tonight the poster boy for everything that's wrong with washington. >> what adjective would you use for jack abromoff? >> he was someone that didn't know any boundaries, didn't see the line, the lines that all of us see in light. >> plus richard lugar on his party's chances to retake the white house. >> romney appears to be the strongest person. >> and an extraordinary emotional and revealing interview of darrell hammond, the dark, dangerous side of the "saturday night live" funny man. >> it was pretty damn bad. it involved being taken from there in a straight jacket. >> why did you feel differently about your father? >> i think because he tried. >> this is "piers morgan tonight." i've interviewed many comedians on this show and always had a suspicion that there's been dark stuff in their lives that makes them chase humor and a laugh. i've never had anything quite like this, darrell hammond from "saturday night live." when i finished your book, it was one of the most, i don't know, moving, inspiring in many way, depressing, sad, shocking things i think i've ever read. >> really? >> yes. >> wow. >> do you feel that when you closed the book and thought that's my life? >> yes, i did. i thought -- i thought it was probably going to be a little bit -- a little bit too dark for people to handle. but it's my story and i told it the best that i could. >> there's a quote there, which i think probably sums everything up in terms of what happened to you as a young man. i'm 3 or 4 years old, my mother is holding me close to her with one arm. in her free hand she hold as ser rated steak knife, slowly sticks it into my tongue, making an incision one quarter inch to one half inch long. >> yes. >> i couldn't believe what i was reading. then i'm reading this thinking why would your mother do this? what effect would that have on you? what's that done to your life? >> well, it's -- that's a lot of -- that's a lot to think about. what's it done to my life? i spent most of my life recovering from moments like that. >> she hit you in the stomach with a hammer, electrocuted you, basically tortured you. you're surrounded with this unrelenting misery it seems top do you remember it vividly? >> i don't. i really only put in the book about five or ten minutes of the first 18 years of my life. i don't remember all of it. i've been to lots and lots of shrinks. i've been too some pretty great institution who is are telling me we can't hand this will case here. but it's not like i'm the only person in the united states or on this planet that has to enter into an agreement with a perpetrator to remain quiet. >> do you have any theories yourself about why your mother -- >> because the same thing happened to her, i think. >> she was abused? >> i think she was abused. i did take pains in the book to point out that i did spend some time meditating over the idea that my mother had once been very innocent just like everybody else. i had this sort of vivid dream about that one night and i took it to heart. i was trying to find a way to not be angry about my life anymore. you know? >> as you got older, what was your relationship with your mother like? >> well, i -- i called her and said i'm in therapy for trauma and child abuse and worse. and she dropped her southern accent and in a very husky tone and deliberately and permanently said "don't ever call here again" and hung up. >> what age were you then. >> i was already on "saturday night live i "so i was getting up there already. i think the thing that i wanted to write about was when a victim to some kind of abuse agrees to stay quiet about it. that's kind of what happened in our house. you think that it's because, a, they could make it much worse on you but, b, really, your mom might abandon you if you confront her on this? that's ended up being what happened. >> did you have any more contact with her? >> not until her death bed. >> how did that make you feel when she died? >> i felt nothing. i was very moved by my father, you know -- >> it's not surprising to me that you're so emotional about it. >> i didn't feel anything. you know, i didn't feel anything at all. i felt like i'd never met her. she was a very gifted and confusing and attractive type of person who knew who to work the room she was in to convince people she was write about jesus and good things were on the way. >> why did you feel differently about your father? >> i think because he tried. >> and because he'd been through so much in the war is it. >> i think he tried to apologize and explain himself. can i have a tissue or something in. >> yeah, sure. >> he tried as best he could. i mean, the best that he could do was put war medals on his chest when he was dying. i got thees and thees and here's what happened and here's who i was while i was alive. i wasn't so good at a lot of stuff, you know. >> was he aware of what your mother was doing? >> i don't think so. he was never there. >> he was apologetic for his own negligence? >> for not being as good as he wanted to be, yeah. i think that, you know, he was genuinely obsessed with the war that he had fought in europe and he never, ever recovered from it and i'm not sure he ever really did. i think he saw things there that he thought were cautionary tales of what can happen on earth. he was afraid to go to church for a long time because i guess he killed a lot of people. >> when i see you now, never having met you before, i can see that there's, you know, all the time you must have been living with this kind of searing pain through all this. how did you juggle it? >> well, when i got old enough, i started drinking. when i left my parents home, i was 19. i went to the university of florida and within 24 hours i was in the mental health department and within 20 minutes being told by the director there they didn't have what i needed there. this is a massive university. they loaded me on drugs, antipsychotics, all kinds of weird drugs, and i drank. that's how i survived for a long time. >> let's take a break and get into "saturday night live," which i guess in many ways may have saved you. this came along at a time when you needed something. >> sure. >> it will be interesting to see how you feel about that. thank you so much. life insurance companies treat you like a policy, not a person. instead of getting to know you they simply assign you a number. aviva is here to change all that. we're bringing humanity back to insurance and putting people before policies. aviva life insurance and annuities. we are building insurance around you. consumers er wanchai ferry orange chicken... over p.f. chang's home menu orange chicken women men and uh pandas... elbows mmm [ male announcer ] wanchai ferry, try it yourself. who can propel america out of this economic freefall and put us back on track and i tell them barack obama is the only democratic nominee for president. >> that doesn't exactly sound like a ringing endorsement. >> i don't think i could be any more clear. i belong to the democratic party. barack obama is also in the democratic party. and i'm not a party wrecker. i love parties. >> that was darrell hammond's impeccable impersonation of bill clinton. i guess bill clinton became the, you know, the standard bearing hammond impression. >> i guess so. >> though there are other great ones, donald trump, ted koppel, sean connery. >> which is your favorite? >> i guess clinton is the one you get the most miles out of. i've had people ask me to do clinton in the most bizarre possible -- >> come on, where? >> are you kidding? like getting a colonoscopy? >> while you're having a colonoscopy? >> no, right before it. they're just getting ready to insert that object in the place good never designed for that object. the woman puts the thing in my arm, i can feel the medication come in, they're going to move me to twilight. just before i'm about to black out she leans in and says "what would clinton say?" i said what is a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? >> everywhere you go, you're going to be asked to do it. >> i think that's the worst example. >> my favorite is donald trump. can i have a bit of trump, please? >> what was the line i used to do? donald trump -- home base with mr. trump is this. you know, like you're over there going so i was over there at snl yesterday and we went and had a sandwich and then we went to the game. he's like this the whole time. >> we should play you something. we have a tribute to you. >> i'm interviewing darrell hammond. >> he's amazing. he was on saturday night live for years. i don't think anyone ever hit me like him. he's a great guy and he has me down to a t. and others. but people think he does it the best. >> rare praise indeed. >> super flattered. >> your head cut in there, you could be brothers. >> i have this bland face that the make-up artists say can you paint on because they say you can't make. look like someone but you can make me -- look, it's very bland. and then it just can be transformed around. >> where do you get the ability to do impressions from do you think? >> i guess from my mom. my mom was great at it. >> really? >> really good. really good. >> after all we discussed, that's fascinating. >> yes, it transported her. it mesmerized her to talk like other people. >> who would she do? >> coaches, teachers, people in the neighborhood. >> anyone, anyone that she -- >> yeah. she was pretty incredible. >> it would make you laugh? >> no. i didn't laugh too much. i just realized that she was being transported. and her state could be changed by doing my 7 or 8-year-old version of paul schofield and richard in "a christmas carol." >> she was very talented as well as being very damaged? >> growing up in the 50s in the south and you're a woman, i don't care what color you were, you might as well be a whore if you have any aspirations of showing all your colors. it's a hellish life. >> do you think with that and your father being the way she was, was she incredibly frustrated? >> she did say the only reason she got married was because her father was going to, quote, beat the living day lights out of her. i mean, those were prearranged existences with moral checklists and here's how you live, here's where you go to church, this is what jesus is, this is the kind of job you have, these are the kind of sports you have, these are the hand gestures you use. innately she understood all of that and she knew how to make the room about the other person and not about herself. >> have you been able to forgive her in your mind? >> yes, i've been able to stop dwelling on it and hating on it and i've been able -- once i reached the point where i realized that she had once been an innocent little girl, it seemed to me that that's when the flashbacks stopped. that's when the nightmares stopped, that's when the cutting stopped. that's when people instead of being on seven medications i was reduced to one or two, you know. it happened fast. >> you self-harmed a lot. you did it during "saturday night live." >> were you ever high when you were on that? >> no, never. i would not fly that airline under the influence. it's ridiculous. >> ever tempted? >> no. it's too hard. >> i've seen some people do it. if you can get it right, amazing. >> not me. no one liked to imbibe more than me but i wasn't going to walk out there in front of millions and people and have to hit my mark under the influence. it's ridiculous. >> are you clean now? >> yeah. >> you don't drink or take drugs? >> i haven't done as well as i wanted to with that but it's been going pretty well. >> let's take another break. i want to talk to you about how you got back on your feet. you left "saturday night live," you have a whole new world ahead of you, what you intend to do with it. congratulations. congratulations. congratulations. today, the city of charlotte can use verizon technology to inspire businesses to conserve energy and monitor costs. making communities greener... congratulations. ... and buildings as valuable to the bottom line... whoa ! ... as the people inside them. congratulations. because when you add verizon to your company, you don't just add, you multiply. ♪ discover something new... verizon. 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[ male announcer ] progresso. you gotta taste this soup. >> back now with darrell hammond. it's been a roller coaster interview to put it mildly, for me and for you i think. tell me about your life now. are you happy? are you happier than you've been before? >> i think so. i think sometimes i even have good nights. yeah,sure. i'm a lot happier than i was. i mean, i'm involved with groups that deal with the things that i've been through and that's the best part of my life. >> do you think "saturday night live" co-stars will be shocked by this book? >> i don't know. there must have been rumors floating around back when i was melting down once a week over there. >> do they know about your background? do they know about your mother and stuff? >> i know lauren did and the producers over there new. they went pretty far out of their way to help me. i think on some level they understood that as you mentioned off the air probably the job saved my life and also, you know, we did have a discussion after one particularly virulent event where it was said if this happens again, you can't be on the show anymore. we did have one of those discussions. >> how bad was the incident? >> it was pretty damn bad. you know, it involved being taken from there in a straight jacket, you know. and who wants to -- >> from the studio? >> actually from -- i think on the book it says the offices, i was taken from the offices. it was the clinic underneath the theater, yeah. >> wow. again, this is extraordinary kind of parallel life going on where i just know you like most people as the guy that does the donald. and then i'm reading this stuff going, wow, how could this have been going on with this guy who just seems like he's the happiest, funniest guy you'd ever meet. >> it did. i don't know how. i've been to enough hospitals that, i don't know, i don't know if i could have paid for all that to be honest with you without snl money. >> what are you doing careerwise now? >> i'm doing "are we there yet" on wtbs. i'll be doing that next season. i have a movie with johnny knoxville called "scout masters." i'm going to start working with will ferrells internet company funny or die. i think that's a lot right there. >> what ambitions do you have professionally and personally? >> i just want to play truman capote on broadway. >> you'd be great as truman capote. >> i did it this summer. i got to do almost everything i wanted to do. a guy like trump, wouldn't mind doing a job with him sometime. >> i could probably fix that for you. could i see you and donald working very well together. >> except he's a foot taller than me, which is kind of difficult. i look like a mini me version. >> can you imagine the joy of walking him and hearing him going "you are a special, special guy." >> the first time i met him i didn't get a, hey, i got "you're going to make big money because of me, you're going to make big money because of me. >> darrell, thank you. it's a very inspiring book. thank you very much. >> my pleasure. and who ordered the yummy cereal? yummy. 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[ male announcer ] it has an hd webcam, killer audio, and lids that switch to start every semester fresh. but mostly it helps me try new moves on and off the court. ♪ [ male announcer ] featuring windows 7 and windows 7 live messenger. for a limited time, purchase select dell pc's and receive our holiday photo solution. our gift to you. for years jack abramoff was one of washington's most influence power broker, a powerful lobbyists with friends and cash to help people get what they wanted until he went too far and took a fall, sentenced to four years in prison for fraud, conspiracy. he's now out of prison, has a new book called "capital punishment" and he joins me now. the book is curious. it's more a look, this is what washington was like, i got caught but a lot of it is kind of not glorious but you're certainly pumping up the good times more than i perhaps would have done if i had done a book for you. in the sense that, you know, a lot of it is, wow, it was great and we were going on golfing trips and i was meeting all these people and there are pictures of you with presidents and governors and celebrities and so on. when actually at the heart of all this people will be reading it going hang on a second, one of the reasons many people believe america is in the shambles it's in now financially and politically is because of people like you. and i would have expected a bit more mea culpa. >> i think the book has an extraordinary amount of mea culpa. >> do you? >> yeah. what i try to do with the book is tell the story of what happened. not necessarily to give an editorial but to talk about what i did, what i went through in part as a way to teach people what goes on there. and i didn't intend for the book to be some sort of cheer leading book for lobbying. quite the contrary. or even for what i did. i made mistakes, i crossed the lines, i did stuff i shouldn't have done, stuff i regret immensely and i talk about that and for which i was severely punished and properly so. however, this is going on still and i thought it was important that people should know what does go on. at least in terms of my experience. >> what adjectives would you use it about the jack abramoff before you got caught? what was that man really like? >> he was somebody who didn't know of any boundaries really, that didn't quite clearly see the lines, the lines that all of us need to see in life, the line between right and wrong. >> i mean, the contradictions i guess are that you're clearly a strong family man, that resonates through in the book. you're clearly a very religious man, a good fearing man. that, too, resonates in the book. what went wrong? >> well, i think that with me a couple things went wrong. i entered the arena to achieve certain things, i didn't set out certainly to break the law or do this evenings that were wrong. i set out to achieve paths and goals that were consistent with my philosophies as a conservative and as a free marketier and limited government person. and eventually participating within the system, having success, having an ability to have power, got to me as it gets to others and i stopped thinking about, again, where those lines ins sand were. and as a consequence, i in a tragic sense set myself up for the grand fall and i'm not the first that that's happened to and i