Re: SNL General Discussion Thread
 

If IMDb and Wikipedia are to be believed, the comedy act of Cheech and Chong appeared just six times on TV between 1972 and 1982, on various variety shows.

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Cheech & Chong's dope humor probably didn't fly much in the 1970s and early 1980s, so their appearances on television would probably be few and far between, though they might have been better suited for late night. Not sure if they ever appeared on Johnny Carson.

I don't think SNL did a lot of drug humor in the 1970s and 1980s, though behind the scenes everyone was snorting up white lines like those alien pilots in Heavy Metal. I've been watching Fridays reruns on Tubi, and it seems like about half of their skits involved drugs. Which was pretty edgy for the early years of the Reagan presidency.

Re: SNL General Discussion Thread
 

^They never appeared on any network late night talk show until 2018.

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Okay, funny extended Chalamet promo for this week's show :

X - Formerly Twitter

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Has Jon Lovitz ever hosted SNL?

Maybe he is not super popular now but back in the day he was hilarious.

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His act now is both stand-up comedy and straight singing, so he could be host and MG

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Oh, I forgot he died

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What year did he host?

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I could certainly go for another outing of "Tales of Ribaldry"

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I don't think we'll get many former cast members as host this season (only Martin Short has hosted this season so far). They will all be there for the SNL50 celebration.

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I thought we would get Will Ferrell to promote his new movie with Reese Witherspoon, but it's premiering on Prime next week.

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I guess they are off on Feb 1 and or Feb 8?

Maybe they have to go on a longer break to prepare for the 50th show though usually they have a show the night before the Super Bowl.

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Future SNL musical performer? :lol:

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I’m scrolling on Peacock and see this ad. Seriously, who is Yang fucking? Of all the many many other talented people on this show (or should I say, people with talent), he gets chosen!?

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/dvdtalk...fd9da5496.jpeg

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I look at that picture of 3 SNL stars and I see a Black woman, and gay Asian man, and a White woman. Seems pretty clear what the point is.

Also, this is not me telling you that you have to like Bowen Yang. This is not me telling you that I like Bowen Yang. But certainly you are aware by now that there are A LOT of people who LOVE Bowen Yang.

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The 3 hr SNL Music special was pretty good but did they really need to spend so much time on Vanilla Ice in that opening mashup?

It was interesting to hear the stories about Rage Against the Machine and how they were not happy with Steve Forbes though he looks harmless compared to Trump and how they were kicked out of the building and not in the closing goodbyes.

Had no idea Kanye West did a diatribe after the show in 2020 and the other cast members were pissed.

Never heard of the band Fear but that was interesting and cool to see David Bowie perform Man Who Sold the World.

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I was out on Monday night so I DVR'd it. I'm about halfway through it, hope to finish it tonight. I haven't gotten to Fear yet, but I knew they'd be featured since I saw singer Lee Ving's name in the opening credits. (BTW, for you who are not fans of the band, he also had an acting career. He was Mr. Boddy in Clue, the sleazy club owner in Flashdance, Willem Defoe's main henchman in Streets of Fire, etc). It's funny, I remember the Fear performance and wondered what the hell it was. I wasn't a fan of punk rock yet, especially hardcore punk like Fear plays. Later on, Fear became one of my favorite bands, and I still listen to them occasionally.

I think what I liked most (so far) is the behind-the-scenes footage. The making of the Dick in a Box video (especially Maya Rudolph laughing hysterically through most of it....It must have been a lot of takes before they finally got the serious one they needed), the rehearsal footage of Billie Eilish. I'm looking forward to finishing it.

One band I know is upset about their exclusion from the doc is Fishbone, but to be fair, as I was watching it, I was mentally compiling a list of bands I've seen live that have played on SNL, and it completely slipped my mind that Fishbone had performed on the show.

The Paul Simon "Still Crazy After All These Years" performance still made me laugh. Also saw the clip of him and George Harrison, and wondered if there will ever again be any great performances of older favorite musicians joining up. I mean, yeah, they do it now with a lot of the hip-hop artists and that certainly counts, I'm more referring to bringing back some musicians popular in the 80s and 90s and seeing a reunion of sorts. And they've done it in the past with not just Simon/Harrison, but even in the "down" 80s years, when Rod Stewart was the musical guest he had Tina Turner come out for "Hot Legs". Man, something like that again would be great.

And I also kinda got an answer to my biggest complaint about SNL musical guests, the way the performance is often enhanced with video tricks. Apparently Lorne does not want the MG just playing their song like I would prefer, because as far back as Devo he was employing video enhancement to the performance. I disagree with that, but at least I do see why it's the way it is now.

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Did they mention Fish Heads?

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Not in the first half, I'll let you know if it's in the back nine.

The other thing I didn't know, although I probably could have found this on Wikipedia had I bothered to research it, The Blues Brothers were an off-shoot of the Killer Bees sketch. Apparently Belushi hated the bit and the costume, but was able to work in a musical bit where the Bees performed the old blues song "King Bee" (I've heard the Rolling Stones version several times on Little Steven's Underground Garage), but for all intents and purposes it was already the Blues Brothers. Then the part I already knew, the show came up 5 minutes short one night and Belushi and Ackroyd just performed Soul Man as Jake and Elwood to finish out the slot.

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Belushi and Ackroyd used to perform blues numbers for the cast at post-show parties before they created the characters for the stage

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Love the Fear appearance! Belushi was really into the punk scene (he even played drums with the Dead Boys at CBGBs in 1978) and had Fear record a song for the Neighbors soundtrack but it was rejected by the producers. To make it up to them, John convinced Lorne to have them as a musical guest on SNL (I'm guessing that Lorne did so in hopes that Belushi would someday return the favor and appear on the show). Belushi brought a bunch of hardcore kids from DC to have in the audience to make it more authentic (including then current and future members of Minor Threat and The Cro-Mags) and chaos ensued. Lorne was not happy with the results, but it was amazing that they were on the show at all. :lol:

Here's an article about it:

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/john-belushi-fear-snl/

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I'd imagine that about 3/4 of SNL bits are something the actors do at parties and get-togethers.

Like I read that Chris Farley and David Spade used to share a room or office or something. Spade would write material, and Farley would just joke around. One of his favorite things to do was take Spade's jacket and squeeze into it, singing "Fat guy....in a little coat", and we all know what happened with that.

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I enjoyed this. Personally would have liked to see a few minutes on The Clash, though I get if the performance itself was not significant to the show's history then it may not warrant a discussion. The editing for the opening sequence was great, as was the decision to take time to show us some uninterrupted performances.

I used to think huge artists were bigger than SNL, and maybe they treat it like a formality like a late night talk show appearance. But this explained with the live element how even they can get nervous and excited.

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It was 3 hrs but probably 90 minutes or 2hr with all the ads which they could have used that time to show more music clips.

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Watched the second half last night. In the second half, they go into the more "controversial" performances, like Elvis Costello, Fear, Sinead O'Connor, Rage Against the Machine, and Ashlee Simpson. (By the way, I never noticed, or knew why the drummer from Elvis' band had a shirt that said "Thanks Malc" on it; it's because the musical guest was supposed to be the Sex Pistols, but they had their infamous blow-up just prior to the show. I guess I now know who the drummer thinks broke up the band). It might have been nice to include some of the performers who went on visibly intoxicated, but that might have been too embarrassing for the bands. I'm thinking of The Go-Go's and The Replacements specifically. Although they did include a little bit about Miles Davis' performance, and Cypress Hill lighting one up on stage, so who knows?

Nice to have them show clips of The Decline of Western Civilization, just in case anyone didn't know what a Fear performance was like. By the way, they showed other clips of Fear performing "I Don't Care About You", without the mosh pit. I'm guessing that was from dress rehearsal?

While a lot of the Sinead segment went to the obvious clips of her performing "War" and tearing up the Pope's photo, they also showed her 1990 appearance. Don't know what song it was, but it looked energetic as hell. People tend to forget that behind the seriousness and protests, Sinead O'Connor could rock out when she wanted to. I know it; the other day I was dragging my ass to work, and "Mandinka" came on the radio and totally got my blood pumping.

Like Jeff, I wished that they had included longer clips of the artists playing. One I had forgotten about was Elvis Costello performing "The Other Side of Summer". I don't know what had happened, but he put a million times more life into that performance of the song than what is on the record. That version should be a single somewhere (another that falls into that category, not included in the doc, was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers performing "The Waiting" back in the 80s. Look that one up. Tom just came out with a 12-string, doing an acoustic performance of it on a dark stage, except the band was there for the "Hey-yays", then when the guitar solo kicks in, the stage lights up and the whole band starts playing. Best version of the song ever)

Also would have been nice for them to mention Queen's appearance, their last performance ever in the United States. I know it was controversial because Freddie had had an argument with a lover the night before and had totally lost his voice, but still went on anyway. And like Bluetoast mentioned, more on The Clash. Specifically, what the hell happened or was supposed to happen when Joe Strummer brought out the boom box in the middle of "Should I Stay or Should I Go"