If only Lorne Michaels and prominent Saturday Night Live alumni could have had a little warning that they’d be doing a 50th anniversary show in 2025. Oh wait…
Michaels has been talking about preparing for the big show since at least 2021, when he told Gayle King at CBS Mornings that he planned to keep his SNL producing duties “until its 50th anniversary, which is in three years.” In other words, he was thinking about the show halfway through Season 47.
But despite years in which to get a few sketches written in advance, old procrastination habits die hard. “There was so much more lead time, but just like our regular show, I’d say 90 percent of it got written in the week leading up to it,” confessed Colin Jost to Variety. “So, it was stressful for six months for everyone.”
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Jost and company had plenty of excuses, none of which stand up to scrutiny. They didn’t know which cast members would show up for SNL 50! They didn’t know if current events would dictate the jokes! They were too busy preparing the weekly show to focus on the anniversary event!
Please. Most every script written for SNL50 was a reprise of a classic older sketch — Dooneese on The Lawrence Welk Show, Black Jeopardy!, Domingo, Close Encounters, a John Mulaney musical and Debbie Downer, to name a handful. Not only could most of these be written in advance, no matter which SNL stars returned, they were half-written already, since the anniversary versions were mostly beat-for-beat repetitions of the already established bits.
Jost insisted it was a tough job, especially writing for the show’s icons. “I found it much more stressful because you didn’t want to let down people who are legends,” he explained.
One star who was particularly intimidating for Jost? Eddie Murphy. “That is who I was most nervous to write for,” he said. Murphy’s style of quietly taking in the comedy concepts didn’t help. “Someone not talking, you read all your worst fears into that person, so when I first presented him with the (Scared Straight) sketch, he was like, ‘I think it’s funny.’ I was waiting for, ‘But I’m not gonna do it.’”
Another aspect that made SNL50 feel like a “by the seat on one’s pants” affair? There was no dress rehearsal. On the one hand, that meant gifted comics were figuring out how to make a sketch work in real time while a live viewing audience watched them struggle. On the other hand, the situation made for spontaneous laughs.
For example, Jost asked Will Ferrell to wear super-short shorts for the Scared Straight sketch, a complete surprise to Murphy and Kenan Thompson, who tried (and failed) to keep a straight face.
Sarah Sherman told Variety that the anniversary show was better without a run-through, since SNL’s regular dress rehearsal is usually “loose” and “the fun version.”
Well, it was definitely loose. And in Jost’s mind, SNL50 had at least one thing going for it — it was funnier than the 40th anniversary show.
Content shared from www.cracked.com.