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    ‘S.N.L’: Live From New York, It’s More Military Secrets.

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    Mikey Madison hosts and Luigi Mangione, Squidward and Ashton Hall make appearances.There was no uncertainty as to whether “Saturday Night Live” would offer its own satirical take on the news that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had disclosed attack plans for a U.S. strike on Houthi militia fighters in Yemen during a text chat that mistakenly included the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. It was only a question of how “S.N.L.” would do it.This weekend’s opening sketch featured the cast members Ego Nwodim and Sarah Sherman, as well as the guest host, Mikey Madison, as teenage girls whose group chat was interrupted by an unexpected message, read aloud by Andrew Dismukes: “FYI: Green light on Yemen raid!” he exclaimed.Dismukes, as Hegseth, continued to recite the texts he was sending (“Tomahawks airborne 15 minutes ago”) along with the emojis he was using for punctuation (“Flag emoji, fire emoji, eggplant”).“Do we know you, bro?” Madison asked. “This is Jennabelle.”“Oh, nice,” Dismukes replied. “Jennabelle from Defense, right?”Warned by Nwodim that he was in the wrong group text, Dismukes answered, “LOLOLOL could you imagine if that actually happened? Homer disappear into bush GIF.” He added that he was “sending a PDF with updated locations of all our nuclear submarines.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      10 Wild Clips to Help You Understand Andy Kaufman’s Greatness

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      The standup, who’s the subject of a new documentary, expanded the ambition of comedy. These videos show how far ahead of his time he was.Andy Kaufman became one of the most influential comedians ever in a brief amount of time — really only a decade, from his first national television appearance to his death from lung cancer in 1984 at 35. In between, his comic stunts blurred the lines of reality and fiction and found a variety of ways to provoke audiences and upend expectations, while doing more than any club performer to expand the conceptual ambition of comedy, turning stand-up into performance art. What makes this even more remarkable is that he did almost none of it via regular roles in movies or high-profile television, with the exception of the sitcom “Taxi.”And yet, Kaufman and his many characters were a constant presence in popular culture, clubs and wrestling matches and on talk and variety shows, many of which are long forgotten. These bits have lived on the internet, divorced from the context in which they appeared. Now on YouTube, the Andy Kaufman rabbit hole is deep and packed with pleasures. A new documentary on his life, “Thank You Very Much,” was made by artists who clearly spent a long time exploring it. Here are 10 of the best examples that show how Kaufman broke from the past and anticipated the future.Foreign ManThe first Kaufman character to break out was the tentative, thick-accented immigrant from the Caspian Sea known as Foreign Man, an antecedent to Borat but sweeter, more sensitive and deluded. He mangled Borscht Belt jokes that fizzle like this one-liner: “My wife’s cooking is so bad, it’s terrible.” Before he turned into Latka Gravas on “Taxi,” Foreign Man showed up in short sets on shows like “Van Dyke and Company.” In one of the first, Foreign Man loses a Fonzie look-alike contest, becoming upset at Dick Van Dyke, who, unlike some television hosts who interacted with him (see Dinah Shore), clearly delights in Kaufman. To make things right, the host offers him the opportunity to tell some jokes. Playing an overly enthusiastic innocent with a shaky grasp on English and an even looser grasp on American humor, Kaufman fumbles through some bits and a terrible Ed McMahon impression. Somehow his errors endear him to the audience. Kaufman’s large, anime-like eyes do a lot of the work.Celebrity InterviewerSilence. Kaufman uses it as well as any comedian, building suspense, tension and most of all, awkwardness. On his ABC special taped in 1977 but broadcast two years later, he used that technique magnificently in a spoof of a disastrous talk-show interview that anticipated everything from “The Eric Andre Show” to “Between Two Ferns.” As the host, looking down on his guest, the “Laverne & Shirley” star Cindy Williams, from a desk towering high above her, (a disparity he would take to more extreme heights later in his career), he stops talking entirely, and the banter ends. Then the camera moves from him to her and back again, unease building. It’s almost a minute of dead air but seems much longer. Then he asks: “You have hobbies? You have any diseases?”Bongo PlayerWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      ‘The Ballad of Wallis Island’ Had a Long Journey Back to the Big Screen

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      Almost two decades ago a pair of fresh-faced British sketch comedians armed with a good idea and an able director with a cache of film stock made a charming short film called “The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island.” The 25-minute outing won a prize at the 2008 Edinburgh Film Festival, was nominated for a BAFTA and announced the arrival of Tim Key and Tom Basden. The two spent the intervening years turning their penchant for absurdist humor into sketch comedy shows, radio episodes, stand up poetry tours and sidekick roles in film and television.But they never returned to Wallis island.Until now. Older, grayer and maybe a little wiser, the friends, onetime roommates and longtime collaborators have expanded their initial concept into a feature film, “The Ballad of Wallis Island.” The film, which ruminates on love and loss, revolves around a musician who is hired by a two-time lottery winner to perform a private gig on an isolated island. It feels like it could have been created only by filmmakers with a little road beneath their feet.“I don’t really regret us not making it 17 years ago, because we just might not have been able to do it right,” said Key, who wrote the script with Basden and plays the rich eccentric, Charles Heath, who prattles through conversations with a stream of nonsensical puns. “I think when we came back to it, we were more ready to make a decent fist of it.”Basden, Mulligan and Key in “The Ballad of Wallis Island.”Focus Features The original director, James Griffiths, returns, and the main conceit of the short remains: The musician, Herb McGwyer (Basden), arrives at the harborless, fictional Wallis Island (portrayed in and around Carmarthenshire, Wales) to perform a concert for his eager audience of one (Key’s Heath). To build out the story, Basden and Key introduce Nell Mortimer, played by Carey Mulligan, McGwyer’s former singing partner and lover from their short-lived duo McGwyer Mortimer. When she shows up on the island unbeknown to McGwyer — whose solo career hasn’t gone as planned — the film gains its emotional heft.“You get a window into what they were like when they were young and into the way that life has or hasn’t messed with their expectations as young people in the music industry, and as a young couple in love,” said Basden, who also wrote the songs for the film. “When you engage with that meaningfully, I think you’re always going to end up having to write about the loss, the heartbreak and the regret that goes with relationships in your 20s.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Through Tears, ‘Mid-Century Modern’ Makes Them Laugh

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      On an evening in mid-January, there were bouquets piled outside of Linda Lavin’s trailer on the Disney lot in Burbank, Calif. Nearby, on a soundstage, a black ribbon was wrapped around her caricature.Lavin had died on Dec. 29, at age 87. Now the creators and cast of “Mid-Century Modern,” a Hulu sitcom that shoots in front of a live studio audience, had returned to work to honor her. That night, they would film a half-hour episode designed to pay tribute to her character, Sibyl Schneiderman, while also eulogizing an actress with an outstanding seven-decade career.That was hard enough. Even harder: They had to make it funny.“The job is to make sure it doesn’t get too sad and too sentimental,” said James Burrows, the multicamera-sitcom legend who directed the episode. “You have to remember it’s a comedy, and you’ve got to make the audience laugh.”I had reached out to the sitcom’s creators back in the fall. A new sitcom set among gay men in later life — think “Golden Girls” for the marriage equality set — it sounded like a hoot. It also offered a chance to explore how depictions of queer relationships have changed since the 1990s.But when Lavin died unexpectedly after most of the season had been shot, an irreverent sitcom with an impressive zingers-per-minute rate suddenly had to pivot. So the reporting assignment pivoted, too. (All 10 episodes arrived on Friday.)The ensemble of “Mid-Century Modern” played a group of gay men living in Palm Springs, Calif., with the mother of Lane’s character, played by Lavin.Chris Haston/DisneyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares96 Views

      in Television

      With ‘The Studio,’ Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg Grow Up. Sort of.

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      Amoeba Records, on Hollywood Boulevard, isn’t the best place for someone of Seth Rogen’s visibility to shop hassle-free. Located just blocks from the Chinese Theater, right by Dr. Phil’s and Dr. Oz’s stars on the Walk of Fame, there may be few places worse.But when Rogen wasn’t being interrupted by his admiring bro-fans, who were legion — one wore toe shoes and a Lil Dicky shirt; another cried — Amoeba was, however, a perfect place to dig through hundreds of vinyl soundtracks. It was the Tuesday before the Oscars, and we were there with Rogen’s longtime creative partner, Evan Goldberg, to browse records and talk about their latest creation: “The Studio,” an ambitious, celebrity-stuffed industry satire for Apple TV+ that premiered on Wednesday.“The Studio” features many celebrity cameos and guest roles, including one by Martin Scorsese, right (with Ike Barinholtz, left, and Seth Rogen).Apple TV+Rogen had been tasked by his wife to stock more jazz — appropriate given the new show’s jazzy score and improvisational feel, shot mostly in long single takes. But as Goldberg and Rogen, who have been friends since they were teenagers, noted, their taste in music had really been formed by their love for movies.So we found ourselves first among the soundtracks, where highlights included a reissue of “The Three Amigos” — “One of my favorite movies of all time,” Rogen said — and two copies of the soundtrack for “Soul Man,” the 1986 comedy about a young white guy who pretends to be Black in order to get a Harvard scholarship. (Different times, as they say.)“Dude, I was just telling some people at work about this yesterday!” Goldberg said.“It has a good soundtrack,” Rogen ventured.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      The Comedian Who Anticipated Our Reality-Bent World

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      You’re in a comedy club, and the guy onstage has gone quiet. He looks down at his feet, fidgets with the microphone, smiles a queasy, tight-lipped smile and, after nearly a minute of this, looks as if he might be about to cry.Listen to this article, read by Eric Jason MartinHis name is Andy Kaufman, and it’s 1977. Maybe you’re unfamiliar with him, or maybe you’ve heard he’s an up-and-coming comedian with a gift for prankish anti-bits. He has performed on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” and “Saturday Night Live,” and he killed on those shows. But tonight, taping his part in an HBO “Young Comedians Special,” he has told one stinker after another, and the people who have laughed have laughed in the wrong places: at him, not with him. Other people have started to groan and boo, and Kaufman seems to be breaking down. “I don’t understand one thing,” he finally says. People laugh again, sure it’s a put-on, or hoping it is, because the alternative would be too embarrassing. He goes on: “No, seriously, why everyone is going booo, on, like, when I told some of the jokes, and then when I don’t want you to laugh, you’re laughing? Like right now.”He continues to stammer, and then he’s sobbing outright, scolding the crowd through tears. “You really showed me where I’m at tonight,” he says, emitting a raw, ugly sound, like the honk of a sick goose: Heegh-heegh. “I was just trying to do my best heegh-heegh.” He keeps scolding and honking, but as he does, the honks form a rhythm. With one hand, then both hands, he begins to play bongos in time with the honks, shaping it all into a ridiculous song. The crowd laughs harder at this twist than they’ve laughed all night, and their delight seems mixed with gratitude — for this reassurance that Kaufman wasn’t really upset, for this slippery return to terra firma.In the history of comedy, no one has shown a fuller commitment to cultivating silence, awkwardness, concern, bewilderment and vitriol than Andy Kaufman. Any comedian trades in misdirection on the way to the surprise of a punchline. But Kaufman, as much of a performance artist as he was a stand-up, saw misdirection as the main event. “I’ve never told a joke in my life,” he once said. Laughter was one among many responses he sought to engineer. “He just behaved strangely, in order to get a reaction of any kind,” Jay Leno, who worked the same clubs as Kaufman in the ’70s, has recalled. “Even hostile.”Trading against his air of childlike sweetness, Kaufman scrambled the line between entertainment, tedium, self-indulgence and combativeness. For years, he assumed the persona of a snarling misogynist and wrestled women in clubs and on TV. Some of the women were plants, some were volunteers. Kaufman beat them all. This routine, along with his belligerent lounge-act alter ego, Tony Clifton, proved so unpopular that Kaufman’s manager feared it was ruining his career. But Kaufman, more interested in provocation than adulation, only dug in more.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares104 Views

      in Television

      Lionizing Mark Twain, Conan O’Brien Subtly Skewers Trump

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      In accepting the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the comedian mounted a bristling political attack artfully disguised as a tribute.Conan O’Brien faced a thorny question when accepting the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on Sunday night.In the headlining speech for the most-high-profile event at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts since President Trump purged Democrats from its board, cashiered its leaders and made himself chairman, how political should he be? Considering artists like Lin-Manuel Miranda and Issa Rae have said they are boycotting the Kennedy Center in protest, should he even show up?Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, the puppet voiced by Robert Smigel, who was on the original writing staff of “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,” captured the dilemma of his position when he welcomed the audience in a gravelly voice: “Thank you for coming and shame on you for being here.”The assignment was especially tricky for O’Brien, because unlike past recipients like Jon Stewart or Dave Chappelle, his comedy has always steered clear of ideological fervor. But moving out of his comfort zone, O’Brien delivered what amounted to a bristling attack on the current administration artfully disguised as a tribute to Mark Twain.“Twain was suspicious of populism, jingoism, imperialism, the money-obsessed mania of the Gilded Age and any expression of mindless American might or self-importance,” O’Brien said, steadily, soberly. “Above all, Twain was a patriot in the best sense of the word. He loved America, but knew it was deeply flawed. Twain wrote: ‘Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time and your government when it deserves it.’”O’Brien’s speech, which along with the rest of the show, will air on Netflix on May 4, followed a murderers’ row of comedians — who put on the best Twain Awards in recent memory. Among those gushing about O’Brien were father figures (David Letterman), peers (Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Stephen Colbert) and his comedic children (Nikki Glaser, Kumail Nanjiani, John Mulaney).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Marty Callner, Director of Comedy Specials and Music Videos, Dies at 78

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      At HBO in the late 1970s, he established the template for presenting stand-up on the small screen. He then became a mainstay of MTV in its early days.Marty Callner, a pioneering director of comedy specials who set the template for the genre at HBO in the 1970s before going on to make music videos infused with humor during the early heyday of MTV, died on March 17 at his home in Malibu, Calif. He was 78.His son Jazz Callner said the cause was not yet known.Over a half-century, Mr. Callner worked with some of the biggest names in popular culture, including Jerry Seinfeld, Madonna, Robin Williams, George Carlin, the Rolling Stones and Chris Rock.Mr. Callner, who preferred to stay in the background but was far from shy, “might be the most successful director you have never heard of,” Jason Zinoman of The New York Times wrote in 2022.One day in the early 1980s, Mr. Callner had an epiphany. While watching television at his home in Beverly Hills, he found himself enraptured by a music video. It was Kim Carnes’s “Bette Davis Eyes” — and he couldn’t take his eyes off it.“I said, ‘This is unbelievable,’” he recalled on the “HawkeTalk” podcast in 2021. He called it “the most artistic and entertaining thing I’ve ever seen” and recalled thinking, “I’ve got to go do this.”Marty Callner in his home office in 2022 with a Sports Emmy Award that he won for the football reality series “Hard Knocks.”Peter Fisher for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Lenny Schultz, Comedian Who Made a Lot of Noise, Dies at 91

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      A highly physical performer, he said he couldn’t tell jokes. But he became well known for a wild act that fellow comedians didn’t want to follow.Lenny Schultz, a wild-eyed comedian who became known in the 1970s and ’80s for high-energy performances that he delivered with a mouthful of sound effects and a table full of silly props, died on Sunday at his home in Delray Beach, Fla. He was 91.His son and only immediate survivor, Mark, confirmed the death.“I can’t tell a joke,” Mr. Schultz told The Orlando Sentinel in 1972, but that didn’t matter. “The guys I like and the guys I identify with,” he added, “are Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Guy Marks — the zanies. I like the zanies. I am a zany!”With his expressive face, his physicality and the rapid pace of his act, Mr. Schultz exuded a loony intensity. He began his comedy career in the late 1960s while keeping his day job as a high school gym teacher.Onstage, he described the start of life on Earth, punctuating his narrative with explosions and other noises; bowed a banana as if it were a violin (while taking bites out of it); played the Lone Ranger, wearing a mask and a tiny cowboy hat while riding a small toy horse on a stick and flinging Froot Loops from a box; rendered a cockfight between game fowl of different ethnicities; and admonished the baby doll in his backpack to stop crying because William Morris agents were in the audience.Mr. Schultz in 1977 on the first episode of the rebooted “Laugh-In.” The original show had revolutionized TV comedy, but the new version was canceled after six episodes.NBCUniversal Photo Bank, via Getty Images“Lenny has a special place in the hearts and memories of everybody in his peer group,” David Letterman, who met Mr. Schultz when they were performing in Los Angeles, said in a phone interview. “He is talked about more often, randomly, than any single person we spent time with at the Comedy Store in the 1970s.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More