Salvation Pretty

“One time I ran into him and I said, “Adam, I need to be in a hit movie. Can you get me a part in your next movie?” And then he wrote a part for me in Little Nicky.”

That nugget about Adam Sandler is just one of so many wonderful moments in this AV Club interview with Jon Lovitz. He makes me love Dan Aykroyd. He describes the perils of working with the ladies in A League Of Their Own. (“I’ll tell you something about that movie that the girls told me. It was like 40 women. They go, “Jon, when you get a group of women together, their menstrual cycles all get in sync, so they’re all getting their periods at the same time.”) He praises Eddie Murphy’s performance in The Klumps as Oscar-worthy.

This story about Woody Allen is my favorite part.

So I was doing it, and then Woody goes, “I think maybe you should just do yourself. It doesn’t sound really like what we want. It doesn’t sound real. But hey, listen, it’s better you do yourself. I tell people Jon Lovitz is in the movie, they think it’s fantastic. Guys like us, we’re already funny.” And he said it, like, twice. I was relieved just to get an answer to my question, because I just didn’t want to get fired.

So I go back to my mark on the set and I start crying—not like sobbing, but tears started coming out, and I almost lost it. Why? Because he said, “Guys like us.” And he said it twice. I’m not saying that I’m him. He’s one of the greatest directors; I’m not saying that. I’m just saying funny. I remember when I was 20 in college, somebody goes, “Who do you think you are, Woody Allen?” Now I got Woody Allen saying, “Guys like us.” So I started crying, because it really was your idol validating your choice that you made in your life. Later I called Dana Carvey. He goes, “What’s it like?” I go, “He said, ‘Guys like us.’” And Dana started screaming, because he knew what it meant. It was heaven, and I couldn’t stop smiling.

In my mind, Jon Lovitz is the only possible replacement for Steve Carrell on The Office. Who’s with me?