I remember when Tim Meadows seemed to have been on forever and that was “only” ten seasons.
Was Al Franken ever an official “cast member” (as opposed to a writer who sometimes appeared on camera)?
This website lists Al Franken as one of the cast members:
If you have evidence that that’s not true, show us.
The rumor is that Keenan is being groomed to take over as Executive Producer when Lorne Michaels retires.
That’s an interesting idea.
I was responding to the posts wondering why Kenan Thompson hadn’t left for movie career like some other former cast members. Because while some, like Mike Myers, Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell, have gone onto lead roles in big movies, plenty of others have not. And there’s no shame in acknowledging that you’re not going to be one of the few that make it big.
If your definition is just somebody who appeared on screen at least once during a given season, then Lorne Michaels is the longest running cast member. I think the criteria should be that a person has to be among the players listed at the start of the show by Pardo (or Hammond as Pardo) to count. That puts Franken and Hammond much further down the list.
It’s actually not my definition. It’s the definition of whoever wrote the website I linked to. Have you watched every episode that Al Franken appeared in and can tell us how many of them he was listed among the cast members in the opening introduction? I haven’t. What you’re telling me is that there is another definition that nobody uses in the websites I looked at. Do you have a list of which cast members are in the opening introduction for each of the 939 episodes so far?
Okay, what makes it confusing (and this is something I didn’t remember, since it’s been a long time since I’ve seen those older shows) is that “Featured cast members announced and shown during the ‘Opening Introductions’ varied from week to week” (as opposed to the way they’ve been doing it recently, where they use the same opening credits for the whole season).
The quote is from Wikipedia’s page on Season 5, which does list the “featured players” for each individual episode of that season.
Franken was, apparently, one of the regular “Featured players” for seasons 14-17 and 19-20, and was credited as “With” in Season 18
God, no. And I doubt the people writing those articles consulted such a list either. All I know from 40+ years as a regular watcher is that long time SNL insiders like Franken or Hammond will occasionally be recruited for a role and not be announced as a cast member at the start of the show. At best, they were unannounced guest stars on those occasions.
Those two probably. Hartman, Murphy, Hader, Belushi, Sudeikis, Wiig, Carvey.
Checking some websites, I find that the introductions of the cast are usually referred to as the opening montage. I’ve tried to find them all together somewhere but can’t. It appears to me that part of the problem is the opening montage has changed so much over the years that it’s very hard to make any definite statements about it. One thing that’s now true is the there are no longer any people like Franken who do frequent long bits (on Weekend Update or whatever), not cameos, who have appeared on SNL much more than a lot of the people who were supposedly cast members but who hardly appeared during the time that they were supposedly cast members. Whatever you think of Al Franken, he appeared many times on SNL for long bits. Many of the people who were supposedly cast members hardly appeared at all.
For instance, A. Whitney Brown was listed as a “featured player” during many of the same seasons as Al Franken, yet I don’t remember him appearing in anything other than Weekend Update.
Whoops. My brain knew Cleghorne but the typing wand in my nose seemed to have issues with the C and G.
Ok, here’s the breakdown:
Carvey: Started at SNL in 1986 and started at $4500 per episode.
Spade: Started at SNL in 1990; was hired to be a writer $900 per week to write and got a $1500 bump if he got on the show (he was initially hired as a writer)
Cleghorne: Started at SNL in 1991 and was paid $245 per episode. No extras for getting on or writing.
I think Carvey was one of those rare birds to start as a main cast member. Like you said, Spade already was working as a writer. Neither started as featured players. Was Cleghorne making less than other featured players in their first season?
Sorry. I was in a snarky mood.
Cleghorne’s larger point is both valid and not valid. I don’t doubt that SNL slighted female and minority cast members. A long history of complaints exist from the very first season. I also know that show business has never been fair in salaries. People in the same show (or movie or play or whatever) doing more or less the same work have been getting wildly different salaries since modern show business began in the 19th century (and probably before). More money correlates with how much the producers think the audiences want to see you.
I don’t know why Carvey got so much money to start. Maybe it was obvious he was going to be a star. He keeps being called one of the funniest people ever. Or maybe it was sheer bro-power discrimination. 1986 was generations ago in the world of equality, which SNL discovered only in the past few short years.
To the other point, though, the numbers show that you don’t get rich on SNL. You get rich leaving SNL. If you ever get rich at all.
It’s a showcase. Many audition, most fail. I can count on very few fingers the stars who exploded from SNL.
I don’t know your definition of “exploded,” but there are quite a few—certainly more than I have fingers—SNL cast members who went on to star in successful movies and/or TV shows.
Most of which I felt exposed the limitations of their skills. They could appear in a big-budget movie or TV show, for the most part, but not carry them. Dan Aykroyd, for one example, basically has had a career as a hack actor, very limited in range.
How many comic actors have “exploded” in the past 50 years? It’s a very short list.
Your opinion of him may be low, but he certainly “exploded” from SNL. He is one of its wealthiest alumni and by almost any standard was massively successful.
I mean I can’t stand Chevy Chase 90% of the time, but he also was massively successful.