Next Saturday brings a repeat of the Paul Rudd show. The Saturday after is the Anne Hathaway installment, so this is it for February sweeps.
Unless you count the delightful and often fascinating new two-hour primetime SNL documentary airing a week from Sunday. It’s titled “Saturday Night Live Backstage” and covers the remarkable 36-year history of the show.
It opens with an old clip of Jon Lovitz’ Tommy Flanagan escorting Jay Leno around Studio 8H. We get to see Belushi’s samurai sword almost slash Buck Henry’s face a half dozen times before it draws actual blood. We get to see a Matt Foley “van down by the river” montage. And a montage of Chevy’s falls. And we get to remember how funny Phil Hartman was as Frankenstein and Frank Sinatra. And Alec Baldwin hone the scoutmaster who so hilariously torments Canteen Boy. Will Ferrell leading Norm Macdonald and Anne Hathaway and Elisabeth Moss and a stageful of other celebrities in Billy Joel’s “Goodnight, Saigon.” Dennis Miller sporting a massive mullet. Charlie Sheen pricing narcotics for audience members during the monologue.
The special sports new (or at least new-ish) interviews with a pantheon of comedy gods: Albert Brooks, Steve Martin, Gilbert Gottfried, Dan Aykroyd, Will Ferrell, Robert Smigel, Adam McKay, Jim Downey, Norm Macdonald. (It’s perfectly staggering how much talent passed through that stage.)
We’re reminded how magicians like Ricky Jay, Harry Anderson and Penn & Teller were no strangers to the show, and that Francis Ford Coppola, William Burroughs and Andy Warhol (!) all put in appearances.
Laraine Newman confesses she didn’t understand why they kept bringing back Mr. Bill: “Okay I got it. Each time was just, ‘Enough already.’”
We’re reminded that Sarah Silverman was barely out of her teens when she was cast. That Julia Louis-Dreyfus was a junior in college. That Larry David couldn’t get one sketch on the show the year he worked there under weak-minded NBC toady Dick Ebersol. That Joe Piscopo worried his fawning portrayal of Frank Sinatra could inspire Sinatra’s mob buddies to kill him. (Later clips demonstrate that Phil Hartman, who did a much funnier Sinatra, harbored no such concerns.)
Buck Henry says it was his idea to bring Belushi’s samurai back a second time. Steve Martin remembers the first appearance of the Czech brothers elicited little audience response while their second appearance garnered howls.
Lorne Michaels recalls the fast decision to leave the applause sign dark when Sinead O’Connor surprised producers by tearing up the Pope’s photo. Michaels also recalls O’Connor was invited to join the cast onstage at show’s end, and that she was “shaking like a leaf” as she waved goodbye to the cameras.
Someone calls Macdonald “the last dangerous cast member.” Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) says he never understood Norm’s firing. Long ago deposed NBC exec and renowned chowderhead Don Ohlmeyer, who ordered the comic removed from Weekend Update, insists he insisted that his friend, accused murderer O.J. Simpson, should not be spared SNL’s barbs. (Perhaps he didn’t realize that Macdonald would mercilessly mock Simpson on every Update – some 60 straight shows over three years.) To judge from the documentary, Ohlmeyer was the only individual on the planet who thought pulling Norm was a good idea. “Anchorman” writer-director and former SNL head writer Adam McKay calls it “a really, really bad call.”
Dana Carvey reminds us that the year he joined the cast the series, fresh off its troubled season starring Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Michael Hall, Joan Cusack and Randy Quaid, did not have a full-season pickup. Carvey told his wife not to move out to New York, suspicious that his first year on the show would be the franchise’s last.
Smigel recalls how Joel Schumacher’s Batman movies inspired The Ambiguously Gay Duo.
Even talkbackers who are careful to note each week that SNL “hasn’t been funny in years” -- and have no idea why the current version starring Kristin Wiig, Seth Meyers, Kenan Thompson, Bill Hader and Andy Samberg, et al routinely draws better ratings than almost every series in primetime -- should love the special.
Saturday Night Live: 11:30 p.m. Saturday. NBC.
Saturday Night Live Backstage: 9 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 20. NBC.
