He’s an Emmy Winner and You’re Not

RATHSKELLER LIVE: Abeles got the SNL bug while a student at Rochester.

In the late 1970s, watching Saturday Night Live was an event on the University campus, when Doug Abeles ’81 was studying psychology.

“Everyone would be at the Rat,” remembers Abeles, referring to the now defunct Rathskeller campus bar. “At 11:30 everyone would charge upstairs to the TVs. We’d all watch SNL together.”

Twenty years later, in 2001, Abeles became a staff writer for the classic late-night comedy show, and in 2002 the writing staff won an Emmy award for the show’s overall writing achievement.

For Abeles, it was a long road to that winged statuette. After stints as a trader on Wall Street and a telemarketer, Abeles decided he wanted to be a comedy writer.

He took a comedy-sketch writing class in 1993, and one of his classmates, who became a senior writer for The Late Show With David Letterman, helped him make the right contacts. Soon he started faxing jokes to the show. In 1997, he saw his first joke used in the “Weekend Update” segment.

Being able to say that Saturday Night Live bought his jokes, he says, gave him credibility in the world of comedy writing and helped launch his career. He lived in California for several years, where he worked on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher and The Martin Short Show. He was hired full time on SNL at the start of the 2001 fall season.

“I started shortly after September 11,” he says. “That was rough.”

Still, he says, working at SNL is “beyond my wildest fantasies. [At the SNL offices] on the 17th floor of Rockefeller Center, the long hallway is lined with head shots of all the cast members, starting from the first season, in chronological order. When I walk down that hall, sometimes I think, ‘I can’t believe I work here.’”

Taking home his Emmy was a surreal experience as well.

“I had it in my carry-on bag, wrapped in towels,” he says. “The guy at the X-ray machine saw it and froze, then nudged the guy next to him. Then he looked at me and said, ‘I have to open your bag.’ I wasn’t in trouble; he just wanted to see the statuette.”

Perhaps that could help remind him that he’s part of the comedic institution that is SNL.

“I know some people who have won a lot of awards keep some in their bathrooms,” Abeles says. “I think they do it to keep themselves humble. I won’t be doing that.

“Believe me, I’m already humble.”