Since we will not be able to attend Tommy Stathes' epic Christmas Cartoon Carnival: Santa Claus 4 U & Me program this coming Sunday at Rubulad in Brooklyn, and the annual winter edition of the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival has been cancelled (postponed for now, returning to Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California in spring 2025. . . we hope), the gang here shall try to get in at least a somewhat festive holiday mood by watching the following selection of Yuletide comedy sketches.
If you're in NYC and able to attend Christmas Cartoon Carnival: Santa Claus 4 U & Me at Rubulad (338 Flushing Avenue between Classon and Taffee in Brooklyn), here is the teaser trailer for the event.
There will be two shows and pianist Charlie Judkins shall provide excellent accompaniment for the silents.
Powerhouse comedian Chris Farley (February 15, 1964 - December 18, 1997) of Saturday Night Live and Second City Chicago fame has been gone a long time but still makes this writer laugh out loud.
Especially noteworthy: the Schiller Visions decaf coffee crystals sketch. . . No decaf for Chris!
With apologies to Tony Robbins, Matt Foley is by far my favorite motivational speaker!
A key assist on the following sketch, featuring Chris' proudly and defiantly unkempt "Bennett Brauer" character, goes to fellow comic and stalwart SNL cast member Kevin Nealon.
Particularly enjoyed the sketches in which Chris co-starred with Phil Hartman, arguably one of the greatest comic character actors ever in the Saturday Night Live cast.
The larger-than-life comedian's appearances on late night talk shows, especially those of David Letterman and Conan O'Brien, are frequently memorable.
Of his movies, Tommy Boy would be the one in which Chris transitions from pure Roscoe Arbuckle style slapstick to character actor in the same film. In addition to Farley's signature physical comedy, there is a vulnerability and likability.
He works quite well, especially in Tommy Boy, with SNL co-star and friend David Spade.
Adam Sandler paid tribute to his friend with this song.
Had Chris survived "comedians' disease" - which has been seen from silent movie comedians Lloyd Hamilton, Jimmie Adams, Charley Chase and bis brother, director/comic James Parrott to hard-partying standup comics too numerous to recount to Saturday Night Live's John Belushi - a second career excelling in character parts, a la John Candy, may well have been on the horizon.
Some of the most cutting and brutal satire this writer has seen in the past quarter century can be found in Robert Smigel's TV Funhouse series, which provided provocative laughs to the Saturday Night Live mix in 1996-2008.
Since the holidays are just about upon us, it is worth noting that there were a slew of Christmas offerings by TV Funhouse. While I love A Charlie Brown Christmas, the following cynical take on Peanuts definitely has its share of guilty laughs.
The Globetrotters' First Christmas is an outstanding spoof of early 1970's animation, specifically the extra cheesy cheesiness of Filmmation, represented by such TV series as Fat Albert & The Cosby Kids. Did anyone who helped make this sendup of 1970's TV cartoons work at Hanna-Barbera or Filmation?
Rankin-Bass gets both a skewering and a homage in The Narrator That Ruined Christmas.
Many of us who celebrate Hanukkahchristmas or Christmashannukah relate to the following. Love the inspired vocalizing by the great Darlene Love - the not so secret musical weapon of Phil Spector - in this TV Funhouse, which makes me want to go out to a Cantonese, Hunan or Sichuan (a.k.a. Szechwan) restaurant on Christmas and/or Christmas Eve. Stylistically, this reminds me just a tad of Art Clokey and Aardman Animations. . . after all, there is a Shaun The Sheep Christmas.
One can't have too much stuff that is questionable taste - no make that bad taste - during the holidays, so we shall finish today's post with an episode of the TV Funhouse spinoff series. Is it both funny and in incredibly bad taste? Yes.
What does Halloween mean to the guy who writes this blog? David S. Pumpkins! Don't know why this guy cracks me up, but he does. . . only every time, without fail! Kenan Thompson, Kate McKinnon and Beck Bennett, not surprisingly, shine in supporting roles.
Why post David S. Pumpkins two years in a row on Halloween? Because we MUST - David S. Pumpkins and his two dancin' skeleton assistants, played by SNL writer/performers Mikey Day and Bobby Moynihan, inevitably get this blogmeister at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog ROFL! "Ah'm David Pumpkins, man! Any questions?"
There was an animated David S. Pumpkins Halloween Special made in 2017. It's not bad, albeit not anywhere near as funny as the previous two sketches. However, you do get the excellent comedienne and SNL stalwart Cecily Strong, along with Tom Hanks, among the voice talents.
On what day can it be considered a good idea to both watch David S. Pumpkins AND post a film in which comedian, actor and prolific cartoon voice artist Billy Bletcher is chased by a giant lobster? Halloween, of course!
It's no surprise to readers of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog that we're big fans of Halloween cartoons.
Produced in 1942 for MGM by Rudy Ising, the musical cartoon BATS IN THE BELFRY is, while not at all scary, very odd and very enjoyable. Sounds like at least one of the three goofball bats was voiced by the ubiquitous Pinto Colvig.
Since we've posted numerous Halloween classics from Fleischer Studios, including BOO, BOO THEME SONG, a skeleton and ghost-filled 1933 "follow the bouncing ball" Screen Song, the brilliant 1934 Popeye opus SHIVER MY TIMBERS and the super-surreal Talkartoons SWING YOU SINNERS and MYSTERIOUS MOSE before, let's find a Halloween-themed Popeye never posted before on Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog.
Here's one: Popeye in GHOSKS IS THE BUNK (1939)
Is there something else we absolutely MUST do, while watching yet more spooky cartoons - or, as in the case of the following Columbia Color Rhapsody cartoon produced by the Ub Iwerks Studio, not that spooky - to get in the spirit of the holiday - and wishing all a Happy Halloween?
Yes - close today's Halloween post with a Count Floyd Monster Chiller Horror Theatre sketch from SCTV.
Today this blogger's fancy and short attention span turns from silent movies (and the great Raymond Griffith) to the world of sketch comedy. July 1 is Dan Aykroyd's birthday, so we shall doff our always battered fedoras to the prolific comedian, actor and screenwriter.
First and foremost, here are a few of Aykroyd's funniest and most original SNL skits.
Of the dozens of Saturday Night Live players, he is among the few who made a relatively seamless transition from TV to movies.
Trading Places, due to the superb and hilarious character acting from Hollywood veterans Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy, lots of lively interplay between Akyroyd and the brilliant Eddie Murphy - and the presence of such SNL stalwarts as Al Franken & Tom Davis - remains my favorite.
Neighbors was an interesting homage to The Twilight Zone TV show. What makes it interesting? The Aykroyd and Belushi roles are reversed, with Dan playing the lunatic and John cast as a meek, mild-mannered nebbish. The excellent character actress Cathy Moriarty and fellow Second City/SNL alum Tim Kazurinsky are added pluses.
Spies Like Us, co-starring fellow SNL cast member Chevy Chase, is - like many movies featuring Saturday Night Live and SCTV cast members - in the flawed but still mostly funny category.
Dan was teamed with Tom Hanks for the 1987 sendup of Dragnet. All of us who watched the entire run of the unintentionally funny Dragnet 1967 TV show got a few laughs from this flick, and especially from Aykroyd's ability to mimic Jack Webb's distinctive walk and verbal delivery.
Last but not least, Dan produced, directed and co-wrote the creepiest and most nightmarishly disturbing of all 20th century horror-comedies, the Razzie Award winner Nothing But Trouble, a hallucinatory Beetlejuice-influenced compendium of Gothic grotesquerie.
The reviews of Nothing But Trouble were brutal, reminiscent of the In Living ColorMen On Film sketches in which David Alan Grier and Damon Wayans say in unison. . . HATED IT!
Described by Vincent Canby in The New York Times as "a charmless feature-length joke about the world's most elaborate speed trap," this haunted house flick presents an intermittently inspired one-of-a-kind fever dream. In the central role as the hideous 106 year old "hanging judge" of Volkenvania, Aykroyd presides as the ringmaster and frequently ventures into unabashed gross-out territory.
Why Warner Brothers released Nothing But Trouble to theatres in February 1991, instead of postponing it in October and specifically marketing the delirious American Gothic piece as a Halloween "monster movie," nobody knows.
Perhaps the suits concluded that Nothing But Trouble, originally pegged as a Christmas 1990 release, cost so much money to produce, it had to get out in the theatres post-haste to have any chance of recouping the investment. That strikes this writer as both a marketing failure and failure of imagination, as it is clearly a haunted house horror-comedy with a Halloween theme, even though David Lynch didn't direct it and the Three Stooges and Bowery Boys are nowhere to be found.
While Nothing But Trouble is a tad too grotesque to get laughs, it succeeds as American Gothic with garish flying colors, reverb-filled echoes of theremins and imagery a la horror-meister Tod Browning's The Devil Doll, Freaks and West Of Zanzibar viewed through a shattered funhouse mirror. . . with a musical number by Digital Underground thrown in for good measure.
We raise a toast of Crystal Head Vodka to Dan and hope he's doing well on his birthday. Cheers - and thanks a million for the laughs!
We wish our readers a Happy Halloween that's chock full of inventive animation.
We'll start Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog post #1250 with the trailer to The Corpse Bride, a very good Halloween flick.
Would Halloween be complete without the inimitable Mighty Mouse, who, as part of his superhero duties, must rescue singing rodents enjoying a Halloween party from a witch and her patented Terrytoons cat? Well, not for us, it wouldn't - that's why we've posted this cartoon on this blog several times!
Next up: by far the least scary but most jaunty and tuneful Halloween cartoon of all, SCRAPPY'S GHOST STORY (1935). As always, this blogger's love of Scrappy and Charles Mintz Studio cartoons remains a mystery!
Those who cringe at Mighty Mouse and Scrappy generally go for Fleischer Popeyes, so here's one of the best, Shiver Me Timbers (1934).
The Max Fleischer Screen Songs series included BOO, BOO, THEME SONG, a gratuitously grotesque cartoon about ghosts, ghouls and spiders who run their own radio station, which they use to sell a poisonous drink named DeKayo.
Another poster has uploaded the song segment from BOO BOO THEME SONG featuring The Funnyboners (a great name for a group). Must watch the following on YouTube. The song by The Funnyboners begins at 3:34. If you resample both videos as mp4 files and combine, that's the entire ghoulish cartoon.
Alas, we missed the chance to plug this weekend's fantastic spooky Halloween movie screenings (A Psychotronix Halloween at the Orinda Theatre, Lon Chaney at Niles, Saturday Afternoon Cartoons: A Haunted Halloween in Manhattan at the Metrograph) a few days ago (uh - before they actually happened), but can post a ghost-filled Fleischer "Inkwell Imps" cartoon seen last night as part of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum's splendid Halloween show.
Sometimes this animation buff believes that the gang at the Van Beuren Studio really, really wanted to produce cartoons every bit as bizarre as Fleischer's. In the otherworldly Gypped In Egypt, starring "Don & Waffles," the bizarreness gets a full court press!
Don & Waffles soon became Tom & Jerry and kicked off their series with a Halloween cartoon, which gives Fleischer's a run for the money in the grotesquerie and bad taste departments.
Another classic Van Beuren cartoon is not specifically a Halloween film, but its storyline about the search for a pot of gold over the rainbow includes demons, apparitions, singing frogs and assorted weird characters, including an odd naked guy carrying around a sack of money while dragging a ball & chain. We love it so much we've posted it two consecutive Halloweens! Wonder if Sally Cruikshank, animator of Quasi At The Quackadero, Face Like A Frog, Make Me Psychic and Quasi's Cabaret, ever saw it. . .
The Ub Iwerks Studio, not wanting to be outdone, made several Flip The Frog cartoons that delved into imaginatively spooky territory. This must be at least the fourth time we have posted The Cuckoo Murder Case, one of the very best Flips and Iwerks cartoons, on this blog! Along with The Wild Goose Chase and Mighty Mouse in The Witch's Cat, The Cuckoo Murder Case was a cornerstone of our Halloween 2010 post!
Since we somehow forgot all about Warner Bros. cartoons, here is one of the spookiest Looney Tunes, an "old dark house" tale directed by the great Frank Tashlin.
Switching for no reason from animation to live-action, Halloween presents as good an excuse as any to post a certain Saturday Night Live bit featuring Tom Hanks as the not all that scary David S. Pumpkins!
A Saturday Night Live Halloween sketch that got this blogger laughing out loud featured Chris Farley's always over-enthusiastic motivational speaker Matt Foley.
Love those Vincent Price's Halloween Special sketches co-starring Bill Hader, Fred Armisen and Kristin Wiig.
How can we close this Halloween post? Well, this way - with the song It's Halloween by The Shaggs. Who were The Shaggs? Three young ladies, the Wiggins sisters from Fremont, New Hampshire whose crazy father wanted more than anything to make a successful rock band out of them. He was so desperate he bought his daughters studio time and recorded an album before they actually learned to play their instruments.
Yes, The Shaggs play out of tune, out of time and out of measurable reality, but there is genuine charm in their utter earnestness, likability, honesty and New Hampshire accents.
The Shaggs try hard and clearly want very much to sing and play their instruments at least reasonably well. Find this admirable.
This blogger is, among many things, an amateur guitarist who got started attempting to play chords on an acoustic guitar around the same time The Shaggs' Philosophy Of The World album was recorded - and totally gets how one sounds - fumbling, stumbling and often failing - when trying to learn to play an instrument. So, while attempting to play a finger-busting Ted Greene guitar chord, we say HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Here we are, downright amazed to be here with the second-to-last post for 2021 - and delighted to wish all readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Thrilled to be cheerful and drawing breath on Christmas Eve - and quite busy redefining what can be considered Christmas music.
Sincerely hope that nobody brings fruitcake to your Christmas Eve or Christmas party.
The temptation is to simply recycle our 2016 Christmas Eve post every year, but instead Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog shall go through a few holiday favorites, after swilling Borden's Egg Nog spiked generously with two double shots of Myers Rum and brandy!
This great tune, our all-time favorite, was first released on Capitol Records epic Merry Christmas To You! compilation LP (Capitol T-9030).
The great jazz saxophonist Booker Ervin (1931-1970) waxed this blogger's favorite rendition of Irving Berlin's White Christmas in 1966, on his outstanding Structurally Sound album.
Booker's fellow tenor saxophonist and occassional collaborator Dexter Gordon waxed this jazz fan's all-time favorite cover of The Christmas Song.
We now turn to some Christmas-themed animation, starting with Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Across the pond, former Disney director David Hand made cartoons for Gaumont British Animation. Ginger Nutt's Christmas Circus is his studio's contribution to the 2021 Yule log.
The late, great Gene Deitch made many fantastic cartoons, first at UPA's East Coast branch, then at Terrytoons and afterwards from his studio in Prague. Gene directed and/or produced a slew of original and strikingly designed animation gems. One of the best is THE JUGGLER OF OUR LADY.
Based on "Le Jongleur de Notre Dame," THE JUGGLER OF OUR LADY is narrated by none other than Boris Karloff and adapted from the Anatole France's book by R.O. Blechman.
Next up: the National Film Board of Canada. We tip our Santa hat respectfully to friend of this blog, archivist supreme and showman Sci Fi Bob Ekman, who is responsible for this blogger seeing this terrific NFB cartoon, Christmas Cracker.
That said, it's comedy for the writer of this blog throughout the holiday season - and it just wouldn't be Christmas without favorite comedy sketches. Leading off, invariably, from SCTV, is Ed Grimley in The Fella Who Couldn't Wait For Christmas. . . I must say.
We'll raise that SCTV sketch with Liberace's Christmas Special!
Arguably, the single greatest pure physical comic ever to be a Saturday Night Live cast member was the late great Chris Farley.
In the SNL Christmas sketch pantheon, love seeing Chris' motivational speaker character, Matt Foley, as a department store Santa!
And then there's A Debbie Downer Christmas Eve, co-starring one of our all-time favorites at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, the one, the only Jack Black. Quality time spent with Tenacious D is guaranteed to cheer this blogger up!
That sketch invariably brings the Debbie Downer out of this blogger.
Have mixed emotions about the Christmas holidays and especially the supercharged commercialization, stressing buying stuff you don’t need in the first place. Stan Freberg’s Green Christmas still resonates in a big way.
On the one hand, love the holiday season and especially love hanging out with friends and family. On the other hand, for those whose family members have either all passed away or are gravely ill, the unrelenting ultra-sentiment regarding family gatherings seems quite cruel.
Noting that for those who lost their jobs and/or are stone broke, the mass onslaught of advertising represents a big upraised middle finger, the Debbie Downer "bwaa bwaa" sound effect is definitely in order. Now, after asserting that feline AIDS is the number one killer of domestic cats, it's time for more Stan Freberg records.
We wish all a safe and Merry Christmas, with a touch of mambo!
The Christmas Eve closer: a Season's Greetings calypso from Robert Mitchum.
While much missing those friends and family members who are no longer with us, we are nonetheless preparing to enjoy a delicious turkey dinner later today!
There will be two video selections for 2021 Turkey Day that originally appeared on NBC's Saturday Night Live way back when. First is a Thanksgiving sketch from the SNL show hosted by Pee-Wee Herman, which originally aired on November 23, 1985 - and, indeed, this blogger taped it on the ol' reliable VHS recorder!
Love the sketch co-starring Jon Lovitz' inimitable Tommy Flannagan a.k.a. "The Liar." Both worked together in The Groundlings, as did future cornerstone of SNL Phil Hartman.
The Pee-Wee Herman SNL, in the opinion of the sketch comedy nuts at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, remains tied with the excellent episode featuring George Wendt and Francis Ford Coppolla as hosts (in which, as a running gag, Coppola takes over the direction of the show) as the favorite from the 1985-1986 season.
To some degree the mostly young Season 11 cast was not necessarily all that well-suited to Saturday Night Live back in 1985, in large part due to the constrictions of the program itself. This would subsequently be confirmed by the non-prototypical performance of Robert Downey Jr. as most non-prototypical superhero Iron Man, any Damon Wayans sketch from In Living Color and all stage, screen and TV presentations featuring Joan Cusack and Obie Award winner Danitra Vance (1954-1994). Squeezing these expansive talents into the fairly rigid parameters and format of SNL turned out to be problematic.
Nonetheless, there was no shortage of talent both in front of behind the cameras and on the writing staff in this season noted for the return of Lorne Michaels.
Much of the 1985-1986 season's cast made their mark after leaving SNL, while others would return for Season 12 and be involved in the series' late 1980's - early 1990's resurgence. For more, check out the SNL Review Index from Nova Scotia writer/photographer Bronwyn Douwsma's Existentialist Weightlifting website.
The second Happy Thanksgiving video selection, Wally Ballou Interviews a Cranberry Grower in Times Square, features a comedy team beloved by Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog and KFJC's Norman Bates Memorial Soundtrack Show, "the two and only," Bob & Ray.
This was from a special produced by the SNL crew and featuring the comediennes from the cast. It aired on NBC in the Saturday Night Live 11:30 - 1:00 a.m. time slot.
This was not the only time the team was slated to make an appearance in the late-night comedy universe. In a 1980 pilot, From Cleveland, Bob & Ray are deejays in their own radio station and introduce sketches starring Eugene Levy, Catherine O Hara, Andrea Martin and Dave Thomas from SCTV. This would appear to have been shot in the break between season 2 and season 3 of SCTV, after Global dropped the series and before ITV picked it up.
Tomorrow morning, shall drink a pot of coffee and enjoy the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. We'd like Mr. and Mrs. Patton Oswalt to host - that would be great!
Strongly suggest avoiding family discussions, especially those involving current events, and either binge-watching football, talking baseball Hot Stove League or doing the following instead.
In need of laughs as April ends, Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog today pays tribute to 20th century standup comedy.
Spotlighted the hilarious Billy Crystal in the Easter 2021 post. . . why stop there? Here's Billy's pal and frequent collaborator Robin Williams.
The following Robin Willians routine should be played in its entirety prior to The Masters every year without fail.
The historical record of mid-20th century standup comedy performances begins with The Ed Sullivan Show; fortunately for us comedy and pop culture vultures, a slew of Sullivan Show excerpts have been recently downloaded to YouTube.
Of the many comics who appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, I especially enjoyed "sad sack standup" Jackie Vernon.
While standup comedians and The Tonight Show tend to be associated with Johnny Carson, the previous incarnation of Tonight hosted by Jack Parr provided a showcase for comics as well.
Have seen few episodes of the first version of The Tonight Show, hosted by Steve Allen, but understand that he often featured stand-up comics - most famously a cleaned-up Lenny Bruce.
Mostly recall Steve Allen's Tonight for an episode in which Ernie Kovacs was the guest host and turned the show upside down, sometimes literally (note: it's on this DVD box set).
Parr's Tonight offered free rein to comedians. The one, the only Jonathan Winters was a regular.
Not to be outdone, Johnny Carson made a point of booking stand-up comedy legends on The Tonight Show.
Carson would revel both in his role of King Of Late Night and in bringing combinations of comedy stalwarts on his shows, sometimes simultaneously (note - a longer clip from the following show can be found here).
A few years before the episode featuring Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters, arguably the very best ever to hit The Comedy Store stage were on The Tonight Show together.
Johnny was no fool. Richard Pryor, a one of a kind talent, was on often.
As a comedian who manages to be a storyteller, satirist, actor and social commentator simultaneously, Richard Pryor is still unsurpassed, 15 years after his passing.
David Letterman offered a showcase through his runs on both NBC and CBS. Dave's love of and respect for comedy and comedians is clear.
Of the comics who first appeared on Letterman, this blogger is particularly fond of the late, lamented, highly original and wildly imaginative Mitch Hedberg.
Saturday Night Live has had a complex and at times unfathomable relationship with stand-up comedians and comediennes, partly due to the show's genesis in Second City/Groundlings style improv.
Many Saturday Night Live cast members first made their name as stand-ups, with some enjoying breakthrough success and others having their difficulties withstanding the brutal backstage politics and unrelenting pressure cooker of live television.
Standup comics from Richard Belzer to Robert Klein to Stephen Wright to Sam Kinison appeared on the show. George Carlin hosted the premiere episode and Richard Pryor hosted the seventh one in 1975.
After the first five SNL seasons, quite a few luminaries from the world of stand-up comedy would become cast members, with varying results. The fearless, unorthodox and delightfully brutal Gilbert Gottfried, the most surreal of stand-up comedians and to this day the only comic to do a dead-on impersonation of Jackie Vernon, was mis-cast and mis-used on the infamous (but not entirelyterrible - the musical guests are consistently top-notch) season 6, which also featured an inexplicably under-utilized Eddie Murphy.
There was a stretch, mostly during the early 1980's years when Dick Ebersol produced the show, in which Saturday Night Live frequently booked stand-up comics as guest performers and gave them the spotlight. Some, such as Stephen Wright, were several steps and universes ahead of the (by comparison) earthbound comedy sketches.
The show also featured such wonderful vaudeville-style acts as magicians Harry Anderson, Michael Davis and Penn & Teller back in those days. These creative performers were a welcome addition and it's too bad this practice ended as the 1980's did.
There are cases where things don't work out for even the most talented comedy performers, actors and actresses in the unrelenting grinder that is television, when the cast blends like oil and water. When it comes to live TV, this sort of thing happens, even with a terrific cast, imaginative writers and the best of intentions. It's never due to lack of talent, creativity or enthusiasm; even the incomparable Your Show Of Shows cast and writers periodically produced sketches that were clunkers.
For reasons unknown to all who were not in the SNL writers' room in 1994-1995, season 20 was arguably the worst in the series' history, or at least tied with the infamous seasons 6 and 11, as well as the less infamous but equally lackluster season 30.
Lots went wrong, very wrong in the 1994-1995 season, even given the blazing talent and incredible standup comics working on the show, in front of and behind the cameras. Season 20 would be a prolonged last gasp for stalwart SNL cast members Kevin Nealon and Mike Myers, both affected by departures from the cast (Phil Hartman especially) in a profound way. These departures also shifted the comedy load emphatically to Adam Sandler, David Spade and larger-than-life physical comedian and Second City Chicago star Chris Farley. This limited opportunities for new additions to the cast; only Molly Shannon and standup comedian Norm Macdonald returned for subsequent seasons.
As had been emphatically the case with the entire doomed Saturday Night Live '80 troupe, the 20th season had difficulty figuring out way to do with new cast members. British actress and animation voice artist Morewenna Banks was a featured player for four episodes, but only appeared in a couple of sketches and then was unceremoniously fired by NBC. In her one-year stint as a cast member, filmmaker and comedienne Laura Kightlinger, later a writer and performer on Will & Grace, was seen less than The Invisible Man. Spinal Tap's Michael McKean and Mark McKinney of The Kids In The Hall joined the cast in season 20, but would be under-utilized in their time as cast members.
The powers that were at SNL, still reeling from the aforementioned departures of two of the greatest cast members in the show's history, the irreplaceable Jan Hooks and Phil Hartman, as well as key writers who left to join the Late Night with Conan O'Brien staff, could not figure out how to incorporate the new additions to the show into the mix. Established comedians were added instead of young unknowns from Second City and The Groundlings. Actress/stand-up comedienne Janeane Garofolo and frequently hilarious Late Night With David Letterman comic Chris Elliott were among the new additions, but repeatedly mis-cast and mis-used on SNL season 20. Go figure!
The unsuccessful efforts to incorporate Late Night with David Letterman's distinctive style of comedy into the Saturday Night Live mix brings to mind that Janeane Garapolo hosted Late Show with David Letterman when Dave was recovering from heart surgery in March 2000; in contrast to her extremely unhappy experience in a half season as an SNL cast member, she excelled and had fun in the process. Had she wanted the job, Janeane could have shined as a new kind of late-night host.
As the 1980s and early 1990s progressed, the Saturday Night Live cast increasingly would be chock full of standup comedians, including Adam Sandler, David Spade and Rob Schneider. Eddie Murphy, Dana Carvey, Chris Rock and Norm Macdonald - brilliant stand-up comedians all - were indeed SNL cast members.
Other outstanding comedy performers auditioned but didn't make the cut; as the old saying goes, that's show business. The list includes some formidable talents: Kevin Hart, Marc Maron, Jim Carrey, Lisa Kudrow, John Goodman, Zach Galifianakis, Kathy Griffin and Michael McDonald (of The Groundlings and Mad TV - not the pop singer/songwriter). Lorne Michaels approached Jennifer Aniston with an offer to join the SNL cast, but she declined and soon afterwards made the big bucks as one of the stars of the successful sitcom Friends.
It has been extended tough sledding at this blogger's household, as we have lost two beloved pets in a short time, but after much quality time spent with the iconic comedians of silent movies (a.k.a. The Old Masters - Chaplin, Keaton, Chase, Langdon, Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy) and a deep dive into both favorite stand-up philosophers and the mid and late 20th century television programs that spotlighted them (many of which can now been seen on YouTube, Archive.org and Vimeo), hints of sunlight are visible on the horizon.
In closing, we extend big thank yous and several respectful tips of top hats worn by John Belushi, Bill Murray and Elliott Gould in the infamous (but funny) "Castration Rag" sketch to websites that have been reviewing Saturday Night Live in detail. These would include the One SNL A Day Project, the SNL Review index on Existentialist Weightlifting and My Saturday Night Life. Dove into both websites for research and screen caps in this post. In addition, there are now numerous Saturday Night Live shows of past decades on Archive.org - and many interviews with Saturday Night Live cast and writers conducted by Marc Maron for his podcast.
