Live from New York...
Missives on frazzled late nights working for Saturday Night Live!
As a freelancer, the origins of some repeat clients can get pretty hazy, especially ones that are long term and/or sporadic. You’re grateful for the work and are thrilled when they call, but after a long working relationship, thinking back to ‘how did I land this one?’ can draw a blank.
Since there’s usually not much reason to recall any one client’s origin story, my casual apathy towards the Hows and whens more often then not goes unchecked. Who cares, really? However… every now & then there’s an instance of someone I know seeing something of mine in the wild, and the question of ‘how did you get that?’ inevitably gets thrown around. Disappointingly, I seldom have a satisfying answer.
In the case of my working for Mad, I can rattle off a detailed, soul crushingly boring timeline of events leading to getting that first gig ad nauseam. This is probably not surprising in that for decades I’d actively clawed and scratched for that opportunity. (More on that in a future ‘Stack!) But with age (and an expanded client list), and at the risk of sounding like I’d take any job for granted (I don’t), recollection of how I got that long term client fades away; it’s more like just magically appeared, and/or simply was always there.
Case in point…
I’ve been doing drawings and sketches for Saturday Night Live for years. Maybe one or two episodes a season, the writer(s) of a sketch will need some drawing or drawings of something/someone, to either illustrate or enhance a sketch or to actually be the punchline. I’m fortunate enough to be on the list of people called when X, Y or Z is needed.
I’ve been doing these gigs since 2017 (which I just learned, after looking through hard drives for images for this article! I thought it was way longer!) These are seriously some of the wildest gigs I get, and no matter what I’m working on, I always make time- the jobs are always super fun and off the wall, the crew I work with are exceptionally awesome, and…. it’s Saturday Night Live f’r cryin’ out loud!
The best part? I have no clue how this started!
All I can imagine is that someone at the show needed a recommendation, someone, somewhere knew me, forwarded off my contact info, probably a few others, and I was the first to answer the phone. But that’s all I got!
A bit on how this works, for the quizzically quizzical
It’ll usually be a Thursday when the call comes in checking my availability for that week’s show (whaddya know- I’m free!) After that, I clear Friday and Saturday as best I can.
After that, anything can happen. Some of these jobs have been one drawing, others have crept up to 30 or so, and all are done in accordance to the notoriously tight SNL schedule. I get a script sometime Friday and start drawing that afternoon. Thus begins the all night caffeine-fueled marathon (laced with the occasional power nap) to hit the deadline of 1pm EST on Saturday in time for rehearsals. If there’s edits, they’ll have to be done by something like 4pm EST for dress rehearsal, and there could always be edits after that, right up to airtime in some cases.
Once I get the all clear, it’s time to chill out, get some naughty food and pour a whisky before finally watching the episode (in a less than cohesive state by this point) has become somewhat of a ritual. I’ve never made it to the credits to see if I’m listed.
Fun fact- each live show, there’s more content created then they need. Running order is adjusted, Sketches are moved, edited and cut as the show is running! Therefore, not every sketch I’ve worked on for the show has aired. Decisions are made on the fly, and (I’m told) it’s not the fault of my drawings, but other factors like pacing, timing, etc etc, will cause things to be shuffled. Sketches with huge sequences of my drawings have been cut at the last minute. That’s the way it goes- though it’s cool to see the final product make air, realistically it makes no never-mind to me financially. The only bummer is, I can’t share any drawings (or anything, really) for sketches that never went to air.
So, like all digital jobs I’ve done, all of these drawings are tucked away deep in the caverns of two external hard drives. Scroll down to the folder labeled SNL, and there, alongside the jobs that’ve made it to air, there’s also the sketches that got killed, and therefore will never see the light of day.
But… that’s showbiz!
Spoiler alert: I have a nail biter to share from a recent one of these SNL gigs. Probably one of my favorite freelancing stories, It’s a harrowing tale of numerous 11th hour revisions.. on an iPad (ugh!)… in a theater’s wifi-less green room… in between acts of a play…I was staring in!
…Coming soon on the Steckley ‘Stack!
Anyhoo, below are some of the sketches, final drawings and a video to detail some of the research I do for stuff like this. In this case, it’s the Owen Wilson ‘Cars’ sketch from October 2021. I had never seen the movie, so I had to give myself a crash course in these characters- their mannerisms, movements, etc etc, to make them my own and not resort to copying stills. I forgot to mention this part as a contributing factor to that 24 marathon I mentioned- a lot of it was just learning!
(I can still draw a mean Mater!)
