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Yahoo
16-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Tom Hanks ‘storms out' of SNL 50th anniversary concert
Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson 'stormed out' of a Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary event in a comedic bit that had the audience in stitches. The Hollywood couple left their seats and headed to the back of the auditorium when host Jimmy Fallon told the audience that the three-hour SNL concert would not be handing out any awards. Fallon said: 'Apparently, there's been some confusion. This is just a concert. We're not giving out any awards tonight. So I just want to make sure that everyone knows that.' At this stage, in a clip that's circulated online, both Hanks and Wilson could be seen jokingly walking out of the Radio City Music Hall venue in New York, with Wilson wagging her finger at the camera. 'Tom? Rita?' Fallon said, playing along, adding: 'We lost Tom Hanks and Rita. Sorry. It wasn't their fault.' Over the years, Hanks has hosted SNL 10 times through the years and made numerous cameos, most recently in December 2024. This has comfortably earned him a spot in the Five-Timers Club club, reserved for stars who have hosted the show five times or more. Other members include Bill Murray, Drew Barrymore, Melissa McCarthy and Dwayne Johnson. The star-studded event saw several key figures from the history of SNL grace the stage, with former cast members Amy Poehler, Eddie Murphy, Molly Shannon, Kristen Wiig, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Maya Rudolph, Pete Davison and Tracy Morgan all participating. Elsewhere, Tina Fey, Will Forte, Kate McKinnon, Andy Sandberg, Seth Meyers, Kenan Thompson, Jason Sudeikis, Fred Armisen and Chris Rock also made appearances – but the omission of Bill Hader was not lost on the sketch show's fans, who begged for the Barry actor to return. The special also features celebrities who have previously graced the stage as guest hosts. These included Adam Driver, Ayo Edebiri, Dave Chappelle, John Mulaney, Kim Kardashian, Martin Short, Miley Cyrus, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Pedro Pascal, Peyton Manning, Quinta Brunson, Robert De Niro, Sabrina Carpenter, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Martin, Tom Hanks and Woody Harrelson. The first Saturday Night Live cast was known as the Not Ready for Prime Time Players and consisted of Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Laraine Newman, Dan Aykroyd, Garrett Morris and Jane Curtin. Radner and Belushi have since died. Aykroyd's absence from the list of returning cast members was unclear, though he posted enthusiastically about the 50th anniversary on social media last week. As part of its anniversary celebration, Peacock is streaming a four-part documentary series, SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, about the show.
Yahoo
15-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
A Half-Century of ‘Saturday Night'
Lorne Michaels once said that the best cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live was the one from when you, the viewer, were in high school. At the risk of contradicting the man who created and has helmed the show for most of its 50-year history, I'll note this is plainly incorrect. The show was uneven during my high-school tenure, beginning with the departure of SNL all-timer Will Ferrell and ending just as the Lonely Island was catapulting SNL into the digital video era. It wasn't always bad, but it wasn't nearly as great as the show had been or would be again. Not only was I not in high school during the greatest cast, I was not quite yet born when the show's golden era began. The single best run for SNL—and this is indisputable scientific fact—was from 1986 to 1993. This just so happens to coincide with the tenure of Dana Carvey, and in his host monologue back in 2011, Carvey said so directly, his tongue making only the slightest gesture toward his cheek: ''86 to '93 was the beeeest.' He was right. That time was the closest the show came to fully realizing Michaels' vision for SNL: as a proving ground for unknown but brilliant comedic talent to deliver a live comedy show for and about television. From '86 to '93, all the pieces were there. Michaels had near-total creative control, an absolute murderer's row of comedy writers, and a cast of professional comic performers that included Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, and, later, Mike Myers, and Chris Farley. And it was a time when television had matured into a medium ripe for parody. More than any other period, the show's writers and stars were tuned into what all of America was watching. That meant, for SNL, network news and MTV, aging late-night talk shows and cheesy daytime talk shows, game shows and soap operas and local-access and mail-order advertising and public television and sports talk and holiday specials and much, much more. This era wasn't anti-establishment and revolutionary like the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players. It created no singular stars like Eddie Murphy or Will Ferrell. But more than any other time in the show's history, it consistently delivered the thrill of live comedy to a TV audience watching comfortably at home. This was made more clear to me after watching the final episode of Peacock's new four-part docuseries, SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, just one of the many parts of NBC's PR apparatus promoting the 50th anniversary of SNL in 2025. This episode focuses on the weird, interesting failure of the show's 11th season, the year before Carvey and company began. It is almost as if the show, and Lorne Michaels, needed a season where most things crashed and burned to be reminded of how SNL could shine. Michaels, having left the show after the 1979-1980 season along with the remainder of the original cast for a mixture of creative and business reasons, came back in 1985 to an SNL that had been under the dominion of executive producer Dick Ebersol since 1981. Ebersol had seen ratings success, anchored first by Eddie Murphy and later by Billy Crystal, Martin Short, and Christopher Guest. But upon his return, Michaels revamped the entire cast and brought back writers from the original era like Jim Downey, Al Franken, and Tom Davis to run the day-to-day of SNL. It was a disaster. The cast was a bad mishmash of established actors with little experience in live comedy and up-and-coming comedians. The writers had little rapport with the cast members, which made it difficult to fully harness their comedic talent. Sketches were sometimes tonally dark or cruel, often overly complicated and dull, and rarely ever, you know, funny. It's no surprise that the few bright spots—Jon Lovitz's and Nora Dunn's fully realized characters, or Dennis Miller's smartass takes on the news for the 'Weekend Update' segment—came from the cast's actual professional comedians. Those three were also the only survivors of the post-season purge, after which Michaels got his second second chance to build his version of SNL. The new cast in 1986 were all pros, veterans of either the booming stand-up circuit or the L.A. sketch-comedy outfit the Groundlings. The writers—including all-time great Robert Smigel, George Meyer, Bonnie and Terry Turner, and Christine Zander—now had reliable partners with whom to build characters and performance on top of the written sketch. And for Michaels, it was a rediscovery of what had made the first five years of SNL such a special, lightning-in-a-bottle experience. And now, he was professionalizing it. The first sketch of the first show of the 12th season demonstrates how much Michaels had figured out the puzzle. Carvey and Hooks played contestants on a game show called 'Quiz Masters' with Hartman as the host. The actors look at ease as they embody their very specific characters: Hartman as the smarmy TV emcee, Hooks as her dowdy midwesterner Marge Keister, and Carvey as an excitable nerd. All the character details are already getting warm, hearty laughs from in the studio before the comedic premise is revealed: Carvey is a professional psychic and is answering the questions before an increasingly amazed Hartman can even ask them. The biggest laugh, however, goes to the straight woman Hooks, who deadpans, 'I don't think this is fair, he's a psychic.' The story goes that in the middle of the sketch, Jim Downey, the longtime writer and producer for the show, turned to Smigel as they watched offstage and gave his relieved assessment: 'The audience feels safe.' SNL succeeds when the audience at home experiences something both familiar and unpredictable. Broadcast television is supposed to be safe—after all, we allow it into our homes, we watch it with our families. We expect it to be there when we need it, like water at the sink or the light switch, and simple to stop when we're done. But comedy can and should feel dangerous. It defies our conventions and tears apart our order and exposes something we all know but don't feel brave enough to talk about. Live comedy is messy, full of tension and chaotic release. We laugh as a physical response to something that's funny, but it's not that far from screaming. That contradiction is what fueled Michaels and the original SNL team 50 years ago: a new generation of comics who grew up knowing television and tapping into the revolutionary impulse to blow it all up. It's perceived as a crutch that to this day the show so often returns to the wells of game shows and talk shows for its sketches, but lampooning TV is in the DNA of SNL. You can see that in the commercial parodies and the mainstay 'Weekend Update' segment that parodies the self-serious news broadcast. The audience is laughing at the absurdity of blue jeans with a third leg. This comedic idea is packaged in a recognizable TV commercial format, which is itself funny because we've all noticed all those silly things they do in ads these days. It's a funny-familiar feedback loop. It's true that there were plenty of duds, misfires, and just-plain-bad sketches during this time—just watch anything from the 1991 Steven Seagal-hosted episode. And despite the unending stream of classic characters and sketches—the Church Lady, Master Thespian, Wayne's World, Opera Man, Hans and Franz, the Richmeister, the McLaughlin Group, Pat, the Chippendale's dancers, Bill Swerski's Super Fans, Mr. Subliminal, the Sweeney Sisters, Toonces the Driving Cat, the Hollywood Minute, Sprockets—there are 43 additional seasons of the show that all have more than their share of brilliance. But what about going forward? The show is as much a relic as it is an institution for a country that has abandoned live TV for everything but sports. I can't recall the last time I tuned in on a Saturday night to catch the show, and I'm likely to see SNL the next morning through clips on YouTube, selecting the ones that look appealing and worth my time. It's unclear what catchphrases or characters are really breaking through to the broader culture the way the show once defined young Americans' comedy language. It's not impossible—my kids were in tears watching last year's sketch about getting 'Jumanji-ed' and still quote from it today—but with the audience for new comedy much more likely to find it on social media, a slickly produced network show's attempts to reflect this new medium always seem to fall short, coming across as a clunky parody or pastiche. Simply put, TikTok doesn't directly translate to television. We're losing our shared experience of TV and, with it, the reason for Saturday Night Live to really exist. There was once a thrill at the idea that on any Saturday night, a hilarious, outlandish, unpredictable moment might happen in real time, broadcast to the entire country, watchable on the same TV set on which your parents watched the weather report. But anyone with a phone and an internet connection can go live at any time, or post short-form comedy videos as quickly as they can make them on platforms over which the creators have much more control. Can SNL, the expensive product of a major media company with 50 years of legacy behind it, keep adapting to this world? Even if it doesn't, we'll always have '86 to '93.
The Independent
15-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Tom Hanks ‘storms out' of SNL 50th anniversary concert after Jimmy Fallon ‘confusion'
Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson 'stormed out' of a Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary event in a comedic bit that had the audience in stitches. The Hollywood couple left their seats and headed to the back of the auditorium when host Jimmy Fallon told the audience that the three-hour SNL concert would not be handing out any awards. Fallon said: 'Apparently, there's been some confusion. This is just a concert. We're not giving out any awards tonight. So I just want to make sure that everyone knows that.' At this stage, in a clip that's circulated online, both Hanks and Wilson could be seen jokingly walking out of the Radio City Music Hall venue in New York, with Wilson wagging her finger at the camera. 'Tom? Rita?' Fallon said, playing along, adding: 'We lost Tom Hanks and Rita. Sorry. It wasn't their fault.' Over the years, Hanks has hosted SNL 10 times through the years and made numerous cameos, most recently in December 2024. This has comfortably earned him a spot in the Five-Timers Club club, reserved for stars who have hosted the show five times or more. Other members include Bill Murray, Drew Barrymore, Melissa McCarthy and Dwayne Johnson. The star-studded event saw several key figures from the history of SNL grace the stage, with former cast members Amy Poehler, Eddie Murphy, Molly Shannon, Kristen Wiig, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Maya Rudolph, Pete Davison and Tracy Morgan all participating. Elsewhere, Tina Fey, Will Forte, Kate McKinnon, Andy Sandberg, Seth Meyers, Kenan Thompson, Jason Sudeikis, Fred Armisen and Chris Rock also made appearances – but the omission of Bill Hader was not lost on the sketch show's fans, who begged for the Barry actor to return. The special also features celebrities who have previously graced the stage as guest hosts. These included Adam Driver, Ayo Edebiri, Dave Chappelle, John Mulaney, Kim Kardashian, Martin Short, Miley Cyrus, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Pedro Pascal, Peyton Manning, Quinta Brunson, Robert De Niro, Sabrina Carpenter, Scarlett Johansson Steve Martin, Tom Hanks and Woody Harrelson. The first Saturday Night Live cast was known as the Not Ready for Prime Time Players and consisted of Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Laraine Newman, Dan Aykroyd, Garrett Morris and Jane Curtin. Radner and Belushi have since died. Aykroyd's absence from the list of returning cast members was unclear, though he posted enthusiastically about the 50th anniversary on social media last week. As part of its anniversary celebration, Peacock is streaming a four-part documentary series, SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, about the show.
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
At 50, 'Saturday Night Live' celebrates its past as a comedy icon — and wonders about its future
NEW YORK (AP) — Tune into the Oct. 11, 1975 premiere episode of 'Saturday Night Live' — then without 'live' in its name — and you may be instantly surprised at some of the bones of the show that are still intact today. There's the cold open skit, featuring cast members John Belushi and Michael O'Donoghue. At its end, Chevy Chase gingerly walks by the prone bodies of the two actors, playing dead, for the very first call of 'Live from New York, it's Saturday night!' NBC is rebroadcasting that episode Saturday, part of a feast of 50th anniversary programming that includes a three-hour special on Sunday reuniting dozens of past cast members and friends and a homecoming concert from Radio City Music Hall being livestreamed Friday night on Peacock. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. The original cast surely would have mocked the display of showbiz excess, much like the actors in last year's fictional backstage depiction of opening night in the movie 'Saturday Night' couldn't hide their disgust at Hollywood legend Milton Berle. Not ready for prime time? Hardly Back then, they were known as the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. Success has long since made a mockery of that name. Among viewers under age 50, the late-night show is more popular than anything NBC airs in so-called prime time, and that doesn't even reflect the way many people experience it now, through highlight clips online. 'Saturday Night Live' is the engine of comedy, minting generations of stars from Belushi to Bill Murray to Eddie Murphy to Adam Sandler to Will Ferrell to Amy Poehler to Kristen Wiig to Kate McKinnon to Bowen Yang. It launched movie franchises too numerous to mention, and NBC's late-night comedy lineup of Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers traces its lineage to 'SNL.' It's still the first place people turn when they want to make comedic sense of current affairs. At its center, then and now, is the inscrutable figure of Lorne Michaels, the executive producer who was 30 during that first season and turned 80 last fall — on a show night, naturally. Michaels left 'SNL' for five years and, upon his return in 1985, hit upon the formula that guaranteed its continued relevance. He recognized, as author Susan Morrison writes in the biography 'Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live,' due to be released Tuesday, that 'just about every person who has ever watched SNL believes that its funniest years were the ones when they were in high school.' That means constantly moving forward, always adding new blood, even being ruthless about it. That means trusting young writers to keep the cultural references relevant, and invent new ones. That means booking musical acts that Michaels and his good friend, singer Paul Simon, probably haven't heard of but his people tell him are on the cutting edge. It's not perfect. It never was. 'The history of the show reads like an EKG,' said James Andrew Miller, co-author with Tom Shales of the 2002 book, 'Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live.' 'There are fantastic years, there are growing years, there are years to make you carsick, there are years to make you wonder if it should still be going on.' Substitute the word 'shows' for 'years' in that quote, and it still makes sense. Creating viral moments before 'viral' was a thing 'Saturday Night Live' is often — usually — wildly uneven. But it produced viral moments before the internet existed. Garrett Morris' news for the hard of hearing, Murphy's irascible Gumby, 'Lazy Sunday,' the cowbell sketch, Tina Fey's impersonation of Sarah Palin: The memories alone produce laughs. The duds, the ideas that never took off or hosts who couldn't rise to the challenge fade away. Or maybe they're the price of genius. It can be easy to lose sight of how hard this actually is, said Bill Carter, veteran chronicler of television comedy and author of 'The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, and the Network Battle for the Night.' A 90-minute program is written from scratch every week, sets are constructed in a New York office building, hosts of various degrees of talent accommodated. Ready or not, the show must go on Saturday at 11:30 p.m. The clock is unforgiving. 'It's a different creative enterprise, every show,' Carter said. 'That's why it is good and bad, but it's also why it's exciting ... 'Live,' that is the essential feature of the show. You know when you are watching that it is actually happening in New York City right now.' Only so much polish is possible. Someone may flub a line, or get the giggles. Sinéad O'Connor may rip up a picture of the pope, or Ashlee Simpson's lip-sync might fail. 'Saturday Night Live' has leaned more into its history in recent years. Alumni make frequent reappearances, and spotting unbilled cameos has become sport. The Five-Timers Club of guest hosts, while a joke, treads the line of smugness. It may seem like a franchise with no foreseeable conclusion, and is even built for that. Michaels will have more to say about that than anyone. The backstage boss is also the longest-running on-screen character; his appearance as a straight man to then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on the first show after the Sept. 11 attacks is one of 'SNL's' most poignant moments. 'Can we be funny?' Michaels asked. Replied Giuliani: 'Why start now?' How long will Lorne Michaels stay with the show? Observers say Michaels has stepped back a bit, relying more on the capable team that he's built. There's no indication that his eye for spotting talent has diminished. Those who have seen it say that his most fearsome skill — making a series of instant decisions between the show's dress rehearsal and performance, shortening or lengthening skits, moving and changing them to produce the broadcast viewers see — is flourishing. The years leading up to the 50th anniversary have been filled with speculation that this will be when he steps down, talk he's even fueled himself in the past. But he hasn't discussed it, or even given interviews surrounding the festivities. The subject is the focus of 'After Lorne,' a new piece in New York magazine, where author Reeves Wiedeman describes Michaels as a man of mystery, sometimes an intimidating force, to those around the show. Whoever replaces him — names like Fey, Meyers and Colin Jost have been mentioned — would likely face crushing pressure. At a time when broadcast television is fading, NBC would be sorely tempted to cut costs around the program in a way they haven't with Michaels in charge, Miller said. If the 50th anniversary were to trigger his exit, Carter said that likely would be known by now. 'It's his life,' he said. 'Why would you walk away from your life if you don't have to? This was a special, unique thing that he created, and if you enjoy doing it, which I think he still does and can do it, I don't see any reason he should leave.' Someday, that time will come. In the meantime, enjoy the show. ___ David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at and
The Independent
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
At 50, 'Saturday Night Live' celebrates its past as a comedy icon — and wonders about its future
Tune into the Oct. 11, 1975 premiere episode of 'Saturday Night Live' — then without 'live' in its name — and you may be instantly surprised at some of the bones of the show that are still intact today. There's the cold open skit, featuring cast members John Belushi and Michael O'Donoghue. At its end, Chevy Chase gingerly walks by the prone bodies of the two actors, playing dead, for the very first call of 'Live from New York, it's Saturday night!' NBC is rebroadcasting that episode Saturday, part of a feast of 50th anniversary programming that includes a three-hour special on Sunday reuniting dozens of past cast members and friends and a homecoming concert from Radio City Music Hall being livestreamed Friday night on Peacock. The original cast surely would have mocked the display of showbiz excess, much like the actors in last year's fictional backstage depiction of opening night in the movie 'Saturday Night' couldn't hide their disgust at Hollywood legend Milton Berle. Not ready for prime time? Hardly Back then, they were known as the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. Success has long since made a mockery of that name. Among viewers under age 50, the late-night show is more popular than anything NBC airs in so-called prime time, and that doesn't even reflect the way many people experience it now, through highlight clips online. 'Saturday Night Live' is the engine of comedy, minting generations of stars from Belushi to Bill Murray to Eddie Murphy to Adam Sandler to Will Ferrell to Amy Poehler to Kristen Wiig to Kate McKinnon to Bowen Yang. It launched movie franchises too numerous to mention, and NBC's late-night comedy lineup of Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers traces its lineage to 'SNL.' It's still the first place people turn when they want to make comedic sense of current affairs. At its center, then and now, is the inscrutable figure of Lorne Michaels, the executive producer who was 30 during that first season and turned 80 last fall — on a show night, naturally. Michaels left 'SNL' for five years and, upon his return in 1985, hit upon the formula that guaranteed its continued relevance. He recognized, as author Susan Morrison writes in the biography 'Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live,' due to be released Tuesday, that 'just about every person who has ever watched SNL believes that its funniest years were the ones when they were in high school.' That means constantly moving forward, always adding new blood, even being ruthless about it. That means trusting young writers to keep the cultural references relevant, and invent new ones. That means booking musical acts that Michaels and his good friend, singer Paul Simon, probably haven't heard of but his people tell him are on the cutting edge. It's not perfect. It never was. 'The history of the show reads like an EKG,' said James Andrew Miller, co-author with Tom Shales of the 2002 book, 'Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live.' 'There are fantastic years, there are growing years, there are years to make you carsick, there are years to make you wonder if it should still be going on.' Substitute the word 'shows' for 'years' in that quote, and it still makes sense. Creating viral moments before 'viral' was a thing 'Saturday Night Live' is often — usually — wildly uneven. But it produced viral moments before the internet existed. Garrett Morris' news for the hard of hearing, Murphy's irascible Gumby, 'Lazy Sunday,' the cowbell sketch, Tina Fey's impersonation of Sarah Palin: The memories alone produce laughs. The duds, the ideas that never took off or hosts who couldn't rise to the challenge fade away. Or maybe they're the price of genius. It can be easy to lose sight of how hard this actually is, said Bill Carter, veteran chronicler of television comedy and author of 'The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, and the Network Battle for the Night.' A 90-minute program is written from scratch every week, sets are constructed in a New York office building, hosts of various degrees of talent accommodated. Ready or not, the show must go on Saturday at 11:30 p.m. The clock is unforgiving. 'It's a different creative enterprise, every show,' Carter said. 'That's why it is good and bad, but it's also why it's exciting ... 'Live,' that is the essential feature of the show. You know when you are watching that it is actually happening in New York City right now.' Only so much polish is possible. Someone may flub a line, or get the giggles. Sinéad O'Connor may rip up a picture of the pope, or Ashlee Simpson's lip-sync might fail. 'Saturday Night Live' has leaned more into its history in recent years. Alumni make frequent reappearances, and spotting unbilled cameos has become sport. The Five-Timers Club of guest hosts, while a joke, treads the line of smugness. It may seem like a franchise with no foreseeable conclusion, and is even built for that. Michaels will have more to say about that than anyone. The backstage boss is also the longest-running on-screen character; his appearance as a straight man to then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on the first show after the Sept. 11 attacks is one of 'SNL's' most poignant moments. 'Can we be funny?' Michaels asked. Replied Giuliani: 'Why start now?' How long will Lorne Michaels stay with the show? Observers say Michaels has stepped back a bit, relying more on the capable team that he's built. There's no indication that his eye for spotting talent has diminished. Those who have seen it say that his most fearsome skill — making a series of instant decisions between the show's dress rehearsal and performance, shortening or lengthening skits, moving and changing them to produce the broadcast viewers see — is flourishing. The years leading up to the 50th anniversary have been filled with speculation that this will be when he steps down, talk he's even fueled himself in the past. But he hasn't discussed it, or even given interviews surrounding the festivities. The subject is the focus of 'After Lorne,' a new piece in New York magazine, where author Reeves Wiedeman describes Michaels as a man of mystery, sometimes an intimidating force, to those around the show. Whoever replaces him — names like Fey, Meyers and Colin Jost have been mentioned — would likely face crushing pressure. At a time when broadcast television is fading, NBC would be sorely tempted to cut costs around the program in a way they haven't with Michaels in charge, Miller said. If the 50th anniversary were to trigger his exit, Carter said that likely would be known by now. 'It's his life,' he said. 'Why would you walk away from your life if you don't have to? This was a special, unique thing that he created, and if you enjoy doing it, which I think he still does and can do it, I don't see any reason he should leave.' Someday, that time will come. In the meantime, enjoy the show. ___
