Davis Tom - 39 Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: the Early Days of SNL from Someone Who Was There

THIRTY-NINE YEARS OF SHORT-TERM MEMORY LOSS

Cross, Country, III, IV, V; Track, IV, V; Publications, IV, V, VI; B-Club, III, IV, V, VI; Union, VI; Debate, III, IV, V, VI; Dramatics, V, VI; Service Comm., IV, V, VI; Dance Comm., V, VI; V Form Speech Contest; Teen Corps member, 6 wks; Dont forget Son of True Grit, (Allen and I co-authored, co-directed, co-starred and shared ego gratification).

Thomas James Davis
T.D., Tom, Tommy... talent unbounded... energy... his eyes sparkle enthusiasm with long hair ... he really didnt want a senior article, so well stop.

TOM DAVIS

Copyright 2009 by Tom Davis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer. who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

Cast photo on dust jacket cover 1975 Peter M. Fine
Photo of Tom Davis on title page 1977 Edie Baskin. All Rights Reserved
Excerpt from Timothy Leary: A Biography
copyright 2006 by Robert Greenfield,
reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Searching for the Soundby Phil Lesh
copyright 2005 by Phil Lesh,
by permission of Little Brown & Company.
Lyrics to Casey Jones by Robert Hunter
copyright Ice Nine Publishing Company. Used with Permission.
Brief text as submitted [The shows announcer,
Don Pardo... ODonoghues time on the show.] from Mr. Mike: The Life and Work of
Michael ODonoghue by Dennis Perrin. Copyright 1999 by Dennis Perrin. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Brief text as submitted [It was Tom Davis and Bill Murray
... Bill Murrays mouth]
from Dark Star: An Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia
by Robert Greenfield. Copyright 1996 by Robert Greenfield. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
From A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead
by Dennis McNally, copyright 2002 by Dennis McNally.
Used by permission of Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4916-0

Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Distributed by Publishers Group West
www.groveatlantic.com

When Tom told me he was writing a memoir, I was skeptical. Dont get me wrong, Toms had a fascinating life, as you will soon find out. But it was my experience that he did not possess, as the title suggests, much of a memorywhich seemed to me an essential ingredient in writing a memoir.

Tom asked if he could, from time to time, ask me to refresh his memory, and, of course, I agreed. I was running for the Senate in our home state of Minnesota at the time and reliving some old times, even a few painful ones, would be a welcome distraction from the serious business of campaigning.

Soon we were trading e-mails about some very memorable moments from our lives and careers that Tom was pretty hazy about. When we did The Comedy Team that Weighs the Same on Lettermanwhat was that about? Remember when you broke your heel jumping into an orchestra pit because some idiot had lowered the pit fifteen feet between rehearsal and the show? Was that an hydraulic orchestra pit? And what college were we playing? When Lorne cut your parents from the showwhat was that about?

But it turns out that Tom has a pretty good memory. We might disagree on a few fine or not-so-fine points, but in this book he vividly recollects a life that at once captures the experience of so many baby boomers and yet is unique to Tom Davis, a suburban Minneapolis boy of the 50s and 60s who went on to disappoint his uptight father by running away to show business and the company of everyone from Dan Aykroyd to John Belushi, Jerry Garcia, and Timothy Leary.

Tom does seem to remember every drug he took. Anyone who reads just a few chapters wont be surprised when they find out that it was Toms drug and alcohol use that broke us up as a team. Tom writes here that he hated my SNL character, Stuart Smalley, the codependent host of the fictional twelve-step cable access show, Daily Affirmations. Of course, he did. In no small part, it was about him and me. And it was a literal threat to his drinking and drugging. Of course, he hated Stuart.

Tom and I had been best friends and partners for over twenty years, and our breakup was a painful one. Ill give you an idea how close we were. My daughter, born in 1981, is named Thomasin Davis Franken.

Tom jokingly refers to himself as the Garfunkel of Franken and Davis, but it might surprise folks that there were times that I harbored self doubts and thought Tom was the funny one. See? Codependent.

And, as you will see, Tom is hilarious. There are laughs big and small in here. In fact, the partnership worked because Tom had comedic talents and skills that I dont. You see, while I was wasting my time at Harvard, Tom was trained in the improvisational method of Second City at a place called Dudley Riggss Brave New Workshop. John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, John Candy, Chris Farley, and many before and after have been trained in that technique.

For a writer (and Tom and I were mainly writers on SNL), the technique is invaluable. If we were stuck in a sketch, Tom would get us unstuck by finding an object to play with. Take the Julia Child Bleeding to Death sketch. If youve seen it, you probably remember itand yet another brilliant performance by Aykroyd.

Julias doing her show and demonstrates how to cut up a raw chicken with a very sharp knife. The knife slips and she cuts herself. Badly. The rest of the sketch is an orgy of spurting blood as Dannys Julia attemptsagainst her panicto calmly show the audience what to do in such an emergency. Nothing works, including a dish towel tourniquet, and the chicken liver shes told the audience to save fails as a natural coagulant. Tom and I are looking for one last thing, one last thing for Julia to lurch for, before she passes out. Tom finds the phone. Of course! The wall phone on her kitchen set. Julia grabs itThe phone! Simply call 9-1-1... And pulling it to her ear, she realizes Its a prop! and drops it, staggering woozily, somehow never losing her Julia Child cheeriness, and passing out, reminding the audience one last time to Save the liver!