Michael O’Donoghue: Is America Ready for Mr. Mike?

HELLO? YES, THIS IS Michael. You wanna do an interview with me? The day after tomorrow? Why, that’s my day of rest! Well, okay, I’ll cooperate — but I’ll be doing a lot of drugs; I’m not giving up that part of my Sunday.

“Besides, I’ve got a lot to talk about. I got an idea last night for a book of poetry called Jesus May Love You, but I Think You’re Garbage Wrapped in Skin.”

I arrive at O’Donoghue’s New York West Village town house on a chilly afternoon, and he admits me with a polite handshake and then a fatherly pat on the back.

“Have a seat, old boy,” he says, pointing to a green velvet couch. “Do you want some coffee? No? Well, I know you folks in the People’s Temple are very strict,” he deadpans, and then laughs heartily. He’s wearing a baggy pair of brown corduroy pants, belted tightly at his tiny waist, and a dark green pajama top with white piping. Shuffling around in slippers as he nips from a snifter of brandy, he seems nervous but eager to communicate.

“I have to get myself some coffee in a second,” he mulls, his round, dark sunglasses firmly in place, accentuating his pale visage and further reducing a balding head no larger than a honeydew melon. “I took a Quaalude — half a Quaalude — which makes me honest. I don’t have time to censor myself. I’ve always thought that truth is the ultimate lie; human beings aren’t capable of understanding it, quite frankly. It dazzles ’em. But you can ask me any question you want if you ask it honestly. Cock size, anything, I don’t care.” He smiles encouragingly.

I figure I’ll begin by asking about his book of poetry, but before I can, he insists I listen to a song he wrote at four this morning. As he hastens to recall it, I realize that he may have been up since then.

“Oh, this is a fucking beauty, this song! Let me see if I can put it together. It’s called ‘Blue Morphine.’ I don’t have a melody for it, so let me see if I can just talk it.” He begins to recite the lyrics, occasionally lapsing into a surprisingly mellifluous croon:

I’m flying too close to the moon
What is the light that dreams are lit with?
Will it be over soon?

Falling like angels cast from the sky
Only blue morphine can teach us to fly
Blue morphine.

“It goes on like this for a while,” he bubbles, “and the last refrain comes after some really hot saxophone.”

Falling forever, shadows and smoke
Death is a lover, and love is a joke
Blue morphine.*

“It’s a bit on the negative side,” he concludes with a beaming grin, “but when you make those major dream breakthroughs at four in the morning….” He cancels the thought, striving ahead: “I had a dream one time, a real hot religious dream in which I was the baby Jesus, nude.

“I’ve always wanted to be Jesus,” he continues. “Let’s face it, any Irishman has. A lot of my humor is like Christ coming down from the cross — it has no meaning until much later on.”

MICHAEL O’DONOGHUE, 39, is perhaps best known as the originator of some Saturday Night Live skits in which he depicts the possible reactions of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Tony Orlando and Dawn, and Mike Douglas to having long steel needles thrust into their eyes. If your response to that kind of slapstick is an irate “That’s not funny, that’s sick!” then you’re at least getting the point, so to speak, of his wanton wit.

On Saturday Night Live, he often appeared before the cameras in the sinister, sunglassed persona of “Mr. Mike,” telling one of the “Least Loved Bedtime Stories” in which, for example, he reduced the hippity-hoppity antics of B’rer Rabbit to “random acts of meaningless violence.” It seems his public comic sensibilities are identical to his private ones. He confides with a bleak snigger, “There’s no difference between Mr. Mike and me. He rose out of a dark emotional situation I was in. The sunglasses came out at the same time. It was a time of snakes on everything.” Michael is now remembered by his former SNL coworkers as “a certified nut case,” “an unbelievable, hilarious, sick bastard” and “a true comic genius who will someday surpass Mel Brooks and Woody Allen.”

“Yes, there are a lot of things in life safer than comedy,” O’Donoghue counsels with a smirking swallow. “But let’s face it: when that sniper on the highway catches you in his sights, you’re not thinking about statistics, eh?”