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There's been so, so many really, really funny, funny sketches on Saturday Night Live over the years. So, so many. So many memorable recurring characters that have made their way into the collective, cultural consciousness of our great nation (and the world). So many memorable catchphrases and slang that have enter into our common lexicon. The influence of SNL is so pervasive that you can only think the worst of a person who is unfamiliar with, or unenamored with the show. Shame on them. I've heard it said that the ability to grasp the program's twisted humor is a good gauge of a person's overall intelligence. Of course, like The Simpsons, many of the program's writers are Ivy League graduates. Proving that it does take a large degree of smarts to write comedy this infantile. LOL.
So, which sketches/skits stick out in your mind as being some of the BEST that the program has delivered over it's 30someodd years?
When Chevy Chase interviewed Richard Pryor.
This one is so funny!!!!!!!!!
It's called Di*k in a box
The following link is the censored version, the uncensored version is right above it..
http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Li...html#mea=51523
I love "Child Psychologist", with Laraine Newman as the little girl psychologist, Gilda as the autistic kid named Colleen, and Murray/Curtin as Colleen's parents.
Schmitt's Gay beer ad!
The Festrunk Brothers!
Olympia Diner skits (Cheeburgeh, cheeburgeh, cheeburgeh, cheep, no Coke, Pepsi!).
...there are more.
Cargo of diamonds as you are: nothing more valuable, nothing more tough.
She's an equal opportunity offender, a societal wildcard. You can't control her, only hope to contain her, even then she refuses to be possessed. If she were a coin, you would spend her, unwillingly. If she were an animal, you'd free her to the wilderness.
Re: What's Your Favourite SNL Sketch/Skit?
Miles Cowperthwaite (both chapters)
The Roman Vomitorium
Julia Child's Cut
Palin dumping real food into that fish tank
Donatella Versace with Elton John
Shprockets!
I loved Julia Louis-Dreyfus spitting coffee on everybody, too. Especially if you didn't get along with your cast!
Originally Posted by BillGuitar
Massive Headwound Harry
Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood
Bill Murray's lounge singer bit ("Staaaaar WARS...nothing but STAAAAR WARS...")
Samurai anything.
Mr. Bill
Leonard Pinth-Garnell's Bad series (Bad Ballet, etc.)
The "Don't Look Back In Anger" short (in which Belushi is the only SNL member left living...and he dances on the graves of the rest of the cast).
Church Lady.
The Smurfette Show (modeled after the Anna Nicole show)..."My smurf itches!'
...there are still more...
Cargo of diamonds as you are: nothing more valuable, nothing more tough.
She's an equal opportunity offender, a societal wildcard. You can't control her, only hope to contain her, even then she refuses to be possessed. If she were a coin, you would spend her, unwillingly. If she were an animal, you'd free her to the wilderness.
You mean the job interview, right? Where they do word association which quickly devolves into Chevy Chase calmly uttering antiquated racial epithets, which Pryor responds to by increasingly angrily shouting back equally antiquated epithets. That was brilliant!
A few of my other favorites:
Dueling Brandos, with Belushi doing Vito Corleone and I believe it was Dennis Hopper as the Brando character from The Wild Ones.
Dueling Joe Cockers, with Belushi and the real Joe Cocker dueting.
Lorne Michaels offering The Beatles $3,000 to appear on SNL
George Harrison griping about how chintzy it was that NBC was only willing to pay him $750 to appear on the show (then doing the "From New York City, IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT" bit when informed that the person who does that gets an extra $100 or whatever it was)
Aykroyd as Jimmy Carter, talking someone on a bad acid trip down, over the phone. "You're going to be very dehydrated, so take some vitamin C, some vitamin B complex. Do you have any Allman Brothers Band? Put it on, relax, and remember you are a creature on this planet and that you'll be alright".
Aykroyd as a DJ operating, simutaneously, both an AM and an FM station, with a totally different persona for each. The AM character is really cheery and playing stuff like Tony Orlando, while the FM character is supposed to be stoned, sort of slurring and almost hissinghis words..."OKaaaay, if you were at the Grateful Dead show last right, you know just how I feeeeel. Noooooow it's time for some Black Sabbath".
Belushi as the (unfortunately ironic) as an elderly man, the last survivor of the Not Ready For Prime Time Players. "Poor Danny, the police clocked him doing 87 before he hit that wall" (apparently, Aykroyd really was into motorcycles and driving fast...it's been said that Elwood Blues' driving habits were sort of based on his own vehicular tendencies).
Of course the Olympia Diner:
Robert Klein: Can I get two eggs over easy?
Belushi: No eggs, you have cheeseburger!
Klein: It's too early in the morning for a cheeseburger!
Belushi: Too early for cheeseburger? (points to each table in successsion) Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger...
(Aykroyd, thinking Belushi is calling out an order starts throwing burger patties on the grill)
Klein: OK! I'll have a cheeseburger!
Belushi (calling out order): CHEESEBURGER!
Aykroyd: No more cheeseburger!
Belushi: OK, you have eggs!
Klein: I want them over easy...
Belushi: No you have scrambled. What do you want to drink
Klein: Can I get a Coke.
Belushi: No Coke! You have Pepsi!
Then there was the Citizen Cane sequel, where it turns out that Cain actually asked not just for Rosebud, but also Henri (the French guy who worked at his newspaper)...except it's revealed in the flashback that he favored roast beef on rye sandwiches, and apparently, his last words were actually him asking for a roast beef on rye.
The Untouchables parody, with, I think, Desi Arnaz Sr as a mobster who orders his men to kill the narrator, who they find hiding behind a stack of boxes in their warehouse hideout. Oh, and Aykroyd dead perfect impression of Robert Stack as Elliott Ness.
There was also a Spanish game show skit, with Bill Murray has the host, and I believe Ricky Nelson was one of the contestants.
Murray: ΏQuiιn es mαs machista: Lorenzo Lamas, o Lloyd Bridges?
Nelson (bewildered): Uh...Lloyd Bridges?
Murray: No, Lorenzo Lamas es muy macho!
Then the game show gets raided by Elliot Ness (still played by Aykroyd) and the Untouchables for employing cheap illegal alien work.
Oh, and the Navy recruitment commercial, showing sailors doing the kind of typical daily work that never gets shown in such TV commercials, things like cleaning toilets, painting the side of the ship, working in the motor pool, etc. Finally, the voice over at the end:
"THE NAVY! IT'S NOT JUST AN ADVENTURE! IT'S NINETY SEVEN DOLLARS AND 47 CENTS A MONTH!"
I also recall an ad for a gizmo that you use to take your place at a funeral. It's basically a little speaker that makes crying noises. They had different models for different ethnicities:
Irish ("We hardly had a chance to know ya, Johnny boy!")
Jewish ("We thought Uncle Hymie would be the first to go!")
Italian (I believe that was a mafioso vowing revenge on his brother's death or something like that)
and so on.
Oh, and the Coneheads skit with Richard Dreyfuss as Roy Neary (his character from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind), who builds a giant mountain in his living room, but "It's not quite right", until he slaps on the pointed top. When he sees a report about Devil's Tower on the TV, he thinks for a second, looks at the mountain, then dismisses the connection. But then he sees an ad for Beldar's driving school, sees Beldar's cone, and realizes, he has to seek out the Conehead family.
I also recall a Coneheads skit, where Connie says she's attending "a concert by the contemporary music group known as Peter Frampton", and Beldar scoffs at that "so called music".
"I've been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand"-Ian Curtis
www.myspace.com/kohntarkosz
http://www.spreaker.com/show/the_chris_richards_show
"Nothing is impossible! If it can be dreamed, it can done, hence the 20 foot jackal staring at you right now!"-Theodore Roosevelt
- Theodoric of York
- Phil Hartman as Frank Sinatra
- Phil Hartman as anyone else
- Phil Hartman as Phil Hartman
So many have already been mentioned, but here's some more:
West Germany's Most Disturbing Home Videos (with Mike Meyers as Dieter)
Frank Zappa's A Night on FREAK Mountain (with John Belushi as Windowpane)
Roseanne Rosannadanna ("A Mr. Richard Fader from Fr. Wayne New Jersey asks...")
"Jane, you ignorant slut" (particularly the abortion debate)
Dan Akroyd as the sleazy amusement park operator (our favorite ride we got coming up here, the Tunnel of Noxious Gas)
Happy Fun Ball
James Brown's Celebrity Hot Tub
Ask President Carter
How Does She Do It? She Takes Speed!
Deep Thoughts ("Isn't it sad that so many families are torn apart by something so simple as wild dogs?")
"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and dammit, people LIKE me!"
Emily LaTilla ("What's all this fuss about endangered feces?")
Buckwheat Sings!
The Coneheads ("Mimpse! Mimpse!")
The Coneheads on Family Feud -
Name a famous holiday!
...the Moons Of Meepzorp!...
(cue the buzzer)
(cue Beldar's buzzer impression)
Name something you eat!
...organically inactive substance between two starch planes...
Can we see sandwich?
...and as everyone else has said, there are so many more...
(thanks for tripping the mnemonic circuitry over on Coneheads, Tim!)
The Night Watch
"Jungle bunny"
"Honky"
"Spade"
"Honky honky"
"Nigger"
"DEAD honky!"
I mentioned this one above.
"What time did you take the acid?"
"I don't know, I can't read my watch."
"What did the pills look like?"
"Orange."
"Were they barrel shaped?"
"Um, yeah."
"Dude, you took some Orange Sunshine."
Wait a second, there was more than one Olympia Diner skit? I only remember the one with Robert Klein trying to order eggs for breakfast.
As for the Samurai skits, his name was Futaba.
One of my favorite Samurai Futaba skits probably was Samurai Divorce Court, with Jane Curtain as the soon to be ex-Mrs Futaba. They divided everything equally, but chopping it half. Child custody is apparently is decided in a similiar fashion, with the apparent intention of Futaba to slice his daughter in half, using the katana, naturally.
I think it was Samurai Tailor where Buck Henry asks him to break a five dollar bill for him, so he whips out his katana and demolishes the counter in the attempt to do so. And I seem to recall one where he was a butcher who used the katana to slice meat (Samurai Delicatessan, perhaps?).
One of the times Frank Zappa was on the show, Belushi joined him during a performance, as the Samurai Jazz Musician.
And there was also a skit with, I think, Aykroyd, Murray and possibly Belushi playing Ricardo Maltaban, Lorenzo Lamas and Cesar Romero. Not only could nobody tell which was which, neither could they..."Even we don't know which of is Maltaban, which is Lamas, and which is Romero" or something like that.
"I've been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand"-Ian Curtis
www.myspace.com/kohntarkosz
http://www.spreaker.com/show/the_chris_richards_show
"Nothing is impossible! If it can be dreamed, it can done, hence the 20 foot jackal staring at you right now!"-Theodore Roosevelt
My favorite samurai skit was Samurai Night Fever.
...some of the faux ads were abolutely priceless...
First time I ever saw the show they 'fished me in' so seriously, LOL...
The 'ad' was for "Epoxydent".
Scenario - family around the picnic table, eating corn on the cob. As we watch, Grandpa's dentures suddenly fall into the bowl in front of him and roll about a little. Some more informed member of the family tells him how much he needs new Epoxydent...
...the ad ends with a helicopter descending hanging a cable from it, at the end of which is a bit for Gramps to latch onto with his newly Epoxydented chompers...
...it lifts him off into the sunset to the words ---
"Epoxydent! You'll never NEED another denture cream!"
I watched at least half of this ad not knowing I was being majorly spoofed...incredulously, thinking, "Commercials really are getting more and more crass!"
(which of course has since come true!)
Last edited by allpurechance; 03-07-2008 at 01:35 AM. Reason: I have ADD- the word, though, is 'ad', LOL...
The Night Watch
...and then there was Farley auditioning for Chippendales...
The Night Watch
Oh, and I forgot the H&L Brock adds, with Belushi as Lowell Brock, a somewhat ammoral tax specialist.
"I'm here with more of 50 reasons why you should let me, Lowell Brock, do your taxes:
Reason #12: We take the time!
We take the time to carefully go over your receipts for the past year, carefully noting all deductions and making sure you're getting the best possible refund. Why do we take the time?
Reason #13: We have the time!
Most people don't have time to worry about other people's taxes, but we do. Why do we have the time?
Reason #14: We're doing time!
We're doing time, for tax evasion, attempted bribery of IRS officials, and other crimes too numerous to mention"
He then walks up to the bars of the jail cell he's in (which up til then, has looked like a typical TV set that you see in things like H&R Block commercials) and starts calling for the guard. When the guard shows up, they start discussing the guard's tax work.
And I forgot the American Express ad, with Garrett Morris as Reuben "Hurricane" Carter, behind bars, where he notes his career as a boxer, then adds "And I've been imprisoned for a crime I didn't commit, but people still don't always recognize. That's why I carry the American Express card, and I if I ever get out of this place, I'll use it in restaurants, hotels, and shops all over the world".
"I've been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand"-Ian Curtis
www.myspace.com/kohntarkosz
http://www.spreaker.com/show/the_chris_richards_show
"Nothing is impossible! If it can be dreamed, it can done, hence the 20 foot jackal staring at you right now!"-Theodore Roosevelt
How about Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo doing Stevie Wonder and Frank Sinatra, singing "Ebony & Ivory"?
[EM] I am black, and you are whiiiiiite
[JP] You are blind as a bat and I have sight
Side by side you are my amigo, negro,
Let's not fiiiiiiiiight ..
Then of course there's the great Farley/McCartney sketch ... "Um ... that was .. a hoax, right?"
"Yeah Chris, I'm not really dead."
Remember when Chris Farley interviewed Paul McCartney?
....that was awesome!
<= My 1998 solo album: Field of View/the zoa factor - http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/fieldofview
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