Hello, Brian. How are you?

Hey John,

What's going on?

welcome back for another one.

Hey, Brian, before we get started, I want to ask you a random question.

Yeah.

Do you have a favorite word?

there's definitely a word that I wear out too much, which is amazing. Everything is amazing. But definitely overuse that. But I like the word amazing.

Amazing.

I'm gonna stand by it.

All right, good. One of my favorite words is juxtaposition.

Oh,

I think it's fun to say. It's fun to spell. There's an X in it. And I really love the meaning and more importantly the concept behind it, right? What it stands for. And I share this because I was thinking about this episode we've got lined up today. It is the ultimate juxtaposition of something I want to talk to you about that's really tech. Very digital.

Yeah, one end.

And then our guest is really analog in a delightful way. And I just, I love that concept of juxtaposition. So with that, I'm going to dive in. You ready?

Let's do it.

All right. Last month. A company called Humane unveiled their new AI pin, and they did it through a 10 minute demo video, which I have a lot of comments on later if you want to hear them. this company was founded in 2018 by a bunch of former Apple employees, including a husband and wife. Design and engineering team. You'll note not a marketer in the co-funding team, which is evidenced by the video. We'll come back to that. They've raised $230 million in funding. And, they have an $850 million valuation,

Hmm.

they, and they've never shipped a product. They haven't sold a thing yet. But they're worth 850 million.

Interesting.

Interesting world we live in, so Brian, when Humane came out with that AI pin, did you hear about that

Yeah. I heard some rumblings about that.

Okay. All right. And I know they've been, you know, in stealth mode for a few years now, and there's been a lot of chatter about it in tech circles. I was not particularly aware of it. But anyway, I'm going to give my oversimplified rundown of what this thing is. Okay? It's a, it's a wearable device that does a lot of what your phone does, but is not intended to replace your phone just yet. so it clips onto your clothing like jewelry. And it's fixed in place with a magnet that is also a battery booster. So that lasts all day. And if you have another booster, you can hot swap that and just keep going. It's tied to the T Mobile network. You can activate it with your voice, just like Alexa or Siri, touch or gesture. And it's got this laser projector that puts what they call laser ink under your palm, right? So, You don't have a screen anymore. This is a screenless device. So you can project onto your palm and use those gestures to change things like tilt to go fast forward through your music. You can close your hand to go to the home screen, do some other things to move between weather and time and stuff like that. It has a hands free camera, obviously. Basically there's a body cam. It has a speaker that's supposed to be some sort of fancy speaker that creates a little bubble of sound. It has a trust light that comes on that indicates when it's activated. So if you and I are talking and I'm wearing this AI pin, you can see when it's active and recording or something. So there's a transparency play there. No apps, right? So unlike a phone, it's not popular with apps but it does run artificial intelligence on its operating system. You can ask questions, and it'll get answers from the web just like ChatGPT does, So, you get this AI power review of results like, Hey, when's the next solar eclipse? That's one of the examples they gave in their demo. Like Siri, you can have it send or read messages. The AI functionality can also summarize and synthesize. And that's where things get really interesting. So let's say I come out of a meeting. I can say, catch me up. And it'll summarize stuff that's in my chats or emails, like, Brian sent you feedback on your stupid PowerPoint. Or I could ask, what's the gate code that Wally sent me? Or, what should I get my daughter for her birthday? And I might recommend something from a note that I made five months ago. The thing that blew my mind in the demo is this idea of real time translations of languages, so it auto detects the language is being spoken to me and responds in a voice in that language that matches my voice. It can recognize objects and provide information like in the demo they said how much protein is in this handful of almonds and you're looking at the handful of almonds and it tells you how much proteins in there. So this thing costs 699. Plus 24 a month to have the network. So Brian, reaction. Real quick, what's your thought on that?

I'm trying to figure out like what's the end game and all this stuff, you know, whether this is right or it's wrong, AI and. How we get there is not necessarily going to be where we end up. So, I think it's natural to get some things in play that pull you off of a mobile device, but, it's definitely strange. That's for sure.

Yeah, well, I was curious about the reaction, so of course the internet did what the internet does.

Internet does what it does.

you know, a lot of people just kind of took shots at some of the little stuff in the demo, like, you know, when's the next solar eclipse that gave incorrect information. People complained that the photos looked kind of meh and were taken in really easy conditions. More substantively, a common reaction seemed to be that it's basically a mid range Android phone that pins to your clothing but doesn't have a screen. With a chat GTP assistant. So you can do most of this stuff with any device and the chat GPT app, plus whatever other apps you, you know, keep on your phone. One reviewer questioned kind of a little bit where you were going. It's like, what are you supposed to do with this thing? Talk to it like an advanced version of Siri or Google Assistant? And my answer is yeah. Because here's my first observation. One, holy shit, AI advancements are happening so fast. It's That we can now have a device that costs less than an That does some Star Trek level stuff. And, and first, most people didn't even hear about it. I would argue. And secondly, most of you who did hear about it are really tech savvy. And kind of took a big dump on it. And, the tech elite of making sure they have all the latest, and greatest apps and can use them as a collection to do lots of what Humane aggregated onto one simple platform without a bunch of apps. this is clearly not the end state for wearable tech, right? This is a step. But wow, we're getting close to devices that don't rely on me jamming a cell phone in my front pocket. Or putting it down and losing it, or whatever other scenario that kind of gives you fits with carrying a phone around all day, every day. Alright, so Brian, my snap decision.

Yeah.

Are we headed toward a shift from phones and their screens, to wearable technology? And if so, how soon?

It's imminent. Mean, like a watch is wearable and this thing is a wearable. but, it needs to get to a place where it's, it's not even like something you have to put on every day, you know? And I don't know how that gets there, but there's some pretty crazy end states of chip implants and things

aha, well that's where I was going to go, yeah. Because my take is I don't know, whether it's a mini step or a big step, but the end state is exactly where you were just going, I think. Implantable technology.

yeah, I mean, I'm afraid to say that, but I think, you know, some people are going to go for that

I think that'll take root faster than even smartphone adoption. You get the right implantable thing in your ear or a contact lens or whatever that gets rid of all of the baggage of all the other, like the, the snap glasses and the Google glasses. And man, I think that's when things accelerate.

Yeah. There's definitely a lot of privacy concerns. The trust light on, on this device is good for the people that are around you, but,, the backlash against Google glass about 10 years ago, it was really creating something that there wasn't necessarily a market for yet and, and people weren't ready for it. And I don't know that people are necessarily ready for this thing yet, but, I'm certainly looking for ways to access stuff without having to carry it.

Yeah. So the carrying thing and in those 10 years that you just mentioned, you know, since Google glass came out, I have become pretty weary of constantly looking at a little screen.

yeah,

It's not great.

It's not, and the, the phones are getting bigger, so that doesn't help either. So. Coming up with new ways for people to access information, I think is good. It's just, how that handles itself in the world and starts recording content and how that can be used against people. I mean, that's like real serious stuff. So it's, it's really interesting and it's really scary.

Yeah, well, I'll give Humane a lot of credit for taking a pretty bold step here, and this is a bit of a tech trend that's out there is more humane technology, and I think what that means is, and Humane's bringing it to life here with this device is, you know, where you aren't so Encumbered by the technology where you don't have to have a screen you're looking at all the time where you don't have to be, touching and scrolling through a device all the time that you aren't sucked into apps that manipulate you into continued consumption. so I think there is something positive to that. We'll see where it goes, but, I give them some credit and I was in many ways blown away by some of the technology, even if some of the technologists out there were uninspired. So

Well, I think, some of these types of companies are going to have to be sacrificial lambs When you look back at the Google Google glass launch was that they put it in the hands of all the nerdy technologists that bombed, they gave it to people who would wear it and use it. And and that really blew up in their face. So I don't know. I mean, the demo is very kind of cold and, it's more of a sterile environment. Definitely it doesn't like inspire a cultural revolution.

No, I won't go deep on this, but I looked at the video, I was like, wow, it's just like a parade of features.

yeah,

And at no point did I hear them talk about, the benefit and some of the life changing experiences that it could create for you. Like that translation thing was kind of buried. And to me, it was a mind blowing moment. So if I'm going on a trip to Spain and I don't speak Spanish and I want to be able to get around real easily, this is amazing, you know? And, and I think that they, Just really skipped over those emotional human connections that some of these features could enable. just skipped over the real, day to day, true benefits,

And coming from people, you know, I know they're not marketers, but the, the people from Apple should know better.

Yeah, because they're the ultimate about like, what's the benefit of this thing?

Yeah.

You know, we've got all this new tech, features are great, it's great to enumerate features when you're going up against an established competitive set, where people know what this thing is. Trying to sell you a TV better be talking about 4k features, That's kind of table stakes. Talk about something completely new that people don't have any frame of reference for. I mean, you better get into a real tangible. Everyday benefit or set of benefits. Otherwise these features just going to watch over. I mean, here's how they started the video. It's a standalone device and software platform built from the ground up for AI. It comes in three colorways. You got Eclipse, Lunar, and Equinox. There's two pieces, computer and a battery backup. I'm like, Jesus, are you reading the side of the Microsoft Windows side panel? System requirements coming next? What are you doing?

Yeah. No, that's exactly what it felt like. And we all have phones, we have our watches and this didn't make me run and want to remove those things. So

Good observation. Yeah. Interesting. Fascinating. Didn't make me want to run out and get one.

And they didn't even seem that excited about it either.

Yeah, they were. Yeah, it was a little sleepy. You know, if you aren't into this stuff, bring a blanket and some chamomile tea and set up for a nap, because it

I mean, the only thing that kept me awake is it's shining that light in my eyes, I guess,

And hey, brands, when you put your demo video on YouTube only, not on your website, You shouldn't be surprised when at the end your launch video about your amazing new thing that YouTube serves up, why humane AI pin won't work at all. You know, that's the next video recommended to me. I'm like, well, point counterpoint.

Yikes. that right up. We'll get off our marketing high horses. But thank you for indulging me in this conversation about, something super techie and nerdy. All right. John, I'm excited for today's guest, but I have a question for you first.

Oh.

Did you ever wonder what would have happened in your life if it would have taken a small step sideways and how different it could have been? Let me tell you a quick story. So back in high school in media classes, I was terrible using the teleprompter. thing is awful. I was brutal. I ended up never taking being on camera seriously. Little did I know that maybe there could have been another way. Well, we're going to talk about that other way today, John. Our guest has spent over 30 years managing the cue card operations at Saturday Night Live. Yes. SNL uses cue cards. From day one through today, in an era where we talk about brain chip implants, machines over humans, and digital, digital, digital, this man has helped support the way we see live television. Which, as we have long discussed, is the last rodeo for gathering large groups of people together for moments of time. Aside from SNL, you might know him from late night with Seth Meyers, where he frequently appears on camera and sketches playing foiled assess bits behind the camera. During the pandemic, he also started a fun private business. Personalizing cue cards for fans across the country. His real name is Chris Feresten, but you may know him as Wally. Cue card Wally, welcome!

Thank you so much for having me, guys. That was a very good intro. I liked it. I liked it a lot. Very thorough.

We like that you're here. Thank you

done your research. You've done your research. I like it.

You know, this is probably, probably the most fun research we can do is watching clips of you on camera with Seth Meyers and any number of amazing, cast members and guests on Saturday Night Live. So we were thrilled to talk to you.

I actually stumbled upon a, a clip of Cindy Crawford walking through Saturday Night Live in 1994 and all of a sudden, you stumbled across them.

Well, a very young Wally stumbled. The whole world ahead of him, you know. And, and 33 years later, I'm still there.

And you and Cindy are still married, yes?

Unfortunately, we had a, we had a, we had a falling out. It's funny, I saw, Julia Stiles was on on SNL this weekend. And she hosted, I don't know how many years ago. It just, it all blends into me. But she, she came up to me, she gave me a big hug. And I had seen her like 10 years ago, like at a cast party. She came up, she came up to me with her, Maybe her husband or a boyfriend and was just talking. She was just hanging out with me and she's like, Hey, what's been going on? And what's going on? And where's the after party? We'd love to come. And so I hung out with them and with the party and I hadn't seen her since then. And it's just wild. And she was like, you're still here. And I go, I'm still here. And that's not a bad thing. It's a good thing that I'm still there. As you

yeah,

Cue cards are still a thing.

I mean, the whole coming and going of generations of people has got to be the most fascinating thing,

Fascinating. So doing it for so long. Here's the thing I'm running into now, which is cool and yet a little scary for like, because I don't consider myself old, but when like Jason Momoa hosts, and he tells me stories about grabbing this little black and white TV when he was little, like, 11 or 12 and going onto his porch and watching Chris Farley on Saturday Night Live and, and I go, I was holding those cards for him

Wow.

freaks out like, he's like, what? So I'm starting to get hosts that were watching SNL when I started and that's scary. That's a little scary,

right? And they're, they're, they're in their forties and they were little tiny kids then. Yeah,

Exactly,

Well, while, while you're, you must have so many stories and we want to dive into them, you know, first I'd love to set the stage for folks who might not know who you are, which is unfortunate, but you just take us through sort of like, you know, what you do, like what happens in a week of getting ready and then broadcasting Saturday night live and or Seth Meyers, take us through what you do, how it works and, and, and let people know what's, what, what it's like to be the director of cue card operations, whoever your title is.

It's here's the deal. Working on Seth Meyers compared to SNL is like a day off for me. You know, it's not because it's not live. Okay, the live factor changes everything. For Saturday Night Live, monday, they have a meeting with the host. Tuesday, the writer's write. Wednesday, there's a read through. So we don't start rehearsing until Thursday. So I'll have like three or four people on Thursday. That's our light day. We'll have maybe five sketches. And those three or four people will print up those five sketches on cards. The script department gives us the scripts. We write them on cards. We rewrite them before we even rehearse them. So we get them on cards and then they sometimes totally rewrite them. And I'm not doing any of that stuff. I'm I'm, I'm too old for that. I don't have, you know, the, my arm, my arm strength is not, is not there. So I hire these, I hire these younger kids that do it and I just block the sketches. So we'll. Block the sketches, we'll do it on camera three times. And again, it's the easier sketches. We want to, we want to lull the host into a like like, Oh, this is going to be not so bad. And then Friday we hit him with pre tapes and, and these really hard sketches and blocking. And they're, they're working until four in the morning sometimes. And it's really hard. So we do that on Friday. We don't, we don't make copies of any of the sketches because it's going to change again on Friday. On Friday, we get. Either six or seven more sketches including the cold open and the monologue and we put those on cards as well In that time the guys were also getting changes from yesterday that the script department brings to us The sketch has changed constantly up until the show is running So we're constantly making changes while i'm blocking i'll let them know. Hey, we need three sets of this card. So one sketch Would have a center set of cards and then two side sets of cards normally, but sometimes it's set up where I need a fourth set, or maybe I only need two sets. So I'm determining that while also working with the host, getting them comfortable with cards, if they're not already comfortable with cards. So that goes on all day Thursday all day Friday we block block block rehearsal 12 o'clock 1230 at night, we go home we have to be in like around 11 or 12 the next day. And again, make more changes on the sketches. We read all the sketches to make sure we haven't made any mistakes. And then we start, we have a run through where we run through with the actors in costume in real time, hopefully. And then we make more changes we do the dress rehearsal from 8 to 10. We cut a couple of sketches. Change other sketches and then we do the live show at 1130 to one doing changes usually until midnight We're good And then if the show's running long and they want to get a sketch in We'll do changes sometimes two minutes before that last sketch is going to air and that's where it gets a little hairy But fun and that's where some snap decisions could come in. Which is what I was hired for and in charge of, I was good at not panicking and making really good decisions under pressure. And that's kind of why I got how I got elevated to run a show only three years into me being a cue card guy. So that's kind of it in a nutshell.

Wow. So you pack basically a 60 hour work week into about three days,

Yeah, you know, when I started and I was, and I was, I was the first one in the last one out. It was, I was in it sometime, you know, 1030 to 10 on Thursday and then at 1030 on Friday and out at midnight, one o'clock sometimes, and then Saturday is, you know, 11 to one. So, yeah, I was packing it a lot, but I was younger. Now I don't do it. I kind of go in late and if I can leave early, I try to leave early if I can, but yeah, it's a lot of work in a condensed period of time.

Wow. And so who's your like source of the truth? So like in marketing teams, like we, when when people that are doing all the, publishing of work versus the people that are creating the work, you know, we try to have a single source of the truth. Do you have like a single source of the truth where you're dealing with one

a really good question. It's a really, really good question. We get changes and only do changes from the script department. Okay. So if a writer comes down and says, Hey, I need to change this, this, this, and this, we say, if, if it's like a, like a normal rehearsal day, we say, you're going to, if it's a new right, we have to go to script, give the script. And then we get them because if they give them to us and they forget to give them to the director or a script, cause the script. You know, the script person, people give them to the director, they give them to the actors, they give them to us. There's a system that's at work. If the writers come and say, I want to change this, I want to change that. We won't take it unless they say, it's really small, I want to get it in before we rehearse it, and I'm going to go right to the script department after this. So, I always check on that, but yeah, it's officially coming from script, or we try not to do it because that's where it can get, we have the changes and the director doesn't, so it doesn't, you know, they don't know.

So is one of those snap decisions and kind of like grace under pressure moments when, you know, a really well known, really seasoned writer comes to you and wants to do something and you're like, sorry buddy, you gotta go through the chain of command.

Yeah. Sometimes I have to do that. But there is a system and they're told the system. So it pretty much, it really works that way. I, like I said, unless it's something like, Hey, we want to get these on for rehearsal real quick. We're going to give them to you. And then a lot of times we'll put changes is on cards from the writer and the script department will come down and get them at the same time. So I know that it's, we're doing the changes that they're going to be distributing, you know, after we do them. They know the system and what we also also do we use the writers as a, as a as a double check to make sure we made the changes. Right. So we'll do changes. And then the writer will come down and check the cards to make sure we did them like they want them to do that's like as a double constantly double checking ourselves because of the likeness of it to make sure we did everything right.

the writers are working with the cast or they work with the script department with the writer or the actors or

They work with the cast, they work with the script department, they work with the director. When you write a sketch, you also produce it. They give them producing you know, over it. So you're basically, if you write a sketch, you're in charge of that. You pick the wardrobe, you pick how the sketch set's They do everything,

oh wow. All right, so, so it sounds like this is a pretty clear process and Brian, it is a good question because as he's talking, you're probably like, we definitely hear some similarities between the way we run marketing projects, but I got to ask. What's the biggest, what's the biggest name that you kind of had to push back on and be like, sorry, buddy. Can't do that.

I don't know if that's ever, I mean, Alec Baldwin changes a lot of stuff. And if it was like when he was doing Trump um, it's just one set of cards, him reading the camera usually, you know what I mean? And if he wants to change a word here or there. It's fine because it's only one, it's usually one camera shooting him. You know what I mean? It's not going to screw up the director if it's an internal change. Steve Higgins is like the liaison between the, between the cast and the host and the writers and stuff like that. So, he would always be there too. And I would be like, okay to make this? He's like, yeah, just make it, it's internal, don't worry about it. He's kind of, he's making a snap. Judgment that this is fine. It's not going to screw up the director. It's internal. It's not going to affect any cuts that they might have So, you know, he's kind of deciding that and say go ahead do it do it because it's still yeah It's still like I shouldn't be doing this. But you know again, it's al baldwin. He's playing trump He's gonna do what he wants to do, you know, so i'm help i'm there to help them out

well that and whatever Trump did that day is probably going to influence something too.

Yeah Yeah,

I'm sure that time between sketch and, the live show is just absolute chaos, right? Because that's where things are still changing.

so, so here's so it's funny. I've been there 33 years and they don't change a lot of the, of the systems because there's always been that way. And some of it's to a fault, like they should change things because things have changed and you know, like they still the writers don't go into writing on Tuesday night till five or six o'clock and they write. Through the morning because of the cocaine days of the early seventies writers, you know, so, and they just never changed that. Like they could come in at 11 and write all their stuff until 11 or 12 and go home and get a good night's sleep. It's just always been, you know, so

it's part of the lore.

keep it that way. So the way it used to be was. Script department, this girl, Claire, would bring the changes down between dress and air, and she'd usually get, hopefully she'd get there around 11, with changes, with all these changes, and then we'd furiously start doing them, get the cold open, because the cold open is coming at 1130. Sometimes she wouldn't get down to 1110, 1115, that's where it got really hairy and scary, okay? So I went to the script department and I said, Hey when do you guys have changes? They're like, Oh, we start, we get them during dress rehearsal while dress for us is going on. And I was like, could you give us those early? And then you can come down and you can check our changes and they were like, yeah, I don't see why not. And it changed everything. We get changes now during dress rehearsal and while dress rehearsal is going on, sometimes we'll get called open late, like 11. 05, but you know, we split it up. We have, we have these systems that work on it, but it changed everything. It went from chaos to reasonable, you know, still hard work, but reasonable.

So what you just, you just mentioned a minute ago, the, the idea of there were, there are still some systems in place, you know, that are kind of like legacy old school systems that probably could, should change. You know, and Brian, you teed this up in your introduction. In, in a world where tech and automation is all around us, can you tell us a little more about, like, what has, what has kept Saturday Night Live and Late Night with Seth Meyers, what has made them decide to keep using cue cards, which is like the ultimate analog element of production?

Well, Saturday Night Live, the fact that it's live is one of the main factors, you know, if you have prompters, prompters break, prompters go down, prompters get unplugged or something, you know, happens. If that happened during a live show, and it was not You know you know, someone really big hosting and you're leaving them out to dry. It would not look good for anybody. So they don't want to take that chance. Plus since over the years, Lorne now considers cue cards as part of the show. So when people were in the audience watching there, people come up to me all the time. I was watching you guys do those cue cards as much as I was watching the actors. It's part of the experience of seeing it. That's for SNL. And for Seth, and for Conan and Jimmy who all use cue cards, they learned how to be on TV using cue cards. So it's what they're comfortable with. So again, you want to keep what you're comfortable with and what works best in those situations. And they use, so they use cue cards and for Seth also it's Someone to play off of. As you guys mentioned earlier, I'm on camera now a lot because he doesn't have a co host or he doesn't, you know, have really a band. Fred's not there all the time. So I'm right next to the camera that he's talking to, you know, the entire show. And if I make a mistake or he makes a mistake or the writers think of something funny for me to say back to Seth, I'm there. It's not a machine that has no personality that he could never do anything with. Sometimes prompter guys are in different states. They're not even in the same building, you know?

Yeah. So, all right, speaking of mistakes, what's the biggest one? What's the biggest gaffe that, you know, you or your team were responsible

Well, so I will say, let me just say, I'm going to say, give myself a compliment and then I'll tell you something I did bad. In 33 years of holding cards on live TV, on shows, I've never dropped a cue card during a show or, or anything. I may have dropped a card walking to the, never during while someone was reading it. I've never dropped a card. When I drop one, I think I retire maybe.

hold for applause. Wow, that's

good. 33 years is pretty good. So, mistakes. Cards get stuck together. Norman Donald was one of my favorites. I used to write jokes for him when I was, when I was younger. He was doing a, a joke on Weekend Update in the, he read the, he read the setup. And I went to pull the card and there was, you know, we tape over cards and then we write, you know, changes on them. Tape was stuck over the edge and the punchline card stuck and I couldn't get it apart. And it just, I ruined the joke. He couldn't get the punchline out. He never said the punchline. And I, and I felt awful. There was silence and he looked at me and I mouthed the words to him. This is during the live, on the live show. I mouthed. And he goes, it's okay. While we don't worry about it. That joke. Wasn't that funny anyway, which made it like, like going, no, don't, don't call me out

Right. Right. Right. That's

So he turned it into something and that's what Seth does all the time. If we make a mistake, Seth will turn it into something funny instead of like getting mad at me. Like, you know, he'll make it, he'll, he'll make a joke about it, you know?

Whereas if, if it was a technology glitch, he'd be frustrated, angry and off his game probably.

exactly.

I think, you know, some of Seth's best moments are when he's just going with it.

Yes, he turns it into something. Now. Yeah, he turns it. He turns it into something funny instead of getting frustrated. He realizes that. Oh, and he's really good at improv as well. So he's like, Oh, wait, I can make fun of this part and we can have a little thing here and it'll be natural and fun to do instead of me getting upset about it. And the audience loves that. You know, I think they do. Yeah. So, and I, like, like I said, there's, the mistakes are made. You, you, maybe you don't have the ending of a thing or you're missing a line or a word. It doesn't happen often. That's why we're still, doing cards for there for that long, you know, and

So I heard that it's at the end of every season you get a shot of cortisone in your arm?

so yeah, started about, well, Throughout the, like maybe my first 20 years, I think I had, I had tendonitis in my left elbow and I, and I rehabbed that and then the next year because I overused my right elbow, I had tendonitis in my right elbow, rehabbed that, that was good, then my left shoulder went, then my right shoulder went, that was like 20, then I had a good run and now my shoulder by March or April is throbbing with, with, with pain from, from, and it's not, it's not the holding the cards, it's the flipping, you're doing this. You know, and if it's someone I can't see, it is not a lot of words. I'm doing this, like, this hurts me right now. Like I do that.

So,

So, yeah, I do a cortisone shot and I do eight weeks of physical therapy to get ready for the next season.

wow. So, so there's, so there's golfer's elbow, there's tennis elbow. Have you had any success lobbying your doctors for Wally shoulder?

It's a good idea, but yeah, it's just, it's having a toll on my body. And I think. When it finally breaks down, it's hurting a lot more already and it's only December. I don't know if it was the five months off that I didn't, you know, that with the writer's strike. that I didn't do. I mean, I was rehabbing it, but usually I'm doing Seth too. So I'm working a little bit. I think not working really actually hurt me a little bit. Like I said, it set it back and it's arthritis in there. I'm getting old and stuff. So I can't just, I can't have soldier surgery because I don't, I can't take that time off. There's no. Five or six months that I could take off, you know, so

Yeah. That's a, that's pretty brutal surgery that you can't just go and do that for a couple of weeks. Can you tell us about the makeup of your team and, and how you, set that up and how do you find people to do this?

I Don't go on any of the job sites Because that would be a nightmare You want to work for late night tv? It's it's usually people that are friends of people that are already, already worked there. Because you're sitting under the bleachers at SNL in the studio, and sometimes you're there for 12 hours just printing, printing cards, and you want a good personality. You want somebody that's not gonna annoy somebody, you know, another person. I look at personality, I look at, then I look at neatness, obviously, of their, of their handwriting, and just how they get along with other people. You're out with the handwriting or the personality.

Both.

Both. a, he's an asshole and his handwriting is terrible.

Yeah, I mean, I've had, I've had luck because my son, my oldest son, Matt and Danny, both were in the TV studios in high school and a lot of their friends that they made were doing that as well. So. Three kids from Livingston where I grew up are working for me now that are friends, there were friends with my oldest son and one of his college friends is that moved to New York city. He's working for me too. So my son's outlet of getting people to work for me. But it's usually younger people that are trying to do other things in the business and just trying to make money, meet, meet people. So I love doing that. And I love to say, get in here, meet people. Let me introduce you to people. What do you want to do? A lot of them want to write. So they're meeting writers and they're talking to them. It's so it's a really good outlet for younger people to do make some money and then also meet people.

Sounds like you're making some decisions there based on chemistry and, you know, feel and when you were describing the process of, you know, a three or even four You know, sets of cards for one scene. Obviously, I guess you're all turning the same card at the same time, and you're, you're, you must, are, are you like a conductor of a symphony there? Like, how's that,

I mean, yeah, I'm setting, I am setting the pace. So hopefully they're looking at me, but yeah, I'm setting the pace. You know, it's a lot of new holders. That's a lot of practice. I don't, I sometimes forget that they don't have as much practice as I've been doing for 33 years and stuff. It's

You take that for granted, right?

Yeah, it's really rhythms and things like that. So I'm kind of watching them as well, as much as I can, at least during rehearsal to see if they're keeping up and doing it properly. So yeah, it's, I'm kind of, I'm kind of teaching as well when I'm, when we're blocking things and, and I forget too, so I'll see a sketch. Maybe six times, seven times before Saturday before the live show, and they're only seeing it run through on Saturday dress rehearsal and then air show. So they get three shots at it. So I give them a little bit of slack because they don't have as much practice on that as I do. But,

and you're also used to that, you know, the cast and probably repeat guests and kind of what their preferences are and their cadence and timings. Like, so it sounds like you're really, you've got to get into a groove with the on camera talent.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm working with the host one on one and if it's someone that's never used cards before I'm working really hard with them trying to get them comfortable It's a trust thing and trust is I know trust in your business world is very important as well I'm getting them to gain my trust that's why I don't like sometimes cards will come out and there'll be a line missing or a word missing and I tell my guys i'm like you gotta Make sure that that doesn't happen, especially on Thursday, because you're, you're, I'm not getting that trust. They're thinking, oh, shit, if they screw up now, we'll be right on Saturday, you know, so they start, you know, so my, I think it's just like getting things right, do it first. Let me gain their trust and then they can relax a little bit and then focus on like the acting, you know I don't want them worried the ones that worry about cue cards too much It kind of gets in the way of of the show and their performance because they're so focused on Doing the cards right that they don't think about the acting

Yeah. So, so last weekend was a, was a, a good guest, Adam Driver, who's been on the show a few, I think he's been on there three or four times and the monologue cuts of him behind a piano. So I guess you had somebody on, you had people in two different spots for the monologue, which doesn't always happen.

Correct. Correct. Yeah. very good. Very, very good. Yeah, we had two sides. Adam's a, so did you like, he did, he did pretty well on the show,

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. he's

good

really good.

He, I, I, this is his fourth time. I put a cue card desk in his dressing room. Because he goes over every card with his lines and underlines at least three or four words that he wants to emphasize on every card. And then he puts slashes on the end of sentences that he wants to do a little pause at. Every single card in every single sketch. So I was in his dressing room more than I was anywhere else and working with him. And he puts so much work into it. I think he wrote that monologue too, by the way, with two of the other writers. It was his idea. And. He just puts so much into it, but that's the, to see his process from like Thursday and then to see the final product, you can really tell the difference between that kind of a host who really gives it his all. And he's constantly running cards and running cards and running cards. It's pretty, it's pretty pretty amazing to watch. And it's, you know, the result is pretty good as well.

Yeah, I love that. How you have the juxtaposition of the guy has been part of it four times and everybody that's been a part of four times probably has their own different way. You know, just last week it was Emma Stone, who probably has her own set of ways to do it, who's also really involved with everything. And then, you know, you have somebody that might be brand new and you got to figure out a whole new process. So it's all over the map.

Ask them, yeah, see how comfortable they are. They might, they might not see very well. They're going to wear contacts. They're not going to wear contacts. You know, it's, it's there's a lot that goes into making, again, making them comfortable and making it, you know, a good performance. Emma Stone was like, was it, she, she just is good naturally. She memorizes a lot. She's, you know, she's a movie, she's a movie actress. So she's that, she's got that skill. Can't memorize a lot because it changes so much. But she gets really familiar with it and just uses the cards of reference. And this, this week we have Kate McKinnon, who was a cast member

Fantastic. Right? Yeah.

I don't have to worry about her. She knows that I read cards. She reads two cards. Great. So she'll be fine. It'll be an easier week for me. So it's, it's a good compared to last week. I'll have a little bit of an easier week this week

Thanks for listening to part one of our episode with Wally Feresten. Join us next time to hear more great conversation and stories from Cue Card Wally. Thanks everyone.