Earlier this year, I was a staff writer on Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney. For 12 weeks, our show aired live on Netflix at 7 p.m. PT. In the afternoon on show days, we’d do a dress rehearsal. Writers would sit in for the celebrity guests, the studio audience was empty, but we had live callers, even though the rehearsal would never air. The topic for our fifth episode was “Getting Fired,” and at the dress rehearsal, Mulaney took a couple phone calls in the first interview segment. One caller identified himself as “Jesse from Los Angeles.” There was an echo on his call. Mulaney debated hanging up but gave him a chance. Jesse told a story about how he worked as a prep cook in his 20s. He was terrible at it, and yet, his boss wouldn’t fire him.
“Jesse, why couldn’t you get fired from that job?” Mulaney asked.
“Because my boss was a fan of my band,” Jesse said.
“What was your band called?” Mulaney said.
“The band was Operation Ivy, the punk band,” Jesse said.
Mulaney’s jaw dropped. “Oh my god, you were in Operation Ivy? That’s fuckin’ sick.”
I was just offstage watching this exchange, dumbstruck. Jesse Michaels called into our dress rehearsal? How did he even get the phone number? It was so unexpected. Michaels was self-effacing and charming while talking to Mulaney, a couple writers, and the show’s announcer, Richard Kind (who, in that episode, was in character as Gene Simmons because he got hit on the head with a Kiss LP). After a few minutes of conversation, Mulaney said, “I gotta hang up on you, Jesse, but Operation Ivy rules.”
After the rehearsal, the writers and producers convened to receive notes from Netflix. One of the suits sent a note that said, “You gotta get the Op Ivy guy to call back for the live show. That was incredible.” Mulaney considered the note for a beat, but waved it off. When spontaneous magic strikes in a dress rehearsal, it can be a fool’s errand to try and recreate that moment on live TV.
Michaels’ phone call to Mulaney’s dress rehearsal gave me a brief but true Op Ivy experience. Like the band, that phone call was only experienced by a handful of people. It was a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it moment that only happened once, and would never be replicated.
Like an atom being split by nuclear fission, Op Ivy was a ball of fire blazing at punk clubs and backyard shows that extinguished before the world could catch on. All that’s left behind is Energy. It’s a remarkable document of a band that had a scene in the palm of its hand. You had to have been there.
