What you can and cannot get away with saying on Saturday Night Live has been an evolving fight with the censors at NBC for more than fifty years. Most cast members have a story about some hilarious line or funny cut to shot that had to be scrapped over concerns about sponsors getting upset. Fortunately, the Not Ready For Primetime Players have figured out some clever schemes to get some otherwise objectionable content through.
During a conversation with current breakout SNL cast member Marcello Hernández on their Fly On The Wall podcast, Dana Carvey and David Spade talked about some of their censorship battles over the years, and not surprisingly, the infamous Il Cantore Restaurant came up. The outrageous sketch from the early 90s stars Kevin Nealon and Kirstie Alley as a couple going out to eat at an Italian restaurant. The staff, played by Carvey and others, lavish attention on Alley and the other women in the restaurant, becoming increasingly more forward with sexual innuendos as it goes on.
The sketch remains a pop culture reference today and has been watched more than a million times on YouTube, but the censors were not a fan in the moment. Between dress rehearsal and the live show, they apparently wanted to cut the part where Victoria Jackson puts her legs over Carvey’s head, but in order to make sure it went on the air as intended, the cast reverted back to an old scheme. The writer who got the note, Robert Smigel of Triumph The Insult Comic Dog fame, “tried” to pass along the directive to the cast but wasn’t able to in time. Here’s what Carvey said…
Right before we went out, 3, 2, 1, Smigel was pretending to try to reach me so he could say to the censorship people he was trying to reach me.
Most of us aren’t television stars, but we’ve all been there before. A parent tells us to go tell our sibling something or a teacher says people aren’t allowed to do something, and you’re not able to deliver the message in time, allowing other people to do whatever you’re not supposed to do while giving them a free out by being able to say they were never told. I love thinking about professional comedians working at major television networks pulling the same nonsense we all did as eight year olds.
Another method, according to David Spade, is to get as close to the line as possible and ask for forgiveness later. He told the story of a Weekend Update segment where he was doing an in and out list. During dress rehearsal, he said going right home after the show was in and going to the after party to try and get some pussy was out, but he intentionally mumbled pussy.
The network censor told Spade and showrunner Lorne Michaels after dress rehearsal that three sponsors would pull their advertising dollars if Spade said the word on the air. Lorne told him not to say it; so, Spade went out there and mumbled slightly more but still did the joke. Weekend Update host Dennis Miller was in the loop and as soon as they went to commercial, he started roasting Spade for how much trouble he was going to be in..
You’re fucking cooked, dude. That got too big of a laugh.
Spade didn’t elaborate on what Lorne Michaels or the censor said when he went backstage after the joke killed, but given he was on the show much longer and turned into one of its biggest stars, I’m going to guess he wasn’t disciplined that harshly. In fact, I’m going to guess he got a don’t do that again with a wink.
The best part about Saturday Night Live is the feeling that anything can happen. Because it’s live, there’s always that sense in the back of your mind that things could go sideways. Sometimes that involves a cast member uncontrollable laughing. Other times it involves a quiet war with the censors that we, as viewers, might not even know is going on. Fortunately, there are still people over at 30 Rock fighting the good fight.
