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      in Television

      10 ‘Saturday Night Live’ Catchphrases That Readers Love

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      Hundreds of you told us about your favorite “Saturday Night Live” catchphrases. Here are the 10 that came up the most.To mark the 50th season of “Saturday Night Live,” we took a look at 50 memorable catchphrases from the show. We also asked readers to tell us about the ones you use with your friends and loved ones, and why. Hundreds of you responded. Here are the 10 phrases that came up the most, along with stories — some of which have been edited — you shared.‘More cowbell’“As a percussionist I think we ALWAYS need more rhythm in our lives. The skit spurred me to buy my own personal cowbell.”— Sheila Krueger, Phoenix“I teach art. There is often something just not quite right about a painting … it needs something.”— Gerard Brown, Philadelphia“We owned a restaurant. It was the perfect answer to any dilemma or flagging energy.”— Mary Beams, Grand Marais, Minn.“I play in a community band. When something doesn’t sound right someone will shout out ‘more cowbell’!”— Carol McMullen, Bowdoinham, MaineWe 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

      Inside Lorne Michaels’s Archive of ‘S.N.L’ History

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      But nothing tested the show like Sinead O’Connor’s musical appearance on Oct. 3, 1992, when she stunned viewers — and the producers — by tearing up a photograph of Pope John Paul II, declaring, “Fight the real enemy.” Two years earlier, O’Connor had drawn wide criticism for joining the cast member Nora Dunn in pulling […] More

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      in Television

      The Comedian Looking for Something All of America Can Laugh At

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      Partway through his latest special, “Lonely Flowers,” the comedian Roy Wood Jr. tells the story of the time he accidentally hired a white photographer. Or, as he corrects himself, he hired a photographer who he did not think would be white until he showed up. Whenever he travels to a city for a gig, he explains, artists who live there reach out to him to offer their services. He respects their hustle and sometimes accepts those offers, like the one he got from a guy who wanted to take some pictures of him. “Come on take the pictures,” Wood wrote back. “I’ll see you next week, Deon!”Wood drops Deon’s name casually, letting the audience pick up on the joke before he has to explain it. As they start to lose it, Wood joins them in astonishment. Pitching his body forward, throwing his arms out and bugging his eyes, he yells: “You see what I’m saying? I don’t know no white Deons either! Never met one!”Deon ends up being a bald, unimaginably chiseled military veteran with menacing tattoos consisting of “an animal, a death threat then a Bible verse” decorating his arms, the kind of white man that a Black person might not want to be left alone with. Wood is terrified of him — he makes sure to pay him up front — but he finds him unexpectedly sympathetic. It turns out that after returning from service abroad, Deon feels intensely isolated, and photography gives him a sense of purpose.Onstage, Wood is unhurried, an amiable man who, despite being 46, has the countenance of a churchgoing grandfather who still starches his Sunday suit. He is a master of the leisurely, even comforting, story that plays to his audience’s expectations of what is good, kind and virtuous, only to foil those expectations with a well-timed word or mischievous glance.When I first watched “Lonely Flowers,” I could feel this story about Deon teetering toward the saccharine: Maybe we can all get along, or at least get along better, if we just listen to one another. But then Wood lets us in on a disturbing detail: “I like the camera,” Deon told him, “ ’cause, you know, I get to look down the crosshair and still shoot people.” Wood’s look of earnest sympathy dissolves, and we’re left wondering how to feel about Deon after all.Then the joke rounds yet another corner: Wood turns serious again, recalling how sincerely Deon thanked him in the greenroom, shaking his hand firmly and looking him right in the eye. “I was like, Wooowww,” Wood says, his voice dropping to a stage whisper, seemingly humbled by the interaction. But then we reach the other side of his pause: “He was about to kill some people.” Wood imagines Deon at home, cleaning his rifle right up to the moment Wood contacts him. “We’ll never know how many lives I saved,” Wood says triumphantly, “because I took a chance on a white man!”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

      ‘S.N.L.’ Celebrates 50 Years With Star-Studded Prime-Time Special

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      Stage and audience alike at Studio 8H were packed with cast, alumni and other celebrities in a night that was in turns sweet and self-satirizing.After a half-century of comedy and music (and what at times felt like an equal amount of buildup and hype), how do you at last kick off a prime-time 50th anniversary special for “Saturday Night Live”? Calmly and serenely, it turns out.The long-awaited “SNL50: The Anniversary Special” opened on Sunday with the musicians Paul Simon (an “S.N.L.” stalwart through the decades) and Sabrina Carpenter (who was its musical guest in May 2024) sharing the stage at the show’s familiar home base at Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.They exchanged a simple joke, setting a theme that would recur for the rest of the night: Time passes, whether you like it or not. Simon said they were about to play a song that he had performed on the show with George Harrison in 1976. “I was not born then,” Carpenter said, “and neither were my parents.”“I’m glad they’ll get the chance to hear it tonight,” Simon replied. And together he and Carpenter performed Simon & Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound,” the first musical number in a night that also included performances by Paul McCartney, Miley Cyrus with Brittany Howard and Lil Wayne with the Roots.And who else could perform the opening monologue on this occasion but Steve Martin, a 16-time host whose own rising star in the 1970s imparted some needed credibility and momentum to “S.N.L.” when it was just starting out.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

      Lorne Michaels Reflects on His ‘S.N.L.’ Legacy Ahead of the 50th Anniversary

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      Is it possible that Lorne Michaels is Lorne-ed out?Even for a man who enjoys being famous, all the hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live,” all the extra attention it has brought him, has been a bit much.“I say this not with any sense of modesty — I was famous enough,” Michaels said recently at Orso, one of his favorite New York haunts. Someone who knew him once sardonically suggested Michaels would like to have “LEGENDARY” stitched into his underwear. And he is, after all, known in some circles by one name, like Beyoncé, Cher, Ichiro. But Michaels demurs.“Everybody who had to know me, knew me,” he said. “I wasn’t in the public eye. But now, walking over here, a young comedian came up and said, ‘How would I audition?’”I said I would have loved to have seen that encounter.“You would not love that,” he said in his bone-dry voice and signature cadence.Since the 50th season premiered last fall, the anniversary of “S.N.L.,” one of a fragmented America’s few remaining communal cultural events, has inspired a steady stream of tributes to the show and its creator. There was a Jason Reitman origin-story movie called “Saturday Night,” as well as hundreds of feature stories and listicles in the press. Last month there was a four-part docuseries on the show and another documentary on just the music. Friday night brings an “S.N.L” concert at Radio City Music Hall, livestreaming on Peacock. A 600-plus page biography of Michaels titled “Lorne,” by Susan Morrison, an editor at The New Yorker, comes out next week.It all culminates on Sunday with a live three-hour prime-time special looking back on “S.N.L.” and its singular legacy. Like a Veterans Day parade with troops from different wars marching by, “S.N.L.” stars from different decades, among many other celebrities young and old — guests include Paul McCartney, Robert De Niro, Steve Martin, Sabrina Carpenter, Tom Hanks, Kim Kardashian and Dave Chappelle — are swirling around New York, ready to help Michaels celebrate the golden anniversary.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

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      Wallace and Gromit Creator Discusses the Characters, Technology and the Queen

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      Nick Park’s latest film in the stop-motion series is up for multiple awards at the BAFTAs and the Oscars.Wallace and Gromit is something of an institution in the entertainment world. Since its introduction more than 35 years ago, the stop-motion series has won three Oscars and five BAFTAs. The two protagonists — Wallace, the cheese-eating inventor, and Gromit, the long-suffering dog — have even appeared on Royal Mail stamps.The animation series’ latest iteration — “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” — is now back in the awards race with nominations at Sunday’s EE British Academy Film Awards, known as the BAFTAs, and the Oscars in March.“Vengeance Most Fowl” was directed by Wallace and Gromit’s creator, Nick Park, and by Merlin Crossingham, who said the film was shot over 15 months in a studio that was larger than a soccer field, with 260 people on set — including 35 animators and 50 puppet makers. The handcrafted clay cast has been expanded to include a robotic garden gnome called Norbot.“As a crew, if we got a minute and a half in the week, we’d have a megaweek,” Crossingham said. He described animation as a “magic trick,” because “you’re breathing life into something that doesn’t have any.”Park was born and raised in Preston, a city in northwestern England. His father was a photographer and his mother was a tailor and seamstress who made garments for all five of her children.Nick Park, left and Merlin Crossingham at the London Critics’ Circle Film Awards this month, where “Vengeance Most Fowl” won the best animated feature prize.Scott A. Garfitt/Invision, via Associated PressWe 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

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Theater

      Tony Roberts, Nonchalant Fixture in Woody Allen Films, Dies at 85

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      Tony Roberts, the affable actor who was best known as the hero’s best friend in Woody Allen movies like “Annie Hall,” and who distinguished himself on the New York stage with two Tony Award nominations and what the critic Clive Barnes of The New York Times called his “careful nonchalance,” died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 85.His daughter and only immediate survivor, Nicole Burley, said the cause was complications of lung cancer.Mr. Roberts played easygoing, confident characters that were a perfect counterpoint to the rampant insecurities of Mr. Allen’s.Alvy Singer, the hero of “Annie Hall” (1977), which won the Oscar for best picture, stuttered, dithered and fumbled his way around Manhattan’s Upper East Side alongside Rob (Mr. Roberts), his taller, better-looking, far more self-assured Hollywood actor friend and tennis partner. If truth be told, Rob would rather be in Los Angeles, where the weather is nicer, adding a laugh track to his sitcom.Mr. Roberts, center, with Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in “Annie Hall” (1977). Mr. Roberts appeared in several of Mr. Allen’s films, playing easygoing, confident characters that were a perfect counterpoint to the rampant insecurities of Mr. Allen’s.Brian Hamill/United Artists, via Everett CollectionMr. Roberts played similar types in other Allen films. In “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy” (1982), he was a jovial bachelor doctor at the turn of the 20th century. “Marriage, for me, is the death of hope,” his character announced. In “Stardust Memories” (1980), he was a brash actor who brought a Playboy centerfold model to a film festival.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

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      Fun Things to Do in NYC in February 2025

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      Looking for something to do in New York? Enjoy laughs with Liza Treyger, learn about Clara Schumann, or see the Urban Bush Women in a Great Migration love story.ComedyLiza Treyger, above in her new Netflix comedy special, “Night Owl,” will host a “Show and Tell” at Union Hall on Friday.Netflix‘Show and Tell With Liza Treyger’Feb. 7 at 10 p.m. at Union Hall, 702 Union Street, Brooklyn; unionhallny.com.Hot off the heels of the debut of “Night Owl,” her hourlong comedy special on Netflix, Liza Treyger is presenting this showcase in which her funny friends joke about their most cherished possessions.Treyger, who was born in the former Soviet Union and grew up on the outskirts of Chicago, has made a name for herself in the New York City comedy scene over the past decade through her blunt appraisals of herself and society’s sexual politics. This reputation earned her an appearance on Netflix’s “Survival of the Thickest” and a consultant gig on “The Eric Andre Show.” She recently had a supporting role on an episode of the Amazon Prime Video series “Harlem.”Taking part in Treyger’s “Show and Tell” on Friday are Tommy McNamara, Drew Anderson, Marie Faustin and Molly Kearney. Tickets are $15 on Eventbrite. SEAN L. McCARTHYMusicFrom left, Why Bonnie’s Blair Howerton on guitar, Josh Malett on drums and Chance Williams on bass, in Boston in 2022. The band will be at Night Club 101 on Friday.Olivia LeonPop & RockWhy BonnieFeb. 7 at 8 p.m. at Night Club 101, 101 Avenue A, Manhattan; dice.fm.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