Mick Jagger, Steve Martin, Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader
Last night saw the final performance from arguably the funniest female on SNL since the brilliant (and sadly missed) Gilda Radner. Yes, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey were great. But neither of them had that "go anywhere for a laugh" thing that Kristen Wiig had. Whether playing a dysfunctional Target cashier; an impishly destructive schoolgirl or an incredibly stupid Broadway actress, Wiig was never afraid to look; sound or be ridiculous, which is what made her such a valuable player on the show's past seven seasons.
And in her final episode, hosted by Mick Jagger, Wiig started the show with my favorite of her characters, Dooneese Maharelli. John Hamm played an Italian crooner who somehow managed to fall under the spell of the deformed and demented girl from the Finger Lakes in what is probably the funniest Maharelli Sisters sketch of all time:
Of course, Fred Armisen's 'Lawrence Welk' had the gayest line of the sketch: "You know what they say about the Finger Lakes. If on vacation you can only fit one Finger in... next time relax and maybe you'll fit in two." Ouch!
Now that Wiig is an Academy Award nominated screenwriter (for Bridesmaids), I hope that she will go on to bigger and better things. I just hope her career doesn't end up like Gilda's, appearing in lame comedies that do little to showcase her awesome comedic talents.
Excuse me while I go change into drier pants...
More, anon. Prospero
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SNL is one of those shows that can be brilliantly funny or uncomfortably stupid. It's always been that way, even during the so-called "golden age" of the late 70's.
I must admit that through all the good and bad of SNL over the last 4 decades, I'm still a fan. From "Jane, you ignorant slut" to Ed Grimley and from "Mango" to "Two A-holes," SNL is still the only live comedy show on TV. They may be hit-or-miss, but they've always been that way. And I have to be honest, when writers Robert Smigel and Stephen Colbert first introduced The Ambiguously Gay Duo, I wasn't sure whether to be insulted or amused. But the whole thing was just so damned funny, I had to admit I wasn't insulted.
This past Saturday's show was hosted by Ed Helms, of NBC's "The Office" and The Hangover films. The show was once again hit-or-miss (mostly misses this time out, I'm afraid). But Smigel's first AGD cartoon in a long time took a hilarious turn and, thanks to a "Flesh Ray," became a live-action bit starring Jon Hamm; Jimmy Fallon; Stephen Colbert; Steve Carrell; Fred Armisen and Helms in one of SNL's funniest bits in a long time:
Honestly, if we can't laugh at ourselves, those assholes in the Tea Party will laugh at us, anyway...
More, anon. Prospero
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That's James Franco swapping tongues with adorable (his eyes get me, evey time - just like Jake's do, but in a less dirty way) SNL regular Will Forte playing Franco's character's grandfather in a sketch about a creepily affectionate family that was gross, hilarious and curiously hot, all at the same time. Franco appeared in the original version of this sketch in last year's Thanksgiving show.
The loss of Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan and Amy Poehler has left SNL much more hit-or-miss than usual, but this week's Christmas show was among the best I've seen in a long time.
The show started with "An Intentionally Lost Episode of Lawrence Welk" featuring another appearance by singing Mahrelli Sisters, three of whom are beautiful, butone of whom (SNL's strongest and most consistently hilarious, Kristen Wiig) is the 'special' sister. The character is reminiscent of Rachel Dratch's 'mutant sister.' though Wiig makes it uniquely hers. I have to admit, as wrong as this character is, and as uncomfortable as she may make some, Wiig almost made me pee my pants from laughing, especially by the end:
Franco is adorable as ever, though I'll never understand why they made him sing and dance (the Latin 'Maury Show' parody got very old, very fast). Still, he not only played tonsil hockey with doe-eyed Forte, he also parodied his role as James Dean on "The Vincent Price Christmas Special" by letting Liberace (Fred Armisten) pleasure him under a piano. Wiig is again hilarious as an over-achieving young Katherine Hepburn:
"Mmmm... Asbestos!"
There's something familiar about the look on James' face at the end of sketch... Hmmm.... I wonder what could it be?
Here's hoping all my fellow East Coasters are safe and at least on their way to digging out. The official record in Philly was just under 2 feet, though here in Southern Bucks County, I think we got more. And a special "Thank You" to the new neighbor who offered to snow-blow my driveway and sidewalk. You saved Christmas, sir! Thanks to you, I was able to actually finish my holiday shopping today, quite pleased with all of my choices and the bargains I got on them, not to mention the lack of crowds almost everywhere I went.
More, anon. Prospero
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I don't exactly remember the first time I saw the often brilliant Christoper Walken on screen. Probably it was in 1977's The Sentinel, a horror flick about the guardian of the Gates of Hell in a New York City Brownstone. It starred a slew of folks whose names everyone knew in the 70's, but are completely unknown by the Twilight generation. Walken played Detective Rizzo. I remember being completely freaked out by it's combination of special effects and actors who had real birth defects and deformities. The scenes in the clip below really don't do it justice, but you get the general idea:
I remember him next in Michael Cimino's 1978 Vietnam flick The Deer Hunter, in which Walken portrayed Nick, a POW forced to play Russian Roulette by his captors. I didn't really appreciate this film when it forst came out - it was a war movie, after all (and someday we'll talk about my aversion to war movies), but Walken is brilliant in this intense scene with Robert DiNiro:
We'll skip Cimino's infamous and ill-fated Heaven's Gate and move on to Herbert Ross' 1981 bizarre Depression Era musical Pennies from Heaven, where he lip-synchs to an old recording of Fats Waller's "Let's Misbehave," and in which he finally gets to display the dance training he received as a child:
Then there was Douglas Trumball's 1983 Brainstorm, infamous as Natalie Wood's last film, about a machine designed to record dreams which ultimately ends up recording Louise Fletcher's character's death experience:
That same year, he played Johnny Smith in David Cronenberg's adaptation of Stephen King's The Dead Zone:
Skipping through Walken's 1985 Bond appearance (A View to a Kill) and 1988's Neil Simon memory play, Biloxi Blues in 1988, we come upon 1989's Communion, based on author Whitley Streiber's semi-autobiographical alien abduction novel. It's probably the movie that cemented Walken as a weirdo, but it remains one of his most interesting performances:
Four years later, Walken played Max Schreck in Tim Burton's Batman Returns. Named for the actor who first played Dracula (albeit unofficially), Schreck is an evil department store owner who is planning on taking Gotham City down with the help of Danny DeVito's Penguin:
Walken's career just goes on and on. From his many appearances on"Saturday Night Live"
to his amazing dance routine in the 1997 video for Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice"
and his hysterical turn as Wilbur Turnblad in the movie version of the musical Hairspray:
So, what made me go on this Walken spree? Well, this clip from a BBC "chat-show" in which Walken gives a dramatic reading of the lyrics to Lady Gaga's hit "Poker Face" (via):
I'm the first to admit that I've glossed over dozens of Mr. Walken's performances on film and TV in a decades-long career most actors would kill to have had, but a post talking about all of them would take far longer to write than I can do without spending an entire day researching and commenting. Someday, I'll probably talk about his other movie, video and TV appearances than I was able to mention here. Needless to say, I am in awe of the man's versatility and staying power in an industry which routinely shews up and spits out performers with the regularity that rivals my own digestive system's (Oh, gross! Did I actually just type that sentence?) Anyway - here's to CW! Long may he rule our screens!
More, anon. Prospero
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This post started out as something else, altogether. I came across a clip on my daily visit to BoingBoing. It was of obscure, androgynous punk rocker Jobriath appearing on a show hosted by Gladys Knight. Jobriath was apparently the inspiration for the Jonathan Rhys Meyers character in the film Velvet Goldmine. The song is "I'maman."
Weird & 70's Bowie-esque (yes, I just made up a new term). Certainly interesting enough for me to do a post on androgyny in music and film. Then, while doing research for that post (yes, I actually do research - I have to know what the hell I'm talking about, though that doesn't seem to stop some bloggers - Hello? Bai Ling, anyone?), I came across something which sent me in a completely different direction ("Ooh, look! A bunny!"). And that direction was early 80's performance artist, Klaus Nomi.
I first saw Klaus in 1979 when he appeared as a back-up singer/performer for David Bowie on "Saturday Night Live. " Classically trained in opera with an exceptional vocal range and a completely, mad and original performance style, the German-born singer soon had all of Lower-Manhattan clamoring to be at one of his shows. He worked with drag impresario Robert Ludlam at Ludlam's infamous Ridiculous Theatre and then went on to create his own shows where he would often perform songs which punned on his name (including 'The Nomi Song'), in a bizarre, robotic style that caused one critic to coin a phrase about him: "He has come from Outer Space to save the Human race."
I was very lucky to have seen Klaus perform live in New York in 1981. It was a strange time - we all wore strange clothes and dyed out hair blue (I was a theatre major with lots of art major friends and it was the early 80's - leave me alone) and we hated pop music and disco and craved the avantgarde. It may have been CBGB or some other iconic downtown club. It was hot and crowded and I was excited to be part of something that was so uniquely New York. Klaus came out and did his set and the crowd went wild before and after each song. I thought I had seen the future of music. Here is a clip of Klaus singing 'Total Eclipse,' live:
And here's fan-made tribute video, featuring Klaus' cover of a song you probably know better - the Leslie Gore hit, 'You Don't Own Me:'
Sadly, Klaus succumbed to AIDS-related disease in 1983. He is considered by many to be the first celebrity to die of AIDS, even though he was relatively obscure in most of the world (celebrated mostly in Manhattan and France - yep, he's the Jerry Lewis of "popera."). His distinctive face and makeup have become rather iconic. Even if you never saw Klaus perform, you've seen his image somewhere. Towards the end, he was writing his own opera and took to dressing as its main character, a sort of Elizabethan clown:
There's a terrific documentary about Klaus, The Nomi Song, which I happened to catch on Logo a few months ago. Nomi's "alien' persona is on full display, though interviews with his contemporaries like actress/singer Ann Magnuson (Making Mr. Right; "Anything But Love") paint a picture of a soft-spoken, though brilliant auteur.
Had he lived, Klaus could have been a major voice in music, art and film today. His 1983 death at the unfairly young age of 39, left the world tragically bereft of yet another original artistic voice. If you have some time and want to know more about the early 80's performing arts scene, Google Mr. Nomi. You won't be disappointed.
More, anon. Prospero
PS - That Androgyny post will be coming soon...
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I know I promised to stop politicking, but California's Prop 8 debacle has everyone in the LGBT Community up in arms. As we should be. And so should our straight allies. The fight against bigotry is education. And I'm not talking about teaching homosexuality in kindergarten - that's just patently absurd. Would you teach about heterosexuality in kindergarten? Hardly. In fact, I'd want any kindergarten teacher who taught about sexuality at all, arrested immediately. I'm talking about educating the public in general. It's the 21st Century, folks. We're not going away and we're not about to get any quieter about it. I've always found the old saw about pictures speaking louder than words to be so true. More people need to see images like the one above (via Towleroad). Then there is this encouraging and appropriately ironic news from LAWeekly: Apparently, anti-Prop 8 protesters are denying Mormons the right to marry. http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/queer-town/los-angeles-protests-stop-morm/index.php And say what you will about MSNBC's Keith Olberman (who can sometimes be quite the pill, no matter what your political leanings may be), this is the most heartfelt commentary I have ever seen. I urge you all to share it with everyone you know.
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And finally, just to lighten the mood, this very funny and silly commercial parody from SNL (I must admit I've taken quite the fancy to Will Forte):
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