This weekend kicked off the 50th season of “Saturday Night Live.” I cannot believe that I watched the first season and at the same time played Pong—that high bar of computer gaming—on a Sony Trinitron TV.
I haven’t watched SNL for decades (it’s past my bedtime) but was reminded of this milestone by Marlene Weisman, who was an in-house designer at the show for seven seasons (1988–1994).
These were classic years for the perennial NBC hit, and Marlene—who worked on on-air titles, parodies and props (not least of which included graphics for Wayne’s World)—was a pre-Mac master of hand-lettering, Letraset, phototypesetting, and even vinyl lettering machines.
The industry standards have come a long way since SNL began a half-century ago. I asked Weisman to recall those madcap golden days.
How did you get the job doing graphics for SNL?
After a few scrappy, punky years in the ’80s creating graphics for NYC music scene–related clients—The Bottom Line, Peppermint Lounge, Tramps, New Audiences, jazz concert promoters, a variety of indie bands, and the American branch of UK’s Stiff Records among them—I wanted to move on to something new.
I noticed an evening course being offered at SVA called “Creating Television Graphics,” being taught by Bob Pook, who was quite the television legend—he was the original graphics “show lead” at both “Saturday Night Live” and “Late Night with David Letterman.” He was also the originator of those innovative (back-from-commercial) “bumpers” that were witty and fun.
I decided to sign up for the course and, unbelievably, there were only a handful of students. Among the assignments, Pook (he was always “Pook,” not Bob) asked us to create and storyboard a television show opening of our choice. Channeling my subversive punk energy, I of course chose one for an imaginary Howard Stern TV show. Pook himself was a bit of a Belushi-like rebellious figure—waist-length pony tail and leather motorcycle jacket—so we hit it off creatively.
After the course ended, he told me he liked my work and wanted to hire me to do some freelance work. (I forget on which show—I think it was for David Brenner’s talk show.) Soon after that, he told me he was working on getting me hired at SNL. When that finally happened, it was very exciting!
And as things were back then, I received my official confirmation that I got the SNL gig at 30 Rock’s downstairs watering hole: Hurley’s Bar (long gone and now a Magnolia’s Bakery). Welcome to the crazy world of SNL!
Pook passed away in 2023—and I’ll be forever thankful to him for giving me the opportunity for a design experience of a lifetime.
How much of your creative time did you spend on the sketch titles?
It varied. Since creating the show’s graphics was a multi-step process in those days, you had to think—and work—very fast. It helped to have a visual encyclopedic knowledge of design and styles, and pop culture in general—along with a subversive Mad magazine–like sense of humor, an aspect I really enjoyed.
Thursday morning began with a production staff meeting, helmed by the show’s director (Davy Wilson for most of the years I was there). That meeting provided an overview of what was needed for the week’s sketches by the production crew.
After that, we’d then receive an itemized graphics list from the graphics coordinator. On the list, there’d be, say, half a dozen sketch titles to create, a few hand-held props (maybe a book cover, an album cover, a grocery product, etc …). Essentially, we’d immediately have to get to work and create all that over the course of a day and a half! We also received a few specific reference materials brought in by the graphics coordinator or prop department, including some actual products to create our parodies onto.
It was pre-computer, so in-house at our creative disposal we had sheets and sheets of Letraset, an in-house phototypesetting machine, a vinyl lettering machine, a huge room-sized stat camera, paste-up and drawing art supplies, and the ability to fabricate 3M custom transfers for props. It was all there—a wonderland of an art department!
I’d be remiss if I didn’t also give kudos to my colleagues Doug Zider and Ira Rappaport, who were a big part of my SNL graphics co-production team, too. They were masters of the Quantel Paintbox—then the state-of-the-art graphics system in television. And they also originated some of the graphics, too—along with Pook and I. It all depended on who got assigned what.
I’d travel up to Doug or Ira, both working side-by-side on Paintboxes on another floor, to bring them the actual hard copies of what I’d created or drawn. They would capture them via a flatbed camera attached to their equipment, and then my newly digitized designs would come alive for television by their addition of color and dimension.
So, as you can imagine, this “think fast” boot camp was amazing training for my creative thinking up to this day. As the famous SNL adage goes: The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30.
We didn’t get Macs in our art department until the mid-’90s, and when we finally got one, it went into an office deemed “the Computer Room.” That Mac was not yet even connected with the show’s control room—what a long way we’ve come since then!
Fun fact: I chose the “cheesy” font (available on our art department’s vinyl lettering machine) for the Wayne’s World logo. Pook said “italicize it,” and I can’t recall which of us added the globe. Who could know it would become the global phenomenon it became as the years rolled on?
Did the writers or cast have any input into what you did?
Yes, some of the writers and cast wanted to have input, and some weren’t as interested or were too busy with rewrites.
I did have a close working relationship with Mike Myers, who basically wrote his own sketches—and would come down to our art department to talk to me about the graphics. He wanted to approve everything himself. He was very specific in what he wanted, and I truly enjoyed working with him.
I clicked with him on where he was coming from creatively. I loved establishing the Euro-style SPROCKETS graphics for him, and creating all his Simon drawings for that series of his sketches, which was really fun. As someone with a similar passion for UK ’60s pop culture, I also loved drawing and creating the title sequence for his “1960s Movie” sketch, which I have a hunch was the seed of the idea for his Austin Powers movies!
The others writers I have fond memories of working with were Jack Handey—who I also worked a lot with—Robert Smigel, and Al Franken. I even got to meet the real “Toonces,” which was Jack and his wife Marta’s (non-driving) pet cat.
Had you done other TV or film work prior to this?
No, not at all! Due to how things were done, it was easier to make the leap from print to television back then. Plus I was very eager to learn quickly.
So, nothing before … but everything escalated rapidly as my SNL years rolled along.
During my non-production SNL days, I also got booked regularly to work on visual comedy bits (including Bookmobile and FDA Rejected Products) for “Late Night”—both Letterman and Conan editions. And during SNL’s hiatus times, I also worked at HBO Downtown Productions, on the famously “underground cult” “Night After Night with Allan Havey.”
And another fun fact: I actually did end up doing some freelance work on an actual Howard Stern pilot TV episode, which never got picked up at that time.
Why did you leave SNL?
There were a few reasons as to why I ended up leaving. There was a concerning spate of bad press—including Entertainment Weekly, New York Magazine—that the show was “dead” and would be ending! Many of my favorite writers moved on, and I think much of the cast was being replaced.
Also, NBC had just dismantled 206W, our wonderful communal spacious playground of an art department. Besides the demolition of that huge room-size stat machine and other printing equipment, you can’t even imagine the treasures they threw into their dumpsters, cleaning out a wall of files that held years of vintage television graphics—show cards, credit scrolls and other history items from the 1950s on! Plus, us designers were now being moved to separate small offices on the tenth floor.
At that same time, I was contacted by a headhunter that an exciting new project—related to something called, um … “the internet”—was looking to hire graphic design talent, no experience needed; training would be provided. The salary was quite attractive—and fearing I would be one of those people from the days of yore who stubbornly wouldn’t leave radio for television, I decided to make the leap. Needless to say, it wasn’t one of the best decisions of my life, as SNL’s Season 50 is now rolling out, and the mega-corporate website entity I left for has long gone out of existence.
But on the other hand—having my life back to be married and have a son was the redeeming bright spot! Because that’s something that’s really hard to do on SNL hours.
Do the sketch graphics have the same look today?
Wow, yep—things are decidedly different. Back in our era, most of the sketch titles were static “supers”—which didn’t animate, but just mostly popped on and off the screen. There were also sitcom-y sequences with full-screen stills—we’d call that a “build,” which was accessed from the control room “still store” that introduced some of the sketches. I also remember designing “lower thirds”—which today, you mostly see on the local news. A lot of this was due to the simplicity of the technology then—the word chyron comes to mind.
I was so lucky to be in the last generation to have the freedom to do stuff like handlettering—and have had free reign to learn on the job graphics-wise, simply springing from my print design background as a graphic designer. And SNL’s unique situation then was that it was a huge staff of people who each contributed a particularly specific part of the production at SNL, so you could specialize in one thing. I suppose it’s surely not that way there today; you’d need to be so thoroughly trained and multi-platform–ready to even approach the kind of opportunity I had. It was all so much fun.