Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504681
than fact, but I've always enjoyed this story. It sounds like something my friend Leo would say, and it reminds me so much of the way I started with Eugene years later. For the first two seasons, Eugene and Leo were the entire Art Department. After that, others were added as the show grew bigger and production more complicated. In those days, the networks had in-house design departments. From what I've heard, NBC staff designers weren't exactly pleased by the presence of these new "hippie" interlopers. After a short time, they were asked to leave and move up to the seventeenth floor where the show offices were located. It seems the constant wafting of pot smoke coming over the office partitions was not appreciated either. I studied to be an architect in London and New York. After school, I was playing in a new wave band and we performed at clubs around town (CBGBs, Max's Kansas City, etc.) and at the time, I thought that's what I'd be doing. Then after pressing a few EPs, the band broke up. I had worked for an architect while in school and a friend suggested drafting for a film starting production he knew about. Eugene was sitting at a drafting board when I walked in. I had no idea who this man in a baseball cap was or in fact, anything about set design, save for the plays I'd designed for my high school's drama department and the books about film design I'd collected while in college. We introduced ourselves and he asked to see my drawings. On seeing they were buildings he said, "You're a little overqualified. I think the position only pays $250 a week." I said, "Sounds perfect," and I started the next day. What I had no way of knowing was we'd be working together for forty years. This was the fall of 1982 and Eugene had left SNL in 1980, along with Lorne. Within the next few days, Gene asked me to draw up a set for an art deco boardroom. He took the drawing and said we're going uptown to Filmways Studios. Handing the drawings to the head carpenter, the crew started construction. That's when I realized everything I'd done leading up to that moment all made sense and I'd found exactly what I was supposed to be doing. In the spring of '85, there was a meeting at Lorne's production company, Broadway Video. C D E