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On the Media

After 9/11, Nothing Was Funny

On the Media

WNYC Studios

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4.68.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2016

⏱️ 14 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Brooke talks to Marc Maron and Will Ferrell about the place of humor in tragedy after 9/11.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This week on our podcast, we're replaying a segment from the show that aired the week of September 22nd, 2001.

0:11.0

Our first show after the attacks, only 11 days after the attacks, to be specific, when nothing really seemed funny.

0:19.2

David Letterman's monologue from his first show after 9-11

0:22.4

perfectly captured how many comedians were feeling.

0:26.0

You can feel it, you can see it.

0:28.5

It's terribly sad, terribly, terribly sad.

0:32.6

And watching all of this, I wasn't sure that I should be doing a television show because for 20 years we've been in the city,

0:41.3

making fun of everything, making fun of the city.

0:44.3

To come to this circumstance that is so desperately sad, and I don't trust my judgment in matters like this.

0:51.3

That week, Brooke hosted a call-in show with then Saturday Night Live's Will Ferrell.

0:57.4

Farrell was most famous at the time for his savage impersonations of President Bush on Saturday

1:03.4

Night Live.

1:04.3

So what's my secret?

1:05.8

I don't know.

1:06.7

Most of good genes, I guess.

1:08.8

And plenty of sleep.

1:10.5

Fourteen hours a night.

1:13.3

Every night, no ifs, or butts.

1:16.9

Also, keeping a moderate work schedule and taking frequent catnaps.

1:23.0

Farrell told us back then that the writer's room at Saturday Night Live was filled with people who,

1:28.2

like Letterman, no longer trusted their own judgment.

1:32.4

Yeah, the one place you'd think maybe there would be some tasteless jokes, we weren't

...

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