[STATIC PLAYING]
We're not worthy.
We're on a mission from God.
More cowbell.
Live from New York, it's Saturday night.
This is Saturday Night Live, and it
is known for churning out some of the most iconic and funniest
characters of all time.
Some of these characters became so popular
that they would eventually break out and wind up
starring in their own feature-length film.
And for a while, it felt like this was actually
part of the pathway to success for these performers.
Showing.
However, we haven't really seen an SNL breakout character
in over a decade.
Saturday Night Live is the longest running sketch comedy
program in television history.
Produced by Lorne Michaels, SNL began airing in 1975,
pulling top tier talent from various live comedy venues
and placing them in a prime time slot on NBC that was previously
reserved for reruns of the Johnny Carson Show.
It has since become a tentpole for burgeoning comedic talent
to showcase their abilities alongside some
of the biggest stars from the film, television, and music
industry.
Since its inception, Saturday Night Live
has focused on delivering high-concept sketches that
highlight the performer's ability to morph themselves
into a caricature of someone else
in order to drive the comedy of an individual sketch
during the show's 90-minute runtime.
This is the sound a doggy makes.
[BEEPING]
Mr. Connery.
Moo.
Saturday Night Live has relied on characters
to attract an audience week after week.
These characters were initially extremely
successful with home-viewing audiences.
People were tuning in week after week
to see if they might get a new installment
of their favorite character sketch.
In the beginning, we had The Wild and Crazy Guys,
Irving Mainway, Rosanna Roseannadanna,
and The Lounge Singer.
Slowly but surely, these characters
were becoming household names.
People would quote lines from Saturday Night
Live around the office in the same way
your least favorite uncle does his Borat impression.
Respect is nice.
Borat.
Character was truly king at 30 Rockefeller Plaza
in New York City.
And year after year, an ever-changing roster
of comedians would showcase their chops
for creating hilarious new personas
to keep audiences laughing.
When a character hit with home-viewing audiences,
they seemed to be added to an ongoing rotation of sketches
that would show up with great frequency.
And I can see Russia from my house.
[LAUGHING]
The first character to ever recur on Saturday Night Live
were The Killer Bees in 1975, led
by John Belushi and assorted members of the ensemble.
These characters were never intended to be recurring.
In fact, NBC wanted to cut them after their appearance
in Saturday Night Live's first episode.
According to Lorne Michaels, NBC's only note
for the pilot episode of SNL was "cut The Bees."
NBC and Lorne Michaels had a tense relationship
over the show, primarily due to the studio questioning
every single decision that was being made
during the show's production.
This "cut The Bees" note irritated Lorne Michaels,
so he ended up leaving The Bees in the show
to send a message to the network about who was actually
in charge of the show.
From then on, slowly but surely, more and more characters
began returning week after week.
Bill Murray's Nick The Lounge Singer
would serenade audiences with songs about Star Wars.
Gilda Radner as Rosanna Roseannadanna
would provide audiences with very New York perspectives
on current events.
And on April 22, 1978, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd
debuted two characters who would eventually break out
into the first ever feature-length film
to be based on SNL characters with The Blues Brothers.
Are you the police?
No, ma'am.
We're musicians.
By this time, John Belushi had become a big star
thanks to his role in the 1978 film Animal House,
so greenlighting a film with him at the center of it
was really a no-brainer.
John Belushi and Animal House director John Landis both
wanted to make a Blues Brothers movie,
but there wasn't a script.
So Dan Aykroyd, who at this point
had never written a screenplay before,
wrote down 324 pages worth of story
and handed it off to Universal Pictures who
then tasked John Landis with editing the script
into something usable.
The Blues Brothers ended up becoming a colossal hit,
generating over $57 million at the box office in 1980.
The success of The Blues Brothers
opened a whole realm of possibilities
within the world of Saturday Night Live,
and it seemed to spark a focus shift
within the actual sketches the show was producing.
SNL began moving away from purely zany and wild antics
and towards the creation of something memorable.
The addition of Eddie Murphy in 1980
gave us characters like Velvet Jones and Gumby.
But after that, the show sort of went into a lull.
Nobody was really jumping out of the screen
and grabbing our attention, not even Robert Downey Jr.'s
Suitcase Boy could hold viewer's attention for very long.
I know why whales beach themselves.
Spider Man told me.
This all began to change in the late '80s, early '90s when
SNL brought in a fresh crop of performers
to hopefully bring audiences back to Saturday Nights.
Many members of this generation of the ensemble
would go on to stardom.
Phil Hartman, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, and David Spade,
among others were able to transition
to successful projects from their SNL heyday.
However, none of these performers
would reach the heights that Mike Myers and Dana
Carvey were able to reach with two original characters who
would capture the voice of Generation X in an almost
perfect pastiche of rock culture with Wayne Campbell and Garth
Algar.
Wayne's World was the second film that SNL greenlit,
and it exploded with popularity.
The film ended up grossing over $121 million
and sent Lorne Michaels on a search
to generate similar levels of box office success
with some of SNL's other characters.
The next SNL breakout film was a vehicle for one
of Julia Sweeney's more popular characters
with the release of 1994's It's Pat.
Good old androgynous Pat.
[CHUCKLING]
This film was a complete and total disaster
at the box office.
And to this day, It's Pat has only generated a paltry $60,000
in revenue.
After that, Lorne Michaels produced a film
featuring some radioactive characters
from the 1970s with the release of 1992's Coneheads,
starring SNL alums Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin.
This film didn't make an enormous splash
at the box office either.
1994's Wayne's World 2 failed to do what its predecessor had
done and ended up flopping.
While the film is undoubtedly hysterical,
it came off as being a little too absurd
and it seemed to try a little too hard to pander
to the original film's success.
It was still successful.
It just didn't come anywhere close to making
the impact Wayne's World did.
Al Franken's Stuart Saves His Family failed.
A Night at the Roxbury failed.
Superstar failed.
SNL then tried to recreate the success of The Blues Brothers
with the release of the Blues Brothers 2000.
But without John Belushi's portrayal of Jake Blues,
this film also failed.
The Ladies Man failed.
And despite generating some cult success after its home release,
MacGruber initially failed.
This was back in 2010, and there hasn't really
been an SNL movie released since then.
As time went on, Saturday Night Live's entire vibe
began to change.
The show that was once a seemingly humble platform,
showcasing amazing and otherwise unknown performers,
began to feel really glitzy and glamorous.
Into 2010, Saturday Night Live began slowly pivoting away
from character-based sketches and leaning more on premise
to drive the comedy of their sketches.
SNL has slowly shifted its content
to deliver on the laughs in an incredibly
short amount of time.
Modern SNL sketches tend to run about three or four minutes
long, and this is just not enough time
to introduce or develop funny characters who feel alive.
The characters that do end up making it onto the show
now are pretty much one-note Weekend Update bits
that just sort of heighten the same joke three or four times
and then end somewhat abruptly.
It's football season.
And if you want to nail your date,
you're going to have to tail some gate.
OK?
Sure, there have been a few standouts.
Kate McKinnon's Close Encounter character
pops up every now and then.
Vanessa Bayer and Cecily Strong's Porn Star characters
had a pretty good run as well.
But even so, these characters are only
popping up three or four times.
It's nowhere near the frequency with which SNL
delivered on characters in the years prior.
Instead of creating rich and interesting characters
for an audience to look forward to returning week after week,
they have been forced to generate shorter,
easy-to-follow sketches in hopes of creating
the next viral internet sensation.
The hiring of comedy groups like The Lonely Island,
Good Neighbor, and Please Don't Destroy are all indicative
of this pivot toward creating content geared
toward an online audience.
The goal isn't to create a box office
film centered around a deep exploration
of a comedic character anymore.
Instead, there has been a pivot toward creating
multiple viral video sensations every single week in hopes
of drawing an audience.
From the Weekend Update zingers to the performances
of the musical guests, one can't help
but think about what we might be missing in our refusal
to slow down and explore a little bit before jumping
into the next thing.
[PAGE TEARING]
And that's it for this one, folks.
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below.
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to some of our other videos.
Feel free to click on those if you'd like to stick around.
And, hey, thanks for watching Nerdstalgic.
[MUSIC PLAYING]