Thanks to Saturday Night Live

My little note of gratitude as the show marks half a century on air

Saturday Night Live is a cultural institution - a pipeline for comedic talent into Hollywood and our collective consciousness for half a century now. Still helmed by the legendary Lorne Michaels, the show has become a juggernaut since its inception in 1975; spawning the careers of Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Tina Fey, the Belushis: both Jim & John, Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, Kristen Wiig, Chris Rock, Maya Rudolph, Ben Stiller and so many more; including names you would recognise & those you wouldn’t but whose faces would definite ring a bell. (I’ve tried to make that list shorter, but, quite frankly: I don’t want to. In fact, it should be longer but I’ve tried to stick to recognisable names.) Michaels can spot talent.

It’s not perfect and it often gets it wrong (do NOT get me started on their attempts at being funny about Irish people & the less said about their frankly appalling attempts at our accents the better…): but few, if any, shows can be said to have shaped the comedy landscape on screen - and provided phrases for the American vernacular - to the extent of SNL.

The first ever host was comedy titan, absolute hero, sage of stage, & inventor of one of the best ‘bits’ ever uttered by a comedian “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on TV”: George Carlin. Since then their celebrity guest hosts have ranged from Tom Hanks & Drake to Ariana Grande & Oprah and the music acts have included Adele, Neil Diamond & The White Stripes.

Given this hugely illustrious list of alumni and the generally gargantuan reach of Lorne’s talent across the cultural spectrum, I thought today we could take a turn through some of the best (& perhaps in some instances, lesser-celebrated) works by those who have worked on the show & in one case, been heavily influenced by it.

TL;DR

Listen to Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers and Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang; watch A Mighty Wind; read Romantic Comedy; watch Shrill and George Carlin’s American Dream.

LISTEN

Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers is a fun show with former SNL head writer Seth Meyers - now also a late night chat show host - and his brother Josh who is also an actor and comedian.

Each week they speak to a different personalities, ranging from Dame Julie Andrews and Jake Tapper to Tom Holland & Amy Schumer, about trips they went on with their family. Usually with these kinds of ‘chat with a famous person’ shows, they are often doing the rounds to publicise their latest book/movie/TV show/moisturiser/diet tea and so it can all get a bit same-y no matter how experienced the interviewer.

Not so here - instead, the device at hand causes the subject to reminisce about the highs, the lows, the laughs & the absolute maddening rage that one experiences when travelling with your family. A fun one to listen to as & when you fancy some non-taxing but nevertheless entertaining company.

Las Culturalistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang is another two blokes chatting to people but this time it’s two queens & it’s about ‘The Culture’. Yang was SNL’s first Chinese-American cast member and only the third openly gay male.

The show was the source of Mariah Carey’s moan about overhead lighting when she appeared (each guest is given one minute to rant about a subject of their choosing).

Yang & Rogers are an entertaining double act and their love of the aforementioned Culture is so genuine that it draws you in & has me constantly Googling things they’re talking about if I haven’t seen them for myself - the latest episode about the Grammys being a case in point.

WATCH

This was a tough one: the SNL crew have made a lot of movies: from When Harry Met Sally, Bridesmaids and Elf to Blades of Glory, Seventeen Again and The Blues Brothers.

But I’m going to go with a lesser-known older option that I loved, from a genre I adore: the mockumentary. Any guesses? And no, it’s not This Is Spinal Tap, though that is obviously a stone cold classic. This week I urge you to watch A Mighty Wind - from a very similar team to the one behind Spinal Tap. SNL alumnus Christopher Guest (also known as Mr Jamie Lee-Curtis as well as the 5th Baron Haden-Guest in the United Kingdom - look it up; it’s true!) directed it and fellow ex SNL-er Michael McKean stars.

A Mighty Wind takes on the folk music scene with a memorial concert being organised to remember a recently-deceased music producer. This provides the scope a wide and generally slightly mad cast of characters all preparing for the show: Eugene Levy, Parker Posy, Harry Shearer and even the Queens themselves: Catherine O’Hara, Jane Lynch & Jennifer Coolidge.

Do yourself a favour: clear the decks tonight, pour yourself something indulgent, get comfy & watch it.

READ

Now for something a little different, rather than a book written by or about an SNL alum, this title was inspired by the show. Romantic Comedy does what it say on the tin.

For a lot of people that would be a mark against it - as ‘chick lit’ not worth anyone’s time (though thanks to the likes of Marian Keyes the term ‘chick lit’ is beginning to shed its wholly undeserving reputation for only being ‘silly stories for silly women’). In this case if you let the title put you off, you’re the idiot.

Brought to you by the modern literary powerhouse that is Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic Comedy so hit the spot at the time of reading, that I devoured it in one go…despite the fact that that meant staying up til almost 3am one morning finishing it. Sittenfeld is also responsible for the instant classics such as American Wife, Prep & Eligible - all of which will undoubtedly be featured in this newsletter at some stage in the not-too-distant future.

It’s a love story between a writer on a big comedy sketch show and a pop star with a dash of lockdown, a heavy-handed helping of social media and a hell of a lot of the paranoia, self-doubt & constant questioning that accompanies the early day of dating someone new.

WATCH

Aidy Bryant bucked the trend at SNL by being a female repertory player who wasn’t a size 00 and she remained the same size for the ten seasons she was on the show. Now, of course no one should be reduced to merely their body size when discussing their work but body size - & being perfectly content to live a fulfilled life in a body that was more the national average than those usually seen on screen - was the focus of the three series of Shrill, the TV show Bryant developed and starred in whilst still working on Saturday Night Live.

Based on Lindy West’s book Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, Bryant plays Annie - an aspiring journalist who is working for a dickhead and also shagging a dickhead. The dickhead she works for refuses to hear her out when it comes to pitching story ideas and the dickhead she’s shagging asks her to leave by the back door so his roommates don’t see her. But thankfully, the show is of course the story of Annie realising this is bullshit and she has every right to be happy just as she is.

As mentioned at the outset, George Carlin hosted the first ever episode of Saturday Night Live back in 1975. Carlin is somewhat of a god to me. I have adored him since I was a teenager. His stand-up back in the ‘90s & early ‘00s is as relevant now as it was back then. See here, here & here. Seriously, watch ‘em. Off you go now.

Once you’ve done that, look up George Carlin’s American Dream, the two-part documentary about the man himself made by none other than Judd Apatow and get stuck in. It’s an absorbing tale about his journey from clean-cut suit-wearing comic to the bearded, pony-tail wearer of the ‘70s onwards as is the story of his ongoing issues with addiction.