Robert Smigel on evolving from "SNL" satire and bawdy dog puppets to family-friendly fare like "Leo"

"I never set out to be dangerous," says Robert Smigel. The man behind the bawdy, brazen Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and "Saturday Night Live's" iconic Ambiguously Gay Duo simply says, "I did set out to be satirical," adding, "and I didn't put limits on myself if Lorne Michaels didn't."

Smigel still isn't putting limits on himself — and he's never left behind his cigar-chomping canine alter ego — but these days he's pushing himself in different directions. After co-writing the first two "Hotel Transylvania" movies, he's carved out a new niche in family entertainment. And now, he's a co-writer, co-director and costar of Netflix's animated feature "Leo." Starring Adam Sandler as a seen-it-all septuagenarian tuatara, the film is a multigenerational "Saturday Night Live" reunion of sorts, with Cecily Strong, Rob Schneider and Heidi Gardner also lending their voices.

In a recent "Salon Talks" conversation with me, Smigel opened up about his button-pushing eras in late-night comedy, his current transition to family fare — and the "SNL" sketch that shocked even Dave Chappelle. 

You can watch my full "Salon Talks" interview with Smigel here, or read the transcript of our conversation below.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about “Leo.” It is charming and funny and witty and weird — all the things that a movie should be.

Five or six years ago, Adam Sandler said, "Smighty, we've got to do a musical, like 'Grease' for kids. We both have kids, and they both go to school. Let's make a movie." At that time, I was doing something with Triumph, and then I moved right into directing “The Week Of,” which was a movie Adam did with Chris Rock. Then, Adam was like, “Try this, Smighty. I already wrote the script.”

Me and the other two directors who ended up on the movie, Robert Marianetti and David Wachtenheim, we all kind of thought the script was missing something that needed a reason to be an animated movie. We took a few things out of that script that are in this movie. The kindergartners, that idea came from that script, and so did the kid who has the drone following him.

There was a narration just a couple of times in the movie. At the very end, it was revealed that it was a snake that was in the room. That sort of set me on this “Leo” idea, which I kind of talked to David and Robert about. What if we made this about the class pet?

I have kids in elementary school and I know their friends. I remember this as a kid, your problems seem so important, but they're so minor in the eyes of adults. Whether it's just not being invited to a party or somebody looked at me the wrong way, anything incredibly trivial. I thought of combining those anxieties with this class pet who's seen everything, every type of kid in the last 75 years. He's like, "Oh, no, that's like Michael Jakovich in 1963, and he figured out a way." It was one of those ideas that came pretty quickly, and usually the best ones do.

It's about childhood and the eternal problems of childhood.

The eternal problems of childhood and tween-hood or pre-tweens. These kids are, they're like 11. The “Oh my God,” years. “Oh my God, this is the worst thing that's ever happened.”

It hits so many of your sweet spots because it's animation and music. You really like doing musical things.You were the guy who wrote “Mr. Short Term Memory,” the song.

That set off an entire era. It almost was like a pox on “Saturday Night Live” because at the time of that sketch, which was Conan [O’Brien]'s idea that we did for Tom Hanks but we all wrote it together. At that time, every sketch started with, "And now another episode of Short-Term Memory Man." It was like Don Pardo. I was like, "Let's do a jingle." I wrote that one, and within a year, every character sketch all started with jingles and montage.

I loved writing, even when I was a kid. I was a comedy bully a little bit. I would do impressions, draw cartoons of kids, and sometimes I would just make up little jingles about kids and then it grew into on “SNL,” occasionally I would write like “Christmastime for the Jews.”

It's the time of year to remember and reflect upon the beauty of “Christmastime for the Jews.” I love that song. I love the video. It captures so many elements of what make the season great. You've got the Phil Spector Wall of Sound kind of production.

I know, and Darlene Love.

And you've got the Rankin/Bass-inspired imagery. How did this minute-and-a-half-long thing come together, Robert? 

Like most of the songs in this movie, that came out of the plot of the story. OK, here's a song I'll write about kids wishing things were easier back when they were 10 or a kid. In this case, it was a strange thing. I had a tune in my head, which rarely happens. I mean, sometimes I just walk around, and there's a tune in my head because I can't play a musical instrument. The only way I write songs is, there's a tune in my head, and then I'll sing it into Garage Band or something. 

“Christmastime for the Jews” was just a tune that was just sitting around and I couldn't think of a premise. Then I came up with that one and I was like, “Oh, great. It's a cartoon.” There were some great Christmas cartoons from when I was a kid. Not when I was a kid, but when I moved to Chicago. They were  classics. There were these very cheaply done stop-motion cartoons called “Hardrock, Coco and Joe" – it's a very Midwestern thing – and "Suzy Snowflake." That's really what, even preceding Rankin/Bass, but I knew it would evoke Rankin/Bass as well. We just went for it, and we got a special group from the Midwest who actually did stop-motion, and they did it for us.

It's a classic “SNL” moment. And this movie, “Leo,” has so many “SNL” veterans in it. You've got Adam, Cecily [Strong], Heidi [Gardner]. You.

Jason [Alexander] hosted.

I want to go back to your “SNL” era because this is what obviously has established you in many ways. You were also boomeranged on the show, which is unusual. You left.

I left and came back.

Everyone who talks about you and your time at “SNL” says you were special to Lorne [Michaels]. Lorne gave you latitude and fought for you and fought for your ideas in a way that very few people got.

He did. He did.

A lot of people have not made it out of that steel cage. You made it out and then went back in.

Well, you put in the time. I think, Lorne, yes, it's a bit of a meritocracy there and that's OK When I first got there, I thought Lorne hated me for a year, and then I barely got rehired after the first year, which was a disastrous year in 1985, '86, with Michael Hall and all these really great people, Joan Cusack, one of the funniest people I've ever known, and Randy Quaid. The show struggled, and we were getting beaten up for the writing, but then they ended up keeping most of the writers, including me, and I survived it. Then we brought in Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks and Dana Carvey, and Nora [Dunn] was there, Kevin [Nealon] and Victoria [Jackson]. It was just sketch veterans, people who really were born to do sketch comedy. It just changed overnight.

I was watching some of these sketches that you wrote and "TV Funhouse." The stuff you get away with, the stuff that I can't believe ever made it to television, shocks me now. Were there ever things that you had to really go to the mat to fight for or that actually didn't make it? 

Well, one of those was pulled permanently. We did Michael Jackson three times. That was one of my first ideas when I went to Lorne and said, "I want to go back to the show. Here's three things I can do. I can do this Ambiguously Gay Duo thing, this ex-presidents cartoon and this Fun with Real Audio thing where we take real audio and turn it into a cartoon." And then the fourth one actually was doing Hanna-Barbera kind of character cartoons about celebrities. The first one I pitched was Michael Jackson as kind of a Yogi Bear. The way Yogi Bear kept snatching picnic baskets, Michael Jackson did the same with underage boys basically. That was the premise. That's what was going on in the '90s.

The '90s were an insane time comedically because the dam burst in the '90s. Basic cable had sort of joined the fray in the '80s, and then HBO had broken out, and there was all this pressure suddenly on network television to compete with basic cable and pay cable, to be more outrageous and reflect the real world more. 

Suddenly in the early '90s, the standards department was dissolved at NBC. It came back in a much softer capacity, and that just happened everywhere. Fox with "In Living Color," the kind of stuff they would do. And everybody applauded it at the time because it was considered taboo-breaking and outrageous. Isn't this great? The networks are loosening up. But in retrospect, some of the most politically incorrect things that would be perceived now, like sketches that made fun of handicapped people or gay people, relentless kind of sketches that way. The '90s and early zeros, I would say would be most reflective of that time.

There were also things that were absolutely brilliant and I think still hold up today.

I'm still proud of the Ambiguously Gay Duo, at least the concept, because it was supposed to make fun of homophobia and our obsession with, "Are these guys gay? They seem gay." And just the absurdity of caring so much, to the point where superheroes, the most heroic people in the world, and all they're trying to do is save the world, and the audience is obsessed with whether they're gay or not.

I was thinking of something that Tina Fey said when Norm McDonald died, which was that he was the last dangerous cast member on “SNL.” I think about that word “dangerous” and the kind of writing that you've done. Do you think what you were doing was dangerous?

I never thought of it as dangerous. I never set out to be dangerous, but I did set out to be satirical, and I didn't put limits on myself if Lorne Michaels didn't. Also, especially during the Bush administration, the show seemed to struggle after Will Ferrell left. I thought some of the characterizations of Bush, like Will Forte's, were very funny, but they were struggling to do humor about the administration. I  felt like we need to talk about this and so I did some very intense stuff about Bush and about Dick Cheney in particular.

One time, it was almost so far that the audience barely laughed. Oddly enough, Dave Chappelle was visiting the show that day, and he looked at me after the sketch and just was like, "You've got balls." It was like all about the Dick Cheney creating robots to avoid the torture limitations of the Geneva Conventions. He creates a robot because it's technically not a human.

Anyway, “Leo” is a kid movie for the whole family.

Dave Chappelle going, “Wow, you went too far.” That's like Sean Penn saying, “You've got an attitude problem.”

I want to get it back to “Leo.” You have this career that's always also been rooted in nostalgia and childhood, and now you have this other dimension to your life where you are making family films. How does that translate for you in the kind of work that you want to do and the kind of sensibility and sense of humor that you're trying to bring to your work?

That's an interesting question because I just guess, I feel like I'm always just interested in the premise and the idea, and if the idea makes me laugh, whether it's for kids or whether it's a summer comedy, or whether it's a sketch or something for Triumph to do with the real world, it's always, I'm just going to be motivated and excited to do it. 

I think I got a lot out of my system, to be honest with you, in the '90s, Just every trick that was possible, I was able to do, like live animals or having simulated sex with puppets. And to me it was just like a playground. Everything we did at "Conan," all the insane visual jokes, I confess, I probably felt like after a certain point, I had gotten that out of my system, and then I sort of became more interested in stories and less interested in short form.

I had written movies, the “Hans and Franz” movie that was completely insane, that Conan and Dana [Carvey] and Kevin [Nealon] and I did a podcast of this summer. But as I continued to write movies, they resembled real movies a little bit more,. “You Don't Mess with the Zohan” certainly had a lot of insane stuff in it, but it had an arc. It had a character arc at least. 

By the time I got the offer to rewrite “Hotel Transylvania,” I was ready for it. I had a couple of kids by then. I have an older boy with autism, and then 10 years later, we had twin boys that were about two years old when I wrote “Hotel Transylvania,” and they were my obsession. Everything about them informed every aspect of my life, and so writing something for kids came at the right time that way as well.