SNL Transcripts: Candice Bergen: 12/11/76: Diana Nyad

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 Saturday Night Live Transcripts


  Season 2: Episode 10



76j: Candice Bergen / Frank Zappa

Diana Nyad

… Candice Bergen

[Host Candice Bergen stands before the well-trimmedChristmas tree at home base and addresses thecamera.]

Candice Bergen: And now here’s this week’s filmby Gary Weis. It’s about Diana Nyad, the marathonswimmer who swam around Manhattan Island.

[The film begins with a young female college studentaddressing the camera. She is photographed in front ofa swimming pool in a darkened gym.]

1st Student: Diana’s been a big influence on meas far as my definitions of what a woman can be – andwhat a woman is. She’s the first woman I’ve met in mylife that sat down and said, “This is what I want -and I’m gonna get it – and it doesn’t matter at allwhat anybody else in the world thinks.”

[Elegant classical music begins and continues till thefilm ends. Slow motion footage of Diana Nyadswimming.]

Diana Nyad V/O: I have been swimming now forover fifteen years, over four hours a day, sometimesfive, sometimes six.

[Nyad works out on a weight machine.]

Diana Nyad V/O: The average heartbeat isseventy-two to seventy-five beats a minute. Theaverage trained athlete is from sixty to seventy.

[Pre-dawn. Nyad, in a heavy winter coat, runs across acrowded New York City street carrying a gym bag and apair of racquets.]

Diana Nyad V/O: My heartbeat is forty-five inthe morning at rest. Um, I can get it up to a hundredeighty when I’m working very hard but the point aboutbeing in shape is that it comes back down veryquickly.

[Slow motion footage of Nyad’s muscles flexing as sheworks out on the weight machine.]

Diana Nyad V/O: I, um, hold the world recordfor swimming from Capri to Naples in Italy and I’m theonly person to have crossed Lake Ontario, which tookeighteen hours, twenty minutes. I hold the record forswimming around Manhattan Island, in a little undereight hours.

[Slow motion footage of Nyad, wearing headband andwielding a racquet, as she plays a game ofsquash.]

Diana Nyad V/O: When I’m swimming during the -the toughest seasons of the year, I eat twelvethousand to twelve thousand five hundred calories aday which is at least ten times what the averageperson eats.

[More female students filmed in front of an Olympicswimming pool in a darkened gym — presumably atBarnard College, an independent liberal arts collegefor women in New York City, affiliated with ColumbiaUniversity.]

2nd Student: Diana Nyad is our coach on theBarnard College swim team. She really has been aninspiration for all of us.

3rd Student: Knowing Diana has made me see thatI can do anything that I want to do. She demandsperfection from you in – in everything but you don’tmind giving it to her because you know that shedemands it from herself.

[More footage of Nyad on the weight machine. More slowmotion footage of Nyad swimming.]

Diana Nyad V/O: From a mile out, I can hear theclapping and the screaming. The people realize that Iswam from a place that they couldn’t even see on theclearest day. They know I may faint when I arrive.They share with me the most extreme moment of all.For, after the pain, the cold, the hours, thedistance, after the fatigue and the loneliness –after all this, comes my emergence. And my emergenceis what it’s all about.

[Nyad turns from the weight machine to smile into thecamera, then turns back. Fade.Applause.]

Submitted Anonymously

SNL Transcripts

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Author: Don Roy King

Don Roy King has directed fourteen seasons of Saturday Night Live. That work has earned him ten Emmys and fourteen nominations. Additionally, he has been nominated for fifteen DGA Awards and won in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.

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