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Sunday, November 15, 2009

When Sarah Met Alec

In her new book, Palin talks about her bad-move SNL appearance, claims she refused to shake Oliver Stone's hand that night, and offers this (via Huff Post excerpt) about her work with Alec Baldwin. We'll see if Ollie and Lorne Michael fact-check. Alec on air did call her "way hotter in person" and she did get in a reference to Stephen Baldwin. Video below of Baldwin talking about experience on Letterman.

Alec Baldwin also guested on the show that evening. The bigwigs haggled back and forth over my appearance with Alec, the writers sending down some lines where Alec was basically supposed to perform a comic dissection on me. Then I was supposed to passively take his arm and stroll offstage.

From a political messaging standpoint, the campaign could see that wasn't going to work. We put our heads together and sent the producers a counteroffer: Alec would still get his barbs in, then I would say, "Hey Baldwin, weren't you supposed to leave the country after the last election?"

Uh... no, producers said.

We tried another idea. It happened that I had recently talked with Alec's brother, Stephen, at a GOP fund-raiser. So we sent back another counteroffer based on my actual conversation with Stephen. "Hey, Alec," the proposed line went, "I saw Stephen at a fund-raiser last week and asked him when he was going to knock some sense into you."

Uh... no.

What's that line about being able to dish it out?

3 comments:

watertiger said...

She needs to leave the comedy writing to the professionals.

Ken Houghton said...

What Watertiger Said. Did anyone find those lines funny--especially compared to the actual scene, where Baldwin makes fun of himself by confusing Palin with the much more attractive Tina Fey?

Billy said...

Tina Fey is not attractive. She's plain if you ignore the scar on the left side of her face. She also looks nothing like Sarah Palin. Jami Gertz from Square Pegs and Still Standing is a dead ringer for Palin. And can do the voice -- watch Still Standing, you'll see it. I despise Palin and wish she'd go away but I'm not going to pretend Tina Fey is beautiful just for the cultural wars.