Saturday Night Live, born October 11, 1975, died May 24, 1986.
That could have been the obituary for the late-night comedy institution, which nearly bit the dust after season 11, depriving America of all the SNL talents who came in later years like Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig, Tina Fey, Kate McKinnon, Adam Sandler, Jimmy Fallon and so many more.
Saturday Night Live’s near demise is the focus of one of the four episodes of the Emmy-nominated series SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, executive produced by Oscar winner Morgan Neville. Kevin Nealon serves as a kind of Rod Serling-like host of the episode, explaining how the show’s “weird year” marked Lorne Michaels’ return to the SNL after a five-year hiatus. Michaels came in with a whole new cast.
“You had Randy Quaid, Joan Cusack, Robert Downey Jr. You had Anthony Michael Hall, you had all these actors. And that was kind of the experiment of that year,” Neville tells Deadline. “’Let’s get all these young actors, fresh blood,’ and great actors. And they had a murders row of writers that year too. It was Franken and Davis, but it was Robert Smigel’s first year, Jim Downey. And it just didn’t work.”
“One of the problems that year was that there were a bunch of actors and there were a bunch of comedy writers, and they didn’t really know how to talk to each other,” Neville continues. “And the following year the network was about to cancel the show, and Lorne said, ‘Wait, I think I know what we’re doing now. Just give me another chance.’ And from what I’ve heard, the network only gave [the show] until Christmas of the next year of what was season 12. And between season 11 and season 12, Lorne went out and got Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman and Kevin Nealon and Jan Hooks, and some of the all-time greatest cast members who all came out of kind of an improv tradition. That’s really what it’s been ever since.”
SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night is nominated for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series, Outstanding Picture Editing for a Nonfiction Program, recognizing the work of editor Cori Wapnowska, and Outstanding Sound Editing for a Nonfiction or Reality Program, recognizing the work of William Harp (dialogue editor) and Sean Gray (sound effects editor). Neville came up with an ingenious way to divide the four episodes thematically.
“The auditions episode is about the entire history of the show. Season 11 is about a year of the show. The writers episode is about a week of the show, and the cowbell episode is about a single sketch,” he notes. “So, they have four very different time horizons to cover.”
Episode 1, directed by Robert Alexander, highlights “the SNL audition process, with never-before-seen audition footage and firsthand accounts from some of the show’s most iconic names as they reflect on their preparation and journey to the SNL stage.” It showcases not only who got in, but who didn’t make the cut, a shocking list that includes Jennifer Coolidge, Jim Carrey, Kevin Hart, Mindy Kaling, Jordan Peele, Donald Glover, Stephen Colbert and more.
Episode 2, directed by Oscar winner Marshall Curry, takes a vérité approach to revealing how writers put a week’s show together (in this case for one hosted by Ayo Edebiri of The Bear). It’s a sort of Darwinian process by which only the strongest sketches survive and only the strongest writers too – those who can endure the pressure and frequent ego bruising (Larry David appears in that episode, an acknowledged comedy great who didn’t exactly triumph as an SNL writer).
Episode 3, directed by Neil Berkeley, takes a forensic approach to exploring the genesis and execution of possibly the single-most popular sketch in the history of SNL. That would be the “More Cowbell” sketch conceived and written by Will Ferrell, in which he plays a fictional percussionist with immense passion for clanging a cowbell during a studio session to record Blue Öyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.” Guest host Christopher Walken plays “legendary” record producer Bruce Dickinson who must use all his skill to smooth over tensions in the band and get prime cowbell on tape.
“Sometimes sketches peak in dress [rehearsal] and don’t work as well on the live show,” Neville notes. Or the reverse can happen. “What I loved particularly about the Cowbell episode was getting that micro into the details of that… Between dress and air, Will Ferrell changed the sweater and got this slightly smaller sweater so his stomach would stick out. Does that make all the difference a costume? Nobody thinks of that, but it makes a huge difference. All those tiny things make a huge difference in unpredictable ways.”
“Gene Frenkle,” the putative cowbell-ist, makes a return appearance in the episode, portrayed this time by Chad Smith, drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers who famously bears a striking resemblance to Ferrell. But Walken? Well, they tried to get him to offer his thoughts, but he politely declined, having apparently decided he requires no more cowbell at this time.
Neville, whose Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces earned five Emmy nominations last year, couldn’t have been better suited to helming the SNL50 series.
“My dad was a big comedy fan and had the first Betamax in our neighborhood and started recording SNL pretty much at the beginning. I started watching it really when I was how old? Eight,” Neville recalls. “I was a big fan of the original lineup — Belushi and Aykroyd and Bill Murray — and then even things like Mr. Bill, all that stuff, the original incarnation of SNL that I loved. I always kept paying attention to the show, always. Even when I started working on this project, I pulled out the book A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, and I had the receipt in the book from when I bought it new in 1985… In a way I feel like it’s something I’ve been preparing for my whole life.”
He sees the original vibe of the show as “feeding into ‘how do we bring the counterculture to TV,’ which was kind of the last frontier of the counterculture at that point. By the mid-‘70s literature and movies and music had all been colonized by the counterculture, but TV hadn’t.” But then, Neville, says, the show evolved to become “much more of a mirror to whatever we were doing… If you really want to understand what was happening in America at a certain time, look at a week of SNL, it really does capture snapshots of where we were at.”
He continues, “Having gone back and watched a lot of old episodes, it is a kind of time travel, because it kind of puts you into a certain mind space for what was happening right then. And it still does that. But the other thing that I actually deeply respect about SNL is that it’s broadcasting in the very meaning of that, which is it’s speaking to everybody or trying to, and in a way that’s the theme of so many of my films, including Best of Enemies, which is how does culture allow us to have conversations with each other? And we’re at a point now where there’s so little commonality. But when it comes to television beyond SNL and sports, it’s hard to think of a whole lot of things that people all watch.”
CBS has announced the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert following next season. In an era of shifting television viewing habits, what does that augur for SNL?
“It is hugely important, I know, to the network [NBC] and even globally. There are multiple international versions of SNL too. It’s a format that has worked, but it’s incredibly expensive to make, and they have the protector of all protectors in Lorne Michaels. It does seem like it’s managed to kind of float above when so many other things have kind of fallen, that SNL has just managed to hang on to what they’ve had. I think everybody, including Lorne, would say that when he’s not there, it won’t be the same, and who knows when or how that happens.”
Neville adds, “Nothing can last forever. So, I don’t know how the story is going to end, but it’s kind of a miracle that it’s still doing what it’s always done as well as it’s always done.”
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