There’s perhaps nothing that epitomizes New York more than the Saturday Night Live institution. People all over the country can tune in and watch through the opening cast montage scenes from a fast-paced and blurry-lit city that is true to reality. And while everyone watches SNL on television, few people actually go, especially New Yorkers. We understand that there is a huge discrepancy between the New York that is portrayed on the screen and the New York that we see outside of our windows on a daily basis.
But just this once, as the opportunity presented itself, I went to Rockefeller Center and took the elevator up to the SNL studios and walked the halls lined with framed still photographs from episodes gone by. Like most things you only ever seen on television – actually being there was a bit surreal, and the same disclaimer always applies: everything is smaller in real life.
It was interesting to be there of course, seated a few seats from New York newsman Brian Williams (is he always in a navy blazer?), watching New York politicians Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani take their turns at making fun of themselves. I laughed when things were funny, applauded when the bright flashing signs told me to, and complied eagerly when invited to the after-party.
The funny thing about New York is that we’re all here trying to make something of ourselves, while at the same time being surrounded by people who already have. So when I saw one John Krasinski of The Office fame standing in the corner in a back hat eating copious amount of sliders from one of the tables without barely taking a chance to swallow, I went up to say hello. Because it’s always good, almost necessary even, to reach out to people you admire (and who you may or may not have an entirely huge crush on) in order to experience a change in perspective. So I told him I was a fan and when he shook my hand and asked me my name, I told him. His response of "my name is John" made me laugh. Yeah, I know, I wanted to say. Your picture is on my fridge.
I talked to him and Colin Hanks (would it have been rude to tell him that I think his father the Jimmy Stewart of this generation?) who told me how much he loved New York but said he didn’t like it when it gets to be so cold out. And SNL cast member Bill Hader told me how much he loves New York too, and agreed that the studio itself is really small in real life, and how its television-to-reality-ratio still surprises him. It’s a strange thing talking to people you feel like you know when they don’t know you at all - the city itself is our only common bond.
But that’s the thing about New York, we are all trying to make something of ourselves, trying to find our place, and perhaps that’s why we admire the people we see on our television screens to begin with - because they’ve all already accomplished what they want to do while we're all still struggling. So it’s good to be able to see it up close and personal in order to remember that anything really can happen in a city where everything is possible - even if at the end of the night you do take a cab back home to your real life, with the inevitability that next Saturday, you’ll be watching from home.
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