Here, there and everywhere
Posted: Thursday, November 01, 2007 4:57 PM by Sam Singal
Filed Under:
Brian Williams
By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor
To paraphrase the old joke, if you looked up the word “multitasking” in the dictionary this week, you might very well find a picture of me there. A week this busy is fun and challenging, but fortunately, it’s also rare. Tuesday morning we drove down to Philadelphia to anchor Nightly News from there, and get into position to moderate the Democrats’ debate at Drexel University that night. My preparations for the debate had been underway for days, although the event itself seemed to go by in a flash. It ended a little after 11pm, and I was soon heading back up the New Jersey Turnpike to NBC headquarters in New York.
I got to 30 Rock at about 1am, and joined the Saturday Night Live writers for their all-night meeting (I don’t normally do this; perhaps I should add that I don’t normally host Saturday Night Live, which I am doing this Saturday). It’s been a long time since I’ve pulled an all-nighter, but the SNL gang hasn’t forgotten the rule we all learned in college for how to do it: consume mass quantities of snacks. To that end, dinner consisted of Tostitos and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
I should mention here that I have been a fan of Saturday Night Live ever since the show went on the air 32 years ago, back when I was still a teenager. I wrote in for tickets that first season, and got them for a show in the second season: episode #40, on March 19, 1977. The host that night was Broderick Crawford, a veteran movie and television actor best remembered for his starring role as Chief Dan Mathews in the 1950s TV series “Highway Patrol”. The musical guests that night? New Orleans’ own Dr. John and the Meters.
At the writers’ meeting, we read through draft scripts of about 30 potential sketches for the show. There’s a copy of each script for every participant in the meeting, which creates a blizzard of paper to go along with the aforementioned tidal wave of snacks. We began the process of sorting through the scripts, picking the funniest and most promising bits, and winnowing out the rest. Most of the scripts won’t make the cut, and the ones that do are reworked, rewritten, and sometimes re-thought. That editing process is still underway, and will continue right up until showtime Saturday night.
By the time I took my leave from the writers, the scripts and the snacks, it was almost 6am Wednesday. I stumbled off to get a few hours of sleep, then reported for duty at Nightly, where we had a full day of news to contend with, including fallout from the debate the night before. In the middle of all that, I dashed upstairs to the 6th floor here at 30 Rock to tape an appearance with Conan O’Brien, who was once a writer for Saturday Night Live. It was good to see Conan, and to deliver greetings from his absent bandleader Max Weinberg, currently on tour with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.
Today brought more preparation for Saturday’s show: a photo shoot, a promo shoot, rehearsals and camera blocking, some pre-taping, and -- as mentioned -- the ongoing process of editing and rewriting. Apart from that, I just taped an interview with Bono for a story we’re working on for tomorrow. I am sandwiching all this in (pardon the snack reference) between what remains my top priority: putting the Nightly broadcast together.
It’s all a lot to juggle, but as Hyman Roth says in Godfather II, this is the business we have chosen. I hope you can join us tonight.
