Ben never expressed anything remotely like that, though. He gave us a guided tour of the apartment, and I could tell he was enamored with the grandeur and the history of the place, although Cameron, Jennifer, and I were acting like fourth graders, laughing while the teacher talked about science. Ben showed me the impressive collection of original black-and-white photos of ’60s and ’70s rock bands that he had all across the walls. Then we went through the living room and eventually into this lounge/den/library/nightcap room that had a fireplace. All the while, I knew my host couldn’t quite understand why I was still there with Cameron, and to be honest, I wasn’t exactly sure why she had taken me under her wing. I guess I should be more clear. We weren’t dating or anything like that. I didn’t push for clarification, since I loved hanging around with her and was comfortable just being friends. But now and then, even I couldn’t help but wonder what exactly was going on.

  At one point in the evening, Stiller came up to me and walked me back into the living room to ask me a favor.

  “Hey, man. Why don’t you go down to my car and grab some CDs?” (Yep, we couldn’t simply touch a screen and hear whatever album we wanted just yet; we still had old-school compact discs.)

  Even though he already had some smooth tunes playing, he wanted me to take the elevator twelve stories down to the parking lot where his Porsche sat and rummage around for . . . I wasn’t sure what, exactly. Nor did I know how to respond, so I simply said, “Yeah, sure.”

  In the elevator, it dawned on me how odd the request happened to be. Were these special albums he carried around in a deluxe carrying case? How many CDs was I supposed to grab? What if he had fifty albums? Should I take Yanni Live at the Acropolis and leave behind TLC? Maybe grab En Vogue and forget about Fatboy Slim? And if I couldn’t find the perfect choice right off, should I search through the glove compartment and the back seats for some Eagle-Eye Cherry? Maybe Limp Bizkit? (I could keep going.)

  While gathering the few albums he had in his sports car, I realized Ben simply wanted to get me out of his place. Not because he didn’t like me. Not necessarily. He just wanted Cameron all to himself, which I didn’t blame him for. I actually rushed back to get into the elevator. When I got upstairs, Cameron and Jennifer were sitting on the couch across from Stiller, who was laid back in his beanbag with his sweater pulled up and his hand rubbing his six-pack. He gave me an “Already? You’re back? Come on!” sort of look. Was he expecting that I’d take an hour to choose the perfect album?

  “Here are your CDs,” I said, holding out the stack and feeling like a Girl Scout selling Samoas.

  Hanging around Cameron and her friends was the beginning of my having a social life outside of anything work related. This steady group of friends became reliable, caring, and even helped me become more responsible; Cameron hooked me up with her accountant, and even her money manager, Dana Giacchetto—who was a well-known investor and close friends with celebrities like Leo DiCaprio, Alanis Morissette, Ben Affleck, and Michael Stipe. Giacchetto seemed like the smartest person to make my first investment with . . . until a few weeks later, when Cameron called me in a panic and said to drop him immediately because he was going to prison for securities fraud and stealing over ten million dollars from his clients. Luckily I came out unscathed.

  During this time, I decided to move out of my father’s house. One of Cameron’s friends who I’d gotten to know was this very cool woman named Stacey Sher. When I met her, she had already worked as a producer on films like Pulp Fiction, The Fisher King, and Reality Bites as one of the heads of Jersey Films along with Danny DeVito, and I ended up moving into Stacey and her boyfriend Kari’s guesthouse on Oriole Drive, just north of the Sunset Strip. I’d describe it as being very similar to the Fonz’s guesthouse above the Cunningham’s garage in Happy Days. The lush property with its pool and outdoor fireplace felt more like a resort getaway than a residence. The guesthouse didn’t have a kitchen, so I would go over and use theirs, where I would usually run into a variety of industry people.

  Since Stacey had worked with director Steven Soderbergh on Out of Sight and other films, one week I got to see them prepping for Erin Brockovich, writing at the dining room table along with Richard LaGravenese, who wrote the screenplay for The Fisher King. Once while I was back in New York and up on the seventeenth floor, Stacey called me and said to come down to 8H to meet Miloš Forman! That afternoon, I got to watch the great Czech filmmaker direct Jim Carrey channeling Andy Kaufman in the Mighty Mouse scene from SNL for Man on the Moon.

  I felt like I was becoming part of this amazingly creative, often brilliant family while living in that guesthouse. Not just in Stacey’s world but the neighborhood in general. Jennifer Aniston lived right around the corner, and I would often see her on Oriole Drive doing her daily run. Lionel Richie lived across the street, and Leo DiCaprio lived at the end of the block. I later began dating Cameron’s friend, Jennifer, and we stayed together in the guesthouse. Jennifer was a lot taller than me, exotic, and our relationship, short-lived.

  One year, Cameron invited me to celebrate New Year’s Eve with her. It wasn’t some big extravaganza, just a small dinner party. Robert Downey Jr. was there, wearing a cowboy hat and sunglasses, looking like a trendy space cowboy. He’s always a sweetheart of a guy; he came with Jared Leto, who I remember not being such a sweetheart to me, a little standoffish. And watching Cameron flirting and having fun with someone as pretty as Jared Leto was starting to make me feel jealous.

  Cameron and Jared started dating while he was filming Requiem for a Dream, which for those who don’t know is that sweet family film about heroin addicts who see their lives fall apart. During this time, I went out to dinner with Cameron and Jared and a few others in the West Village in New York. What was funny about that night was that for the entire evening, Leto was doing his method approach and locked into his Brooklyn-based character from Requiem, so whenever he would order something, he would speak in a thick Brooklyn accent. “Yeah . . . uh, gimme the salad with croutons and uhh, gimme the hot tea. Thanks babe.” Out of respect to Cameron, I wasn’t going to start making fun of her boyfriend, even though this behavior was practically screaming “Please make fun of me. I’m begging you!”

  Then at one point, while trying to move a little closer to Cameron, Jared accidentally lifted his chair up as he scooted over a few inches and landed right on her toe. Since she was wearing open-toed sandals, not surprisingly she screamed. Then Leto, still in character and sporting that crazy accent that sounded more like Travolta’s character in Welcome Back, Kotter than anything else, responded by saying: “Hey—come on. It was a joke. Whaddya want?” Which made sense since every actor knows, no matter what happens . . . always stay in character.

  Eventually I became acquainted with the third member of the Charlie’s Angels trio. When Lucy Liu hosted in December of 2000, she took photographs during the week on an actual camera, and after the show she gave cast members the photos she’d taken of them as gifts. At the after-party I asked if she’d like to hang out when we were both back in LA, and we exchanged phone numbers. When I finally got up the courage to give her a call, I found out that the phone number she had given me belonged to her assistant.

  At the time, Lucy was busy filming the second Charlie’s Angels along with Cameron and Drew, but somehow she found time to meet. When she drove up in a Porsche convertible, she sported a leather jacket, yoga pants, and a Hermès scarf around her neck, and for our destination she similarly chose only the finest: 7 AM breakfast at Du-par’s on Ventura Boulevard. I tried to convince myself that pancakes and coffee could be categorized as a date. Especially when it costs eleven dollars, which I insisted on paying, of course. Ah, ma chérie, the morning is young!

  Chapter 14

  YEAH, BUT HAVE YOU SEEN THEM LIVE?

  When I first heard the last half of “New Year’s Day” on a local Seattle radio station, I was immediately infatuated with the sound of a little band called U2. Then I heard “With or Without You,” and I was obsessed. I spent many of my high school nights sitting in my car at the pier with the engine off, overlooking the still waters of Puget Sound; the rain would continuously knock on the hood of the car, and I would turn on my Kenwood CD player, the one with the detachable face, to play “40” from their War album.

  It wasn’t just that I became a big fan, it was much more significant and emotional. As if psychologically, and I know this sounds corny, The Joshua Tree became the sound of my youth. A bit like the character in Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver, U2 provided the soundtrack to my high school years.

  When I saw Bono’s emotional performance of “Bad” at Live Aid, I couldn’t believe how his physical performance combined with the band’s music to give him so much control over the audience. He was one of the few performers (other than Bruce Springsteen and Freddie Mercury) who seemed to have an almost sexual command of the entire stadium. I would save up money and buy overpriced VHS bootlegs and study terribly videotaped concerts of U2’s The Joshua Tree and Zoo TV tours. In the process of finding my so-called “self” by performing at pep assemblies in high school, I once sang “With or Without You.” Because I didn’t dare do an impression of Bono outright, my impression was Bono via Bobcat Goldthwait’s impression at the first Comic Relief benefit, where he ran from one end of the stage to the other in a leather vest, hair tied back while holding up a white flag.

  So when U2 came on the show in December 2000, I knew I had to try to get Bono to do a sketch. I wanted him to do a Mango cameo; they showed Bono a tape of Mango in action, and he decided he didn’t want to do the cameo or any other sketches. He recognized I was a big fan, though, and invited me to his dressing room after the show. The whole band was there, along with Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, and the legendary Joey Ramone.

  I sat down across from Bono. He had orange-tinted shades covering his wise, weathered eyes and was sipping from the nearly empty bottle of Heineken in his hand. We talked about his physical performance and his connection to the audience. Bono told me, “When you’re singing and you get to that level of control and one with the audience, you say:

  “I love you, I love you,

  Fuck you, fuck you,

  Wait, I’m sorry, I love you, I love you,

  Fuck you, seriously. Fuck off.

  Wait. Come back, I’m sorry.”

  Brilliant.

  At the end he said, “Come see us,” and surprisingly he followed through. They put aside some front-row tickets for a U2 show in Toronto while I was filming the movie Undercover Brother with Denise Richards, who I took to the show. I was so excited to see them live, to have front-row floor seats no less, and then Bono started singing “With or Without You”—my song, my anthem, my soundtrack. It was just like the movies; I turned and looked into Denise’s bright blue eyes and yelled as loud as Bono was singing so I could be heard.

  “Denise! Kiss me! You have to kiss me. This is a moment.”

  She shook her head and shouted, “No! Absolutely not.”

  “. . . nothing to win, and nothing left to lose.”

  “Come on! He’s singing like three yards away from us—it’s a moment!”

  “Stop talking!” she screamed.

  When you give yourself away, it doesn’t always mean someone wants you.

  During the next year or so I got into “the scene,” frequenting the club at the Roosevelt Hotel, named Teddy’s in honor of the late director Ted Demme. Teddy’s was always packed, and you could always count on seeing the regulars like Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and Kate Hudson, but one night in 2002 I ran into Bono there, wearing dark shades and a cowboy hat. He had just been featured on the cover of Time magazine with a headline saying: “Can Bono Save the World?” He was becoming involved with the (RED) campaign for AIDS and was coming from an ANC meeting with President George W. Bush. When I walked up to him, Bono immediately remembered me, and we talked for a while. But at the end of the conversation—that is, when I ran out of interesting things to say—I said “Goodbye, Bono.” And he pulled down his shades to look at me, and said, “Goodbye, Jimmy!”

  Then, to add insult to injury, I got a call from Fallon a couple of days later.

  “Hey, um, did you talk to Bono the other day?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Well, he just invited me to his birthday party.”

  Fucking A!

  In the beginning of Season 25, the musical guest was one of my absolute favorite musicians—and most likely one of yours—the incomparable David Bowie. It was one of the few times I asked a guest on the show for an autograph, and he kindly obliged. I didn’t do it that often because I was slightly embarrassed at the time, but today I’m happy I did, like with Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty. And hey, I didn’t do it with the group All Saints or Natalie Imbruglia. I stopped after Jimmy saw me at the page desk asking one of them to ask Janet Reno if she would sign my SNL book, and he gave me a “that’s not cool, pal” look.

  Anyway, back to Bowie. Instead of asking Marci or someone who worked in Talent if I could meet him, I decided to go to his dressing room, and when I got there, the door was wide open and he was just sitting in a leather armchair with one leg over the armrest, swinging his foot back and forth. He was such a rock star.

  I said, “Hi. I’m so sorry to bother you. I’m Chris.”

  Like a six-year-old boy seeing Santa Claus for the first time, Bowie jumped up and with the utmost grace and what I can only describe as an elegant curtsy came to shake my hand.

  This was the first time I noticed how clear blue the color of his right eye was compared to the moody black color of his left eye. Later I learned that the hypnotic, beautiful color difference of his eyes was actually the appearance of one pupil being larger than the other, a condition called “anisocoria.”

  Later, when David Bowie and his band finished rehearsing the single “Little Wonder” for camera blocking, I yelled, “Sing ‘Ashes to Ashes!’” And you know what? They did. It was absolutely insane, and finally my movie moment!

  One of the kindest musical guests was Lenny Kravitz, who hosted in January 2001. He brought his dad with him, and they wore matching wool sweaters.

  But some were not so cordial, like the lead singer of Jamiroquai, Jay Kay. When he and his band were headed to their dressing room after playing their set in September 1997, I said “Great job” as I walked by, and he replied “Fucking rubbish.”

  In a similar circumstance, while I was briskly passing Sir Liam Gallagher, the lead singer of the band Oasis—by the way I’m almost positive he wasn’t knighted, but he sure acted like he was—I said “Hello,” and he answered “Oh, come off it!”

  Probably the most fun I ever had with a band wasn’t actually on the show. One night at a star-packed VH1 benefit for the survivors of 9/11 at Madison Square Garden, I met Destiny’s Child when they asked me to introduce them before they sang the hit song “Say My Name.” A few months later, I saw them again when we were on the same six-hour flight from New York to Seattle. I was going to see family, and they were on tour, and for about three of the six hours in the air, Michelle, Kelly, Beyoncé, and I played games while seated with our seat belts on. We played charades. We played Heads Up! And we played a game we made up ourselves, where we basically threw pretzels at each other from across the aisle. But the best game was a scavenger hunt, which lasted almost an hour because poor Beyoncé had to search the entire cabin while trying to find the hidden treasure.

  For the Christmas episode in 1998, legendary operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti was the musical guest. Between dress and air, I was in the makeup room getting all dolled up for camera, and I noticed in the mirror that, directly behind me, sitting in a makeup chair, was Pavarotti—with extremely dark eyebrows. When my makeup artist waved me to get out of the chair since she was done, I asked if I could put on some ChapStick for another minute since I wanted so badly to keep watching Pavarotti.

  “You’re all done, Mr. Pavarotti,” said his makeup artist. Pavarotti grabbed the eyebrow pencil, held the head of it to his eyebrow, and pleaded to her, with an Italian roll of the tongue on the Rs: “More! More!”

  “Of course,” she said, applying more dark pencil to what already looked very similar to the eyebrows of an Angry Birds character.

  “How’s that?” she asked. “We good?”

  Pavarotti took one more look in the mirror and said, “More. Please, more. More!”

  “You never know what people will talk about,” Christopher Walken said in a Rolling Stone interview when asked about the popularity of the infamous “More Cowbell” sketch. “I’ve made so many movies, movies that I’ve never even seen. It’s just as hard to make a movie that doesn’t succeed as it is to make one that does. Things just happen a little mysteriously.”

  Walken was right. Nobody realized how popular the sketch would become when it aired on April 8, 2000.

  (No, this book is not missing a page, we are jumping right into the “Cowbell” sketch; I just don’t know what else to say about my Pavarotti experience. Moving on . . .)

  Will said the idea came from hearing the cowbell in the background of the Blue Öyster Cult song “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.” He wrote the sketch with Chris Parnell and first pitched it to Norm Macdonald when he hosted. But no go. Submitted a second time for host Alec Baldwin, but rejected again. Normally two strikes would kill a sketch idea, but in this case the third time really was charmed. Walken hosted, and it was finally chosen.

  Between dress and air the night we did the sketch, instead of wearing the shirt he wore in rehearsal, Will asked wardrobe if they had a much smaller one. Wearing a shirt three sizes too small, the bottom half of his orange-haired belly was unmasked, and you could see his appendix scar. Will wasn’t afraid to expose anything, and I always admired that. One time I walked into the office he shared with Parnell and he asked me if I wanted to see his “taint.” Which, for those who don’t know, is the smooth hairless area between the testicles and the anus. I passed, but I’m sure if I’d said, “Yes, I would very much like to see your taint,” he’d probably have been okay with it.