The Tonight Show - Louis C.K.

How rare it is that "The Dana Carvey" show gets mentioned in any capacity but how sweet it is. Louis C.K. tells a story about the time when he was head writer for "The Dana Carvey Show" and Jimmy Fallon auditioned to be in the cast.



I've always thought I should make a post dedicated to "The Dana Carvey Show" but I probably never will so I might as well summarize it briefly here.

"The Dana Carvey Show" was a tragically under-watched, underrated, under-appreciated show that was cancelled after just 7 episodes. It was probably my favorite show of the mid-90s.

Look at the talent involved. The writers/performers for the show included:

Louis C.K.
Robert Smigel
Dana Carvey
Stephen Colbert
Greg Daniels (Parks and Rec, King of the Hill, The Office)
Steve Carell
Spike Feresten (SNL, The Simpsons, Seinfeld)
Charlie Kaufman (yes, THE Charlie Kaufman, Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
Jon Glaser (Late Night with Conan O'Brien)
Bob Odenkirk
Dino Stamatopoulos (Late Night with Conan O'Brien)

And ALMOST Jimmy Fallon.

Brian Stack Leaves Conan

Thursday was long-time writer Brian Stack's last show. Stack joined in 1997 during the "Late Night" days and was a mainstay actor in sketches and bits. Some of my personal favorites were: Clive Clemmons, Hannigan (the traveling salesman), Artie Kendall (the Bing Crosby-esque singer), Brian LaFontaine (the creepy lounge singer), the singer of the Minty theme, WikiBear and Frankenstein.

The best-of tribute to him is not available on youtube but can be watched on the Conan website here.

This feels like a huge loss. He, along with Robert Smigel, Jon Glaser, Andy Blitz and Brian McCann seemed to be the heart of the show that I first fell in love with in the late 90s. And of those, Stack was the last one left.





"Hitlery-hoo???"

The Price Is Right

Still pretty smooth.

The Late Late Show - Corden's First Episode

The new host of The Late Late Show is James Corden and his first episode aired last night. You can watch it here.

Although I've stated it many times, I'll mention again how a late night talk show can't be assessed based on the first episode - it's a marathon not a sprint, and boy is it a long marathon. He had the big comedy piece with loads of celebrities and it went well (see below) but he's not going to have that every night. And his first guests were Mila Kunis and Tom Hanks... he will also not have those guests every night.

That aside, how was the first episode? It was good. The monologue was short but heartfelt - he thanked his predecessor Craig Ferguson but didn't thank Craig Kilborn or Tom Snyder (more on that later). The guests were obviously good. He has Reggie Watts as his band leader. He has no desk and they actually had both guests come out at the same time. It's unclear whether that's going to be the norm or whether that's just for the first show.

The second comedy piece (see below) was also very good. One gets the feeling that they'll be going for the kind of comedy pieces that go viral on youtube instead of the usual "desk" routines (well, there's no desk, so...). Again though, you won't have Tom Hanks every night.





I love the fact that they went with a Willy Wonka/Golden Ticket reference, I'm a big fan. But there's something strange and coincidental about that. When Craig Kilborn's first episode as host was about to air, this is one of the commercials that aired:



And this wasn't the only one, it was a whole campaign of several different commercials. There was even one with Vince Vaughn that you can watch here.

It's the same show so why do I think it's strange and coincidental? Well Corden didn't thank Craig Kilborn for starting/continuing the show. Seems like if he was even slightly aware of the show's past, he would have done that.

The Tonight Show - Piccolo Girl

This is one of those "feel good" clips that you can send to your grandma or aunt. I won't explain who the Villanova Piccolo Girl is because it's already in the clip but she sits in with The Roots for the night.

Movie Review: Saturday Night (2014)

Saturday Night (2014)

Filmed in 2008, premiered in 2010 and officially released in 2014, I'm surprised that I had never even heard that this movie existed until today.

"Saturday Night" is a fly-on-the-wall documentary that follows the cast and crew of "Saturday Night Live" for the production cycle of one episode (one week). The host (John Malkovich) is introduced on Monday and from that point they have 5 days left to write and produce an hour and a half of  live television.

This movie is exactly what I was expecting and exactly what I wanted. You always hear the lore of SNL - about how the writers stay up all night to try to squeeze out sketch ideas, how sketches can be killed by one bad rehearsal, how no one can memorize the lines because rewrites are happening right up to the time of going live - but you ONLY hear about it, there's never been a way to see it up close. In fact, most of the inner workings of SNL seem to be pretty well shrouded in secrecy. This movie really takes you inside and places you in the middle of everything that's happening.

Directed by James Franco, the film is extremely low budget but I get the feeling that that has more positives, in this case, than negatives. For one thing, I think a full documentary crew would be seen as too intrusive to the show and wouldn't be allowed access to begin with - better to have a few people with handheld cameras. But it also helps to shed the weight of being "a documentary". I don't need an interview about what Chevy Chase did in 1976 and I certainly don't need the backstory of how the show began. The movie is simply: how are these people going to get a show to air this week? Will it be funny? And the handheld cameras, unsteady as they may be, suit the stressful, hectic feeling perfectly.

7/10.

This movie is very hard to find (I thought) except that while writing this review, I found it's on Hulu. That was easy. You can watch it (with commercials) here.