Formative humor

Originally published in 2020

Got a feeling ’21 is gonna be a good year. Below is the result of about eight years of list-making… My annotated list of “formative” humor influences. Of course every list is subjective but I am seeking glaring omissions / any nominations to The Committee that you might make.

Faithfully Submitted,

Douglas C. Niedermayer

Sergeant-at-arms.

FORMATIVE HUMOR • Personal influences, 1968-The Present

Carol Burnett Show/Laugh In ­— Combined these, as they represent the beginnings of being able to stay up for a comedy show (after which it was bedtime). Mostly scattered memories — “Sock it to me” and “Missus-uh-Wiggins” — but I’ll crystalize a couple: Dan Rowan made my Dad laugh hard. That twinkle in Rowan’s eye was inspiring. As for “Carol Burnett,” everything Harvey Korman and Tim Conway did was funny to a young sprout. To this day, several friends and I still maintain huge affection for a signature Korman move — an over-the-top “stage bow” that his ham actor character Alfred Funt would perform (Whenever “Funt” would enter a scene, the audience would burst into applause, so he would break character and take a big bow before resuming the scene.) A stellar example is here at 1:52. Another here at 1:46.

MAD — Mad magazine, and its mascot Alfred E Neuman, was the entry point for non-kiddie parodies of current celebrities, TV shows and movies. There was the tiny cartoon-in-the-margins, Spy vs. Spy. There was Don Martin and his creation, Fester Bestertester. And of course each issue had a giant Al Jaffee Fold-In, in which a seemingly benign gatefold illustration, when folded back in on itself, would reveal a graphical “zinger” of a punchline. Possession of a Mad offered glimpses of the adult humor world to come. Often “you” (i.e., me) knew something was funny by the set-up, but didn’t understand the joke. Yet.

Comedy albums — One of the (mostly) parent-approved ways you learn about the adult world when you’re coming of age is via stand-up comedy recordings. When our son Ben was 11, he’d drift off to sleep to the Pandora “Jim Gaffigan Channel” he had created. In my day, it was the comedy album. During my formative years these recordings included performances by Bill Cosby, Bob Newhart, Steve Martin, and George Carlin, as well as a ten-inch 1950s Kermit Shafer “Pardon My Blooper” record my parents owned, and comedy albums from National Lampoon, Monty Python, Cheech & Chong, Richard Pryor owned by friends.

Monty Python’s Flying Circus — Quick word here. PBS stations nationwide began airing episodes in 1974-1975. I was 11, the perfect age to be sucked in to the lunacy. I recall that in freshman English class (1978), MHS’ Brother John Stout was appalled but intrigued probably because Python (like Looney Tunes) threw in enough history that its viewers gained a small measure of culture without even knowing it. Python TV was terrific, but the real sweet spot for me would have been their movies, Holy Grail (I saw it at the drive-in in 1975), Life of Brian (1979) and — especially — The Meaning of Life (1983). The fellas and I watched it six or seven times during summer-school session. [Troupe comedy flourished as well because of the Python. I can’t call it an “influence” per se, but I love the wonderful Mr. Show (HBO, 1995-1999). Bob Odenkirk’s creation stands up well on HBOMax two decades later… and plenty more successful ensembles can name Monty Python as a major factor in their existence]

Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies — There are a zillion you could cite, but nothing and nobody beats the classic Warner Brothers cartoon… The one where Bugs encounters “Nature Boy” (who’s trying to shoot a poisonous apple at him through a blowgun), and Bugs preemptively shoots it right back down NB’s throat. Or the one where Bugs and Daffy are Vaudeville performers. The crowd adores anything Bugs does and ignores Daffy. At the close, Daffy is dressed as Satan and blows himself up, etc. If there’s a funnier and more influential cartoonist than Chuck Jones out there, well then there’s hope. 

Johnny Carson — Nearly 7,000 times over a 29-year span until 1992 Johnny Carson, sidekick Ed McMahon and “Tonight Show” bandleader Doc Severinson were fixtures on screens in American households following the late local news. My brother-in-law Perry, a few years older, once summed it up:  The sound of a happy 1970s childhood is drifting off to sleep upstairs in your bed to the sound of your parents laughing to the voice of Johnny Carson.

Talk-show guests — Robin, Pryor, Martin Mull, David Brenner, Billy Crystal… Moments, movies and TV roles, episode snippets and most of all, guest appearances on various talk shows loom large. I always looked forward to Leno as Dave’s guest. He was terrific with, “What’s my beef?” Don Rickles’ Tonight Show appearances and roasts were essential/formative. 

The classic sitcoms — I’ll take “Cheers,” “Seinfeld,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show,” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”  “WKRP in Cincinnati,” “Barney Miller” are right there, too. Others including “Happy Days,” “Taxi,” “Soap,” “Welcome Back, Kotter” and “M*A*S*H” were influential but also spotty over the course of their lengthy tenures in the spotlight.

Assorted/random favorite episodes:

• The Peeper (Newhart)
• Turkey Drop (WKRP)
• Chuckles the Clown (Mary Tyler Moore)
• The Cheers where Coach and Sam go back to high school
• Any Andy Griffith with Ernest T. Bass

Young Frankenstein— Born in ’64, I missed the age cutoff for Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, but barely. That’s fine, the older kids filled me in while shooting around on my neighbor’s driveway. So when my father took me to see the Brooks followup movie, Young Frankenstein (January 1975), also starring the underappreciated Gene Wilder (as Dr. Fron-ken-SHTEEN! and don’t mispronounce it), I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. Filmed in black and white with glorious attention paid to the style of James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), it’s great fun on many levels. While Dad guffawed at the double entendres I couldn’t get enough of Marty Feldman’s updated take on the ever-faithful hunchbacked assistant, “EYE-Gor.”

Early SNL — Aside from just the sheer realization that this was not for our parents (as least, not mine), the debut of NBC’s “Saturday Night” arrived like a comet in October, 1975. The live sketch comedy dynamic delivered, as did the ensemble cast of previous unknowns, The Not Ready for Primetime Players. I could go many different directions, but will focus just on the list of characters created with perfect, odd originality by my favorite original cast member, Dan Aykroyd, who was only 23 when the show debuted: 

• Telepsychic
• Leonard Pinth-Garnell
• Irwin Mainway
• Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute
• E. Buzz Miller (and Christie Christina)
• Jimmy Joe RedSky
• Jason (and his Old Lady, Sunshine)
• “Bassomatic ’76” pitchman
• Tom Snyder
• Jimmy Carter
• Nixon, looking at the portrait of JFK saying, “They’ll find out about you!” 
• Yortak Festrunk, one of the Two Wild and Crazy Guys
• And of course, Elwood Blues.

National Lampoon (1978-1980) — Action Golf. Epic PJ O’Rourke essays. Pre-fame John Hughes stories. Boobage and doobage. Like an R-rated version of Mad, it was all too much for a wannabe hepcat like me. But I asked (and my parents permitted it) to pay for a subscription the edgy monthly during its second strong period (this one coming a little after early-70s staff writers like Michael “Mr. Mike” O’Donoghue, an all-time great, had achieved their NatLamp notoriety and moved onward and upward). Not to be overlooked: the NatLamp Specials, such as the Sunday Newspaper Parody and the 1964 High School Yearbook Parody, both brilliant.

Steve Martin — Steve’s emergence on the scene timed perfectly with my adolescent years. His comedy LPs, “Let’s Get Small,” and “A Wild and Crazy Guy,” the 1978 NBC Comedy Special (“Ray, Ray, Ray…”) his SNL appearances as Theodoric of York and Georg Festrunk, and his 1979 movie The Jerk all hit 15-year-old me squarely. The book Cruel Shoes and his clever noir send-up Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid sent my friends and I scurrying in several fun directions as well. Steve went on a lengthy creative run in the public spotlight, culminating in Roxanne, that any modern comedian would kill for. His autobiography Born Standing Up is an enjoyable read. (I’m skipping the part of this writeup where I witnessed the 2017 Steve Martin/Martin Short Netflix special.)

Airplane/Naked Gun — Airplane and The Naked Gun hold up well to this day, incorporating some of the greatest comedy slapstick ever. It was pure genius of the Zucker brothers and Jim Abrahams (who got their start with 1977’s The Kentucky Fried Movie) to realize they could cast dramatic actors Leslie Nielsen, Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, and others and just have them play it straight with those scripts. There is a scene in Naked Gun where Frank Drebin (Nielsen) breaks into a suspect’s office with a credit card on a keychain filled with American Express cards. He opens a desk drawer and quietly exclaims, “Bingo.” He’s found a bingo card. Stealthily avoiding surveillance cameras, he accidentally activates a manic player piano. Next, he snatches a piece of stationery from beneath a house of cards without tipping it over. Squinting to read the words on the page, he flicks on his Zippo for a better look. Of course, this sets paper, curtains and soon the entire room ablaze. A series of antique ceramics begin to topple from a high shelf and Drebin must catch each one as it falls. With the fire now raging, he moves outside the 30^th-story room onto a window ledge where he loses his balance but regains it by grabbing first the breasts on a building-exterior statue, then by latching on to a buxom woman in an open window, and finally, by grasping the concrete penis of another of the statues. In the sequence’s final gag, the now-delirious Frank stumbles from the windowsill inward to the chesty woman’s apartment. He fumbles and falls toward her, giant sculpted penis in hand, as she shrieks. The whole thing takes less than 90 seconds. [Don’t miss also: the same production team’s irreverent Police Squad! and the not-bad Val Kilmer spy comedy, Top Secret!]

Animal House — Starting with the fact that I was 14 and persuaded my mom to bring me to the theater to gain “parent or guardian” access, to me National Lampoon’s Animal House is the world’s overall #1/#1 draft pick formative humor item of “pre-driver’s license” adolescence. Preppy fashions, fraternal pimpovers, Greek Council pressure: all of it was waiting to be lived for real, at a Large Midwestern University. This and the Caddyshack scripts inform many phrases my friends and I still use daily. “Everybody thought the Stork was brain-damaged.” The Stork was National Lampoon editor Doug Kenney, who wrote and produced Animal House and Caddyshack before his untimely demise at 33.

Caddyshack — The most over-quoted comedy of my lifetime, Caddyshack is now more than 40 years old. Fashioned like a class-conscious Marx Brothers script by director Harold Ramis and fellow writers Doug Kenney and Brian Doyle Murray (who had caddied at Winnetka, Illinois golf club Indian Hill, which still has live caddies), Caddyshack offers comedic freshness every time you watch. Judge Smails, Al Czervik, Ty Webb, Carl Spackler, Danny Noonan, The Bishop, Spaulding, Dr. Beeper, Mrs Haverkamp, heck, even The Gopher shimmying to Kenny Loggins’ “I’m Alright” — each character has something previously under-observed going for him… That my friends and I must then share with one another… Immediately. The movie also features the worst dramatic subplot of all time: Has young Danny knocked up Maggie, the Irish waitress? [spoiler alert: Who the fuck cares?] I could go on for days, but gotta stop here. As the bishop said, “I’m just a man!” …”Then you don’t get no Coke!”

Harold Ramis: Stripes, Ghostbusters & Groundhog Day — The late Harold Ramis accomplished titanic feats in comedy, before prematurely catching a cab in 2014. He is Russell Ziskey in Stripes (1981) and Egon Spengler in the original Ghostbusters films and co-wrote them. He directed Caddyshack (1980), National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), and Groundhog Day (1993). He was SCTV’s original head writer and also a performer with the likes of John Candy, Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis, Catherine O’Hara, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Martin Short and others. He co-wrote Groundhog Day and Animal House (1978). [He has a writing credit for Meatballs (1979) – “She wants it, Spaz!”] Ramis functions affably as straight man/provocateur to Bill Murray’s loser leading man in Stripes, which is another hugely influential, eternally re-quoted ’80s comedy. His Spengler character shattered my unsuspecting Dad with the visionary, “Print is dead!” line in the original Ghostbusters. My favorite Ramis idea might just be Back to School (1986), which let Rodney Dangerfield and a great script take over. And Groundhog Day (1993) is an all-time classic. I had forgotten how much I enjoy the young married couple who think Phil Connors is the cats’ pajamas. It’s sweet and absolutely brilliant, and I will probably watch it again tonight. (He says, un-ironically.)

Woody Allen: Play It Again, Sam, Bananas, Annie Hall, Love and Death and Without Feathers — Our family got one of the first Sony Betamax recorders. Roughly the size of a Delta 88, it ushered the way for a young buck like myself to closely study Play It Again, Sam, and Bananas. Howard Cosell, in his ABC blazer with the live call of the banana-republic assassination, is comedy gold. Love and Death may be the best “singles-hitting” jokes asset in the Woody Comedies lineup. Woody Allen was canceled, way before it was a thing. Before then, he and his movies were definitely cool, but Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) is a long time gone.

“The Muppet Show” — Syndicated, weekly variety show airing around 6:30 p.m. Saturdays in most markets. Usually hosted by an actor or celebrity playing himself. Really well written. Loved the Chef, Beaker, “Pigs in Space,” and of course, insult comedians Statler and Waldorf. The memories of this series are mostly during high school. I loved those cold winter Saturdays circa 1979-81:

• We had a fire burning perpetually in the fireplace, everyone wearing multiple layers up and two down
• Dad was without doubt going to be reading some obscure British military history book; Mom puttering in kitchen
• I would make chocolate-chip cookie dough, sometimes actually baking the chocolate chips [Later add visits by buddies Jim, Wanny, Mark, Mac, Billy or Bill AKA “Foz”]
• These viewings usually wrapped around an appearance in 1970s-80s Indiana, by the Farm Bureau mop lady “Martha,” and an IU Hoosiers basketball game 

The Blues Brothers (1980) and Trading Places (1983) — John Landis’ big-budget Chicago comedy works so well because of the musical numbers (which revived the careers of Aretha, James Brown and Ray Charles) and not so well for the inane plot. Still I loved it then, and I’ll stop past it now if it’s airing on The Superstation. Landis, whose career got going when he directed The Kentucky Fried Movie in 1977, again struck box-office gold with the holiday vibe of Philadelphia-based Trading Places.

The financier Duke brothers (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) cause a blue-blood, monied twerp in their employ (Dan Aykroyd) to lose everything one Christmas, while they groom a homeless con (Eddie Murphy) to replace him.

The script’s class jokes are pointed and the performances smart and funny, as Trading Places explores the time-honored “nature vs. nurture” debate. A close buddy and I still to this day will quote the scene in the prison lockup where Murphy’s “Billy Ray Valentine” lies to the two giant convicts with, “The phone in my limo is busted…!”

Diner — I was 18 and grabbed a Rolling Stone to learn of this observant comedy about a group of buddies on the verge of real-world adult responsibilities in late ’50s Baltimore. Wonderfully cast (Tim Daly, Mickey Rourke, Daniel Stern, Kevin Bacon, Steve Guttenberg, and Paul Reiser) and played, Barry Levinson’s quiet tale works because of the unexpected, and precise attention to detail. The influential script nails what guys talk about, what they value. When it comes to choosing a spouse, YES, basic knowledge of NFL franchise history matters. OF COURSE, the proper sorting of record albums should never be taken lightly. The movie soundtrack is killer, too.

This is Spinal Tap — The progenitor of the mockumentary, which gave us Nigel Tufnel AND Christopher Guest, has proven its influence time and again. It’s an ensemble piece with so many characters and bits to focus on that it never seems past its Sell-By date. I enjoy, but don’t revere, Waiting for Guffman and the other Guest mockumentaries but Tap is the one. Special shoutout to the late Fred Willard, whose genial airbase tour-guide character (and the band name the character invokes: “Four Jacks and A Jill”) is mint. Glossing over Christopher Guest is a mistake, as he singlehandledly created a genre – the mockumentary – that informs many of today’s sitcoms.

[Guest’s 1989 directorial debut, The Big Picture, is affectionate, wise and the story (Kevin Bacon is a promising director who thinks he’s just gotten his “big break”) sharply lampoons the blind absurdity of show business. The movie (not a mockumentary) is hard to find today, I looked, but it’s a gem. Don’t miss Martin Short as self-styled superagent, Neil Sussman.]

Mid-period SNL (Chris Guest/Harry Shearer/Eddie Murphy/Martin Short) — After the first SNL decade, after Lorne Michaels left the show (replaced briefly by Dick Ebersole) and then returned, the cast offered an interesting split: Eddie Murphy’s explosive star power versus skits crafted by Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer and Billy Crystal. It was an odd marriage yet it produced memorable comedy over a multi-season span, roughly 1980-1984 — including masochistic security guards Willie and Frankie, Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood, Short’s SCTV characters Ed Grimley and Jackie Rogers, Jr., The Minkmans and Senor Cosa. All noteworthy personally, because of the collegiate timing.

NB: Eddie Murphy probably deserves a full call-out on this list. Only 19 when he broke in, his impact was as immediate and enormous. Murphy got a huge number of people thinking about quick/sharp humor, about standup, and improv… and the difficulty of sustaining all of it — the energy, the fame and the massive audience. I won’t soon forget the odd feeling of disappointment upon hearing the news that he had stormed off after failing to win a Supporting-actor Oscar for “Dreamgirls.” He’s someone you find yourself pulling for and the notion that bitterness had consumed him said so much about how he views himself and his place in the pantheon. It’s good to see him back in action lately.

Albert Brooks — Modern Romance (1981), Lost in America (1985), Defending Your Life (1991) It’s oddly therapeutic watching a typical Albert Brooks character obsess about “Mercedes Leather” versus real leather, or whether his BMW 325 looks like a turd compared to the 750 parked nearby. Brooks built his smart-comedy niche around the all-American neurosis of comparative material happiness. In these, his three biggest movies, Brooks relentlessly hones in on the absurdity of wanting what we cannot have.

Because someone else received the promotion he coveted, Brooks‘ Lost in America character wishes aloud that his rival’s new boat will sink and that he will be eaten by sharks. In Defending Your Life, Brooks is devastated when he learns that in a past life, he’s actually been eaten by a wild animal himself — while an acquaintance learns she was Prince Valiant.

In Modern Romance, Brooks plays a sadsack movie editor who, more or less, stalks his girlfriend In the opening scene, he breaks up with her. For the remainder of the film, he expends Kelly Ripa-esque energy trying to win her back.

Though Brooks’ anti-heroes are pathetic and funny, they continue trying to do their best in a world full of futile material comparisons, bungled salary negotiations and the abject terror of public speaking. Yet in spite of humiliating and often hilarious defeat, they plod on… and that is the point.

SCTV — Second City TV, on a bad day, surpassed anything Saturday Night Live could ever hope to be. The reason for this was that a low budget and the requirement to write multiple episodes months before production honed the SCTV writing process. Harold Ramis’ experience drove head writer Dave Thomas, forging healthy competition and character-driven creations that had to live independent of real-world events. How else could you script a fake newscast, six months ahead of time, than to create it from whole cloth?

“Play It Again, Woody.” No SNL writer from the last 30 casts could even get in the same area code as this terrific parody:

• Part 1 here: https://youtu.be/8GqbCrsfrfs
• Part 2 here: https://youtu.be/QvB5Ch0uN3U

From the SCTV “Midnight Cowboy II” episode, “Mel’s Rockpile,” a Bandstand-style skit with Eugene Levy as a cognitively diminished Dick Clark, delivers a punk-rock episode where Mel is eventually trampled. An early version of Martin Short’s awkward “Lawrence” character is interviewed, as one of the kid dancers. John Candy also kills in this sketch, as the uncomfortably nervous ‘Stefan Slurry from ‘Pre-Teen World'”. Amazing head-nodding and constant eye-blinking in a Candy performance for the ages (okay, slight exaggeration). 

And finally: SCTV signs off (remember when television channels would actually sign off for the night?) with the “Mel Torme National Anthem/Signoff” – 1:28 of comedy gold.

The series may have been less high-profile or popular than SNL but its influence remains large. SCTV is huge on the formative humor lineup, however, it took some time until I was able to actually see the series. This is because stateside, the shows aired immediately after SNL in larger NBC markets (and not in mine). As a result, I wasn’t able to see many episodes until after I arrived to campus, and a larger NBC affiliate. 

I’d be remiss if I failed now to mention the formative-humor magic that occurred in the ultimate viewing room of my later youth: Upstairs at Emery’s House, 1983-1987. My fraternity brother Jon’s home base in Bloomington featured an expansive, upstairs “man fort” — a billiards and video setup where several of us spent many a weekend. I have the Emery men to thank for many of my first exposures to SCTV and countless other terrific comedies, classic movies and TV shows. 

“Late Night with David Letterman” — At its peak from 1985 to 1989, Late Night was the most disruptive, inventive and downright authority-challenging comedy show anyone had ever seen. 

The show, hosted by a favorite son of Indiana, is probably the single greatest formative-humor influence on Young Adult Me. (Factored into this, the heady feat of having one of my PR clients on the show. In May 1989, I was able to spend 48 glorious hours in and around Rockefeller Plaza Studio 8H, leading to my client’s “Late Night” appearance. He was booked as an episode’s final guest with a live “sporting goods demo” that Dave simultaneously participated in, and mocked. I had a lovely time and got to see Kathleen Turner, Dana Delaney, Jeff Altman and other 80s faces.) 

“NBC-era Dave” (1975-1993) encapsulated his rise and peak years. A recent re-run package on BRAVO reinforced the notion that no one has been able to duplicate the brilliance of those early seasons of “Late Night.” I realize, it was a time and place. But the will was strong every Monday through Thursday at 12:30 a.m. during my undergrad years (1983-86), to drop whatever else was happening on campus and find the other five like-minded “Dave guys” in the fraternity to watch together. For a representative taste of the show at its peak, check out a full episode from Thanksgiving 1986, The Late Night with David Letterman Second Annual Holiday Film Festival.

The CBS show never did it for me.

Still, “Late Night with David Letterman” was a hell of a run… groundbreaking material in comedy TV and appointment viewing for TwentySomething me.

Spy magazine — SPY had about a 2.5 year run of near-perfection before it got top-heavy and/or drunk with success. The Manhattan-centric magazine was aloof, cruel and media obsessive. It changed magazine journalism because it was willing to commit to unsavory (often litigious) celebrity takedowns and scandalous subject matter other rags were loathe to expose. 1988 was the peak year, when I was 24 and working in a downtown Chicago agency job. This was the right time and nearly the exact place to enjoy the magazine and its irreverent anecdotes and gossipy tidbits. I still have a few copies and am proud to say I sold a handful of ideas to the Undead, post-relevance version of Spy in 1996. That and a dime will get me a cup of coffee.

“Seinfeld” — “Let me tell you why my series in the ’90s was so good, besides just an inordinate amount of just pure good fortune,” said Jerry Seinfeld in 2018. “In most series, 50 percent of the time is spent working on the show, 50 percent of the time is spent dealing with personality, political, and hierarchical issues of making something. We spent 99 percent of our time writing. Me and Larry [David]. The two of us. The door was closed. It’s closed. Somebody calls. We’re not taking the call. We were gonna make this thing funny. That’s why the show was good.”

Recent attempts by keyboard heroes in social media to cancel Jerry Seinfeld or diminish the series can all go pound sand. It’s still the best sitcom ever, and it gave rise to Larry David’s brilliant and exasperating followup, “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Seinfeld had once pitched a way for the series to end, Jason Alexander told media recently. “It would be a regular episode, and we would be in the coffee shop afterward talking and talking and talking, until we ran out of things to say … and Jerry would say, ‘That’s enough.’”

1990-93 SNL seasons (Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Mike Myers, Dennis Miller, Kevin Nealon with young David Spade, Chris Farley, and Adam Sandler) — The only other truly great era of the show in my opinion: Motivational speaker Matt Foley. Dennis Miller (the greatest “Weekend Update” host ever, and it isn’t close. Who else could take the bathyscaphe down into the Marianas Trench of references the way Miller could? A highly subjective list of oft-cited, Favorite Miller References of mine includes: Topo Gigio, the Zapruder film, Tenzing Norgay, Blanche DuBois and Bob Crane). “Coffee Talk with Linda Richman.” Dana Carvey as both George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot, with Darrell Hammond as Clinton. The Chippendale’s audition sketch with Patrick Swayze and Chris Farley. Wayne’s World. Sprockets.

And for my money the peak skit of them all, from December 1990: “The Carl Sagan Global Warming Christmas Special” with Mike Myers as Sagan, Tom Hanks gloriously sending up Dean Martin, and Carvey’s spot-on Paul McCartney.

I stopped being a regular viewer around 2003. If forced to pinpoint the fateful moment, I can cite the first few times that the Weekend Update anchors suddenly began to break character to laugh at their own jokes. The show has become what it once lampooned so effectively: Establishment.  I could be wrong. You’re invited to persuade me otherwise. I’ve missed at least the last two full cast eras, so perhaps SNL today isn’t safe. Perhaps it isn’t partisan. Perhaps it isn’t utterly predictable. Change my mind!

The Larry Sanders Show — In the recent Judd Apatow documentary about the late Garry Shandling, when Shandling turned away from a reputed offer to succeed Johnny Carson during the ’90s late-night wars involving Dave Letterman and Jay Leno, Shandling’s journals seemed to suggest that he was doing so in pursuit of Buddhism.

Others have suggested he turned away from becoming the next host of “The Tonight Show” not as a higher thing, but rather because he had already begun moving toward the fictionalized version. “Larry Sanders” was something he saw as being better and more original, and he was right (but he wasn’t trying to achieve Nirvana). What Shandling ended up creating was ahead of its time, sharp and closer to reality than Dave or Jay could ever have imagined — an HBO mockumentary comedy which brought to life an insecure talk show host and the hired staff trying hard to maintain his equilibrium, along with their own employment. 

For six seasons, ”Sanders” was must-see TV, brilliantly made with exceptional primary characters — Rip Torn as Larry’s all-knowing Take No Prisoners producer, Artie, and Jeffrey Tambor as Hank Kingsley, Larry’s loyal, buffoon sidekick. The series was timely, relevant and wickedly on point from the first episode to the last.

That Thing You Do — [Note: this was written just after the 2020 death of prolific songwriter Adam Schlesinger, who did the soundtrack. Adam was best known for his work in Fountains of Wayne.] 

There’s a lot to love about the entire movie. It’s very funny. It’s sweet and observational. Everything Steve “Lenny” Zahn says (“Know what these are? Presidential flash cards!”) kills me. 

It’s one of my favorite comedies. There’s not a bad line or a bad scene or a bad character anywhere. It just makes me smile all the way through: “A man in a really nice camper wants to put our song on the radio!”  

Tom Hanks wrote the script during the production of “Forrest Gump,” at a time when he claims he was tired of hearing about himself and worried about being overexposed. He wanted a small movie, an ensemble piece and had songs in mind for the other acts, but the rights clearances for those hit girl-group songs were hugely expensive so he decided instead to create all-new ones. It’s a tribute to Schlesinger’s ability, and a rarity in movies, that the signature soundtrack tune about a fictional hit song sounded exactly like a hit song.

Schlesinger, a gifted genre “narc,” seems not only to have had talent but also the ability to poke fun. I always thought the other acts/songs on the That Thing You Do soundtrack were dead solid perfect.  “Mr. Downtown,” “Drive Faster,” and the song by the Supreme-y girl band The Chantrellenes, are all really good songs, but all of them are great sendups as well. If you listen to the words of the girls’ song, “Hold My Hand, Hold My Heart,” it’s such utter tripe – like written by a 13-year-old.  But so good! Just a half-tick below the real thing.

A note on Streaming platforms and the fate of creative projects in the current environment:

Since streaming series are now analytically precise and driven by subscription rather than ratings, even a hit comedy or drama series, after awhile, isn’t that interesting to the Netflixes because those shows don’t generate new subscribers. (It’s also a reason you see a lot of Dave Chappelle specials, e.g. they are looking for Moments.)

A sitcom used to be awarded staying power for being able to reach the 100 episodes -> syndication goal. And the head of a network would champion a handful of shows that might not have big ratings, because he thought it made the network look good. A case in point would be the first seasons of Seinfeld or Cheers, when audiences had not quite caught on just yet.

With digital “metrics,” today the streamers have so much information. Did you pause for a bio break/to grab a refill, and if so, at what point in the program? Did you stop watching an episode, and where exactly did you leave? Did you abandon the entire series altogether, and if so, in which episode?

They can get all this information. Thus, it is much harder now to fight the programmers to get a given show to survive.

**********

Also receiving votes: 1) Might write about, later. 2) Somewhere on the list, but would place below Pantheon level:

John Hughes, The Good Stuff only — which to me would include Sixteen Candles, Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller, Weird Science, Planes Trains and Automobiles, Vacation and Christmas Vacation. Hughes has his detractors, but I’m not one. I think it’s because of timing. I knew his classic essays, “My Penis” and “Vacation,” from having been a National Lampoon reader. Then when I got to Chicago, I saw both Ferris and Weird Science — each filmed there (the latter movie, I viewed in the Water Tower Theater complex, a few steps from where one of the scenes takes place which brought the audience into a small frenzy).

Plus, he’s an ad guy from Chicago who “made it.” Double-plus, he wrote The Great Outdoors, which if you haven’t seen… Go to it! One of the all-time great Dan Aykroyd roles. So yeah, I choose on balance, to remember John Hughes fondly, and to sidestep the Curly Sue / Home Alone / Uncle Buck era.

Cameron Crowe — Fast Times (Dir. Amy Heckerling); Say Anything, Singles, Almost Famous

Bosom Buddies and the young Tom Hanks in general 

Peter Sellers (especially the Pink Panther movies)

South Park

Mike Judge: Office Space, Beavis & Butthead, King of the Hill — Aside from the manic Cornholio era, a little bit late to call it Formative. Still, great stuff. A favorite detail from Office Space, The Bobs are each wearing Medic Alert bracelets.

Mad Libs; Wacky Packages

Celebrity Roasts

Jonathan Winters/Robin Williams — Winters was a prodigious talent, but was “bipolar” and spent many years traversing mental issues. His spontaneous comedy defied predictably — here he is armed only with a stick, with Jack Paar back in 1964. Robin Williams was beloved and his demise shocked many; his big breakthrough hit “Mork and Mindy” was huge, but sort of a dippy show. Nevertheless, he had a huge following and brought massive numbers of people to think about improv comedy.

The Princess Bride

Fletch

Rushmore

Assorted ’80s comedies: Risky Business, Revenge Of the Nerds, Making The Grade