one of the great writers of the century and here i am, this jerk from naperville. [ light laughter ] [ bleep ] but i felt duly chastised and i carried on with the job. >> seth: you talked about your early "snl" time, and you wrote a great book about your career in comedy. >> oh, thank you >> seth: and i heard you recently tell the story, and this has some lore about talking to a host, because sometimes you have to talk to really accomplished actors. >> this was a great actor, jeremy irons >> seth: one of -- i mean, to this day >> one of the greats >> seth: and what was your - >> my experience was that i had written a monologue for him with someone else, another writer, and it was -- it took us a, you know, a good 26 minutes to write it a lot of work went into it [ light laughter ] and it's his monologue and he's been waiting to do the show he was so mad. and he's reading it like this. and i'm sitting right here he's right here, his face is right here and he's looking at this thing and he's going, "you're making me do this?" i mean -- and he starts complaining. and i have my recorder