The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast - My Testicles & Peyote
Episode Date: May 27, 2024The Lonely Island and Seth cover two SNL episodes this week, highlighting what went on behind the making of two digital shorts: My Testicles & Peyote. Plus, they talk about a few other iconic sketches..., including Tennis Partners from Will Forte and a hilarious Unsolved Mysteries sketch with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. My Testicles - https://youtu.be/GR-n87eUmNg?si=aBESvfLkMRe9rkNJPeyote - https://youtu.be/_1M8QeXHlKQ?si=l0yJ6AMNko8h36oeTennis Partners - https://youtu.be/l1KRhBe3p3M?si=GlnbytOawkR79GQxDavid S Pumpkins - https://youtu.be/rS00xWnqwvI?si=2N2jkMlxHvqDN1HtMySpace - https://youtu.be/8AlDTjiWdKg?si=1DlOuZOz9oBroKfu (Not all the clips we mention are available online; some never even aired.) If you want to see more photos and clips follow us on Instagram @thelonelyislandpod. Sponsors:AirbnbThe Lonely Island Podcast is supported by Airbnb.  Your home might be worth more than you think.  Find out how much at airbnb.com/host BetterHelpThe Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com/island  today to get 10% off your first month. Produced by Rabbit Grin ProductionsExecutive Producers Jeph Porter and Rob HolyszLead Producer Kevin MillerCreative Producer Samantha SkeltonCoordinating Producer Derek JohnsonCover Art by Olney AtwellMusic by Greg Chun and Brent AsburyEdit by Cheyenne JonesMix and Master by Jason Richards
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All right, shall we?
Sure.
Oh, wait, what episode we got?
Probably the best one ever.
You're the host, so get your, you know, mind in the game.
I could probably do a little preamble.
Yeah, do it.
Get ready for the worst episode.
Oh, yeah.
This is episode nine?
Episode nine.
Episode nine, the least exciting of all the apps so far
if you were gonna look at the titles of every app and choose one last this is it something like that
yeah something like that and this is the last two of the year right yeah season one yeah but we're
gonna reveal two big secrets in this episode, so really pay attention, you guys.
Yes.
Oh, gotcha.
I shouldn't say it's the end of the SNL season.
It's the SNL season. I understood.
Oh.
The best of the worst.
Welcome to another Lonely Island Seth Meyers podcast.
Hey, everybody. It is episode nine of the Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcast.
And I think we all agree if there's one to skip, it's this episode.
We're not. You guys are not. I mean, my hands are clean.
Well, am I being too hard on it right out of the gate?
No, no, no.
We're going to talk about two different digital shorts.
I think it's very, very fair.
We're just talking about content wise. What we're talking about is skippable.
Yeah.
Yeah, we might be interesting talking about it.
Yeah.
Right.
It remains to be seen.
It might be the best episode of the podcast.
Yeah, yeah.
That's true.
Possible.
But we are going to talk about two different digital shorts that I am guessing, even if
you're a hardcore Lonely Island fan, you have not heard anyone talk about these
since they aired.
Correct.
They are in competition for the bottom.
They are in competition for the bottom,
and one of them has a real A-lister involved.
Yeah.
So I want to start with that element of,
first of all,
we're rolling into the end
of your first season on the show.
I do still think one of the things that's happening,
not just for you guys, but the show in general,
is there's an excitement building.
And one of the things that's really exciting
is we have a series of really big time hosts
to close out the year.
And one of those hosts is Tom Hanks.
Now, I had at this point not worked with Tom Hanks.
This is the first time he'd been on the show
since I had been on board. You guys had obviously not worked with Tom Hanks. This is the first time he'd been on the show since I had been on board.
You guys had obviously not worked with Tom Hanks.
And yet, not only do you know this guy from all his movies, both serious and funny,
you know him to be kind of an all-time SNL host.
Definitely, yes.
And he's since proven that he has not aged out of that.
I mean, he probably has been one of the biggest sketches of the last 10 years with
David Pumpkins. Definitely. Absolutely. So you feel like when Hanks is there, the digital shorts
are in ascendancy. I do remember he showed up down to do a digital short. Yes. Bless his heart.
He had kids who were at the age where they were hip to it.
Is it fair to say that we let down all our heroes on the show?
As you built this up, Seth, my stomach was just dropping out for every part of this.
I'm just like, what a disappointment we made.
Because we've covered Steve Martin.
Yep, that's right.
We let down Steve Martin.
And now we're here.
And I remember, you know, another one of the best SNL hosts of all time is Alec Baldwin.
And this is pre-Trump.
So it was still surprising even to have him on the show.
And it was like, oh my God, we're here for an Alec Baldwin episode.
And we didn't even get anything on the air in my recollection.
You mean more rare, not surprising.
Yes.
For us, it was more like, holy shit.
Yeah.
Yes.
And I just mean nowadays, it wouldn't be so surprising because he became a regular.
Agreed.
I think no matter how long you're at SNL, there are the two kinds of hosts you're excited for.
There's the one who you're there for their first SNL,
and then it's a little bit weightier when you're there for their seventh, eighth, ninth.
They know the difference.
Because one of the things, it's such a sugar high to host SNL.
It's true.
That sometimes, in a wonderful way,
a host will have a dud episode,
but they'll still be super psyched at the party
because they don't know.
And it's not their fault.
They put their heart into it.
It's very rarely the host blew it.
Yeah, we get it.
We fucked up.
Do you want to say the title of the short
just to really put a nail in the coffin?
Well, I like the fact that everybody's listening.
The massive fans of this podcast by episode nine are like, wait, what is it?
How come I can't remember?
Well, they saw the title, but they have no clue what it is.
The hit digital short, Sexy Song.
Right.
Oh, that's better.
We were smart enough not to name it.
It's title.
That's smart.
On YouTube, it's called My Testicles.
Yeah.
My Testicles.
I thought it was going to be Please Don't Cut My Testicles.
Please Don't Cut My Testicles.
Yeah.
Did you guys watch it before we just started?
I did.
I did watch it.
I watched it recently independently of this podcast.
What?
I don't know why.
My memory, though, is so embarrassed that when I just watched it,
if I could just jump to my experience.
Sure.
It got lots of laughs and I felt immense relief watching for most.
It played fine.
It played fine.
And that's what I mean.
It played better than some things,
better than the one we're going to talk about next.
I just hate the main joke so much.
It had tainted the whole thing.
There's lots of little color in there.
Agreed.
Of making fun of like Euro, English as a second language, you know,
Swedish, Danish, where they make songs to cross over to the American market and they're saying
kind of odd things. I would also argue that the bookends are delightful. Yes. Forte, Keenan and
Parnell. That's true. Look great. Yes. I was so grateful at the end when he said he didn't like
it. I was right there with him. At least we shit on it. Yes. We knew it wasn't good. And that's a
classic SNL move is bailing yourself out when you know your thing's not actually good enough by calling it out before anyone else can.
It's more than it's Tom Hanks, though.
Like just watching him have to do it.
It's such a drag.
Much like Steve Martin and surf meeting.
Yeah.
Tom Hanks, 110%.
Yeah. Tom Hanks, 110%. Again, when you watch a host, especially one of great talents,
not take their foot off the talent gas
while they're speeding through a piece of turd.
A piece of turd.
It's fair.
If we hadn't already done the one with Natalie,
I would have said shame on him.
You know what I mean?
Like we had only to that point,
before the Natalie one,
only proven that we could make it work
with us specifically doing it.
Yeah.
But then she came in and wanted to do a song and it ended up working really well.
So then it's like, he's not wrong to be like, well, shit, do that for me.
And us being like, oh, my God, Tom Hanks is in our office.
Well, to be fair, it is also a direct parody, though, of a real song that we heard and were mimicking that no one knows.
I can't even remember.
Isn't it the, what is it, Right Said Fred song, though?
No, no.
It's a song.
It's like an, is it Israeli?
I think that's right.
Yeah.
But what was it called?
I do remember it existing.
That our buddy sent to us.
It has a similar cadence. I feel like there's that drum moment in this song, like,
which almost sounded exactly like, yes, I'm too sexy.
Yeah, that's true.
And they're dressed like Right Said Fred, too.
Like we're taking, obviously, from all sorts of Euro pop stuff.
Of course.
Of course.
So I want to ask a question.
I feel like sometimes I'm looking at the script and it wasn't the script
because it starts with New York City 1991
Forte, Keenan,
Parnell, beautifully costumed
to look like 1991 New Yorkers
talking about new songs. New Yorkers. Was that
like Vanilla Ice?
Forte is just literally Vanilla Ice.
You know like a casual New Yorker in the 90s.
And I
do feel like Keenan definitely is dressed like some Bay Area rapper that you guys liked, right?
I'd have to look at it again.
Yeah, hold on.
But was it always going to have that framing device?
Did you know that that was important?
I think so.
I think so.
Oh, well, he's dressed like Dwayne Wayne.
He's even got Dwayne Wayne glasses from a different world.
Oh, right.
That's what it was.
So I guess that's like Atlanta, right?
Yeah, I guess so.
So they talk about there's this hot new song.
Parnell holds up a boombox.
Always forget Parnell stronger arms than you think he's going to have.
Also forgot how big that boombox is.
We asked for the biggest boombox they could find and they delivered.
Yeah.
You guys ever heard that song by C&C Music Factory, Everybody Dance Now?
Yeah, that's pretty good. You heard that Right Said Fred song, I'm Too Sexy factory everybody dance now yeah that's pretty good
have you heard that right said fred song i'm too sexy oh yeah that's pretty good too sure fellas
but have you heard the new song by ariel and ephraim no who are they check this out
morning in the kitchen you're frying an egg. I'm squeezing some oranges.
The room is getting hot.
Over at the counter, I shake the salt.
You take out a knife.
Please don't cut my testicles.
Please don't cut my testicles.
Please don't cut my testicles.
Don't cut my testicles.
It's a nice day.
Relax.
Right at that moment when it transitions into the video and those drums that you were just singing, Seth, come in,
and you see it's on this infinite white psych and everyone's in leather and Polar's there and Maya's there and it's got a vibe.
And you realize, oh, my God, it's Tom Hanks in there. Expectations just go through the roof.
Even I found myself in this rewatch like, okay, whoa, I'm in the presence
of greatness. I might be witnessing a classic unfolding. Yes. And I think that helps you because
the audience feels that way. I will say it's very fun to watch you and Hanks share the screen,
Andy, because I remember, especially because you're wearing a bald cap, you look more like you do now than you did then.
Whoa.
You actually...
Whoa.
I just mean that your hair...
Andy still has that wonderful head of hair.
Thank you for clarifying that.
But you looked young all the time because of your explosive head of hair for that first
year.
Yeah, your ragamuffin style.
And now you kind of look like a co-star of Tom Hanks'.
Akiva, I think the audience was just like you.
They're like, we're watching a classic.
The song is so short, they don't have time to realize they're not.
Okay, well, that's good.
That's the first compliment you've given.
The one thing I'll say outside of the bookends that I really liked
is that we get out so fast.
I was so relieved when it ended.
I was like, oh, well, at least it's just that.
Like it just signals to everyone we knew we weren't sitting on something that we thought
was great. It's weirdly two verses. And I was very surprised it was over. But then I thought
knowing you guys, like I know you, I knew that that was not an act of laziness. That was an act
of shame, hatred, hatred and shame. You know what else? Other little things.
Let's talk about little things we like.
Okay, great.
I liked how I pronounced often.
Yeah.
Often.
Often.
Love that.
Yeah, I did like that.
I do.
I worry often.
I like that.
I love Parnell very plainly explaining that,
I guess, some really horrific things
that happened to their testicles.
I like that too.
And obviously, I loved him saying,
I got to go hit the skins with a tenderoni.
With a tenderoni.
Yeah, Audi 5000. I wish that I. And obviously I loved him saying, I got to go hit the skins with a tenderoni. With a tenderoni. Yeah, Audi 5000.
I wish that I had had that info
about the testicle trauma earlier.
Yeah.
I was like, somehow I wish someone could have just told me that
so I would have understood.
But then you wouldn't have liked that line so much though.
If in the preamble he goes,
oh, Ariel and Ephraim, have you heard that?
And they're like, no, who's that?
And they're like, oh, there's these two guys
that make great dance music. But apparently they had horrible things
happen to their testicles. Check it out. But I'm sure they didn't talk about it in a song.
Why would they? Would that have helped? No, it wouldn't. I think it's better that it landed
where it landed. There's no right way to have done it, I think. No, no. Hit the skins with
a tenderoni. Can you guys just for those? Because I barely understood it.
Well, Hit the Skins is have sex.
Yeah.
Yeah, it just means to knock boots.
Yeah.
No, but what era of hip hop is using that?
Early 90s, like Grand Poobah said it a lot.
Okay, gotcha.
And then Tenderoni, I mean, it was popularized by Bobby Brown.
Skins was everywhere, though.
Like, it's in Boys in the Hood, right?
Where he's like, you're gonna give me the Skins or what?
Like, when he's on the phone.
Yeah, for sure.
And his mom's still
on the other line.
And Tenderoni got
shortened to Rony a lot.
Yeah, there's a
Bobby Brown song
just called that.
And what about Audi?
Do we know the first
usage of Audi 5000?
Or who?
We'd have to Google that.
I will say
the most fun thing,
of course,
is feeding that
through the Parnell robot.
Yes.
We knew that.
Yeah.
That's just what it was like in 91.
Everyone talked like that.
I also appreciated that we didn't care that there were cars and people in the background
that showed it was clearly now.
We could have just turned the camera towards a wall and it could have been 1991, but we
didn't.
I actually do non-sarcastically like that because it lets you know that we're just having fun and went out with some costumes. The stakes were decidedly not high.
Right. We may have looked at each other and been like, yeah, it's fine. So the shortness of the
song, does that mean that you guys knew there were fundamental problems in the writing of it?
When do you know we got to get in and out of this because it's not sustainable?
I think in the writing phase.
Gotcha.
We always are cutting things short. We've talked about it before. That's
kind of a staple of our things is trying to cut things as short as they can be.
Yeah. And the dumber the joke, the faster you tell it, I think.
Yeah.
Just in general.
I should note another thing I like about it is as a young man, especially in that sort of Robert Palmer video thing.
I like that icy cold European look
of the women in the sketch.
Yes.
I like the severe haircuts
on Maya and Polar.
Fred has a nice moment.
Didn't Fred's character have a name?
Did he?
I feel like it was like
Little Johnny or something.
Oh, yeah.
Little Frankie.
Little Frankie.
Why did he have a name? Oh, because he's tiny because we keep shrinking him and putting him in different spots in the video. Oh, yeah. Little Frankie. Little Frankie. Why did he have a name?
Because he's, oh, because he's tiny.
Because we keep shrinking him
and putting him in different spots in the video.
Oh, my God.
But I also thought it was like while we were shooting,
maybe Amy and Maya were calling him that.
I might be wrong.
And then, Jorma, you appear in this one as well.
It's nice to see me younger.
Yeah.
I basically look the same, right?
Well, it's funny when you think back to there were
a few times that snl sketches i had my shirt off and i was so nervous about it yeah and then the
key is you just get like 20 years older and you look back and you're like yeah what i would
give what i wouldn't give so kevin pulled from urban about Audi 5000, but I have a question right off the bat. It spells it Audi, like O-U-T-I-E.
Yeah.
Oh, I would never have spelled it like that.
Isn't it Audi like the car?
That's what I, yeah, I assumed it was the car too.
Because isn't that the whole thing? Because it means to leave, to be gone. And so I thought that that's the car. Whoever invented the thing, it was like saying, and I'm Mercedes-Benz and like, I'm out of here.
No, I believe it's like, I'm out.
It's an extension of I'm out.
But then why the 5,000?
I'm out is I'm out, but it should be Audi 5,000.
And I guess you could spell it like the word out, like O-U-T-I-E, like this thing is.
Like it's giving it to Ice Cube saying, so at 10 p.m. I was Audi 5,000, meaning I'm out.
It left.
Maybe it's that sort of Cockney near rhyme where it is based on Audi 5,000, but you say Audi.
Okay, but now he's got it for Audi 5,000 spelled the right way.
There's a car that is the Audi 5,000.
Of course.
Oh, well, then it's definitely that.
Yes.
The answer is people would always say, and I'm out.
And then at one point someone said, I'm Audi 5,000 because of the car.
Exactly.
Yes.
So I would spell it like the car. It's wordplay. And it's very cool for us to talk about it. I would say I'm Audi 5000 because of the car. Yes. So I would spell it like the car.
It's wordplay.
And it's very cool for us to talk about it.
I would say I'm Honda Accord.
No, you'd always be like, I'm Audi belly button.
Oh, right.
Because that's how you want to spell it.
I tried and failed once in stand up to say that if I could meet one person living or dead,
it would be the first person who said no shit, Sherlock.
I mean, it seems like you're just saying you'd like to meet Watson.
The IBM computer.
That's right.
The chess playing IBM computer.
You guys are a pretty, I don't know,
kind audience to me.
And it was heartbreaking how like
I once tried to stand up it
and all of you were like,
just dead silence.
Well, was there more to it?
Like you didn't even like the premise.
I do like the premise.
I just had the next line for it.
We have more of a writer's room mentality.
We were more pitching around.
It was punch-ups.
Exactly.
Writer's room mentality.
You should understand that.
You know, I think in general, too,
like, looking through this run list for Hanks,
and again, I mean, you guys know
I have always referred to our era
as Anne Golden era.
Right.
But this was not,
this probably doesn't crack
Hanks' top seven.
And he's hosted, what,
like 12 times or something?
Yeah.
And he's had some real
barn burners
and we did not,
in general,
come through for him.
You're just looking
down the rundown
and seeing nothing memorable?
I'm just kind of looking
down the rundown
and it's sort of an absence
of a...
But is it possible
if the whole rest of the show
was fucking fire and this sketch was in it, that it actually would have down and it's sort of an absence of uh but is it possible if the whole rest of the show was
fucking fire and this sketch was in it that it actually would have taken it out of the top seven
anyway this digital short would it just take i don't think it could develop i think in general
we just didn't have it this week oh i see in cut after dress digital short lobster claw and handlebar
haunting it haunts the rest of the season so the phantom of
the season by the way did any of you ever see the phantom of the opera on broadway no regrettably
no i never did either and my wife who loves it got tickets it's last week and she said do you
want to go and i said no i don't need to go. And so she
took her family because they were all in town and they, as a family, had seen it a bunch of times.
So they went. And then she was talking to me afterwards and I realized she was talking to
me with the assumption that I had seen it. And I said, I've never seen it. And she was so mad that
I hadn't mentioned that when I said, I'm not going to go. I'm with her, I think. I would leap at the
opportunity this week to see it after 30 years,
knowing it's the last chance.
I thought you were going to say she couldn't believe you had mentioned that
when you said, I do.
And you guys were at my wedding.
She made me get married wearing that half a mask.
Yeah, and you just went with it,
not even knowing what it was.
You saw some freak shit.
I was very excited.
When we were kids and that show started,
we lived in the Bay Area.
We were nowhere near Broadway.
We never went to shows.
We had very few even albums in the house
and they bought that soundtrack
and it was on all the time.
So I know every song
the way that I think people listen to Hamilton now,
who I've never seen Hamilton
and it's kind of the easy way to get a taste.
We had Les Mis,
but we went and saw it as a family.
Got it.
It so surprised me knowing your mom
and how sarcastic she is,
Keeve, that's very shocking to me. She might
have been listening to it ironically, because it
is a goofy-ass musical.
They just wanted to take down Weber, you know? It's like
real synthy. Yeah, that's
the dope stuff. That's the part that I've
always had a problem with. And I have nothing
but respect for Phantom and the work
they did. Yeah. Very synthy.
But it was of the time when it came out.
Yeah, but it was this week when I got
invited.
Did they update it with all
new drums and stuff? I don't know.
I'd be mad if they did. Yeah, you don't want
new drums. The Lonely Island Podcast
is supported by Airbnb.
Hey, Jorm. Hi.
You know how last summer my family
and I circumnavigated the globe?
I do, and I was jealous.
Took a balloon, went around the world, took somewhere between 79, 81 days,
and while I'm doing it, I'm thinking I should Airbnb my place, right?
I would be nuts not to look into it.
You know how expensive it is taking a balloon?
Just the propane to keep it aloft?
I know you spent an arm and a leg on that trip, and I commend you for wanting to chip
away at that nut.
At that nut, of course, because otherwise you're stressed the whole trip.
Otherwise you're a fool.
You're a fool.
You said it, and you're the first to say it.
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Don't be a fool.
Crack that nut.
The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp.
Hey, Jorm.
Yes.
You ever needed to get something off your chest?
Thank you, Seth.
I just wanted to say that you are
such a good friend and thank you. And this is seems like the right moment to share. Is that
what you're talking about? I'm going to cut you off there, Jorn, because I actually didn't want
you to get it off your chest to me. I was going to suggest therapy because I benefited from therapy
and it's a really wonderful way to talk about things that you maybe don't want to burden your
friends with. And BetterHelp is a great place to turn. Yeah, that sounds good too.
All right, great.
Well, if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try.
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That's better help.
Spell it, Yorm.
H-E-L-P.
Wait, can they do Thursday?
Dot com.
Of course they can do Thursday.
They have so many professionals available for your schedule.
Thank you for asking if they can do Thursday, Yorm.
Yes.
H-E-L-P.
Dot com slash island.
Yeah.
Yorm, do you remember Tennis Partners that you wrote with Forte?
I watched it again because I thought I was going to be asked this question and barely,
but I think it was one of those very late night forte writing sessions where you're like, he's doing the circling a paragraph over and over again.
One of those.
Yeah.
And you're just like, God, please end this.
But it came together.
So the 10 to 1-er.
Have we talked about 10 to 1 as a premise yet here on the podcast?
Not sure.
Just do a brief one. We don't know. 10 to one is the last sketch of the night. So it's 10 to one in
the morning. And the perfect use of 10 to one is a piece of very unique writing that is not going
to be a laugh a minute, but for a certain kind of SNL purist who stays till the end every week and admires and appreciates the slightly out there choices, it is a reward to them.
I feel like that's when it's used the best.
You never see, for example, a game show or a talk show sketch at 10 to 1.
Ideally, those sort of serve a role earlier.
And this forte really was the king of 10 to 1 for a great many years on the show.
The absolute king.
McKay and Farrell were the previous kings of that, I would say.
Yeah.
And 10 to 1, it's called Tennis Partners.
And I'm just going to blast through the very simple premise of this sketch,
which is Will and Tom used to be tennis partners,
and Tom had an accident, and now he only has one arm.
Richard, I have some rather bad news
to tell you about our tennis partnership.
Richard, I'm sorry to say, I think we're
going to have to call it quits.
Douglas, what are you saying?
We've had so many great years together
and I just think we're moving in different directions
tennis-wise. Oh, is this because
of the accident? Oh,
did you have some sort of an accident well yeah
actually pretty major one actually i i came out of it minus one arm oh richard wasn't aware of
that really sorry to hear that i'm kind of surprised you didn't notice you sure this has
nothing to do with the loss of my dominant playing arm no nothing to do with the arm just
indifference of tennis philosophies.
And Will has a new
tennis partner because he doesn't want
to play with a one-armed player, and it's
Parnell who has three arms.
And then Tom
raises the stakes because his new tennis
partner is Bill who has seven arms.
And that, I've just described to you,
is a perfect 10-to-1 practice.
And they're talking like this the whole time. Ah, I've just described to you, is a perfect 10 to 1 premise. And they're talking like this the whole time.
Ah, I see.
Yeah.
Sounds good.
It's also short, too.
It feels like a 10 to 1 that was also cut down a little bit for time, too.
Yeah, there's a lot of big cuts.
This is a real forte two-line exchange.
Hey, Greg.
Seven-armed Toby Slavin. I thought you retired.
Retired? Hardly.
I was lured away by a very lucrative offer
from Alaskan Fishing Catery,
who believed, and rightly so,
that I could do the job of three-and-a-half men.
Ten years later, I'm back in tennis.
I just so appreciated that the math is right,
that he has seven arms so he can do the work of three and a half.
They rightly assumed he could do the work.
Rightly so, yeah.
Rightly so is the best part for me.
This is a real wonderful forte flourish.
Parnell, his new partner, is giving Hanks, his old partner,
shit for only having one arm.
And Parnell says, we'll be waiting for that day.
It'll be the same day you grow a new dominant playing arm.
And then Will says, at bay, Skip.
At bay.
It's good.
It's really good.
There is something interesting about a Forte sketch.
And this happened a couple times when writing with him,
where when you would go to a rewrite with a normal sketch,
you could be there for a while because anyone can pitch on it.
And oftentimes, if you went in with a forte sketch,
people would kind of look around and be like,
huh?
And there would not be much of a punch up
because the logic was so forte,
it was very difficult to find your way in.
So rewrite tables on Thursday,
and I greatly enjoyed my Thursdays.
And as head writer, I would sit at the head of the table
and you'd have about seven other writers at the table. And then Forte would come in for, say, 45 minutes to
an hour and you'd pitch jokes on it. And the nice thing with Forte was knowing that exactly what he
just said, so you'd only maybe give it 10 minutes. You'd pitch a few things. He would sort of
dutifully write them down. You would know that they would go right in the garbage and that was
fine with everybody. Immediately in the garbage. He would nod like very appreciatively though.
He was always kind about it.
Yeah, of course.
And whoever was on Forte's piece
had hours and hours to go.
It wasn't like he was done working on it.
Yeah.
There was no value to him
in the sort of collective writing process.
I have a quick thing I want to talk about
in relation to nothing.
Great.
This is in relation to a, I don't want to say drunk,
but let's just say jovial FaceTime I got from Andy and Seth together.
And it was a rare time where they're together in the same room
drinking a little whiskey together.
And it was delightful.
Yeah.
It was just delightful.
Andy and I had not seen each other for a long time.
And we went out for dinner.
And then he came back over to my apartment and we drank bourbon and we got we got old man wasted we got a little stripped out
we started cold facetiming bros and what a treat to get a cold facetime and just turn it on and
two guys in one square together yeah we then i have still photos because then we made you watch some stuff where
we were FaceTiming and then you were watching stuff on your computer and I was taking screenshots of
your face while you're watching things. That's the sort of thing you do when you're drunk.
All right. Now we move on. This is very exciting. This is a return from a former cast member,
a cast member who would straight up tell you to face they did not have the best time as a cast member on the show.
And I think this was a very triumphant return.
It was for me a really cool week to get to work with Julie Louis-Dreyfus.
All right.
Yes, that was awesome.
Is an all timer.
Yes. is an all-timer yes and it was also a really cool week because she was very good at telling us how
much nicer the vibe was and she was very funny talking about the things she was embarrassed about
when she was there like she came from a very like theater background and there was sort of half the
if you remember she was there at a crazy time when you also had like the billy crystals of the world
it wasn't even the lorne time it was the Dick Ebersole time. It was.
It was the Ebersole years.
So despite all her massive successes, I should note, I think she's hosting for the New Adventures of Old Christine.
This is pre-VEEP.
This is 2006.
And she comes in and it was so much fun to have her there.
She was the best.
She really was.
And it was a great episode.
Despite the fact that, again, it wasn't that memorable a digital short.
No. Well, we've already covered this short a little bit because it was the one we did after lazy sunday
we didn't shoot one that week yeah so there's no julia's not in it and it is peyote which is sort
of the follow-up to lettuce that wisely didn't air as the follow-up to lettuce so even though
it does not make an impact here the positive impact was the instinct not to make it the second digital short,
because now we put some air between it. Now it sort of feels like a 10 to 1-er, even though it's
not. No, it did. Oh, you're right. It is a 10 to 1-er. It was the final sketch of the night.
Which is a perfect place to put it. And so it does not have the burden of being an early digital
short. And for those who
enjoy the journey of digital shorts, peyote is good time. Yeah. So peyote comes from Sandberg.
Do you guys sit down and say, is there another move in lettuce to do a second lettucey sketch?
I feel like it was also Forte's idea, wasn't it? Yes. Lettuce had worked out and we went back to
Forte like, let's do it again. What else you got, buddy? And obviously lettuce was the switcheroo
as it was very depressed and very sad
and they're chewing on lettuce.
I think in this day and age,
people wouldn't even do something that touches suicide,
which is probably correct, but this was another time.
So Andy standing against a brick building,
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to jump.
Forte talking through a bullhorn.
You don't want to do this.
None of these people,
they just want to see the freak jump. Sir, come on. You know that's not true. You don't want to do this. None of these people, they just want to see the freak jump.
Sir, come on.
You know that's not true.
You don't understand.
Oh, come on, come on.
Whatever it is, we can talk about it.
I love her, man.
She broke my heart.
No one person is worth taking your life.
She was.
Just relax.
I'm done relaxing.
No, don't do it. No other way.
And it intensifies.
It's very dramatic. And then we
cut to a wide and they're right
next to each other. Classic cut to wide.
It's a fun editing joke, that one.
Porte's on his knees. Andy's feet are on
the ground. Yeah.
And we get a cameo of one of the best
reoccurring characters we ever did. Yorma as
man on the street walking by.
Pedestrian Yorma.
Oh, I was very good at walking by.
That's how you know it's in the same series as Lettuce.
I got a compliment from Chester about my walking by in both of them.
He was like, you really look like Jewel Santana when you walk by.
I was really proud of that.
Interesting.
Genuinely.
Not who I would have picked.
No.
But I love it.
Only Chester would say that.
Does the audience respond happily when they see the reveal?
Yeah, it gets a nice little laugh.
Honestly, Peyote gets a bigger laugh,
which wasn't in the original script.
I think we added it
when we were editing
and that was the only thing
when we rewatched it
that made me chuckle.
Of the drugs,
it's pretty decent.
It's very unlikely
to have an ad campaign.
Yeah.
I feel like Peyote doesn't feel like they're going to add market cap.
It's a simple premise done well, but amounts to very little.
Locale.
Very low-cal.
Perfect for the very end of the thing when most people are asleep.
Yeah.
How long is it?
It's like a minute 10 or something, right?
I'm going to guess that's true.
Honestly, that's probably the main reason why it aired last,
because it wasn't helping change a set.
Right.
I think one of the nice things about the success of the digital shorts is,
again, I'm extrapolating out based on nothing,
why a lot of people got behind them,
is you guys were never eating up a huge chunk of the show.
If somebody's writing a recurring piece that's seven minutes every other week,
that's really taking away time from other people.
But you guys were capped out at like 2.20.
Sometimes you'd come in at 1.15.
Nobody could be upset.
Also, it never took away from anyone's live piece
because there always had to be a pre-tape piece
in the spot we were in.
Yeah.
50 seconds.
Jeff just went and looked.
50 seconds.
Oh, yeah.
That's that shit.
What was the number that we had to hit, though,
to be able to change a set?
It was 145 or 150?
Was it 135 or 150?
I thought it was 150.
So if you made it something underneath that,
Lorne would kind of like,
thanks a lot.
Really doesn't help me.
Yeah.
He was like, it really helps me
if you can make it 150 or longer.
But I think when he saw peyote,
he was like, no, 45 is about the right price.
He was like, that's okay.
That's fine.
He's like, just play it twice in a row.
Just play it twice in a row.
Like the hit.
People forget.
That's what makes Lawrence a really good producer.
Remember, he would always be like, twice in a row.
Can we hop into Seth's Corner for a second?
Yes, please.
Seth's Corner, you're all invited.
Seth's Corner, it's happening right now.
Take it away, Seth.
Okay, so I wrote a sketch called MySpace
And it was Andy
Do you remember that you were the professor
Or the teacher in this sketch?
No
Okay
It was a Learning Annex MySpace and You seminar
You were a young man
Oh, vague
Yep, yep, yep
You were teaching everybody how you could set up a MySpace page
So you can communicate with more than 6 million young people currently in the MySpace
community. Let's get started.
This is a slightly older group than I'm
expecting. And it's in
Julia, and then the rest of us are clearly
pedophiles.
Jesus. Well, I admit
I'm not here to start my own MySpace
page. My daughter is
spending all of her time on it, so I thought
I should see what all this hullabaloo was about.
Okay. And the rest of you?
What she said?
Yeah.
What the lady said.
Yeah.
Fair enough.
Now, the first step in creating your MySpace page
is to fill out your profile,
things like your name, sex, and age.
Now, with the age thing,
could my, uh, child put a different age
than his actual age?
Yeah, I guess they could.
And MySpace doesn't have a way to police that?
Not really.
So if my son was 45, he could say he was 15?
Your son is 45?
I said if he was 45.
It's hypothetical.
It's a real good sketch.
It's fairly dark. That is fairly dark. And accurate. And it aired. It's hypothetical. It's a real good sketch. It's fairly dark.
That is fairly dark.
And accurate.
And it aired.
It aired.
Here's my favorite memory of it.
In Dressed,
do you remember who was in it
that asked to get taken out of it?
No.
Somebody was in it
playing a pedophile,
got a giant laugh,
and then between Dressed and air
thought better of it.
And that was musical guest
Paul Simon.
He's like, that didn't feel like the right laugh for me.
He was great.
I was like, who are you going to say
that would be okay with you saying that?
And I was like, oh yeah, Paul Simon.
He wants everyone to know he pulled himself.
Yeah.
Again, I think one of the fond memories I have of it,
and this is pre-Odenkirk Breaking Bad.
This is in my mind now,
just Mr. Show Odenkirk,
so somebody I really looked up to.
And Bill knew him,
and Bill came to my office and said,
Odenkirk asked you wrote that sketch.
Oh, that's wonderful.
That's nice.
Comedy, cool dude.
I mean, again,
I feel like ultimately did Paul Simon
make the right choice?
I feel like he's pretty well regarded even today,
so ultimately I think he did okay.
This was one of the first ones
where I got asked to direct something for the show
that wasn't one of our sketches
because I did some parts of the monologue I didn't write
that was like going out in the streets
with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
And I remember having a great time
and feeling kind of proud
that I had contributed to the adult part of the show
rather than just our little kid corner.
There's a sketch called Alien Encounter in this show.
And obviously, it's unfortunate that now there's, you know, obviously a historically great alien abduction sketch that Kate McKinnon did. But there was a sketch where Julia was in a TV movie where they were reenacting the alien abduction of Sandy Patterson. And the sketch just becomes a lot of wig walking in as the real Sandy Patterson.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Can we cut? Can we just cut for a second?
Cut! Cut!
Michelle, what's the problem?
Oh, I really don't want to be a pain or anything,
but that didn't really sound like an alien.
It was more sort of like a bunch of ghosts.
Well, that's what it sounded like.
That's what I heard.
I'm sorry.
I should have introduced you to earlier.
Michelle, this is the real Sandy Patterson.
That's what happened!
Those are the sounds I heard when they came for me!
Oh, I'm sorry.
I didn't mean anything.
I just...
They were in my house!
All right, Sandy.
All right, Sandy.
All right, Sandy.
All right, Sandy.
All right, Sandy.
All right, Sandy.
All right, Sandy. All right, Sandy. All right, Sandy. All right, Sandy. Michelle, let's just stick to the script, okay? Oh, of course. I'm really sorry. It was horrible.
They were from space.
Of course they were.
Make it happen to you.
Of course.
It was a good show.
I'm reading Shaggy Dog.
Also guest writing that week, John Glazer.
Oh, yeah, that was a good time.
And we wrote it with him, and it was super fun.
It's because we had, for years, starting at this time,
somebody was pranking our office and putting posters
for things that we did not care about in our office.
And we would show up the new week of work and there'd be, say, a poster for Disney's The Shaggy Dog starring Tim Allen.
And then the next week we'd show up and there was like, was it Allen Iverson or something else?
Some like Reggie Miller, some other like sports poster.
Is that how we got the Breakfast and Tiffany's poster as well?
Yes. Every week we'd show up and there'd be a new poster that just kind of was meaningless to us.
And no one ever took the credit for this prank, for this long running prank.
But it did result in a Shaggy Dog sketch because we were staring at, if you recall,
the poster also had, it had a dog, the Shaggy Dog, and then his eyes were Tim Allen's eyes.
So it was super creepy looking, weird Disney poster but this sketch i have no recollection yeah it's sandberg and glazer are the first two
names then chaffer tacone so it was us and john glazer anyway it's a bad bad sketch yeah how did
this even get to dress well then they start pitching out our ideas yeah on the plus side i
bet this got us to take the poster down in our office we didn't want
to look at it anymore because it was so embarrassing to have it up there after we wrote this like well
we well we can't remember this now for the next five years just the biggest movie television and
music stars came through that office and would look at our collection of posters and go huh
this is where the magic happens they'd be coming into the guys who had made Dignifieds.
It was everyone from Lady Gaga to Rihanna came in and saw that.
It does say something about you guys.
You appreciated the prank so much that you wouldn't take them down,
even though you had that power every single turn.
Our office was like the shittiest dorm room that you've ever saw.
It was like the dorm room that I expected to have in college and didn't until SNL.
The guys that made Mother Lover love Breakfast at Tiffany's.
These guys are really interesting.
And Reggie Miller.
Yeah.
All right, so gentlemen, we are now closing in
on the end of your first season on the show.
You are then about to embark to Vancouver to shoot Hot Rod.
You've been balancing writing digital shorts
with working on a script.
It's a very exciting time.
And I don't know if you guys,
when it turns to spring in New York City, even now,
I feel the way I felt when SNL season is coming to a close,
even though I'm not on that schedule anymore.
It just felt so nice to know,
especially if it had been a good season.
It was so nice that it was a little bit lighter,
a little bit later,
and it just felt like the reward
of getting through a long season.
And I felt that very much this year that we had done a very nice job.
Testicles aside.
Yeah.
There it is.
And I don't know if he has heard me earlier,
but Lobster Claw and Handlebar did get cut again this week.
Yeah.
Oh, good. Interesting.
Yeah.
The phantom of this opera for the rest of the season.
Throwing it back at you.
Oh, my God.
There's one more episode of SNL, correct?
Yeah, we have one more to go
and we'll be back
with that episode next week.
We'll see you next week,
everybody,
for episode 10
of the Lonely Island
and Seth Meyers podcast.
Bye, gentlemen.
Bye.
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and Seth Meyers podcast
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