Legendary ‘SNL’ Writer Jim Downey Finally Steps Out of the Shadows

“I’m kind of a private person,” says Jim Downey. That’s an understatement. Downey is easily among the funniest and most revered comedy writers ever to emerge from Saturday Night Live, where he worked from 1976 until 2013—authoring touchstone moments and franchises including the Patrick Swayze–Chris Farley Chippendales sketch, George W. Bush and Al Gore’s first presidential debate, and Weekend Update with Norm MacDonald. But Downey is also allergic both to the spotlight and to technology; he says that Lorne Michaels gave him a computer in the early 2000s—but didn’t take it out of its packaging for about another 10 years.

As a result, Downey can move through life much more anonymously than the comedians he helped turn into stars. But bring his name up to anyone who crossed paths with him at the show, and their eyes light up. From Conan O’Brien to Adam Sandler to David Letterman to Maya Rudolph to John Mulaney, he’s your favorite comedian’s favorite comedian.

And now, more than 10 years since he finally left SNL, Downey’s having perhaps his most public year yet. He’s appeared in films like Sandler’s Happy Gilmore 2 and Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, as well as on Tim Robinson’s new show The Chair Company. He’s also the subject of a new Peacock documentary called Downey Wrote That, both a tribute to his storied career and essential viewing for anyone who cares about comedy.

I recently caught up with Downey—who, true to his general mystique, was in Bermuda to attend a friend’s art gallery opening—for a delightfully long phone conversation. We spoke about his reluctance to participate in a documentary, sharing an office with Bill Murray, how Chris Farley inspired the much-imitated monologue Downey performed in Billy Madison, and sharing the stage with John Wayne. As for Downey’s own politics, he’s been described variously as a “conservative Democrat” (in Downey’s words) and “right wing” (by another ex-SNL writer, Adam McKay), but says he’s been happy not to write Donald Trump sketches. And for the record, it’s not because he’s a MAGA sympathizer.

Vanity Fair: Lorne Michaels kicks off the documentary by saying, “They always say the subject is elusive. Well, Jim is elusive with a capital E.” There’s been sort of this legend around you for years in comedy circles. Are you aware of that lore?

Jim Downey: Not really. [Laughs.] It would’ve been nice to have heard more about that. There’s a certain Mr. Chips factor going on. Just by virtue of being in the same place for a long time, a lot of people have come through SNL when I was there. And a lot of them have gone on to do remarkable things. It’s very moving that I was a positive influence, and I was a good person to work with. I learned something from everyone I worked with too. It’s an exchange.

Also, I’m glad that it wasn’t a documentary where they follow me around and try to capture something. Because I had been saying from the beginning, there’s nothing that’s very filmic about writing. Even if you somehow were lucky enough to have a camera running when someone came up with an idea, I’m not sure what that looks like.

Speaking of the writing process: The film explains the “Downey Formula” for a sketch: “a nonexistent problem; an ineffective solution.” This seems to be a running thread for so many of your sketches.

Well, it’s a number of them, but I certainly don’t analyze my stuff and break it down into structural elements or themes. When you come up with something that makes you laugh, you then basically sell it. If you’re writing with somebody, it’s, “Hey, is there something here?” And you sort of pitch a fragment. As you get positive feedback, you get more confident in it, you start embellishing it. It’s only after a piece exists [that] I can look and go, Oh, here’s what I was doing there.

I think it was [SNL writer] Jack Handey who first commented that a theme of my writing is someone taking enormous pains explaining something that doesn’t need an explanation at all, and getting it wrong. And I thought about it. Huh. Yeah, okay. So it’s an after-the-fact kind of thing.

Perhaps the best example of over-explaining the thing that doesn’t need to be explained is “First Citywide Change Bank,” which you star in.

Yeah. [Laughs.] It’s also not a service that needs a whole organizational arrangement. People can generally handle it by themselves.

You and Norm MacDonald famously did Weekend Update together. What was your first impression of Norm?

Adam Sandler knocks on my door and goes, “I want you to see this guy. He’s so funny, he scares the shit out of me. He’s, like, the funniest person I’ve seen in years.” I instantly agreed. At the time, he was writing for Roseanne. And I don’t think Roseanne [Barr] wanted to lose him. But when he said it was a chance for him to perform, she gave him her blessing.

Within a month, he came on as a writer and featured player. He did a couple things that were on Update in the 1993-1994 season. He did an Andy Rooney piece that was one of the bravest pieces of comedy, where he’s going, “This is a letter that comes from Toledo, Ohio. This is a letter that comes from Denver, Colorado.” He didn’t care about the fact that half the audience was going to be completely bewildered.

During this time, Don Ohlmeyer had joined the network and was very aggressive about giving notes. And one of his edicts was that Kevin Nealon had to go as Update anchor. Kevin was a great favorite of mine and all the writers, and we felt it was the writing of the segment that was the issue. It wasn’t Kevin’s fault. I went out to one of my first and only meetings where I had to listen to network notes, in ’94, and Ohlmeyer said, “Nealon’s gone. Who’s going to replace him?” So there was a discussion. I thought Norm would be the best to do it. I remember at the meeting a network executive went out of his way to talk about his objections to the show that year. He said, “I don’t know if any of you saw this guy Norm MacDonald doing Andy Rooney, and he’s just reading addresses off envelopes.“ It was like, “Please don’t tell me you’re bringing that guy back.” And I said, “Well, funnily enough, we were on the subject of who should do Update, and I think Norm MacDonald.” And the executive did a cartoon-like take, pretending that’s the strangest thing he ever heard.

Weekend Update’s one of the things I’m proudest of. He certainly had balls to spare. If he believed that something was funny, he couldn’t be shaken. It wasn’t like he was self-indulgent or didn’t care about the audience—he genuinely wanted the audience to hear the joke, which is the opposite of self-indulgent. He just had really high standards.

The documentary touches on when you wrote a letter to John Wayne that was sort of in jest, and then he showed up at Harvard. I had heard of that, but I never knew you were the Lampoon’s president at the time.

It was at the tail-end of my presidency. There was one guy on the staff who was absolutely convinced that this would be a huge thing. I said, “It would be funny. But do you think it’d be that big a deal?” God, was I ever wrong. We were on the front page of every newspaper on planet Earth.

The original idea was that we wanted to have a cattle drive going down Mass Ave, which is the Broadway of Cambridge. Of course, that was instantly shot down by the city council and mayor. One of our members was the son of one of the highest-ranking master sergeants in the Army. So he was able to pull some strings to get a tank from Fort Devens, which was a base outside of Boston.

We had a screening of this movie he was promoting at the time, and then we had a Q and A. And I have to tell you, standing room only in comedy is like magic. People are so thrilled to be there. I can attest that none of the questions were prescreened, and all of his responses were adlibbed. And I didn’t have a terribly strong opinion of Wayne before this one way or the other. I didn’t think he was evil because of his politics, and had never really watched that much of his work. But after I spent the day with him, I really was impressed with what a smart and funny and clever guy he was. After the event, we had a dinner at the Lampoon Castle—all of our dinners were famously wild—and Wayne was pitching in with everyone else, standing on top of the table. It was a great night.

This isn’t in the documentary, but SNL writer Dave Mandel told me to ask you about it: Is it true that you were living in National Lampoon founder Doug Kenney’s guest room when you got hired for SNL?

Yes, it is. Doug Kenney was class of ‘68 at Harvard, so we did not overlap. And we were all fans at that time of National Lampoon. So we had reached out to those guys, and they came to one of our dinners with [infamous SNL writer] Michael O’Donoghue. And so they followed our stuff. We did a parody of Cosmopolitan magazine. When I graduated, Kenney had said “You should write some things for us.” And I got a call from Michael O’Donoghue—who left the magazine—and said “We’re doing this show and I hear you’re funny. Why don’t you come down to New York and we’ll talk?” A couple days after that, I unexpectedly got a traveling fellowship and I ended up going to eastern Europe for almost that entire first year.

And then when I came back in October 1976, Kenney said “If you need a place, I’ve got a spare bedroom.” So I did live on and off for about a year at his place. I ended up just floating around New York and staying with various friends, certainly pitching in and paying for things. I was living at Kenney’s on Banks Street when he, Chris Miller, and Harold Ramis were writing Animal House. So I was the guy they would focus group and try out different things on. I don’t think I contributed anything. Kenney had seen Lorne Michaels at a cocktail party and he said “There’s a guy living in my guest bedroom who I think is pretty funny. You should take a look at his stuff. I would love to see him on his feet, and getting his own place to stay.” So that worked out for both me and Doug.

You and Bill Murray started at SNL on the same day and shared an office. What was the first thing you two collaborated on?

It might have actually been shockingly late. We didn’t at first hit it off all that well. I tended to work much more with Aykroyd and Belushi and Gilda, Laraine, Jane Curtin. But it wasn’t much of a one-on-one thing [working with Murray] until the fourth season, really. The nature of what I was writing was a lot more of the other cast members. One thing which is in the documentary is back in the 70s, Billy used to sing a fragment of the love theme from Jaws. That is something we used to goof around with in the office together, but never did anything with. And then for the 40th anniversary, I just thought of the bridge. I called up Billy and I went, “Hey, I think I may have a way of fleshing this thing out.” And he liked the idea, so we ended up doing it for the 40th anniversary. We figured it had to be some kind of record for the greatest length of time between the initial thought of the idea and the completed piece.

Can you expand a bit on what led you to leave the show in 2013, after having returned in 2000 after a two year break?

Well, after I was fired with Norm [in 1998], when I came back for my fourth and final stint, Lorne explicitly wanted me to just do political stuff. But towards the end, I knew Seth Meyers had his own ideas and wanted to do his own thing by the time we got to 2012-2013 with Romney and Obama. I remember it was so freighted with symbolism. I turned 60 on the day of the second show, where I had a debate piece. And at the end of the year, my son graduated from college. It just felt like this is the time to go. There’s not going to be another election for four years; I don’t see myself being here at age 64. It was very clear to me and Lorne that this would be it for me.

You left the show in 2013, and you had been doing a majority of the political pieces. Obviously, there was a big political shift two years later, thanks to Trump. Do you ever wish you had been there for the Trump years, or are you perhaps grateful you dodged that bullet?

I think I wrote a Trump piece back in 1984-1985. Basically the gist of it was just Trump’s vulgarity. It was a parody of those “What is sexy?” ads. It was just Trump being a louse, basically. He hosted the show at one point, but I didn’t write anything for him. So I was kind of tired of him as a character [by 2016].

When you do politics, the problem is you don’t get to invent a character. You have to deal with the actual people who are running for the office. If you write sketches for them, the characters that you create have to more or less resemble the actual people; otherwise it makes no sense. To me, it’s much more fun when you’re dealing with two new or relatively new people on the scene, so as characters they’re fresh and not as worked over. I guess Romney/Obama qualifies, and so [did] Bush/Gore. Gore had been around as vice president, but he didn’t get the focus that I’m talking about. It’s true that the Trump of 2016 was way more undisciplined and sloppy than even the vulgarian Trump of the ’80s and the ’90s. But to me, I’d rather have someone new.

The things I’m proudest of that we did in politics is when we sort of introduced an impression of someone to the country, like Dana [Carvey]’s Ross Perot. It’s a long way of saying I haven’t particularly missed having the opportunity.

Having said that, I love James Austin Johnson’s Trump. It’s the exact way to do him—as a complete, utterly undisciplined, self-indulgent person who expects us to pay attention as his mind wanders all over the place. I think that’s the funniest way to do it. James Austin Johnson doesn’t need my help. I don’t know what it’s going to look like in 2028. It can’t be Trump again…we hope!

It’s been a transitional year for the show, which you’ve gone through yourself a number of times.

Oh yeah. Heidi Gardner, I’m a huge fan of hers. I thought she was the most fun to watch in this group, both her and Kenan. And I think she was there [for] eight years. There’s no more “Hey, I hit it really huge in year three, so I’ll be leaving to do movies.” That doesn’t seem to happen like it once did. So when they do have a transition, Lorne is clearly thinking about these things. He’s constantly staggering departures and arrivals. He doesn’t want to be in a position where he has to replace an entire cast at the same time. He’s done a great job of sustaining the show, certainly well past the period people were smugly confident that it cannot possibly make it another year.

Audiences may know you best from your monologue in Billy Madison. It’s taken on a life of its own, including last week, when your monologue was lifted and tweeted out by the Department of Homeland Security. Did you know about that one?

No! Jesus. I hope that doesn’t turn people against it. [Laughs.] I’ve got to look into that thing. I think I should get some money from that.

What was the genesis of the Billy Madison speech?

The Billy Madison thing was something I used to say to Farley. And just so you understand, this wasn’t cruel. Farley loved to play that character: just raising his hand very tentatively, like, “Am I allowed to make a suggestion?” And I’m like, “Yes, Chris. Would you like to say something?” “Okay, okay, um, well, could you have a guy…no, no. This is dumb.” He was leaning into the thing. I would just take the bait and go, “Thanks, Chris. Everyone here is now dumber. I hope you’re happy. You’ve done your job.” So when Adam asked me to do the thing in Billy Madison, I just sort of did that.

You’re acting a lot this year, including with a pretty good-size part in One Battle After Another. Tell me about how that came about.

Well, obviously I worked with [Paul Thomas Anderson] on There Will Be Blood. I was with him on the set of Inherent Vice. So once a decade, we get together. I think he has a very clear idea in his head of who he wants for parts. My fear is always, “Paul, it’s not like I’m doing a bit part in Dirty Work.” I love Norm MacDonald, but it’s not like sharing the screen with Daniel Day-Lewis. I didn’t want to be the thing that ruins the thing. His attitude is always, “Don’t worry about that. I’ll make sure you’re good. Daniel Day-Lewis will make sure you’re good. Sean Penn will make sure you’re good.” So in January 2024, I got a call about it. My instinct is, “Yes, of course. Why would I say no?”

It’s a different thing for me. Having been a writer for 50 years, I’m now responsible for respecting the script. It’s really hard to memorize lines that may seem partly arbitrary to you. You have to learn the lines and then, if you’re me, you have to stand there and hope you’re not the reason that they had to kill the take. [Laughs.]

It was right around the time that I was finishing up [One Battle After Another] that I got an email from Zach Kanin and Tim Robinson about The Chair Company. I hadn’t really worked with those guys before, although Tim’s first year at Saturday Night Live was my last year. That was just a case of admiring what those guys do. And I’m a little bit more confident with comedy, just because I think I can understand how it’s meant to be funny, and how to perform it to make it funny. But for a lot of us who write stuff, you’ll see someone like Phil Hartman or Jon Lovitz and see why they’re in front of the camera—and you’re not.