And assuming it sticks around, different casts gel in different ways. Some years are just adequately funny, while others catch lightning in a bottle and are absolutely hilarious. Those years typically launch big comedians’ careers- think Dan Ackroyd, John Belushi, David Spade, Chris Farley, Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, Tina Fey, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Amy Poehler, et al.
But there are multiples of that number who were on SNL who never went on to greater renown as well.
Actually, they do put the whole show (of the US SNL) on YouTube. At least, all except the closing (which is about 30 seconds to a minute long) where the guest host thanks everyone. And they don’t put the commercials on, of course. In fact, they sometimes put an extra sketch on. These are what’s known as the cut-for-time sketches. On Saturday at 8:00 PM they do a dress rehearsal for the whole show in the same studio as the show itself uses. They finish that at about 10:00 PM. They film the whole dress rehearsal so that each sketch looks like a regular sketch. Sometimes they do one more sketch than can fit into the hour and a half long actual show. Michaels then decides which sketch not to do on the regular show. Sometimes then in the next day or so they put the film of the cut-for-time sketch on You-Tube.
Circling back to this (because further discussion jogged my memory) the very early shows had a news sketch, and it flat-out didn’t work. Again from memory, this was solved by a fella called Harry Enfield who appeared as kebab shop owner Stavros, who would opine on matters in the news. Like this. (Which, incidentally, would not be acceptable these days in this form - so you know before clicking).
That did work and made Enfield a star. So there’s a precedent for solving this problem in the UK. Just sayin’.
Watch this space.
j
(BTW Arsenal/The Gunners refers to a football club)
Words for Discourse
j
And their fans are sometimes called “Gooners” as a “Gunners” joke, although I suspect that nickname may quiet down for a while…
The sketches of this week’s SNL UK are being released on YouTube one by one at the moment.
This week’s show was decidedly better. Clearly less American influence. I’m willing to keep watching, but I’ll still skip the burlesque show… I mean the musical guest.
Who was the musical guest the second week? Despite the overlap between the country’s musical tastes there are a lot of big UK acts I’ve never heard of.
Episode 2 had Wolf Alice. I don’t mind listening to bands I’ve never heard of (I had never heard of Wet Leg either), even if I don’t really like the music. But so far the criteria for being a musical guest on SNL UK seems to be an attractive female singer in skimpy clothing performing sexually suggestive lyrics and/or movements. If the music doesn’t grab me, I’m hitting FF.
And that’s different from original SNL how?
It seems to me that the sort of musician that’s picked as the musical guest for SNL has changed over the past 50 and a half years, as you can see in this list:
Even if we restrict ourselves to the female musicians, they started with ones like Anne Murray, Carly Simon, Bette Midler, Aretha Franklin, Rosanne Cash, Suzanne Vega, and Tracy Chapman. The more recent ones do seem to be more like “an attractive female singer in skimpy clothing performing sexually suggestive lyrics and/or movements”. I can’t name many of them because I don’t recognize the names even if I watch their performances. Is this because of a change in SNL’s choice of female musicians, or is it a change in what female musicians are popular these days?
I’d say the latter.
If you are talking from the early days I think it changed from what Lorne Michaels personally likes to what is currently popular. There was a lot of trying to expose new groups in the beginning. It morphed into booking popular artists to bring in an audience with an occasional odd choice.
Didn’t know anything about this until it came up as a suggestion on YouTube. The opening Prince Andrew sketch was clever, I thought. Tina Fey’s monolog wasn’t great but picked up when Graham Norton showed up. Their Weekend Update left me cold. The woman might get better, but the guy was kind of creepy and not the least bit funny. I didn’t know who a lot of the people in the David Attenborough sketch were, but found the concept amusing nonetheless. Those are the only parts I’ve seen.
And by the way, “infamous” is one of those words that people use who don’t know what it means. Being famous is a positive. Being infamous is not. It’s kind of like when people say “irregardless,” which isn’t a real word, but they think it sounds more important than “regardless,” which is.
I don’t see that at all. Using the link I gave above, compare the musical guests in the first year or first few years with the most recent year or most recent years. The earlier ones strike me as more popular at the time then than the ones are popular now. This may be more about how old I am versus how old you are. Does anyone know how to look up how popular each of the musical guests were at the time they were on the show?
Lorne Michaels was allowed to like music that was contemporary to him. Paul Simon has the record for most performances and he also happens to be Lorne’s closest friend. SNL had the reputation of having both the popular acts Lorne liked and some relatively unknowns he wanted to give exposure to. And in the infamous case of Fear, someone Belushi convinced him to give exposure.
ETA it might be better to substitute “popular” with “trendy.” In many cases a flash in the pan is on that disappear from popular culture in a short time. But at the time they have buzz.
I ask this question again.
I asked Copilot to rank musicals guests on SNL based on popularity at the time of performance.
The top 3 were The Beatles (1975), Michael Jackson (1992), and Elvis Costello (1977).
Is this when Lorne Michaels offered them $3000 to appear?
Um, the Beatles were never the musical guests. Paul McCartney was the musical guest three times. Ringo Starr was the guest host once. George Harrison was the musical guest once. John Lennon was never on SNL