Bill Hader

            On Thursday I killed more bedbugs while trying to sleep than I have for a while but I found fewer on the floor and wall around my bed. 

            I worked on memorizing the second verse of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian and the third verse of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have them both nailed down tomorrow. 

            I weighed 91.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the last of two sessions and it went out of tune all the time. 

            I weighed 92.5 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back I stopped at Freshco where I bought five bags of cherries, a pint of blueberries, some bananas, a pack of hot Italian sausages, marinara sauce, salsa, and a lint roller. I did a price match on the cherries with the No Frills price of $8.80 a kilo. 

            I tried to show my Scene card but it disappeared again. When I first got the Scene card it was right there in my email and it was easy to access, but then it got buried by emails. AI told me I could put it in Wallet and so I downloaded that and it worked but sometimes Wallet would disappear from my apps. Then I learned I could type “wallet” in a search and it would show up. But recently all this stuff started filling up Wallet when the only thing I wanted in there was my Scene card but then I figured out that I just needed to click on my own picture and then on “Your data in Wallet” and then “Scene” again to find the card. 

            I weighed 91.5 kilos at 18:40. 

            I was still three days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. 

            I had a potato with margarine and a piece of roast pork while watching two interviews about Carol Burnett with Bill Hader and Burt Reynolds. 

            The Carol Burnett Show ended just before Bill Hader was born but he saw it in re-runs. His mother and grandmother were big fans. When Bill saw the movie Annie, his mother told him “That’s Carol Burnett! She’s one of the funniest women who ever lived!” 

            He’d already seen Harvey Korman in Blazing Saddles and Tim Conway in other movies. 

            Bill had a big crush on Carol Burnett and thought she’d be the perfect person to live with. From a very young age he found funny women very attractive. 

            He talks about the difference between performing and acting. Performing is projecting outward to a live audience while acting is very interior. Carol could do both. She made everyone feel like they were in on the joke. She was like the bass in a rock band holding all the crazy stuff together. 

            He loves Monty Python and Black Adder but Carol’s show was very US in that aside from the talent one got to watch people have a good time. 

            In Second City in Los Angeles he learned that you have to make the people and situations real.

            On SNL Kristen Wiig and Amy Poehler were more like Carol Burnett. Fred Armisen and Will Forte were more like Tim Conway and they could make Bill laugh during a skit. John Malaney would change the script to make him laugh. Bill says he gets very nervous before a show. If you’re a performer with tension then someone who’s more calm will take advantage of that. Fred Armisen was the king of that. On the skit The Californians he would stretch out a line and then Bill would lose it. Then Fred would give Bill a puzzled look. 

            The best way to make someone laugh is to get in their space and Tim would do that to Harvey.

            When Bill does Vincent Price on SNL he’s really doing Harvey Korman. 

            For a long time until he was in his late 20s Bill thought Carol and Vicki were sisters. 

            He loved old movies and watched them with his family. When Carol and her cast did takeoffs of vintage films he felt like it was for him. 

            Burt Reynolds appears a bit drunk in his interview. He talks about one of his own TV series that was on opposite Dean Martin, and Martin blew it out of the water. Dean sent Burt a note saying, “I told you not to take out your laundry.” 

            Burt had a good time with The Smothers Brothers and admired them but nobody could compare with Carol Burnett. She made her guests comfortable. If a guest didn’t like a joke her writers would change it. 

            Burt started the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre in Jupiter, Florida in 1979 and invited his celebrity friends to come down and do plays. In 1980 Burt co-starred with Carol there in a production of Same Time Next Year, directed by Dom DeLuise. When Burt kissed her she acted like she used to act around Lyle Waggoner on her show as if she was about to swoon. Burt told her to stop but she said she really meant it. They played jokes on each other onstage. She nailed his loafers to the stage floor so when he slipped them on in a scene and tried to walk he fell on his face. When they were in bed in a scene he put a frog there. Burt got Carol to warm up the audience the way she did on her show. She would pretend she forgot her lines just to get Burt to ad lib. He says it was the most fun he’d ever had on stage. 

            Burt talks about how much he loved Dom DeLuise and his whole family. 

            He says Dean Martin also cracked up in the middle of skits. Dom DeLuise could make him fall apart. 

            Burt talks about his beginnings as a stuntman. All stunt people have to have an athletic background. His two best friends are stuntmen and there is no one in the movie business he loves more than stunt people. 

            He says he had a mad crush on Carol Burnett but she didn’t believe it. If he had to go to a desert island and could take one person he’d take Carol. He kept saying that in interviews until she sent him a picture of herself in a bathing suit with the caption, “When?” 

            She loved anything that made her crazy. 

            He’s scared to death to sing in public but he wasn’t when he did “Time Goes By” on Carol’s show. She kept on insisting that he could sing until he believed it. When he told her he wanted to fall down the stairs during his number she was horrified that he would break something. He did it twice to make sure they got it right. 

            It was fun to watch Harvey and Tim because it was clear that they loved each other. 

            Vicki’s timing was good from the start and she had the goods right away. 

            Lyle Waggoner was taller and Burt said if he worked with him he wanted him to be sitting down. Lyle took him seriously and tried to accommodate him until Burt told him he was joking. 

            Nanette Fabray was the perfect guest for Carol and she was very easy to work with. 

            Carol came to Burt’s dressing room ten times to make sure if everything was all right and to ask if he wanted anything. He wanted to see how far she’d go so he asked for some vodka. She brought him three bottles and afterward he pretended he was drunk. 

            Bill Hader studied at the New York Academy College of Film. He originally wanted to be a director and had no thoughts about being a comedian or an actor. he worked as a production assistant on several movies and shows. he started taking improv classes at Second City. He co-formed a sketch troupe called Animals from the Future and one of the members was Matt Offerman the brother of Nick Offerman. Nick’s wife Megan Mullaly recommended Bill to Lorne Michaels and so he was invited to fly to New York to audition for SNL. For his Saturday Night Live audition he did impressions of Al Pacino, James Mason, and Peter Falk. He was in the cast of Saturday Night Live from 2005 to 2013. On the show he did impressions of Vincent Price, Harvey Fierstein, John Malkovitch, James Carville, Julian Assange, Alan Alda, Clint Eastwood, and Charlie Sheen. He was the first male castmember to be nominated for an Emmy since Eddie Murphy. One of his most famous characters was Stefon. He co-created, co-produced, directed and starred in the HBO show Barry from 2018 to 2023, for which he won two Emmy Awards. He co-created, co-produced and starred in Documentary Now from 2015 to 2022. He was a producer for season 13 of South Park for which he co-won an Emmy. He made his film debut in You Me and Dupree in 2006. He co-starred in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Adventureland, Paul, BFG, Trainwreck, Inside Out, Sausage Party, Maggie’s Plan, Nelle, The To Do List, . He starred in The Skeleton Twins, When he saw that his girlfriend had Star Wars curtains, he knew he was going to marry her. He played Mr. Peanut in Planter’s commercials even though he’s allergic to peanuts. He hosted SNL in 2018. He discovered on Finding Your Roots that he is descended from Edward I of England and Charlemagne.