It's been pretty quiet on the Forte front since then -- his memorable 30 Rock appearances aside -- a silence broken only last month with the premiere of his new comedy A Good Old Fashioned Orgy at the Tribeca Film Festival. (The film is scheduled for theatrical release in September.) Movieline caught up with Forte for a chat about the year in between, including MacGruber's aftermath and why he left Saturday Night Live -- a show that he obviously still misses. Forte also shared his opinion on the popular theory that Jason Sudeikis suffered this season without his presence, walks us through one of the most bizarre sketches in SNL history and tells the somewhat unbelievable story of how he became the 29th best Donkey Kong player in the world.
After the Good Old Fashioned Orgy premiere, when you were on stage with the cast, you briefly mentioned that while filming you became ranked 29th in the world at Donkey Kong. Did I hear you correctly?
I don't know what I am now, but back then, one of the guys who was a stand in, Leo Daniels, he was huge in that arcade scene. And he was a record holder of several of those old games from the '70s and early '80s. I think he was the world record holder in Tempest or something like that. I don't know if he was in The King of Kong, but he definitely was in that movie Chasing Ghosts, which was another documentary about that scene. So I would come in every third or fourth day and I had been really going nuts on the Donkey Kong machine in downtown Wilmington [N.C.].
I had one score which I was really proud of so... [Laughs] I took a picture of it and brought it in and showed it to him. And he said, "Oh, that's a really good score." And I had no idea, but he then checked it against the existing registered Donkey Kong scores and it was number 29, I think. I think he might have sent it in to Walter Day, who is in that King of Kong movie -- the guy who verifies the scores. And so they got me in on the list. I think since then I've moved down, I don't even know where I am now. But at a certain point I was number 29 in the history of Donkey Kong. Then again, I think that's just people who register their scores. It takes a certain type of person to register your Donkey Kong score. So I'm just number 29 in registered Donkey Kong scores.
How long did that game take?
It might have been an hour. I forget exactly. It bleeds together because I spent so much time at the Donkey Kong machine. And I got pretty good so each game was pretty long. I tend to get pretty obsessed with things, I'm borderline OCD so I will spend hours and hours at that Donkey Kong machine and just go nuts. There's a certain level that is really hard to get through and most people who are just casually playing Donkey Kong, they can't get through this one particular level with those little elevator things. So I went back and asked Leo for advice and looked it up on the Internet -- like for good ways to get through this -- and it had a bunch of tips. And I spent hours and hours working on it at this bar and finally got through that level. And that's the key to opening you up to more points. It was really like an all-consuming passion for Donkey Kong glory -- which I got a small piece of.
This would make a great sequel to The King of Kong.
It would make a really sad sequel. Those guys, I can't even imagine. I definitely didn't get anywhere near half of the world record. It blows my mind that they can get up there. Then again, who knows, if this shoot was another three or four weeks, I might have gotten into the zone.
The last time we spoke was at the MacGruber junket...
Those days are pretty crazy. It's like every seven or eight minutes new people come in. You know, you try not to get too close to people because they just leave after seven minutes.
How did that film's failure at the box-office affect you?
It was... It definitely was disappointing. We made a movie that we loved and we still totally believe in. The main bummer is just that a lot of people didn't go to see it. So it's been kind of nice that it's out on DVD and been showing on HBO recently. There are a lot of people who didn't get a chance to see it in the theater who are getting a chance to see it for the first time. I feel like, hopefully, that people... It's hard not to not look at box-office numbers and judge a film's worth based on the amount of money it takes in. It's hard not to get sucked into that. All we can do as the makers of the film is make the best movie that we can make. And then you just hope for the best. We never have lost our love for this movie and we're really proud of it and, hopefully, more will get a chance to see it.
We were so excited when we would go to screenings, they would always do very, very well. But I don't know why people didn't give it a chance. It's definitely not a movie for everybody, but I think a lot of people prejudged it for different reasons.
I remember that you were worried about that when you were promoting it -- that people would prejudge it as a feature-length comedy sketch and dismiss it without giving it a chance. Is that what happened?
I think. I don't know. I mean, I have no idea. I don't know. I've had so much time to reflect on it, there could have been so many different reasons why people didn't go check it out. I'm sure that's a reason why some people didn't go see it: Not seeing how a sketch like that could turned into a full-length movie, just assuming that it would be a series of explosions every three minutes. I wouldn't want to see that movie and I don't blame people for not wanting to see a movie like that. But the problem was that wasn't the movie. The movie was completely different than the sketch. I feel like a lot of people, if they had given it a chance, would have liked it. Not everybody -- it's a crazy movie. It's not for everyone. But the people who it is for, I think, will enjoy it a lot.
Right after that, you left Saturday Night Live. From an outsider's perspective, it seemed like that would have been the perfect way to get back on the horse -- returning to the show that you've been on for so long. Why leave at that point?
It was way more of a personal life decision then a professional life decision. I had been there for eight years. I had just turned 40. It's really a pretty grueling schedule. I mean, it was the best experience of my life, but it just seemed like the right time to go for some reason. MacGruber, that whole situation, didn't affect my SNL decision at all.
It was a hard decision. Geez, I miss that place so much. Still. And knowing that it was my decision made it even more difficult to get through those first couple months of watching the shows. It was very painful. I missed it so much and it was like, "I could be there! Why did I decide to leave?" I think that anytime anybody leaves that show has such a fondness for it. It's so grueling! But it's also just impossible to describe that experience. You make such intense friendships with people who are there -- it's like a big family. It was weird to leave this group of people that you care so much for. And it just could not have been a better job, but, you know, God, you gotta leave at some point. I don't know, it just felt like the right time. My sister was having babies out here.... I don't know.
Did you miss it more than you thought you would?
[Pauses] Yeah. Well... I don't know. I knew I would miss it, but I made the decision over the summer where there weren't shows. So it's much easier to make a decision like that when nobody is doing the show. And then when everybody comes back and is doing the show, it's like, "Oh, every single person that I work with is there, except for me." You know, you miss it. You miss it a lot.
You came back to the show this season to reprise Greg Stink. Good experience?
Oh, it was fun. I still keep in touch with everybody there and come back and visit all of the time. It was a blast. It's also kind of hard because you go back and you're only doing one sketch and you get to see everybody... There are so many emotions attached to the place and in a way it was hard because I had just kind of gotten OK with it, "OK, I can deal with not being at the show anymore." And then you reopen the wound a little bit and you go, "Oh, I still miss it." But it was a delight to be back, though.
It's been pointed out that it appears Jason Sudeikis was missing something this season. The theory is out there it's because he used to do so much with you.
Oh, really?
To be fair, it's our job to over-analyze things like this.
[Laughs] Oh, man, I had so much fun with him over the years. We didn't really start working together that much until the final couple years. And, god, we had so much fun together. But, oh my gosh, he is so funny. [Laughs] He doesn't need me! He's amazing.
A couple of times this past season Paul Brittain played a creepy character, and he was immediately compared to your creepy characters. Do you take that as a compliment?
Oh, that's very nice. That's very nice. I guess in my time there I'm kind of thought of as... [Laughing] the guy who played the creepy characters. Or the pedophile. Which I guess was true. No, I take it as huge compliment. But, God, he is so funny. Paul is so funny. But he's creepy in a completely different way. And I mean that in the best possible way. Old creeps will always give way to new creeps. So once Paul has had a wonderful stay on the show, he'll step aside one day and another creep will come in and take his place.
Since you've been gone you've been doing a lot of 30 Rock and Conan. Has that helped fill the void?
Oh, man, I've been having a lot of fun doing Conan. It's a completely different experience because a lot of the stuff that I would do at SNL, I would write with some of my friends or write on my own and you'd be working on it all week. With Conan, I come in a couple hours before the show to do a rehearsal and do it. It's a completely different experience. It does quell a small portion of that performance desire.
I'm fascinated by the sketch that you and Jason Sudeikis did where he plays some sort of Southern-type gentleman interviewing with you for an astronaut job at NASA. Potato chips are also involved. It's quite possibly the most insane sketch I've ever seen on SNL. How does something like that even get created?
I don't know how it came up, but I guess at some point I recorded like a small snippet into my phone -- because I was walking along on the street. I don't even know what led to it, I just kind of talked into my phone in the voice of that NASA guy and said, "I don't want you getting into my potato chips." Just two or three lines of that, which actually made it into the final sketch. And then, one morning, we had been up all night and we had to turn it in; we have an all-nighter on Tuesday, and we had to turn in our stuff Wednesday morning. I don't think I had written anything that week so my buddy John Solomon came in and I played him that little 20-second snippet from my phone and we just went nuts. And Jason had earlier done this kind of Foghorn Leghorn type voice that we loved so much, so we said, "Oh, let's have him come in." I think part of it was just from sheer exhaustion that it went to the crazy places it went. But, yeah, we wrote it up relatively quickly and then it ended up making it into the show.
And then Sudeikis put some awesome touches -- the hemorrhoid doughnut was his idea. And that may be my favorite end to any sketch: the framing of the three of us -- so dramatic at the very end. I don't know if you remember that, but that was his idea, too. A lot of time you'll write stuff that's so crazy that it might not make it, but, thank God, Lorne [Michaels] let us take a chance with this. [Laughs] The bummer was that I had gone so hard in the dress rehearsal that I threw out my voice. The original guy talked like an octave higher. Just that high register was completely gone by the time we did that. It's also a longer version, there's much more back and forth between me and Jason about his desires to be a part of the space program. It's nuts, but Lorne wanted us to get to the potato chip stuff sooner. Rightly so, after you see the dress rehearsal. The bummer is the stuff where we really get going and get into the argument is even more bonkers than the one that actually made it in.
Man... you're making me miss it again. You're making me miss the show again!
I'm sorry. I could tell you were enjoying talking about that...
Oh... no, no. I'll tell you, I mean, it was such a special part of my life. I'll always miss it.
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