James Woodward Downey (born 1952)^[1][2] is an Americancomedy writer, producer andactor. Downey wrote for over 30 seasons ofSaturday Night Live, making him the longest tenured writer in the show's history.^[3]SNL creatorLorne Michaels called Downey the "best political humorist alive"^[4] whileConan O'Brien said he is "the great comedy writer that we all revere."^[5]

Downey was born inBerkeley, California,^[1] and grew up inJoliet, Illinois.^[6][7] After graduating fromJoliet Catholic High School, he enteredHarvard University, where he wrote for theHarvard Lampoon and later became its president.^[3] He graduated from Harvard in 1974 with a degree in Russian.^[8]

Downey is not related toSNL alumnusRobert Downey Jr.,^[9] whose uncle James B. Downey has been confused with Jim Downey in the past.^[10]

In 1976, Downey joined theSaturday Night Live writing staff as its youngest member.^[3] He was among the firstHarvard Lampoon writers to write for television, at a time when, in the opinion of writerSteve O'Donnell, "the sensibilities of theLampoon [were] a little closer to the sensibilities of themass media."^[11]Simpsons writerMike Reiss called Downey "patient zero" ofLampoon comedy writers.^[3]

Downey ultimately worked on 27 of the show's first 32 seasons, one of the longest tenures in the show's history.^[12] He arrived atSaturday Night Live the same week asBill Murray with whom he ended up sharing an office overlooking 50th Street, but he mostly began writing atSNL withAl Franken,Tom Davis, andDan Aykroyd.^[13] His first stretch as writer for the show ran from 1976 to 1980, culminating in a brief stint as a featured cast member. By the1979–1980 season,Lorne Michaels had lost bothDan Aykroyd andJohn Belushi to feature film careers, causing him to look to writers like Downey, Tom Schiller, Dan Aykroyd's brotherPeter,Al Franken, Alan Zweibel, andTom Davis to fill spots as cast members (along withSNL bandleaderPaul Shaffer and newcomerHarry Shearer).^[14] Downey left the show in 1980 as part of the mass exodus of writers and actors following Lorne Michaels's departure.

After leavingSNL, Downey becamehead writer ofLate Night with David Letterman for a little over a year, 1982 to 1983, during its formative stages. He is credited with inventing its Top Ten List and contributing to its influential sensibility.^[15] He returned toSNL in 1984, whenDick Ebersol was producing the show, and was named head writer, the next year, when Michaels returned to the show in 1985.^[16][17] Downey stayed in that position until the end of season 20 in 1995, after 10 years as head writer (the longest-tenure for an SNL head writer^[18] and one of the few writers from the previous season to return to season 21^[19]). WhenNorm Macdonald began asWeekend Update anchor in the mid-1990s, Downey wrote exclusively for that segment of the show. Downey and Macdonald subsequently became a team, working away from the rest of the cast and crew. They were both fired from the show in 1998, midway through seasons 23 at the request of NBC executiveDon Ohlmeyer. Downey believes that it was a result of various jokes onWeekend Update callingO. J. Simpson a murderer; Ohlmeyer was a good friend of Simpson's.^[2] Downey would remain credited as a writer until the end of the season.^[20]

Downey returned to the show in 2000. He continued to write for the show until 2013, pausing only in 2005 to work on a novel.^[12] For an October 2000 sketch satirizing a recent presidential debate, Downey coined the word "strategery" for then-presidential candidateGeorge W. Bush to say, based on Bush's reputation for difficulty with public speaking. The word soon began to be used in atongue-in-cheek fashion by members of Bush's own administration, as well as by political pundits on both sides, to refer to the Bush administration's political strategy.^[21]

FormerSNLWeekend Update anchorDennis Miller has called him the second most important person in the history ofSaturday Night Live, behind only creatorLorne Michaels.^[22][15] In 2013, he retired fromSaturday Night Live after the end of the38th season after 30 non-consecutive years^[23] (making him the longest-tenured writer in the history of the show)^[24] writing for the show working part-time, commuting fromUpstate New York.^[25]

Although he was only a credited actor onSaturday Night Live for one season, Downey appeared in over 40 sketches from 1977 to 2005, his most notable being parody commercials such as Craig's Travellers Checks, First CityWide Change Bank, and Grayson Moorhead Securities. In 2007, he appeared in aDigital Short titledAndy's Dad, where he portrayed the father of cast memberAndy Samberg, and had a romantic relationship with guest starJonah Hill.^[26]

In movies, he is probably best remembered for playing the high school principal who judges the "academic decathlon" inBilly Madison. His brief role in that film includes a famous monologue in which he insults the title character, played byAdam Sandler, concluding with the sentence "I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul." The monologue was based on a response Downey often gave toSNL cast member (and fellowBilly Madison cast member)Chris Farley in theSNL writers' room when Farley presented certain ideas.^[27]

He appeared in theNorm Macdonald movieDirty Work as a homeless person. Downey also had a bit part inPaul Thomas Anderson's 2007 filmThere Will Be Blood, where he plays Al Rose, Little Boston's real estate broker. Anderson's YouTube channel is Al Rose Promotions, a nod to Downey's role. He later had a bit part in Anderson’s 2025 filmOne Battle After Another playing the part of Sandy Irvine, a member of the Christmas Adventurers, a fictitiouswhite supremacy organization.

Given Downey's role in writing much of the political humor featured onSaturday Night Live during his tenure there, his own political leanings have been a source of speculation. Downey has said that he began his career as "a standard-issue Harvard graduatecommie", but later turned into "aconservative Democrat".^[28] He is a registeredDemocratic Party member.^[29] In 2008, he expressed his support for then-presidential-candidateBarack Obama.^[29] Nonetheless, his comedic targets have included American politicians across the political spectrum. TV criticTom Shales, author of the bookLive from New York: The Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live,^[30] called Downey, andSNL, an "equal opportunity slasher" in political comedy.^[31]

Some have called Downey moreright-wing than his self-description, including Shales, who described him in 2002 as "aRepublican" and "prettyconservative".^[31] In theHuffington Post, formerSNL head writerAdam McKay called Downey "right-wing" and an "Ann Coulter pal".^[32] On a 2019 podcast, Al Franken described Downey as a "thoughtful conservative."^[33]

In early 2008, Downey wrote sketches forSNL mocking the then-ongoingDemocratic presidential debates that depicted thenews media as biased toward Obama. After the first sketch aired, candidateHillary Clinton referred to it at the beginning of the next debate. The sketches were controversial; McKay suggested that they were a ploy to favorRepublicans, since Clinton would be a weaker candidate than Obama.^[32] In response, Downey "said he probably favored Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton, but that he genuinely felt she was receiving tougher treatment from the news media". He denied thatSNL had intended to help Clinton.^[12] According to theProject for Excellence in Journalism theSNL sketches may have prompted tougher news coverage of Obama.^[34]

On Obama, he stated, "If I had to describe Obama as a comedy project, I would say, 'Degree of difficulty, 10 point 10.' It's like being a rock climber looking up at a thousand-foot-high face of solid obsidian, polished and oiled. There's not a single thing to grab onto—certainly not a flaw or hook that you can caricature."^[28]

• James Downey atIMDb
• "Marci with James Downey".SNL Backstage.NBC. Archived fromthe original(Video) on February 26, 2008. RetrievedMarch 3, 2008.

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