You may know Al Franken for being one of the original writers for Saturday Night Live for 15 years. You may know him as a United States Senator for Minnesota from 2009-2018 (btw, he has recently said he was tempted to run again). You may even know him for his four #1 New York Times bestsellers. Regardless of how you know him, he’s been a part of popular culture in one way or another for almost 50 years.
We recently caught up with him ahead of his appearance at the Keswick Theater (8 pm, March 12th, 2022, tickets still available) to talk about his upcoming show, his career in comedy and his opinion on cancel culture.
GL: Have you ever performed at the Keswick?
AF: I haven’t performed there. This is my first tour as myself. I used to tour with Tom Davis years and years ago but that was only colleges, so this is my first tour around the circuit. My friends who have toured have told me it’s a great theater.
GL: What do you consider the high point of your career…or your best memory?
AF: Well, right now this tour has had some great moments. I did Town Hall in New York, and the audience was rooting for me in a way, and it was just a wonderful night; so, the tour has been a high point.
Of course, my years on SNL…people ask me what my favorite memory is of SNL, and it’s really two, three in the morning on a Tuesday night into a Wednesday morning of just rolling around on the floor laughing with writers and cast members. We’re creating the show; there’s kind of nothing like that stuff – the moment of creation. And, working with hilarious people…I can’t tell you one moment of that, but I can tell you [that] as a general memory as I think back on SNL. Then, there will be sketches that just worked on every gear: Julia Child Bleeding to Death.
That was an odd one because it worked in dress for the previous week, but we held it because we knew we didn’t have the blood spurting right. Tom [Davis] and I wrote it. Part of the reason the blood spurting wasn’t exactly right usually is that’s done by a special effects guy and the special effects guy [during the sketch] had to be underneath the counter, putting pressure on this insecticide sprayer. But when we were talking it over with the special effects guy, he said that he thought Tom should do it because he knew the timing.
Some things kill in dress, but not 100% on air; this one was a classic piece. They showed that at the Smithsonian as part of a Julia Child exhibit, running over and over again, the Julia Child Bleeding to Death piece. She loved it. Every once in a while, you hit something like that, like: “Oh Man, Ok, it just peaked in front of 20 million people.”
GL: Tom Davis was your main writing partner during the SNL years. Do you think about Tom when doing your comedy now?
AF: Oh yeah. Absolutely. And there are actually Tom moves that I’ve stolen from him, but he wouldn’t mind because he’s not around [laughs]. Inflections…even when writing, I’ve internalized him. His brain. I’ve learned more from Tom than anybody.
GL: After having a career as a politician, does it change your perspective on how politics is covered in comedy?
AF: It does. It’s hard to describe. Sometimes I feel like the people doing comedy don’t really know what’s actually going on [laughs]. They don’t understand what’s really going on in the Senate, the House, the White House or in Washington.
[On SNL] Jim Downey and I wrote a lot of the political stuff together. Jim was a Republican when we started working together and right now, I’d say it’s hard to be a Republican now…he’s one of those thinking Republicans, worried about the government taking over too many things but really understood and had a very comprehensive knowledge of what was going on both in moment to moment and in history. He and I felt it wasn’t the job of the show to have a political point of view. We felt that there were too many people working on the shot – in the beginning there were 7 cast members, 13 writers – the show shouldn’t have a political point of view.
[A show like] Murphy Brown was created as a liberal show and had a liberal point of view and that was absolutely proper…but I felt like SNL, what we should do was well-observed political satire that didn’t have a bias one way or the other. Jim has a saying which is: “Lets reward people for knowing stuff but don’t punish them for not knowing stuff.”
So, we would write things, if you were a political junkie, you’d get things that maybe someone else who wasn’t a political junkie wouldn’t, but they wouldn’t know they missed something. But they would laugh at Dana’s (Carvey) George H.W. Bush impression and also, we would write funny stuff for Dana.
Dana really understood politics and he also understood the characters. So, when he did characters, he would do them comically. I remember when I showed him a tape of Perot (H. Ross Perot), I put it in the machine and it’s five minutes of Perot…and Dana goes: “Oh my God, it’s a fully formed comedic character. He just had him right away and also there was a lot there because he [Perot] was a populist, he was against free trade, against NAFTA, and there was a reason he got 19% of the vote.
GL: I wanted to let you know my favorite Al Franken sketch from SNL and I think you’ll be surprised. It was when you played Paul Simon, the Senator from Illinois during the 1988 Democratic Debate.
AF: I have a picture in my office of me and Paul…I’ll tell you a funny story…at one point SNL did a fundraiser for the Democratic Party at the Kennedy Center. And this was in 1991, right after we had won the Gulf War very easily and left. Bush was at literally 88% approval and so the only way to make fun of him at that moment was him being cocky. And there was no reason for him to believe he shouldn’t be cocky, and Dana got that.
So, we did a show based on a lot of Dana and then the last half of it we had Crosby Stills and Nash. We had to do a big set change to get their sound equipment out on the stage, so they sent me out to kill time for about 10 minutes as Paul Simon. So, I just did a thing like: (in Paul Simon voice) “I’ve been sent out here…to kill some time…it reminds me of when Hubert Humphrey came to Southern Illinois…during the 1964 campaign…and he was late…and they said Paul…go out there…and kill some time…”
And Clayborn Pell, the Senator from Rhode Island, who came up with Pell Grants – an unbelievable contribution…he was getting very old at that time, and he turned to Chris Dodd – “Why is Paul up there on stage?”
GL: I wanted to change gears and talk about cancel culture and what’s going on specifically with the Spotify situation and Joe Rogan
I’m a satirist, I’d like to think. I think there’s been a role for satire since the beginning when people started to do comedy. I believe in free speech, but I don’t believe in someone handing out misinformation. I think there’s a difference between provocative satire that encourages people to think while they’re laughing…thinking back to Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Dick Gregory…my heroes, when I was young. That’s satire. I think what Joe Rogan is doing is carelessly putting out disinformation and I think Neil Young certainly has freedom of speech to take his music off of that platform. And already I think Spotify has done stuff like put corrections in after his podcast, but I think they should do it beforehand. I don’t like what he’s doing and I’m very angry at Fox News for spouting anti-vax stuff all the time and I think it kills people. I’m not certain what Spotify should do and I’m not them, but I do think they have to do something about that.
GL: Anything else you would like people to know about the Keswick show?
AF: The show is me. I don’t have an opening act. I talk about my experience in the Senate quite a bit…that’s some of the funniest stuff. It’s also about stuff going on right now. I’m happy with the show and proud of the show and I hope people will come.
Al Franken’s THE ONLY FORMER U.S. SENATOR CURRENTLY ON TOUR TOUR! will be at the Keswick Theater on Saturday, March 12th at 8 p.m. Tickets are still available here.
Interview edited for conciseness and clarity