April 04, 2012|By Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune reporter
Mike O'Brien is 35 and single, lives in New York and works as a staff writer for"Saturday Night Live."He is earnest and polite, comes from a long line of South Side Chicago Irish and has the gentle features of a choirboy.
Now that you know a bit about this fine young man … well, it may seem forward but — he would like to make out. With you. Mike O'Brien would like to make out with you. No, no: Please, hear him out. He has this Web series, "7 Minutes in Heaven With Mike O'Brien." It's becoming kind of a big deal, Internet-wise. It's also wonderful, revealing, uncomfortable, funny, sweet and exactly what you'd imagine: O'Brien stands inside a closet with someone, engages in awkward small talk for a few minutes, then makes a move.
Oh, wait — are you famous?
Mike O'Brien isn't shallow and stuck up like some people! If he likes the person he's in the closet with, "they don't have to be a household name to be considered for my lips," he said. Still, come on: O'Brien likes kissing famous people. He's good at it — or rather, good at trying. And famous people like letting him try: Paul Rudd, Ellen DeGeneres, Tracy Morgan, Christina Ricci, Amy Poehler, Elijah Wood, Kristen Wiig.
Initially, though, O'Brien just wanted to interview and make out with friends. Last July, he and his colleague Rob Klein were kicking around projects to work on during the "SNL" summer break. They jotted down a few ideas, and "7 Minutes" seemed like the easiest and the funniest. Plus, O'Brien had a little experience: Before "SNL" hired him in 2009, he had spent a decade as a mainstay of the Chicago improv scene, working as an instructor and performer at Second City and iO. He wrote a 30-minute play for Stage Left Theatre about couples who play Seven Minutes in Heaven; he also played Seven Minutes in Heaven himself with his improv friends, "but innocently, at parties, more to enjoy the awkwardness than to do anything else."
Being at "SNL," his proximity to celebrity — and a small budget provided by Lorne Michaels' production company, Broadway Video — changed those modest plans. Surprisingly, the innocence stayed. Partly because O'Brien, often wearing a tie and a short-sleeve dress shirt and looking like the manager of a Taco Bell, is a self-described awkward person who asks awkward questions amiably ("Can I call you Ron Draper?" he asks Jon Hamm); and partly because the series is so intimate (the cameras trained close to the faces), guests mostly drop whatever facade they typically carry into the usual media-centric situations.
Which places "7 Minutes in Heaven" somewhere between the heartfelt confession of Marc Maron's "WTF" podcast and the surreal improv of Zach Galifianakis' Funny or Die Web series "Between Two Ferns," a talk show that's more of a charming critique of the faked intimacy of celebrity interviews than a talk show. In fact, "7 Minutes in Heaven" is such a Web success — the first 18 episodes have been watched more than 2.5 million times on YouTube, and O'Brien just began posting the first of 10 episodes he's making for Yahoo — we thought it was only fair that he share tips, should we find ourselves in a closet with a celebrity.
Mike O'Brien's Guide to Making Out With Famous People
No. 1: Know Lorne Michaels.
"The thing about Lorne is he will green-light something on just a sentence, which is cool. That paid for a sound guy, nicer equipment than you would normally see on a video series. But everything is done separately from 'SNL.' It's just me and Rob and Erin Doyle, this young producer at 'SNL.' A video producer on 'SNL' has this friend who has an apartment in Columbus Circle, and we use the guy's walk-in closet. We also have a set designer on the show who rearranges some of the background, but it's 90 percent the guy's actual closet. As for guests, Erin made the initial calls and the pitch was, 'He wants to interview them in a closet.' I don't know why anybody would say yes — but Erin gets pitched guests a fair amount now. And at 'SNL' after-parties, people come up to me and whisper, 'Hey, I would do that closet thing if you want.'"
No. 2: Be sensitive.
"We have three cameras, and we're actually in the closet for about 25 minutes, so I will watch the guest's interviews on talk shows and know what conversation will work best and what to avoid. I will spend days reading about someone, watching their movies — only to stammer and double back on questions. A lot of guests come to us in the middle of a junket and are so exhausted of being asked the same three questions. Patricia Clarkson, who was the second one, was simply told it would be fun to do. Which is the right attitude. I hope that's what they're thinking. Or maybe they just want to make out with me. Patricia was the second interview, and Hoda Kotb was the first interview, and I turned bright red when I went to kiss them both." (Sample question for Hoda: "Whisper in my ear the worst thing about Kathie Lee Gifford.")
