While teasing his new podcast on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night (Jan. 12), David Spade opened up about his Saturday Night Live sketch with Tom Hanks that completely bombed. After Hanks had pitched the idea of subway surfing, Spade helped him craft a sketch they thought might be funny — when, in actuality, it was a complete train wreck.
Hanks was hosting at the time, with Spade working out of the writers’ room. After Hanks tossed in the idea, Spade called him over to unpack the idea further.
“I caught him and I said, ‘You pitched something in the meeting about subway surfing,’” Spade recalls. “‘Are you gonna write that up?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, you wanna write it up with me?’”
Spade agreed, of course. He says that unfortunately, Hanks didn’t realize he was “horrible.” Once Hanks suggested writing music for the sketch, Spade knew things could only go downhill.
“First of all, I have a legal pad,” Spade said. “We don’t have computers back then. So I’m [scribbling]. I knew how to write a couple of jokes. So we went in there, we wrote it all night, then we did it, and it bombed.”
Although there seems to be no evidence of the failed bit, Spade attempted to draw some visuals from his memory.
“I remember being on the subway, surfing, and he was next to me. In the middle, our eyes connect and we’re like, ‘It’s over, dude,” he said. “We were two minutes into it and we have five more and I was like, ‘Oh, it’s bombing!’ We just did it wrong. We hit the wrong thing in rehearsal.”
Ultimately, Hanks made the executive decision to cut the sketch from the final broadcast. And yet, because Hanks remembers all of his work on SNL, he still recalls the entire failed bit.
“We talked about it and he remembered the song, and he sang the whole song,” Spade says. “He remembered the song! I couldn’t believe it. It was crazy. Really fun.”
Spade’s new SNL podcast Fly On The Wall, hosted with Dana Harvey, launched yesterday (Jan. 12) with Cadence13. Jimmy Kimmel Live airs weeknights on ABC at 11:35/10:35c. Watch the full segment in the video above.
