Latest / Kvetch & Release / LIVE FROM NEW YORK it's 50 years of Saturday Night Live!
Transcript
- 0:17Speaker 1: Gert Bergan, it's funny day, Yeah, Nan, is it Buggingham?
- 0:29Speaker 2: We're gonna have to cut us out.
- 0:30Speaker 3: Well, loty freaking god. Hey, we're back. John Lydkee here
- 0:37Speaker 3: on a M eight hundred CKLW eleven thirty six. Can
- 0:41Speaker 3: you believe Starday It Live turning fifty? I can't believe
- 0:48Speaker 3: that I'm being a kid trying to stay up way
- 0:51Speaker 3: past my bed time live from New York. It's Saturday Night.
- 0:55Speaker 3: Guaranteed that there would be some laughs in there. Looking back,
- 0:58Speaker 3: I realized I did not get the vast majority of
- 1:02Speaker 3: the jokes that we're being told. Even today, there are
- 1:05Speaker 3: some skits that I'll come across where I go, Oh,
- 1:10Speaker 3: that's what that one was about. Colonel Angus comes to
- 1:15Speaker 3: mind right now, quite frankly, was one that I absolutely
- 1:18Speaker 3: had no clue what that was. Joining me in studio
- 1:21Speaker 3: right now to chat about Saturday It Live, the fact
- 1:26Speaker 3: that it is fifty years old soon. Ryan Richardson You
- 1:31Speaker 3: hear him often on The Damn McDonald show, on Our
- 1:33Speaker 3: Round Tables. Host of the Go Tell Someone Podcast. Ryan Richardson, Ryan,
- 1:38Speaker 3: how you doing.
- 1:38Speaker 2: I'm doing great?
- 1:39Speaker 3: How are you doing really well? Thank you? I'm so glad.
- 1:41Speaker 4: I'm a little nervous. And what we're going head to
- 1:43Speaker 4: head talking about SATA right live is.
- 1:46Speaker 3: It's okay, it's all in jestin good fun here no,
- 1:49Speaker 3: but there's no there's no points. It's like the whose
- 1:51Speaker 3: line is it? Anyway of conversations, So there's no winner,
- 1:54Speaker 3: there's no score. It's all good. We'll see what happens.
- 1:57Speaker 3: Listen starting a live fifty. It needs to be celebrated.
- 2:01Speaker 3: It's an institution, it's a cultural landmark. If you will,
- 2:05Speaker 3: do you have a favorite skip a favorite sketch? That's
- 2:08Speaker 3: like asking your favorite kid.
- 2:10Speaker 4: There is a really good sketch that it took me
- 2:12Speaker 4: a while to find. It's actually Nicholas Cage when he hosted,
- 2:15Speaker 4: and it was I think right after he won the Oscar,
- 2:17Speaker 4: and it's it's a he and his wife are trying
- 2:20Speaker 4: to think of baby names and they couldn't think of
- 2:23Speaker 4: the Every John Oh, I gotta go to the Johnt.
- 2:26Speaker 4: But like every it just got more and more absurd
- 2:28Speaker 4: as it kept going, and and by the end you
- 2:31Speaker 4: understand why he's so particularly he's got a particularly funny name,
- 2:35Speaker 4: although he doesn't think it's that funny. I don't want
- 2:37Speaker 4: to ruin it, but it is on our site. Like
- 2:38Speaker 4: we've put the actual sketch on our site because it
- 2:42Speaker 4: is super obscure and very hard to find. But that
- 2:44Speaker 4: that was that was a really good one. Just trying
- 2:46Speaker 4: to name your baby and just thinking of every terrible
- 2:49Speaker 4: name that they could be made fun of and all
- 2:50Speaker 4: that kind of stuff.
- 2:51Speaker 2: And yeah, so second.
- 2:54Speaker 3: One SNL fifty dot com is that website you have
- 2:57Speaker 3: experience celebrating programs that have made a cultural mark, that
- 3:05Speaker 3: have left a lasting legacy. I think of twenty four, right, yes,
- 3:10Speaker 3: and you put together an incredible series of events and
- 3:15Speaker 3: they had an incredible panel. It all led up to
- 3:18Speaker 3: a incredible guest star.
- 3:20Speaker 4: We had a live event with Kiefer Sutherland who also
- 3:23Speaker 4: hosted Eston ellwan Point And yeah, we had about fifty
- 3:27Speaker 4: cast members from the TV show twenty four. We did
- 3:30Speaker 4: podcast leading up to a live event, and then we
- 3:32Speaker 4: did a full on live event at It's available on
- 3:36Speaker 4: YouTube if you just googled twenty years of twenty four.
- 3:38Speaker 4: It's all on YouTube. And we had about fifty little
- 3:41Speaker 4: over fifty people from the show. We had about four
- 3:43Speaker 4: hundred households around the world that were all tuning in.
- 3:46Speaker 4: It was very stress inducing, but it was so much fun.
- 3:49Speaker 4: It was so much fun.
- 3:50Speaker 3: So fifty years of Saturday Night Live SNL fifty. I
- 3:55Speaker 3: mean I could ask you, like, why are you doing this?
- 3:57Speaker 3: I don't have to ask that question. It's pretty clear
- 3:59Speaker 3: the the cultural date is there. What impact would you
- 4:04Speaker 3: say that signent Live has had. It's it's immense. I
- 4:07Speaker 3: could start putting together the list, but I'd rather hear
- 4:09Speaker 3: what you have to say.
- 4:09Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it's sometimes it's better than watching the
- 4:11Speaker 4: news because like you get you get the news stories,
- 4:14Speaker 4: but filter through. Comedians are really good at portraying telling
- 4:19Speaker 4: us kind of what's really going on or you know,
- 4:21Speaker 4: there's that that satirical side where you can say, hey,
- 4:24Speaker 4: this is happening in the world, but we see what's
- 4:26Speaker 4: really going on, or they can speculate, but it allows
- 4:29Speaker 4: us to laugh a little bit. The first thing I
- 4:31Speaker 4: think of was was great for a Monday morning, but
- 4:34Speaker 4: nine to eleven right the the they were right in
- 4:37Speaker 4: the middle of everything. And when SNL came back, that
- 4:41Speaker 4: was when the mayor used to have respect. But two
- 4:45Speaker 4: different people now, but that at that time the mayor
- 4:48Speaker 4: had a lot of respect and he came out on
- 4:50Speaker 4: the show with firefighters and and it was a whole,
- 4:53Speaker 4: very respectful return to let's get back to normal, let's
- 4:57Speaker 4: get back to you know, we've had this horrible tre
- 5:00Speaker 4: but Saturn Live was literally the center of getting back
- 5:04Speaker 4: to laughing about things, because I remember for a week
- 5:06Speaker 4: or two people were like, can we laugh at anything yet?
- 5:08Speaker 2: Right now?
- 5:09Speaker 4: This is terrible, But it was really part of the healing,
- 5:12Speaker 4: you know, twenty three years ago. So there's so many
- 5:15Speaker 4: things that there's a cultural touchstone, you know, you think
- 5:17Speaker 4: of like Hans and Franz, you know, when they made
- 5:20Speaker 4: fun of a Saturday of Arnold Schwarzenegger. There's so many
- 5:24Speaker 4: different things that have happened. I mean the rise of
- 5:26Speaker 4: Will Ferrell, of Keenan Thompson, who's been on the show
- 5:29Speaker 4: since I think since the beginning, Like it's unbelievable that
- 5:33Speaker 4: the cherioh Terry Kristin Wigg. There's so many people that
- 5:37Speaker 4: have come out of the show that have really taken off.
- 5:39Speaker 4: I think Louren Michaels, who's Canadian by the way, when
- 5:42Speaker 4: he started the show, he was really smart to latch
- 5:44Speaker 4: onto Steve Martin because Steve Martin was really at the
- 5:47Speaker 4: height of his stand up career and doing arenas and stadiums.
- 5:51Speaker 4: But Steve Martin was a big part of that. He
- 5:53Speaker 4: was never actually a cast member, but he was a
- 5:55Speaker 4: big part of getting that show going because people wanted
- 5:58Speaker 4: to see Steve Martin didn't know anybody else on the cast,
- 6:01Speaker 4: but he was really smart and kind of getting Steve
- 6:02Speaker 4: Martin to be a big a part of that. And
- 6:04Speaker 4: Steve Martin's just just a comedic genius.
- 6:06Speaker 2: You know.
- 6:06Speaker 3: The beginning episodes, the beginning seasons of the show are
- 6:09Speaker 3: very different than what it's like now. It's very polished
- 6:12Speaker 3: and obviously things are different because of social media, so
- 6:15Speaker 3: things are being produced with that as a lens. I
- 6:18Speaker 3: don't know if we could ever see another King Tut
- 6:22Speaker 3: produced again, and quite frankly, because that is like, it's
- 6:26Speaker 3: got the element of comedy in it. I mean, Steve
- 6:28Speaker 3: Martin in that role is just so over the top
- 6:31Speaker 3: and just his facial gestures. But it's also you know,
- 6:34Speaker 3: it's a damn good song too, quite frankly, and that
- 6:37Speaker 3: has to do with the fact that the Starate Live
- 6:40Speaker 3: Band is such a big part of things.
- 6:42Speaker 4: I posted a clip today and I didn't even realize
- 6:45Speaker 4: until watching it today that it's our nineteen seventy nine clips.
- 6:48Speaker 4: So every day we're posting a clip for every year.
- 6:50Speaker 4: Our campaign is, it's a kickstarter campaign at SNL fifty
- 6:53Speaker 4: dot com, and every day is a different clip, but chronologically,
- 6:58Speaker 4: so we started with nineteen seventy five, we posted nineteen
- 7:00Speaker 4: seventy nine, and we'll keep posting a different clip from
- 7:03Speaker 4: each year of the show, so fifty years and fifty days.
- 7:06Speaker 4: But I posted one and Paul Schaeffer is in it
- 7:08Speaker 4: from David Letterman's band, and I was like, oh, yeah,
- 7:10Speaker 4: that's right. He was a part of the SNL band
- 7:13Speaker 4: and part of that whole crew from day one. Another Canadian,
- 7:16Speaker 4: you know, like in many ways Saturday Life is as
- 7:19Speaker 4: much Canadian as it is an American show. Even though
- 7:22Speaker 4: it was live from New York, it could.
- 7:23Speaker 3: Have been live from Windsor, Toronto.
- 7:25Speaker 2: Well I prefer that's fair. You know.
- 7:28Speaker 3: My parents brought in Tom Bones Malone to Blues Fest
- 7:33Speaker 3: a number of years ago and I got to go
- 7:35Speaker 3: pick him up at the airport and talked his year
- 7:37Speaker 3: off driving back to Windsor quite frankly, and he played
- 7:40Speaker 3: trombone in the sign It live band, but also in
- 7:44Speaker 3: the Blues Brothers band and the stories just about how
- 7:48Speaker 3: the Blues Brothers got on air, and it was something
- 7:51Speaker 3: that Lauren was just not interested in, didn't think it
- 7:54Speaker 3: was funny. And then it was oh, we're running short
- 7:59Speaker 3: on time, get the two of them on stage right now,
- 8:02Speaker 3: go do that, and then that turned into the cultural
- 8:05Speaker 3: icon of the Blues Brothers. This is the thing sign
- 8:08Speaker 3: it live is, it's it's a birthing studio for some
- 8:12Speaker 3: of the funniest things and some of the biggest cultural
- 8:17Speaker 3: pieces of culture that we have.
- 8:18Speaker 4: My goodness, Church Lady, you know Target Late, like all
- 8:21Speaker 4: those all those sketches, it's it's amazing. One of the
- 8:25Speaker 4: things that really the reason we want to even do
- 8:27Speaker 4: this is because it's the only really live show that
- 8:31Speaker 4: runs by the seat.
- 8:32Speaker 2: Of its pants every single week.
- 8:33Speaker 4: Even though it's timed and you said it's much more
- 8:35Speaker 4: polished now, it's still there's sketches get cut, Like during
- 8:39Speaker 4: the show they go, oh, we're running out of time.
- 8:41Speaker 4: We got to get rid of when Ryan Gosling was
- 8:43Speaker 4: laughing during every sketch it actually extended, you know, like
- 8:46Speaker 4: it had there were sketches had to be cut because
- 8:49Speaker 4: he couldn't stop laughing and it knocked off the time schedule.
- 8:53Speaker 3: Right. Oh well, I mean, if we're talking about how
- 8:55Speaker 3: laughter or maybe even applause can cause for things to
- 8:59Speaker 3: get delayed, anybody who watched the Joe Biden's speech at
- 9:03Speaker 3: the DNC last week would know a lot about that
- 9:07Speaker 3: because it went an extra hour and a half, maybe
- 9:10Speaker 3: seven hours. It felt like joining the in studio. Ryan Richardson,
- 9:13Speaker 3: host of the Go Tell Someone podcast. He did twenty
- 9:16Speaker 3: years of twenty four podcast. He's now doing SNL fifty.
- 9:21Speaker 3: You can check it out SNL fifty dot com. Got
- 9:24Speaker 3: us go fund me there, Ryan, what's this podcast going
- 9:27Speaker 3: to look like? When I when I start a new podcast,
- 9:30Speaker 3: I want to have an idea of what I'm getting
- 9:32Speaker 3: into because if it's just going to be listening to,
- 9:34Speaker 3: you know, just clips of it on end, I can
- 9:37Speaker 3: just watch star It Live.
- 9:37Speaker 2: You can go on YouTube.
- 9:38Speaker 3: Yeah that, So what is this we're going to talk about?
- 9:42Speaker 4: Where there's there are eight different eras of Saturday Live
- 9:45Speaker 4: that have been identified. I'm gonna I might go by
- 9:47Speaker 4: that list. I might go every.
- 9:48Speaker 3: Five years, each won the Golden Era, each won the
- 9:50Speaker 3: Golden Era.
- 9:51Speaker 4: Now, well, the Robert Downey era is one of them,
- 9:53Speaker 4: and that's that actually has an era of its own,
- 9:55Speaker 4: the Robert Downey Junior. I mean, we can talk about that.
- 9:58Speaker 4: I mean, he's he didn't do well in sa No,
- 10:00Speaker 4: but he's iron Man now, right, even that a breakout.
- 10:04Speaker 4: But we're going to talk about the different eras of
- 10:06Speaker 4: Saturday Life. One of the things we're going to spend
- 10:08Speaker 4: time on and some of the rewards on our Kickstarter
- 10:11Speaker 4: is access to Spotify lists. We're doing a decade, We're
- 10:15Speaker 4: doing five decades of musical guests. I mean, if you
- 10:17Speaker 4: look at the list of people who it's easier to
- 10:19Speaker 4: name people who didn't play Saturday Live, to be honest,
- 10:22Speaker 4: because you've got the birth of the White Stripes.
- 10:25Speaker 2: You've got Dave Grohl that has been on that show.
- 10:27Speaker 2: I think it's fourteen fourteen times. He's been on the show.
- 10:30Speaker 4: Once with Tom Petty, Wow with Nirvana, with Foo Fighters
- 10:35Speaker 4: like anythink cricket Vultures, like it's insane, Like he's played
- 10:39Speaker 4: that show so many times. So we'll talk about the
- 10:41Speaker 4: musical guests. You know, we'll talk about Shnead O'Connor at
- 10:44Speaker 4: some point for sure. That's definitely gonna come up. But
- 10:46Speaker 4: there's so much history fifty years. There's one hundred and
- 10:49Speaker 4: sixty four cast members that have been through. We're reaching
- 10:52Speaker 4: out to them, starting to set up interviews with some
- 10:54Speaker 4: of the people that were part of the cast, part
- 10:56Speaker 4: of the crew. We want to talk to the musicians.
- 10:58Speaker 4: If you have ever been I'm putting out there. If
- 11:00Speaker 4: you've ever been to a live taping of Saturday and
- 11:02Speaker 4: Live and you want to talk about it, we would
- 11:04Speaker 4: love to have you on the podcast to talk about
- 11:06Speaker 4: what that experience is.
- 11:07Speaker 2: I've never been there.
- 11:08Speaker 3: Can you try to get Wally the que card guy?
- 11:10Speaker 4: Oh?
- 11:10Speaker 3: Yeah, that'd be great deal.
- 11:12Speaker 4: Wally would be great, but I don't think I don't
- 11:13Speaker 4: think it'd be good for a podcast because.
- 11:14Speaker 3: Because he would just be there holding up the que cards,
- 11:17Speaker 3: you can't hear it.
- 11:18Speaker 2: Give me the questions to ask would be great, you know.
- 11:20Speaker 3: Speaking of Wally, he's also the Q card guy on
- 11:24Speaker 3: Late Night with Seth Myers, and I was mentioning to
- 11:27Speaker 3: you during the pandemic, he was selling off personalized que
- 11:30Speaker 3: cards smart side Hustle. Let me tell you, I really
- 11:33Speaker 3: regret not buying one of those when I had the chance.
- 11:35Speaker 3: Forty nine ninety nine. It should have done, should have
- 11:37Speaker 3: done it absolutely Late Night with Seth Meyers, specifically, the
- 11:42Speaker 3: segment A Closer Look happens twice a week. It's where
- 11:47Speaker 3: I get my most enjoyable news. I agree it is.
- 11:52Speaker 3: I wouldn't say it's a direct result of Saturday Night Live,
- 11:55Speaker 3: but Seth Myers was a host of Weekend Update Satura.
- 11:59Speaker 3: Eyeing the news. There is something about when you deal
- 12:04Speaker 3: with news in a comedy setting, you have to cut
- 12:07Speaker 3: away all the fat. There's no room for anything that
- 12:11Speaker 3: isn't supposed to be there for the joke because you
- 12:13Speaker 3: have to do so much of a setup. And I
- 12:16Speaker 3: think that's where the integrity of it comes in. Is
- 12:19Speaker 3: you have people that you want the punchline to land,
- 12:23Speaker 3: so they need to understand how we get along this
- 12:26Speaker 3: little journey to the punchline. When I watch Fox News
- 12:31Speaker 3: or watch which is not often, but I do, I dabble,
- 12:34Speaker 3: as you will. Not an aficionado, but I like you
- 12:36Speaker 3: like to try a little bit of different thing. Sometimes
- 12:38Speaker 3: I like to try a red, sometimes I'll try white.
- 12:41Speaker 3: If you put on MSNBC, they've got their own perspective
- 12:45Speaker 3: and they each decide to cut out a little bit
- 12:48Speaker 3: of stuff along the way to get to where they want.
- 12:51Speaker 3: It's not like that when it comes to comedy. With comedy,
- 12:54Speaker 3: you've got to treat the audience with integrity, which is
- 12:57Speaker 3: what makes it such an interesting way to tell the news. Yeah,
- 13:00Speaker 3: with the jokes. What do you think about this? And
- 13:02Speaker 3: how it's SNL has changed how we view news.
- 13:06Speaker 4: It's interesting because like a lot of times that people
- 13:08Speaker 4: point to, uh, you know Kevin Dennis Miller, and I'll say, oh,
- 13:12Speaker 4: Dennis Miller was the greatest at the at that or
- 13:15Speaker 4: at doing the news their news segment, which has always been.
- 13:18Speaker 2: A part of the show.
- 13:19Speaker 4: But really I really like Kevin Nealon, who is just
- 13:22Speaker 4: actually in Detroit on the weekend. Uh, when you put
- 13:25Speaker 4: on from Saturay and Live and you're doing stand up,
- 13:28Speaker 4: people are gonna come out regardless, right. But the one
- 13:30Speaker 4: I love and the one that I'm so grateful I
- 13:32Speaker 4: got to meet was Norm McDonald.
- 13:34Speaker 2: Yes, again, he didn't care.
- 13:36Speaker 4: About the punchline and and that's why he didn't last
- 13:39Speaker 4: That's why he was unceremoniously walked out the door. But
- 13:43Speaker 4: he got more leverage out of that happening. But Norm McDonald,
- 13:46Speaker 4: when he said, when you talking about the news, Norm
- 13:48Speaker 4: McDonald was really good at tackling the news or O. J.
- 13:51Speaker 4: Simpson tackling see what I did there, And he didn't
- 13:55Speaker 4: care if the audience was with him or not. And
- 13:58Speaker 4: I think that's the most fearly way to be. Andy
- 14:00Speaker 4: Coffin was another person like that, whereas like he would
- 14:03Speaker 4: do stuff and he knew it was funny in his head.
- 14:05Speaker 4: And sometimes it takes years for us to get, Like
- 14:07Speaker 4: you said, the joke the punchline that you get ten
- 14:10Speaker 4: years later and you.
- 14:11Speaker 2: Go, oh, I get it, Norm McDonald.
- 14:13Speaker 4: If you go on YouTube and just watch Norm McDonald
- 14:16Speaker 4: news clips, you can watch hours of him just brilliant
- 14:19Speaker 4: and not everything's getting a laugh, which is great.
- 14:22Speaker 3: My favorite one, and i'll butcher it right now, is
- 14:25Speaker 3: OJ Simpson is at the trial and the prosecution steps
- 14:30Speaker 3: forward and says, what you see here in my hand
- 14:33Speaker 3: is the hat that OJ Simpson was wearing at the
- 14:36Speaker 3: time of the murder, to which OJ Simpson stands up
- 14:38Speaker 3: and says, hey, be careful with that. That's my lucky
- 14:40Speaker 3: stabbing hat.
- 14:42Speaker 2: That is that is a Norm McDonald original. For sure.
- 14:45Speaker 2: I think we're gonna have one episode just about Norm
- 14:47Speaker 2: I don't.
- 14:48Speaker 3: See how you couldn't. Yeah, he got fired for those
- 14:52Speaker 3: jokes relentless, and it's because OJ Simpson was a good
- 14:56Speaker 3: friend of the president of TARNT of NBC at the time.
- 15:00Speaker 3: It goes to show like surn Ight Live was this
- 15:03Speaker 3: weird place where, yes, there were repercussions, but you could
- 15:08Speaker 3: still do it right.
- 15:09Speaker 2: Yeah it was live.
- 15:10Speaker 3: Right, what are you going to run into the studio
- 15:12Speaker 3: and turn the light SnSe She tore up a picture
- 15:16Speaker 3: of the Pope.
- 15:16Speaker 2: That was live. You can't.
- 15:18Speaker 4: You can't undo that or unsee that. She's surprised. Lauren
- 15:21Speaker 4: apparently was extremely upset. But we're still talking about that,
- 15:25Speaker 4: you know, twenty years later, twenty five years later, we
- 15:27Speaker 4: still talking about norms jokes.
- 15:28Speaker 3: And it didn't tear down the show.
- 15:30Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no.
- 15:31Speaker 3: The show's still there.
- 15:32Speaker 4: The most recent one was the Beabs and Buttead cameo
- 15:34Speaker 4: like that. If you can get into the zeitgeist and
- 15:37Speaker 4: people are talking about it a week later, you you've
- 15:38Speaker 4: already been.
- 15:39Speaker 3: Your successful, especially in our social media that we're in
- 15:42Speaker 3: right now. Well, you can check out SNL fifty dot com,
- 15:46Speaker 3: got to go fund me there. They've got a great
- 15:49Speaker 3: podcast that's going to be coming out, Ryan Richardson, I
- 15:51Speaker 3: can't wait to tune in anything that you go and
- 15:54Speaker 3: produce and you put your mind to, it's going to
- 15:56Speaker 3: be above and beyond the average caliber of stuff that's
- 15:59Speaker 3: out there.
- 15:59Speaker 2: So people, thanks for your vote of confidence.
- 16:01Speaker 3: Oh absolutely people can look forward to that. Head to
- 16:04Speaker 3: s n L fifty dot com if you are interested.