The 'Saturday Night' massacre that launched a career

"It was incontestably the worst year in the show's history." So Doug McGrath '80 describes his first months in the entertainment industry as a writer for Saturday Night Live, a job he landed just three months after graduating from Princeton in what would seem to be an auspicious start.

Unbeknownst to McGrath at the time, he joined the SNL payroll at one of the most tumultuous periods in the show's history.

Only one year after being hired, McGrath, along with the rest of the writing staff, was fired.

Some might deem this a not-so-promising beginning for a man who has subsequently written or co-written more than four feature films, as well as become an experienced actor and director.

It's 9 a.m. on a Friday morning when I dial the number to his New York City office. When he picks up the phone, he asks if I can hold while he finishes up a conversation with his wife, who, incidentally, grew up in Princeton. He calls me by my first name in a tone that suggests I call him all the time, just to chat.

When he gets back on the line, I take down his stats: grew up in Midland, Texas, attended boarding school at Choate-Rosemary Hall for the last three years of high school. Then I throw out my standard Princeton alum question: So what did he like best about our illustrious institution?

His response is thoughtful. "Hmm. I liked so many things," he says. "I know this sounds corny, and I'm sure it's incorrect, but I can't remember a single outstanding unhappy moment there. I'm sure I was unhappy at some point, but usually it would be over, you know, things like if they ran out of hot dogs at lunch. I know I'm supposed to pick the education, but for me, I think what I loved best were the friends I made there, really great friends. When I think back to Princeton that's what I really remember."

He speaks just as fondly about the campus itself.

"That campus was then probably a largely more gothic style but still I've seen many of the buildings that have come up since I was there, and I think they're all really great. To have such a verdant, beautiful landscape in which to live — I found that in itself quite appealing."

I now know I'm talking to a writer. He works the word "verdant" into casual conversation.

"I always liked the cliché of everything," he adds. "I liked when I went to Paris and they had the nice Eiffel Tower and it looked like Paris. And my image of college was sort of what Princeton looked like — sort of gothic and green and ivied. And then I got there and that's what it looked like, and I liked that. That's why I like New York. It looks like what I thought New York would look like."

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We are only about 15 minutes into the interview, but already there seems to be a magnetic quality to his words, a capacity to absorb the listener completely. Perhaps it's the beauty this Texan-New Yorker seems to find in nearly everything we discuss.

Realizing that I've grown silent, I rush out another question.

"So had your interest in film and writing developed before you came to Princeton?" I ask.

"They developed before I came. In a way, as much as I loved Princeton, because I was interested in things like theater and film in which, at least when I was there, the course of study was fairly small," he says. "I don't necessarily connect it with what I've done afterwards. But I loved what I learned there."

Then he confides, "Princeton was where I started to become a writer. When I worked with the Triangle Club I wrote two original shows and directed them. And I really enjoyed that."

In fact, it was those shows at Triangle that convinced a friend at SNL to call the still-jobless McGrath two days before he graduated and ask him to submit some sketches.

At that point, McGrath had no idea how he was going to get a job, and had simply decided to "leave everything up to God." A member of the entertainment industry who can talk about God away from Oscar acceptance speeches — I'm impressed.

After reviewing his sketches, SNL interviewed him, requested more sketches and hired him to the new and ill-fated writing staff in the fall.

"The one good thing about the year was Eddie Murphy joined the cast," McGrath recalls.

It is the first of several times he will casually mention an enormously famous actor as if I know the celebrity personally. For a while, I am proud of my nonchalance about the whole thing. I don't know that later we're going to talk about how "Gwyneth" loves New York City restaurants and how "Sigourney" has a wicked sense of humor.

For now, though, we're still on SNL.

"I wasn't temperamentally suited for the job, for staff writing on a television show, because it's such a machine," he says. "I'm more of the let's-do-a-little-something-and-sit-back-and-enjoy-it-for-a-while school."

However, he adds, "It was really great for me as a writer because it just forced [me] to write all the time and edit [my] work quickly."

And those attributes would serve him well later in his career.

He co-wrote his first screenplay, "Loose Women," after leaving the show, sold the script but never saw it produced. Later he wrote "Born Yesterday" (1993), a Walt Disney film starring John Goodman and Melanie Griffith, co-wrote "Bullets Over Broadway" (1994) with Woody Allen and wrote the screenplay adaptation of Jane Austen's "Emma" (1996), which was also his directorial debut and starred Gwyneth Paltrow. Along the way, he played small roles in several Woody Allen films and Robert Redford's "Quiz Show," which was released in 1994.

"I was always an actor in [high] school — that was what I always liked doing," he says. After establishing himself in the industry, he adds, "I would pick small acting parts, but it's such a hard life, the actor's life. Maybe I had waited too long to toughen myself up for it. And it does take a certain deadening of the more sensitive feelings because it's just too much "no, no, no" all the time. There's so much rejection, and now being a director I've seen actors in auditions where I know they're doing a perfectly wonderful audition, but for so many reasons they're not what [I] want, whether the person's good or not. Usually if they're in the audition they're pretty good."

Audition life is "too joyless," McGrath explains. "When you [act] in school it's so full of joy, and as a career for me it wouldn't have been." He describes the decision to focus on writing as a happy one. "I realized through my 'Quiz Show' experience [that] I'm happy writing. I love writing. I don't need [acting] the way I thought I did. I always felt guilty for not pursuing it because it was something I thought I loved. And I did love it, but I loved it in a different way."

McGrath focused more on writing and directing with "Emma" and then began his new project, "Company Man," a film he co-wrote and co-directed with Peter Askin, starring Sigourney Weaver, John Turturro, Woody Allen, Ryan Phillipe, Alan Cumming, Anthony LaPaglia, Bill Murray and Denis Leary, to name a few. The film is scheduled to be released later this winter.

"It's a completely silly movie," he readily admits, "a comedy about the Bay of Pigs [invasion] — we like to think the first comedy about the Bay of Pigs excluding the actual Bay of Pigs. It's a tiny little movie — it cost $7 million."

In addition to co-writing and co-directing the film, McGrath plays a starring role.

"I wouldn't do it again, to tell you the truth," he says of the project. "It's too much. We had the most fantastic cast and the funnest group of people so the shooting, the acting of it, was a lot of fun. People were very funny and very silly — it's the silliest movie you can possibly imagine — and the only way we could possibly make it work was to have as much fun ourselves as we did . . . but even having all that much fun I found what I really missed and liked the most was directing."

McGrath goes on to explain that he realized he wanted to direct most when he saw Askin talking to an editor, for example. "It was a joyful discovery for me to say, 'I don't have to divide myself this way anymore. I think the greater gift I have or the thing I take greater joy from is directing,' " he says. "I think because it allows me to be bossier. Do you think that could be it?" He laughs.

"Once you have a script that you've written and somebody else directs it, it usually only takes that before you want to be a director, too," he continues.

McGrath admits that one of the drawbacks of working as strictly a writer is the loneliness that goes along with the job. By directing, McGrath explains, he is able to "indulge" and discuss his loves for acting, writing, art and "visual things."

The celebrity worshipper in me finally takes over with what she has been wanting to ask for some time now.

"What is it like to work with huge Hollywood names?" I ask, hoping I sound professional.

"When I worked with Gwyneth, she wasn't really a big name," he replies, trying to sound modest. "It was delightful. I think ['Emma'] was her first breakthrough lead role, and so she knew the opportunity that she had . . . She really saved the day for me really by which I mean we had a very quick schedule, and she was on all the time and if she hadn't been as quick as she had and as gifted we might have gone over schedule."

"We were both kind of homesick for New York, so we would entertain ourselves by sitting together and talking about if we were in New York what restaurant we would be going to and what we would be ordering," he adds. "We were a little depressed with our food situation."

He then switches gears to talk about another celebrity. This time it's Sigourney Weaver.

"Sigourney was quite different in that she [was] not at the beginning of the career and was a big star," he says. "Everyone — before we started working with her — was nervous because we didn't know if she was going to be a prima donna or not. I have to say that she is the most well-mannered, generous and fun person I may have ever worked with. She is utterly delightful. She cares so much about her craft she knows that it's all about the work of making the part great and we couldn't have had a better time. She made me laugh so hard that sometimes we'd ruin the take. Oh, she's heavenly, just heavenly."

My time is almost up, and so I ask him if he's coming to Princeton any time soon, and he has another eloquent answer.

"I may come when the Triangle show is up," he says. "I hope to come soon because I'm always interested to see the new buildings on campus . . . What's beautiful about Princeton is it retains its tradition, and it keeps growing too. If it didn't keep growing, no modern person would remain interested in it. So I didn't want to be that kind of grouchy old alum marching around muttering. And I'm delighted to say I come back and I'm always thrilled to see the changes keeping the place vibrant and beautiful and wonderful."