada to Manhattan, I was wearing the garb of many bike riders in my part of the world -- black leather jacket, black jeans, black T-shirt, black metal-toe-shank boots, leather peaked Harley-wings cap. From a rear pocket dangled a red cotton handkerchief. That it was an oil rag was of no consequence to M.O.D., who saw in my appearance a type of New Yorker as yet: unknown to me: the Christopher Street Gay Bar Leather Boy.
So as I walked for the first time down the hallway at my new job, Mike stepped out from a doorway as if he'd been waiting. Like a hybrid of Nevada trapdoor spider and Indian cobra, he darted and injected: "Jesus, are you in the wrong part of town or what, pal? Aykroyd, you look like the biggest, ugliest leather queen I've seen since Rondo Hatton tried to fuck Montgomery Gift. Listen, they're having a great sale at the Anvil bar on anal drawstring, and from the width of your ass, you'll be needing a yard of 100-pound Fiberglas test!"
Any reaction other than laughter might have barred me from further contact. Then I looked at him while attempting to summon a rejoinder from my reeling brain. Here was a sartorially impeccable, slender, red-haired, pink Irishman. In his hand he held a long black Egyptian cigarette, and although they were writer's hands, I saw a bony, clawlike strength. My first thought was, "This is someone I don't want to fuck with physically. The hands could snap your throat, and he'll bite, too." There was nothing one could really do at that point but go home and change or right there flat come out of the closet. I had been leveled, no comeback possible.
My future with O'Donoghue was one of immobilizing laugh sessions under the tutelage and encouragement of this Dean of Shock Value. The boiler of masterfully savage stews like the Claudine Longet Invitational ski shoot, Jamitol, Shimmer Floor Wax/Dessert Topping, the Temple of the Jack Lord, he wrote the best language the Not Ready for Prime Time Players ever spoke and also gave genuine support when others wrote something good. Real laughter from Mike was a silvery imprimatur. If we wrote something bad, however, there was no politesse in the inevitable scorching. Tom Davis and I received one the night we launched a sketch called Danger Probe. The second the scene was over, as we skittered away under the audience scaffold, Mike was there, cigarette and wineglass in hand, to declare: "Oh, we'll be seeing lots more of those, I hope. That one will be way bigger than the Conehead sketches."
Broadsword, rapier, scythe, buzz saw, Mr. Mike of Mondo Video was also a purveyor of the most generous form of Edwardian-influenced hospitality. The grand gatherings at his turn.of-the-century Village town house always attracted a great mix, and you dressed in church clothes. Those classic, elegant parties are the sweet syrup beneath the crust of my New York memories.
The house was done in the taste of an impeccable old-school gentleman. One wall held a display case filled with various sizes of miniature rhinos. Monstrous cats patrolled the premises. Writers, wits, humorists and artists would attend, the fare being an elixir of continuous irreverence. The Age of Innocence with good boo.
His impact on SNL began with the show's very first sketch -- his language-teacher piece. He provided the arming mechanism for a generation's comic blast. During the show's crucial early days his boldness and slash-and-burn style freed the other performers and writers to push the limits of comic convention. Yet his work exemplified the discipline necessary for us to pull off our own visions. We performed his scripts with zeal and passionate affection, learning well from them, and went forth from this master's chamber as his journeymen. Without him, our accomplishments -- and the glorious fun we had -- would have been much less.