Lazy Sunday

This episode is brought to you by Airbnb. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. Hey everybody, it's time to journey back to SNL in the 2000s, where we discussed the digital short era. I'm Seth Meyers and I'm talking to the Lonely Island, which is Akiva Schaffer.

That's quite a song.

What genre of music would you call that? It's like barbershop quartet. Fifties. Jazz.

Jingle.

Jingle.

Yeah, fifties, trying to sell you shaving cream.

Fifties WAP. Not do WAP, but just WAP.

Fifties, WAP.

Yeah, wet ass pee.

I don't say the word. Yes.

Oh, W-A-P.

Yeah, fifties WAP. Fifties WAP.

Yeah, fifties WAP.

The original.

Yeah, that was a much more difficult WAP to get.

Are you referring to WAP in the fifties or current WAP 50 years or older?

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, that's one for the listeners.

I was saying 1950s like milf WAP.

Yeah. Keeves always talking about milf WAP.

Guys, don't give away gold like that on the podcast. We got to make a song.

We got to make the hit song, milf WAP.

Modern era SNLers might be listening to this, and we're just throwing them free shorts.

I do like a song where it keeps adding.

An acronym. Yeah, sure.

So we can cut out me struggling for it if we feel like it. A song that keeps just adding acronyms.

I think we keep it.

I don't want to get to know the real you.

I feel good that I eventually did get the right word.

You did and nobody helped. Mostly because you were explaining it so badly that I didn't know what word you were looking for.

Yes. But yeah, it's a joke rap, right? Okay. Let's start there. Evergreen.

Joke. raps are evergreen. Yeah, man.

It's on topic for today.

Exactly.

It's very on topic for today. All right, so episode two, we talked about Lettuce, which was the first short that aired. And now it is two shows later. It is the Christmas show in 2005.. It is, even if you remove the digital short, which we're going to talk about at length, a really great show.

Yeah. Basically, Higgins and Shue came, said, whoa, that aired, do it again. And we were immediately out of ideas. We had been at the show maybe two months and we were like, we got nothing else.

Lettuce wasn't even our idea. So that's even sadder.

We were out of ideas from the jump, from number one. And so we went back to Forte and we're like, what else you got? I guess we have to do another one like this. And he came up with this script for Hey, Odie. And I feel like we'll get to it, because eventually it aired, but it was a very direct sequel.

Not only were you out of ideas, you were in the most populous city in America and you couldn't even find a second stoop.

Well, it was our stoop, though. So we felt safe there.

Yeah, we didn't want to get in trouble, you know, and we want to save money on location. So we shot in front of Andy and Akiva's apartment.

Right, because you guys own that whole brownstone, right?

Yeah, the rental agreement allowed it to be a shooting location for network TV as well.

That was the stoop where Akiva and Andy, you guys shared that apartment together, right?

Yeah, five floor walk up.

And it was like a triangle. If I remember, it was a very oddly shaped apartment itself.

The kitchen was a triangle, yeah.

Yes, the actual apartment was very weird.

Yeah, you didn't walk in and think, there's def. two bedrooms here.

And there really weren't. There was like an office. One room was just big enough for the bed.

Did you guys switch off? Because I did that in college. Did you guys like rotate?

We did do the college thing of halfway through the year, switching rooms. Yeah, it was so much work.

Yeah. Who decorated better?

Keeve, obviously.

No, we didn't decorate anything.

Yeah.

It's in Lazy Sunday. You can see Andy's bedroom. He was in the bigger bedroom and it starts with him on the bed.

Oh, right.

Yeah, that's right.

That's his real bed in his real bedroom.

We're going to get to that. OK, but first of all, we have a lag week because you shoot peyote, which then airs later in the season. It does not air that week.

No, went to dress, right?

Went to dress.

And literally Shoemaker was like, maybe try something completely different. Don't just do the same thing twice in a row.

Right now, I do want to point out that it became very iconic. An SNL digital short. This was whose decision that that would be sort of white on black before each of these?

Well, to be fair, we had watched some Adam McKay shorts with Will Ferrell. It was just the two of them messing around. And I think it's the exact same font, too. And it's an SNL digital short. And we were like, you know what?

Now, I'm going to give the 30 second background on Adam McKay and in his final season, when he wasn't sure he wanted to stay at SNL anymore, when Ferrell and McKay were kind of the kings of the show, he made a special deal to be able to make short films. And they made a short film that I remember seeing at home and being like, where did that come from? That was shot on 35 millimeter. that had Ben Stiller. Who else was in it?

HSO.

It was about Glenn Frey, right? Look at him, man. Looks good, too. I mean, I can't believe it. That guy's done everything.

It literally looked like a movie. It looked amazing. And then they had burned their entire budget for them. Then they made one and they called it SNL Digital Short. And the point of that is because the digital cameras looked terrible back then.

It had, like some really edgy rock and roll. It was pretty punk rock.

Yeah, it was like, you know, you're seeing something a little punk, a little off the beaten track.

I want to say that it ended with, It's in your head! Or something like that. Like something very aggressive.

And there was like ones where it's like Will Ferrell wrestling, a stuffed animal of a Doberman Pinscher, maybe?

Yeah, there was like a Doberman attacking him, for no reason, I think.

It predates me. Yeah. So I missed him as well. I just remember seeing him.

Those were the last short films that had aired on the show when we showed up, besides TV Funhouse. So when we were trying to figure this out, the first thing we did was make a card before Lettuce that said Lonely Island short, to try to separate it and be like, this is a different thing. And then we were told that that was not acceptable and that we should not be sneaking in our company on the company dime. I do remember, though, at the end of all, that, we were with Lorne and we said, what are we supposed to put at the top then? Just so that people know they're about to see something that doesn't look at the quality of the show.

Oh, there you go. So you guys go back to the drawing board because Peyote makes a dress, does an air. Shoemaker suggests something different. From where is Lazy Sunday born?

Once again, out of ideas.

Yeah.

I mean, before we got hired, one of the things we had done was make joke raps and make videos for them.

Yeah. Taking it back. Take it all the way back in.

Like the original Lonely Island stuff. That was kind of out of the gate. We were doing stuff where it was like us doing our version of Stella, like the show, Alter Wayne, Michael Ian Black stuff. And then the thing that made what we were doing different from that was that we were making joke, songs and videos. And whenever we showed people those, they were like, ooh, that's something.

What were some pre-SNL joke songs of yours?

The first one we did when we all lived together in Los Angeles, at the actual official Lonely Island, dubbed that by Akiva.

And your landlord there was fine with you calling the apartment Lonely Island. It was just Lorne that wouldn't let you call the shorts that, right?

Correct. Weirdly, our landlord was Lorne, though.

He just has a different approach to landlording.

He forgot that he owned the house.

Was it you called him your land, Lorne?

Yeah, our land, Lorne. Was cool with it. But we would, like, I made a bunch of beats on our other roommate, Matt's BR8, 8-track, digital 8-track. And we would make like just sample songs from records and like loop stuff. And then we would make like 4-track beats.

Just won the lottery! That's Kablamo! You can shit in Doherty! That's Kablamo! You joined a sorority!

It was not a great song, but we were only 20.

It wasn't a great beat either.

Well, I mean, Yoram is selling the shit out of it. It should be.

That's true. I don't seem very excited about it.

He's giving it pace. He's giving it enthusiasm. Yeah.

That awesome preamble where he, like, named the equipment you guys used.

People loved it.

That's important. People are like, how do you make beats? And they need to know, if it was 20 years ago, what they'd go and buy to make some simple beats.

You can still get them. I just looked it up online.

The three of us lived together in that apartment. And there was a fourth guy, Matt, which is Matt Bettinelli-Olpin. And I will say we knew him from home and we knew him from college. And he directed the Scream movie from last year. Oh my God.

God love him.

We went to elementary school together. Me, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, and Chelsea Peretti were all in the same class in elementary school in Oakland.

Well, and he was also in the early videos. And so was Chester. Like, we had Chester Tam as well.

And Chester is in Harad. And he's also in Scream.

Hey, look at that.

It was a bigger group. And then it dwindled to this. But we made all sorts of, like, we made one called Stork Patrol, that we made a big dumb puppet for. That was us being in love with a bird.

And then Just Two Guys was the other main one that we did in like 2004.

Hello, welcome to the party.

Hi, I've never met you before.

I know.

Just two guys and we're having a good time. Having a good time.

Having a good time.

Just two guys and we're having a good time.

Having a good time.

So who's the first person to suggest the first seed? that becomes Lazy Sunday?

Well, we had made another song called The Heist 2. later. It was me and Akiva. And it was a very aggressive style beat. But a very mundane thing about.

Yo, son, I hear you talking. How about Sunday afternoons right after speed walking? That's a date.

But I know that ain't the reason for your calling.

No doubt. You're so. observant. Must have noticed I was stalling.

Yo, best friends gotta tell each other their secrets. Best friends gotta tell each other their secrets is a great line.

That is very good.

It is a great line.

Quality writing.

And true.

In terms of ripping ourselves off, there's even a moment later, we were having tea and he says, this tea is delicious. What'd you say it was? And we go, chamomile, motherfucker. Which is just snack attack, motherfucker.

Is it caffeinated, cuz? Then we're talking about how we don't want to have caffeine anymore. Anyway, it's pretty lame.

We should clarify, you're talking about before SNL.

Yes.

Pre-SNL, Keevin Yoram had made a song called The Heist that they never shot a video for. We never did a video for.

Yeah, it was just an mp3 on our website.

And we had been fans of Parnell's update feature raps, where he would go super hard. And we were like, whoa, we're here with Parnell. We should do something. that's a joke. rap with Parnell, since they want us to use cast and he's the only other cast member that we know has done funny rap stuff.

We were also super worried about stepping on toes. And because he had done that, Britney Spears rap and the other one, we were like, really didn't want to come out there, being like, we do raps and steal his bit. And so we were also just protecting our reputation at the show by being like, we love those raps and they're super funny. But we also were just like, we didn't want to be known as the guys that steal anything comedy wise.

It's also so funny to think about further pointing out how much we do not think of ourselves. Ourselves as rappers, no rapper would be like, well, he raps, so I shouldn't.

Also, no rapper is like, I'm not stepping on the OG, Chris Parnell's toes.

That's how we felt about it, though.

In our minds, it was like, well, he's the one who does raps on the show. That's his territory. So we would have to include him if we were going to do that.

We're always pretty concerned with that. Yeah.

And luckily, once we left SNL, everyone was like, hey, there were already people that did a lot of raps. We better not do any. And there hasn't actually been one on the show since we left.

Yeah, that's right. There's not a single comedy rap. since. Now, guys, it was not your fault. You didn't know it.

Tell us what it was.

Please.

I did a comedy rap in Chicago. We shot it on video cameras. It was a minor Chicago hit in the comedy circles. Me and Case Clay and my friend Pete Gross. And it was called Noodles in the Pot.

Because you love that Thai restaurant.

We did.

It sounds like a precursor to Das Racists, Taco Bell, KFC, whatever that one is.

It was a precursor to a lot of things, but, most importantly, to you guys.

And the thing about it is. So I was ripping you off. Yeah.

I just went back to Chicago and did stand up. And Pete and Case Clay came and we did it live on stage. Wow. Whoa. That's great.

Can you remember some of the stuff you said?

Yeah. When you were talking about how we ripped you off.

Yeah. It was like you guys were the Elvis that like stole music.

Right. So you were the original.

So it was like motherfuck Andy Samberg and John Wayne.

That is so tight. Wow.

Now I will say that one of the things about Noodles in the Pot that became very hard when I saw the runaway success of Ladies Sunday. Noodles in the Pot was like five minutes long. Right. And so you realize you guys had a good eye for what the show needed.

We already sort of knew that our songs were better, shorter. We'd made enough stuff in LA to know that shorter was better.

We've said this before, but we knew that joke raps suck.

We still do know that actually. Yeah.

Yeah.

And that was one of the main debates we had the week of Lazy Sunday. And we were like, should we try one? They suck though.

Yeah. That's right.

As an art form, they're bad. And we don't want to be responsible for making them more popular. And we don't want people to think we think they're good. They're a cheat and they're lame. And almost all musical comedy is.

It's weird that we're known for something that we kind of hate.

Yeah.

Hey, you don't hate that money, though. Do you, Yoram? What's your chain?

Where's those sound effects?

I cannot stress to those of you not on Zoom, how close Andy got to the microphone to say that. All three of you are uniquely different and good rappers. You have good voices for it.

Again, I want to just preface it by saying we're fake rappers and we don't take this seriously. And when you're around a real rapper, there's a real difference. Because they don't do like a billion takes.

Right. They probably do a fair amount of takes, though, right?

Real dudes can just bang it out. It's pretty impressive.

So you basically have come to the conclusion. Now you've decided. you and Parnell are going to do a rap together.

And how'd that conversation go, Keev, when we asked him? Like, hey, Parns, you want to do a rap with us?

I think he just was like, oh, wow, sure. Is that right?

Do you want me to set you up, Andy? Hey, Parnsy, we're going to do a rap. You want to join us?

All right, sounds good. And that was the end of the conversation.

That sounds good.

Okey dokey.

You penned it, though, completely on your own, the three of you?

Oh, yeah.

In our little room. Yeah.

Yeah, Jorm whipped up the beat.

And when we were doing it, because it was Parns, I was like really nervous. that like, oh, fucking Parnell's waiting and we're going to do this thing. And I remember making the beat in the room with these guys, because this is the first time that computers were like fast enough to be able to like.

What kind of computer?

It was an Apple.

Tell us about, like the processing power and the model number.

Yep, yep.

Anyway, it wasn't gonna be all right. But I was making the beat on Reason and I was really nervous because I was just like, oh, God, we got to get this. It's got to be good. And I was running through like the Reason presets and I found that little refrain thing. I was like, this is pretty fucking cool.

Questlove complimented that beat one day later on.

He did.

That's high praise. if Questlove compliments a beat.

I was going to say the interesting thing about being nervous about Parnell and his take on it is. Parnell was the kind of performer that would literally do whatever you asked him to do without hesitation. If you wrote in a sketch, he had to run through a wall. He was the sort of guy I feel like college football coaches want to have on their team. He would never ask a question.

Yeah, he's like all mad. Yeah. Yeah.

In retrospect, there was no need to be nervous. But this was early days. You know, what show was this for us? Our sixth? Seventh?

Probably a little bit late. Eight or nine, because it's a Christmas show. Yeah.

We had started in October. The first episode, though, was October 1st. So we've only been there 10 weeks, and those aren't all episodes.

I do remember like being confident because we had done this kind of stuff before. And I was like, hey, we're actually doing something we know how to do. We were in our element and certainly didn't think it was going to pop off or anything. But at least we were like, hey, this is kind of cool. We're like doing our thing.

Yeah. You guys were going so hard on it. And then, when it was done, it did feel like, oh, yes.

When we first recorded it, it was just relentless all the way through. There were no dance breaks. And then Steve Higgins came in to check in on us and we played it for him. And he was like, that's way too fast for the audience. You have to put in breaks to give people a time to laugh and wrap their head around it.

Yeah, I will say that's one of the maddest times I've ever been at SNL. I was so furious about it.

At that note, really?

I loved how it sounded. It just ran through.

So you guys weren't rapping faster. It was just that there was none of those moments where you're like bobbing your heads in the back of the taxi.

Higgins, I think, correctly asked us to make it slow down so that the audience had a chance to catch their breath and decide they liked it or not, you know?

I think he was right for the live audience.

Musically, I disagreed with it and still do. But I would certainly not say it was the most mad I ever got at the show, Yoram. I got so much more mad than that.

Yeah, but that was our first thing.

Yoram's not saying he was right to be that mad. He's just saying that's what happened. His instinct was just like, no, you're just, I want that raw uncut.

I was furious. I was really furious.

It's fine.

Yeah.

Because you worked there for maybe like six more years and you never talked to Higgins again.

That's right. That's right.

I never did. No, but Higgins was 100% right. Because if you watch it and hear the audience, the whole first verse, the sense is, what is this? And then you give them that break. And the whole second verse is them saying, we love this.

He was totally right.

I will also say that the dance break, once. we were like, no, it's like a remix. You can throw in another beat at the same tempo and we'll think of stupid Beatles-style animation.

Those things got the correct laugh too, which was that they knew we knew they sucked, which was nice.

Yeah.

Yes. And I think by the end of making it, we're fine with it.

Yes. For sure. For sure.

The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcast is supported by Airbnb. Hey, Yorm. Yes. I want to tell you real quick about a trip I took at an Airbnb in Pittsburgh. We got there.

You guys are nuts for sports.

The personal touches were really nice. There were old Steelers, newspaper articles framed, Pirates articles framed, but also a big old picture of Mr. Rogers and another big old picture of Wiz Khalifa.

That is everything, Pittsburgh. That is a black and yellow Airbnb.

And it made our visit very personal. And this is just a shout out to anybody who might be listening, thinking, hey, my home has personal touches. People who visited my town might want to stay there. You might as well just go over to Airbnb and see what your hosting opportunities are. And you can enjoy it as much as I enjoyed it.

Yes.

We talk a lot on this podcast about a very special time in our life where we were just drained, emotionally, physically, on empty.

Are you talking about right now? Because that's where I'm at, Seth.

Well, I was talking about the past. Oh, the past is often present with you, Yorm.

It is. That's what I'm always saying.

I think a lot of people we knew back in the day and a lot of those same people now have used therapy as a helpful tool for those days when you're feeling drained, when you feel like you have no energy for the things that are important to you. And BetterHelp is a great option for anyone who's looking for somebody to talk to. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapist at any time for no additional charge.

Seth, if they wanted to talk to you personally and just get it all out, could they?

No, I am not available nor licensed. But fortunately, BetterHelp is. Find your social sweet spot with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash island today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com.

What kind of camera do we use, Keith?

Oh, no.

I think it was a Panasonic or Sony.

So wait, I want to say YouTube, Supreme. Let's also not forget Magnolia Cupcakes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, arguably put them on the map and there was no appreciation from Magnolia. So you guys were sort of at the ground floor of a lot of different things and didn't manage to monetize it at all.

No, no, no, we did not get paid.

Hey, over the years, have you heard from Gosling or McAdams?

Never have.

Interesting. I would have thought not that they needed to be put on the map, but I feel like that's a real iconic place. Yeah. When you get named dropped in a rap song, I think that that is, you know, a real tribute, especially a catchy one that people remember the lyrics to. So Magnolia Cupcakes.

It was in our neighborhood and we were trying to do everything where we could just walk around and shoot stuff. And I remember we shot a couple of shots outside and then a woman who worked there came outside and told me that she had called the owner. We were not allowed to be taping. We couldn't be showing anything. We were like, actually, we're outside on the street.

Yes.

Because they started sending us free Magnolia just to our shoots. So they tried to make good on it. They heard this story and went, ooh, okay. And they tried to make it.

You know, credit, where credit's due. I think they went a couple of weirdos, no offense, or outside your place of business filming. You might not know. it's going to be a hit comedy rap that will endure for 20 years.

Also, they were already a smash success.

Yeah, that's true.

We name check them because we knew people would know what we were talking about.

Yeah.

And a lot of people have been like, do so many people go get Magnolia now because of you guys? And I was like, probably more people go stand outside Magnolia and do the poses we were doing and take pictures than actually buy the cupcakes, but probably a little of both.

I will say we also didn't look very professional. It was Akiva holding a video camera, me playing this little beat back, which was maybe annoying because there was a bunch of cursing too in front of their store, and Parnell and Andy. And that was it.

Yes. When they're rapping in the back of that cab, the whole crew is in that cab. I was able to fit in one cab ride.

Were you in the back seat, Keev? Because I feel like I was in the front seat playing the beat next to the driver.

I think I sat in the front seat, passenger seat, and I'm shooting through the little window back at Andy and Parnell, and you're on the floor by their feet.

Oh, maybe I'm hiding, then. Yes.

You were ducked down under us. Keev, should we say frapping anytime? we're talking about times when we were performing our lyrics?

I think that's fair.

Frapping is a term we've coined for fake rapping.

Oh, interesting.

So people don't think we're actually rapping.

We're frappers.

Oh, that's good. So you were frapping.

We were in the back of the cab frapping.

Yeah, while they were frapping back there.

Was the choice of Chronicles of Narnia just based on the fact that it was a movie that was out then? Or did you think it was just good frap scansion?

We were trying to make it topical for you.

Yeah, that's as topical as we get.

Did you ever see that film?

Yeah.

Well, it has the word chronic in it, too. So it led to, yeah.

That's what I was wondering. I mean, it was of the time, but I was wondering if chronic helped it. Step on, it, sucker!

What you wanna do, Chris? Black attack, mother! The chronic blood pulls of Narnia! Yes, the chronic blood pulls of Narnia!

Can you guys name one actor in Chronicles of Narnia?

The lion.

I'm sorry, an actor.

Yeah, Aslan.

Yeah, who was the voice of Aslan?

I'm guessing Liam Neeson.

You got it. Nice job.

Whoa, that's good.

Who else could it have possibly been, you know?

Was James McAvoy, the little half goat guy?

Oh yeah, he's the goat guy.

He's Mr. Thomas. Oh man, this is great. This is gonna be really fun. These are other movies that came out on the same day.

Oh, please.

Frap. Will we frap the titles? We'll frap them. Thank you.

Memoirs of a Geisha.

Please don't make us do this.

Don't do this.

All right. Booze of bust. Talk more about your improv background.

We hate fake raps, Seth. I don't know how we can make it any clearer.

Freestyling a frap? No, that's a bad idea.

Anyways, what about the bodega you shot in?

It was right around the corner from you and Keith's apartment. Yeah.

Did you close it up? Did you ask for permission?

No, we just asked if we could get behind the counter for a second. And they said yes.

And they were cool.

We looked like film students. It was just the four of us. Emily Heller, which is Jorma's sister-in-law, who's a stand-up comic, is the woman behind the counter selling stuff. And I guess she was just in town visiting and just came by at that moment. And so we were like, hey, get behind there.

It was before she had even started comedy, though, right?

No, she was doing stand-up at the time.

But she must have been like 20 years old. To backtrack, just because we've talked about this thing so much, but we do the exact same way as Lettuce, where we borrowed the camera from Maggie, Bill's wife at the time. And we just ran out on the street. And it cost the cab ride and two mini-DV tapes.

We did buy little speakers that you could put into an iPod, because iPods were popular. back then. We got like a $15 speaker that we were doing playback on. And as he's like walking down the street, I would hold his backpack that probably had our supplies in it and videotapes, and then play the song while we're walking down the street. So we don't look professional at all.

Most of the time we would say we were NYU students.

Shout out to New York City for being amenable to the idea of helping out a couple of students.

The movie theater is the UCB theater.

Ah, that's right.

Thanks, Polar.

There you go. I remember showing it to Sudeikis when it was done, but it hadn't gone to dress, just in our writer's room. And him very nicely. being like, this is going to blow their minds. I can't wait for this there.

This was before we even had an edit room, right? We edited in that room.

Yeah, yeah. We were just on our writer's room. And I just remember him being very generous with his compliment and giving me confidence and feeling genuinely like, oh, wow, maybe this will be good.

Now, Shoemaker told me that Robert Smigel, who, in this show, and one of the reasons this is a really great show, when you look back at the rundown, did one of my favorite Smigel pieces ever, this claymation piece called Christmas Time for the Jews. Well, it happens every year, on Christmas Eve. All the happy Christian people take their leave.

Yeah, the streets are deserted, and that's weak news.

It's Christmas time for the Jews.

When you talk about timeless, it is a perfect piece of comedy, because the observation it makes are really timeless observations about Jewish people at Christmas time. And he knew he had a hit with that and he wasn't wrong. And yet, when Lazy Sunday aired, he said to Shoemaker something along the lines of, well, that changes everything. Yeah. Because it was like anybody who worked there and saw what it looked like, because it did look gritty, right?

That was one of the things that allowed it to stand out, too, was that the year that we got there was the first year, I believe, that SNL went HD. So it looked much cleaner and more polished than it had in previous years. And then we sort of weirdly stood out even more by it not looking polished. So it really felt like it was its own kind of thing in the middle of the show. Yeah.

The quality drop.

Yeah, the quality drop really helped it.

And we tried to keep that going throughout all the years. Just the distinct quality drop where our stuff would start. Yeah, yeah. It is funny, however, the course of being there, SNL Digital Short went from being like, hey, hey, hey, this is going to look bad. Just go with it to, hey, this can be shot with movie cameras and be actually the best looking thing in the show.

Seth, the Smigel thing bears looking at, because it shouldn't go unnoted that Smigel was on our hero list. Coming in, we were like, holy shit, that's Robert Smigel. We knew about his reputation. He's one of those legendary SNL writers. We knew he had a relationship with Sandler and all those guys that were our main cast.

Yeah. And the other thing about both of those pieces of content, his was a super catchy song as well. You know, wonderfully performed.

Who was the singer on it?

Darlene Love. You know, again, you guys had Parnell. That Smigel had Darlene Love.

His is also like expertly crafted stop motion. It's like beautiful sets, beautifully animated.

Well, he'd been doing them for a while, so he had carte blanche.

Yes.

To your point, though, Seth, because it was such a good show, I was very excited that it aired, but it's not like. the moment it aired, I was like, oh, that's going to really pop off.

No, and in fact, Jorm, I would argue that we were way more excited that Enemy Mine was airing our Enemy Mine sketch.

Have you even said it was Jack Black who was the musical guest?

Yeah, so Jack Black hosted musical guest Neil Young.

That's a banger.

That's a good show.

That is a banger.

Yeah.

And you guys have an Enemy Mine sketch.

Hey, Steve.

Yeah, Gluck.

So I know it's been a while since our ships crashed into each other during the space war between our races.

Yeah.

And I know we've been stranded on this moon with no one but each other to be friends with for a long time now.

Right.

And odds are no one's ever going to find us out here.

Sure.

And it could be just me and you until we die.

What's your point, Gluck?

Well, in light of all that, I think there's something. maybe you should know.

Okay, shoot.

Oh, gosh, how do I put this?

So just something to think about.

By far your best live sketch to this point as well. What?

Yeah. Oh, to this point. Yeah.

Andy got so offended.

Yeah, show nine.

Now I get it.

We should note that this is based on a Dennis Quaid-Lewis Gossett Jr. film.

Yes, it's a sci-fi movie called Enemy Mine that I was super into.

That maybe came out 15 years before you wrote the sketch. Yeah.

Seth's favorite thing that I would do, which was come up with ideas based on super old sci-fi movies.

This will be a recurring theme. But Enemy Mine, and I should note, I also had a soft spot in my heart for Enemy Mine. I think it's a super cool movie.

You had a soft spot.

I'm just going to say what I remember about the film. Dennis Quaid and Lewis Gossett Jr., who's an alien, crash land on the same planet. They're like warring.

Yeah, they're enemies.

During a war, yeah, that they're on the opposite sides of.

Yeah. Each one of them is like, you're my enemy. Exactly. No, you're mine. Correct.

Yes, more than befriending.

Well, no, because in the movie, Lewis Gossett Jr. has both male and female sex organs, correct?

I don't even know if that's what it is, or if it's just that in his species, that the males just give birth. Right. But it's a late reveal that he is about to have a kid and then does, and then they raise the kid together, kind of.

Or I think he dies and Quaid raises the kid without it.

Oh, yeah, right.

That would make sense.

I should note, this film alone has a comedy premise, and yet you guys had to heighten.

Can I say also, you don't need to be familiar with the film to enjoy the sketch. That's part of the brilliance of the sketch is that it stands alone.

Yes, I should note that as well. This sketch did very well. I'm willing to venture that not more than 10 people in the audience has seen the original film.

That one was also going back to the. well. Yes. Because we had made in 2004,, the year before, a very cheap pilot presentation. I think $70,000 was the full budget for a sketch show for Fox.

I think he had seen it.

Well, he was in the pilot presentation.

Right. He was gracious enough to even come introduce the pilot presentation.

Yes. We drove up to where he was recording some Tenacious D shit, and we put him in like a George Washington costume and shot him for the intro of the whole thing.

Right. That's how he had seen it. Yeah.

Bless that guy's heart. He's the greatest.

That was when they were making the Tenacious D album with the Dust Brothers. So that was, speaking of like Smigel style, like meeting your heroes, we were like walking in on the Dust Brothers, who did Paul's Boutique.

Yeah, holy shit.

Working with Jack and Kyle on the Tenacious D official record.

I will say as a preamble to Enemy Mine, because Jorm and I were in it together, this was a similar thing to the Parnell thing of like, we talked about it a lot of like, hey, are you okay with me asking Jack to be your part? Because that's kind of fucked up, because we have it recorded as us and we love that version. But also, we're in our first half of our first season and we're completely out of ideas already.

Well, and Jack was very nice about that too. He was like, are you sure?

No, but it's Jorm, I remember.

Yeah, yeah. And then afterwards, he was like, you did it better. I was like, I don't know about that, but thank you.

Jack Black was the kind of host, and you weren't the only ones to take advantage of it this show, who would, if you had a piece you loved that? maybe hadn't worked with previous hosts, but it was a comedy lover's delight, your final Hail, Mary, would be, let's throw it into the Jack Black show.

Jack, I also would put Jonah Hill in that category. He saved some really funny shit that never got picked, but he was like, no, no, we have to do this.

And they were the kind of hosts, by the way, if you told them that, if you said, yeah, I've tried this a bunch of times and it hasn't gotten through, they're both the most polite guys. But then they'd be in the room with Lorne and, I think, in the most charming way, saying, oh, we got to though.

Yeah.

We got to do that one.

Jonah did that right for Jackie Snadd and Clancy T. Bachelorette, right? The Model T Cars one.

He did. He willed that into existence.

That's fantastic. These tend to be episodes on Christmas too, because they would save some fantastic person. And then Christmas always became a real thing for us of like, fuck, now we got to do another good one on Christmas.

Well, we should note that Lorne has a very famous speech that he does right before the Christmas show and right before the last show of the year, where, between dress and air, it's sort of his Friday night lights hyping up the room, except the complete opposite energy, where he says something along the lines of, well, you're about to have three weeks off and you're going to see a lot of friends and family, and, you know, they'll want to talk about the last show. And wouldn't it be nice if they had something nice to say about it? And then I guess we were supposed to be like,

Jack is playing a guy with his family, extended family, I think. I want to say, like aunts and uncles, but I could be wrong. And they're like out on the town and the wind is so crazy that they have to take refuge in a Sbarro. But people keep opening the door.

Oh, honey, great.

You've got a seat. Oh, and there's room for the stroller.

This is so great. It's so busy in here.

Oh, I'm exhausted.

Oh! Oh, no! Good Lord! Oh! Oh!

It's a very straightforward premise, executed to perfection, and it just keeps escalating and escalating, and I remember it destroying at every phase, like table, rehearsal, dress, and air.

I feel like Dratch is definitely on wires at some point in this sketch.

Yeah, she should be.

She gets lifted laterally. She's the grandma, and she gets lifted up.

The grandma's lifted over there, and they're holding onto her by the leg.

Also, there were two writers at SNL in this era who are A-plus Hall of Fame writers, James Anderson and Emily Spivey, both of whom you would often say, how did you come up with that idea? And Emily would say, y'all, it happened to me.

And that's why it had to be in a Sbarro, because that's what happened.

The fact that that's known as Sparrow is really funny, because it has nothing to do with Sparrow. And in terms of the argument of fair use and satire, and we can use the name brand Sparrow, because we're poking so much fun at it, you're like, there is no legal argument that you could make that would make it okay that it's Sparrow.

I would argue there is actually parody purposes, because I think the joke works better, because one would only go into a Sbarro to escape a winter gale.

I guess we can cross Sbarro off our sponsors list.

Shit!

Oh, no, wait, we got our first live ad.

We can win them back.

I was defending them.

Let's run back the things we hate, guys. Joke, raps, Sbarro. We're really paying ourselves into a corner here.

Also, Sbarro wants to be our sponsor, but they want us to do a rap about him.

Done.

Oh, take it, Keith!

Business. The word is business.

The word is business, and then it is just the perfect Will Forte performance.

Business,

F-K-L-M-G-H-R-K-W-T-F-N-Y-L-K-P-Q-W-Q-R-T-D-F-P-L-M-K-Q-K-W-Q. Q, Q, Q, Q, Q, Q, Q, Q, Q. But he had done it for three years. Forte had been trying to air Spelling Bee. And then the reason Spelling Bee finally aired was Jack Black walked out in front of it and played a song.

Yeah, he rewrote a song.

Like a Tenacious D style song.

Yeah, it's like lights down on the sketch, lights up on Jack and Kyle. Spelling Bee.

A test of wit and wordly, the ancient sport of kings and queens to make it on the Spelling Bee scene.

You've got to be the cream. Spelling Bee.

And it just felt like an ending. It was a really hot show. It was a hot show and you didn't know what was gonna be the thing that popped from it. Christmas time, from the Jews, Sbarro's, Lazy Sunday, Spelling Bee. And yet I feel like within a day, the world spoke and said Lazy Sunday was it.

Well, a big thing happened, though, which is that it was also on a site called YouTube that we hadn't heard of before.

That's right.

So it did have a second life after that.

Up until this moment, you basically were still in the old style of SNL, where something would air, and if you wanted to see it again, you were waiting for a rerun. And then, the next morning, my brother called us and was like, hey, check it out. Someone else put it online, because server space was so expensive and video servers were so expensive. The idea that somebody else would put a video online for you was unheard of, because you would have to do it yourself and pay for it. And it was YouTube, and it was the first time any of us went to YouTube.

It really was.

It ended up being the first time most people went to YouTube.

And then it kind of had a whole other life, though, too, because it became part of that story of the rise of YouTube. So when anybody had to write about YouTube, we invariably got mentioned, with a couple other videos that were on there. And if NBC hadn't taken it off, at the time, it was one of the top watched things, because it got like 5 million views.

But very quickly it got 5 million views. Because I think you're right. Like there were obviously the kind of people like all four of us were before we were on SNL, where you would watch it and then you'd wait for the rerun to watch it again. Maybe you had a friend who recorded SNL, and so you had it on a videotape.

We recorded on VHS so that we could rewatch stuff.

Yeah, exactly. But then you would have to literally know a person and go to their house or dupe a tape. Literally, I'm explaining ancient history. Like now you would call up and be like, it's online. And then you'd go to YouTube and everybody's like, yeah, we fucking know old man.

You gotta understand, there was no TikTok.

He was right.