Adam Driver Saturday Night Live.
Photo: NBC
Saturday Night Live's season 44 premiere introduced a thoroughly relatable and timely character in Adam Driver's dried-up oil tycoon Abraham H. Parnassus, and new writer Eli Coyote Mandel delivered a groundbreaking sketch that flaunted modern masculinity without giving Matt Damon a false snot. SNLand why Mandel finds birds so strange and gross.
What is the origin of this sketch?
It started about five years ago in an improvisational play in Chicago. I think I was just an old guy, doing stuff with a cane as an old man, basically, a hilarious improvisational comedy. And my friend Dan White said, “Oh my God, he's crushing birds under his cane!” And that was kind of funny at the time.
I was like, “It would be funny if he was really old. How could he scream these lofty words?” So at some point he was an oil tycoon. I did it four or five times in Chicago and then I forgot about it. And then when I heard Adam Driver was going to be hosting… that was my first episode, by the way.
Congratulations!
Thank you. I was hired about two weeks ago. When I heard Adam Driver was going to play the role, I had him in mind. I thought he would be great for playing my weird oil tycoon character. So instead of a 45 second role, I had to expand it to a 5 minute scene.
Why oil barons and not railroad barons, sweatshop owners, or other Gilded Age industrialists?
My biggest desire was to make it completely visceral, to be able to feel it through words. I feel like oil is a very strange, gross substance. The line “mother's milk” comes to mind. I heard someone say “milk of the earth.” I thought it was a very gross, partially sexual phrase, but it tickled me for some reason. I feel like there aren't any oil barons anymore. Oil barons are something we don't think about anymore.
What do you think a day in this guy's life looks like?
He gets up, sits down at his big desk in his house, and every now and then a very old secretary or assistant comes in and delivers something, and he eats a bunch of boiled eggs or something, and goes to bed at 4 p.m.
This was your first episode, what was it like going through the process of pitching a sketch and all the steps of production for the first time?
Oh, that was amazing. Everyone was great. Around 10 p.m. [on Tuesday, writing night]I sent it to one of the lead writers and they gave me some good feedback. [Melissa Villaseñor] I'll probably get more enthusiastic. And the next day is the reading. Now, before each step of this process, I think: This is the worst, I'm a cheater and they're going to find me out. I hate everything about this, it's not funnyLuckily, I was joined by two other writers from Chicago, Allison Gates and Alan Linick. They both read the script and said it was good. I said, “No way, it's awful.” But then the script was read through. Right before the read through, you can give the cast a note or two. I got to go to Adam Driver's dressing room and talk to him briefly. But when I got there, he'd already read the script and already had an idea of what to do. This is 150% Adam Driver acting, and he's a very good actor. I was really lucky to have him.
They go into Lorne's office and they pick which sketches they want to make, and mine was made. Then I didn't know what to do. They assigned Brian Tucker, who is the more senior writer there and a really funny comedian. He walked me through the production process. He showed me where to go, what to do, and answered all of my questions. I had no idea what was going on, so he literally helped me with everything. From there I met with the production team, all the designers, and they were amazing. They did a really great job.
Could you choose between a walking stick and a bird? You were shown an owl and a crow and after careful consideration you chose the crow?
Yes. In the first production meeting, they asked me what props I wanted, and I said I needed a walking stick and a bird. They asked me what kind of bird I wanted, and I said, “Um… a seagull?” They asked me what I wanted the name of my high school to be, and I said the name of the high school I went to, Sierra High School. So I put up a sign out front that said “Sierra High School,” the name of my actual high school in Tollhouse, California. The class was my favorite teacher in high school, Mrs. Linder's class. I was so happy when my friends from high school caught it.
At rehearsal, we were shown a few options for canes and chose the one we thought would work. They had been practising the bird parts so at the first rehearsal they had a stand-in bird – Adam didn't seem too keen on stomping around on his first try. For the dress, we were shown a feisty seagull – we used that at the dress rehearsal and loved it.
Did I say beans?
It was like a Beanie Baby with bird wings. We ended up not using it live, but I liked it because it made a weird noise when it fell. Adam stomped on it with his stick and it made a crunching noise. But we got a big warning after we dressed it up, we had to cut the bird out because it was gross. We changed the bird, which was a bit unsettling, but then I was really moved when I saw the stick go through the bird's heart. It was really good.
So you had the idea for the sketch while you were in Chicago, but you were drawing it as a character piece. Was that a way to get hired?
No, it was something I had in the back of my mind that I'd performed a few times. I was a little worried because I had auditioned for another act where I stomped on a bird, but that was a totally different situation! I don't want to be known as the comedian who stomps on birds.
That's a shame, because that's going to be the headline for this interview.
Eli Coyote Mandel, the bird-smashing comedian?
Yeah.
That's amazing, that's amazing, but I had auditioned for another piece that involved birds, and I loved the intuitive weirdness of birds.
What was the act of squashing a bird?
I was a man going to confession, and I said, “Father, forgive me, I have sinned… Anyway, today I ate a bird.” And I saw a bird fly into his mouth, and he didn't know what to do, so he just ate it. And they seemed to enjoy it.
So, do you hate birds or do you love them? What are birds?
I don't have any particular opinion about birds, but I think they're weird because they're not dogs or cats, so what are they?
They are the closest animal to nature you will find in a city, and seeing them outside of the forest is a reminder that there is another world out there.
Yeah. And birds are just otherworldly. I'm originally from the country. I come from the middle of nowhere, so there were a lot of animals around, but birds were like… what are they? I took a dinosaur class in college and I found out they were dinosaurs. Real dinosaurs. It's so weird.
