I read somewhere that Bugs Bunny became a zealous Anti-Communist McCarthy bandwagoneer during the early '50s and even gave the UnAmerican Activities Committee the names of several people he suspected of being Communists including Foghorn Leghorn, Tweetie Bird, and the female cat from the Pepe LePew cartoons. Later he recanted, but only after destroying the careers of Betty Boop and the original Porky Pig. Daffy Duck wasn’t nearly as political but his experimentations with LSD and primal scream could make him impossible to work with.
It’s kind of a Muppet Show parody; behind-the-scenes workings of a troupe called the Feebles. The master of ceremonies (a rabbit) has only hours to live because he has every sexually transmitted disease known to man. The knife thrower (a lizard, I think) continually drops acid because it’s the only way he can suppress his Nam flashbacks. Every bodily fluid is present in some fashion or another. The R rating is well earned.
SNL’s Michael O’Donoghue was known for having the cajones to stand up to Loren Michaels. The writers absoutely least favorite job the first year was writing Muppet skits. They use to pay each other to write one for them.
When ordered to do so by Michaels, O’Donoghue gave him the single best SNL line ever: I don’t write for felt.
In the SNL Scrapbook published ~1977, there is a note, supposedly written by O’Donoghue: “I’ll give anybody $500 [serious coin for them back then] to write the Muppets. P.S. I’m not kidding.”
The Muppets and SNL were one of those collaborations that were doomed to fail, seeing as their comic sensibilities were lightyears apart, but Bernie Brillstein, Lorne’s manager, used the Muppets to get SNL on the air. NBC thought that Lorne and Co. were one step away from the Mongol Horde with heroin habits. So having these slightly weird but still sweet characters like Scred and the Mighty Favog were a mitigating influence.
John Belushi and Chevy Chase had been rivals since the National Lampoon days. The first day he was in the offices, he saw a picture of Chevy’s fiance and said, “Oh, you have the regular one of her. I have the one with the donkey dick!” Chevy was fond of saying that he made John as fit as we could be for civilized society by shaving his back and teaching him to eat with a fork.
Of course, anyone who’s seen “Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video” knows that O’Donoghue was a major jerk with absolutely NO talent, and Michaels should have fired him much sooner.
If he thought he was too good to write for puppets, he was wrong.
Yes, but not the same ones who were on The Muppet Show (except I think Kermit was in an episode once). These were early Jim Henson creations with a more “monsterish” appearance and their sketches, which weren’t very funny, were written for an adult audience. They didn’t last long.
Here’s a video of Lily Tomlin singing with one in the first season.
[QUOTE=Annie-Xmas]
SNL’s Michael O’Donoghue was known for having the cajones to stand up to Loren Michaels. The writers absoutely least favorite job the first year was writing Muppet skits. They use to pay each other to write one for them.
When ordered to do so by Michaels, O’Donoghue gave him the single best SNL line ever: I don’t write for felt.
[/QUOTE]
Not everybody on the original SNL hated the Muppets. Gilda Radner, for example, guest-hosted “The Muppet Show” a few years later. However, while I don’t share this viewpoint, I can understand the antipathy the Muppets faced on SNL. To many people, anything having to do with puppets (and cartoons) is inherently infantile. It’s kid stuff–something you stop paying attention to before you turn 12. The fact that the Scred sketches featured more adult humor than most the stuff the Muppets were usually associated with didn’t matter. To these people, seeing puppets (or watching cartoons) doing adult-oriented material is like hearing a five-year old swear. At best, it’s good for a quick “shock humor” joke but beyond that, it gets to be quickly tiresome and annoying. (I also wouldn’t rule out the “Uncanny Valley” effect on why some adults don’t like puppets.)
