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Saturday Night Live (SNL) is a weekly late-night ninety-minute live comedy-variety show which has been broadcast every Saturday night on the American NBC network since 1975.
Each week, the show's cast is joined by a guest host and a musical act, forming a repertory company for the week. SNL's ever-changing cast list is a veritable 'Who's Who' of comedy and includes some of the biggest stars of the last 30 years, including John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Pamela Stephenson, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Martin Short, Dana Carvey, Mike Myers and Chris Farley.
The show usually follows a standard format. It opens with a sketch known as the 'cold intro', which begins without any announcement or titles, often features a political parody and always ends with someone saying "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!", and the segue into the opening credits. Next is the opening monologue, often followed by a TV commercial parody. The rest of the show consists of more comedy skits, the news parody segment Weekend Update, and one or (typically) two performances by the guest musical act. Some sketches feature recurring characters, running gags, and celebrity impersonations.
In 1974, NBC Tonight Show host Johnny Carson wanted the weekend broadcasts of "Best of Carson" to end. To fill the gap, the network drew up some ideas for new shows, and decided to bring in young Canadian producer, Lorne Michaels. He was given studio 8H, which was built in the 1930s for performances by Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra.
The original concept was for a comedy-variety show featuring young comedians, live musical performances, short films by Albert Brooks, and more esoteric material like segments by Jim Henson featuring his Muppets. Rather than have one permanent host Michaels elected to have a different guest host each week.
When the first show aired on October 11, 1975, with George Carlin as its host, it was called NBC's Saturday Night, because ABC featured a program at the same time titled "Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell." When the ABC program went off the air, the NBC program changed its name to Saturday Night Live.
The original (1975-1980) repertory company was called the Not Ready for Prime-Time Players; this was a reference to Cosell's show, which featured "The Primetime Players," a group which included future SNL cast member Bill Murray.
From Lorne Michaels down, SNL has had strong links to Canada, and often draws new cast members from the Canadian comedy scene -- particularly the famous Second City troupe, and more recently, cult Canadian TV comedies Kids In The Hall and Upright Citizens Brigade -- as well as the Los Angeles comedy group The Groundlings.
The first cast included Second City alum Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, and Garrett Morris. Bill Murray replaced Chase in 1977, after Chase left to pursue a movie career. Current Letterman music director Paul Shaffer was the musical director for the show from 1975 to 1980 and also appeared in many sketches.
Other regulars on the show included writer Al Franken, who later became famous as a political author and satirist, and (for the 1979-80 season) Harry Shearer, who later acted in several films and television series, including The Simpsons. The show also featured frequent guest appearances by comedians Steve Martin and Andy Kaufman.
Michaels fought and cajoled network executives to accept his vision for the show, which was far removed from standard variety-show conventions (one executive, visiting a dress rehearsal, noticed that the band was in blue jeans and asked when their tuxedos would arrive). Before the show began Michaels had remarked that he knew what the "ingredients [of SNL] would be, but not the proportions," and that the show would have to "find itself" on-air. Indeed, the Not Ready for Primetime Players were hardly featured in the premiere, but quickly became the focus of the show, with the guest host and musical act playing a seccondary role. Albert Brooks and the Muppets were also dropped after the first season, but short films by writer Tom Schiller continued to be shown under the title "Schiller's Reel," as well as the popular claymation segment Mr. Bill.
By its second season SNL developed into something of a television phenomenon. It was, in many ways, the first show of its kind to appeal to a younger audience, making it very attractive to advertisers. Recurring characters and catch-phrases (see below) soon entered the popular vernacular, and the cast was often described as "The Beatles of comedy." It was also one of America's only mainstream national TV shows that consistently featured topical political satire.
Aykroyd and Belushi departed after the 1978-1979 season and subsequntly found worldwide fame in the movie version of the Blues Brothers sketch. Belushi famously died of drug-related causes not long afterwards. Lorne Michaels quit the show at the end of the fifth season and the rest of the original cast, along with the entire writing staff, followed.
Jean Doumanian took over the show for the 1980 season, hiring a completely new cast and writers . The new show was plagued by problems from the start, and was deemed disastrously unfunny by both critics and the viewing audience. Symbolic of the problems faced by the show, cast member Charles Rocket realized the network's greatest fear when he used the word "fuck" at the close of an episode in early 1981. NBC, which had had enough, fired Doumanian.
It looked as if NBC might cancel the show (indeed, many nights the NBC aired sketch comedy show SCTV in its place), but SNL was given one more chance when Dick Ebersol was hired to replace Doumanian. Ebersol had been involved with the creation of the show, and fired all of the Doumanian cast save Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo. Murphy had rarely been featured during Doumanian's tenure, but became a break-out star under Ebersol, and his popularity helped restore the show's ratings. Ebersol left the show after the 1984-1985 season, at which point Lorne Michaels returned.
The show was in constant flux during the early Eighties, and the cast changed significantly each year between 1981-82 and 1985-86. While some did not manage to especially distinguish themselves on SNL, they were certainly able to move on to bigger and better things. Several very notable names passed through, often staying for only one season. The list includes future Seinfeld star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jim Belushi, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, Rich Hall, Harry Shearer, Martin Short, Pamela Stephenson, Joan Cusack, Robert Downey Jr, Jon Lovitz, Randy Quaid and Damon Wayans.
Murphy and Piscopo left after the 1984-85 season and this was followed by two more decidedly patchy years, but in the late Eighties SNL began to revive and gain renewed popularity, mainly thanks to Michaels' inpsired casting decisions, vastly improved writing (led by Al Franken) and increasingly on-target political satire and TV parodies.
With Michaels back at the helm, a strong new cast was assembled, led by Dana Carvey, Nora Dunn, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Victoria Jackson, Jon Lovitz, Dennis Miller and Kevin Nealon. Although the new lineup contained some of the best female actors since the show's early seasons, there were reportedly some dramatic behind-the-scenes ego battles, and tensions eventually forced some members out -- notably Victoria Jackson, who has since been highly critical of Hooks and especially Dunn, who was romantically involved with Michaels at the time.
A major turning point came with the 1988-89 season and the recruitment of young Canadian comic Mike Myers. He introduced several classic characters such as the Streisand-loving cable chat show hostess 'Linda Richman', and ultra-pretentious German arts show host 'Dieter'. He also formed a strong partnership with Carvey and created one of SNL's most popular and successful recurring sketches, Wayne's World. Under Al Franken's influence, SNL also began to take a much more incisive line in politcal satire and the satirical impersonation of politicians.
The shows in this period featured some of SNL's best loved recurring sketches and characters, including 'Wayne's World' and the Schwarzenegger-like Austrian body-builders Hans and Franz (Carvey and Nealon). Carvey also gained renown for his regular impersonations of then US President George Bush Sr and his scowling, ultra-conservative 'Church Lady' character.
The early Nineties are sometimes referred to as SNL's "Bad Boys" period, with a number of new young male actors coming to the fore. Although some die-hard fans hold the original cast to be the best, many others consider that this early-to-mid 1990s era was one of the consistently strongest and funniest phases in the show's history.
The 1990-91 series showed further improvement and introduced a number of new players who quickly became stars of the show -- Chris Farley, Tim Meadows, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, David Spade and Julia Sweeney. Noted standup comedian Chris Rock also featured for two years. Another significant debut during this time was SNL's first regular black female cast member, Ellen Cleghorne.
Sandler and Farley soon became two of SNL's most popular actors. Farley's surprising grace and high-energy performances belied his heavy footballer build, although he regularly traded on his size for laughs. He idolised John Belushi, and while they shared similar comedic strengths, it soon became tragically apparent that he also had similar personal demons. He left the show in 1995 and although he made a strong start in film and won wide popularity with movies like Tommy Boy (with David Spade) and Beverly Hills Ninja he had begun abusing drugs heavily; on his last SNL appearance as a guest host in 1997, he was bloated, grossly overweight and clearly unwell. He died from a cocaine-opium overdose on December 17 1997, aged only 33.
Sandler, a talented amateur musician, won many fans with the humourous self-penned ditties he performed on Weekend Update (e.g. "Red-Hooded Sweatshirt' and 'Sex Phone Lady'), as well as his famous and popular 'Opera Man' and 'Canteen Boy' characters. In stark contrast to the sad fate of Farley, since leaving SNL Sandler has become one of the world's most successful and popular comedy movie stars, with a string of hits to his credit.
The 1991-92 season introduced satirical animator Robert Smigel, whose "Saturday TV Funhouse" segments have become regular features. They include a number of recurring cartoon segments such as 'Fun With Real Audio' and the hilarious superhero parodies 'The Ambiguously Gay Duo' and 'The X-Presidents'.
The period between 1992 and 1996 saw more important cast changes. 1992-93 was the final season for both Dana Carvey and the long serving Phil Hartman, and 1993-94 saw the arrival of (This Is Spinal Tap star) Michael McKean (1994), Norm MacDonald and Jay Mohr.
The 'generational change' continued in 1994-95 with the arrival of Chris Elliott, Janeane Garofalo, Kids In The Hall alumnus Mark McKinney and Molly Shannon; this series also the last for Chris Farley, Adam Sandler and Kevin Nealon, and saw Norm MacDonald replace Nealon as anchor of Weekend Update.
1995-96 was another milestone year, marking the last season for David Spade, and the debuts of a strong new batch of recruits -- Jim Breuer, Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond, David Koechner, Cheri Oteri, Nancy Walls, Chris Kattan, Colin Quinn and Fred Wolf.
Ferrell, Hammond, Oteri, Shannon and Kattan would become mainstays of the show for the rest of the decade and beyond. The mid-to-late Nineties arguably produced some of SNL's best material in years, performed by one of the strongest and most versatile ensemble cast yet.
Hammond proved to be perhaps the most gifted impressionist SNL had yet seen and he has since built up a fine reportoire of uncanny and hilarious impersonations, including Bill Clinton and Ted Koppel. This period also featured many classic sketches and characters, including the wry public radio parody 'The Delicious Dish' (with Shannon and Ana Gasteyer), 'The Ladies Man' (Tim Meadows), the popular Spartan Cheerleaders (Ferrell and Oteri), Ferrell and Gasteyer's hilariously square husband-and-wife music teachers, Kattan's outrageously campy 'Mango' and Molly Shannon's starstruck, accident-prone Catholic schoolgirl, Mary-Catherine Gallagher.
Hammond's Clinton impersonations were consistently superb and some of his funniest performances were his Presidential movie reviews on Weekend Update, in which the fake Clinton gave enthusiastic reviews to films like Independence Day, purely because the storylines had the President's wife being killed (a dig at the unpopularity of the First Lady).
Ex-Groundling Ana Gasteyer joined for the 1996-97 season, bringing a strong voice and considerable musical skills, as well as creating some memorable parodies, most notably her withering impersonation of home improvement expert Martha Stewart. Also new this year was Tracy Morgan.
This fine ensemble remained substantially unchanged for the 1997-98 and 1998-99 series, although the latter introduced important new cast members Jimmy Fallon, Chris Parnell and Horatio Sanz. Norm MacDonald left the series under a cloud of controversy in 1997 and was replaced by Colin Quinn as anchor of the Update. It was later reported that MacDonald had been sacked due to pressure from a senior NBC executive and it was widely rumoured that the executive -- a close friend of O.J. Simpson, a regular Weekend Update target -- had taken offence at MacDonald's persistent attacks on Simpson and his blatant suggestions that Simpson was guilty of slaying his wife. The executive was reportedly to have asked for MacDonald's removal because he considered the actor "unpopular and unfunny", depsite Norm's regular rapturous reception by the studio audience and Update's consistently being one of the funniest segments in the show.
The 1999-2000 was, sadly, the last for Colin Quinn, Cheri Oteri and Tim Meadows, but it also marked the arrival of two strong new female cast members, Rachel Dratch and Maya Rudolph; Rudolph is the daughter of the late singer Minnie Ripperton and a lifelong friend of actress Gwyneth Paltrow.
Although SNL has an often rapid turnover of supporting players (many of whom have appeared for only one season or less), some performers have had remarkably long tenures with the show. Among the longest serving are the late Phil Hartman, Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond, Tim Meadows, Molly Shannon and Cheri Oteri. Don Pardo has been the main voice-over announcer for the entire 29-years of the show.
The following is a summary of the process used to produce the show. It is based in part on an August 2000 Writer's Digest article and an April 2004 Fresh Air interview with Tina Fey:
The status of the show during the week is maintained on a bulletin board. Sketches and other segments are given labels which are put on index cards and put on the board in the order of their performance. The order is based on content as well as production limitations such as camera placement and performer availability. Segments which have been cut are kept to the side of the board. As the broadcast approaches, often the writer/producer discovers the fate of his or her segment only by consulting the bulletin board.
Over the years SNL has almost always been broadcast live on the east coast, in spite of the expletive spoken by Charles Rocket in 1981. The exceptions were shows hosted by Richard Pryor, Sam Kinison, and Andrew Dice Clay, which were broadcast on a five-second delay.
The following performers have hosted SNL at least five times:
Michael McKean is the only performer to appear as cast member, host, and (as David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap) musical guest. Those appearing as both host and musical guest include:
The most enduring segment is Weekend Update, which has been part of every show (though under varying names during the Doumanian/Ebersol years). Other recurring characters and sketches include:
This is a list of movies based on Saturday Night Live sketches.
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