Saturday Night Live (TV Program)

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      ‘Saturday Night Live’ Mocks Trump’s Trip to Ohio

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      Woody Harrelson was the host this week of an episode, which featured Jack White as musical guest.The “Saturday Night Live” opening sketch has reliably become a showcase for the cast member James Austin Johnson — it’s simply a matter of which political figure or celebrity he’ll impersonate in the segment. This week the wheel was spun and it landed on former President Donald J. Trump, who on Wednesday visited the town of East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a train derailment that has led to a toxic chemical spill.This week’s “S.N.L.” broadcast, which was hosted by Woody Harrelson and featured the musical guest Jack White, began with Johnson playing Trump as he addressed an East Palestine firehouse.“It’s wonderful to be here in the town of East Palestine,” Johnson said. “Not a great name. But I had to come here and see these wonderful people who have been abandoned by Biden. He’s on spring break in Ukraine with his friend Zelensky in the T-shirt, very disrespectful. Zelensky thinks he’s rocking that ringer tee like Scott Pilgrim. But I’m here and I brought hats. Cameras and hats.”Relating a story that he claimed had happened on his visit, Johnson said, “Earlier today a farmer came up to me, big fella, and he said, ‘Sir, we have nothing to eat because our dirt is poisoned.’ And I said, well, what are you doing eating the dirt? Don’t eat the dirt, folks. Don’t eat the dirt. You should be eating the cold McDonald’s I brought you. And the bottled water, Trump Ice. I’ll be honest, I just put my sticker on some Dasani.”Indulging in a bit of Trump-style free association, Johnson said, “I was looking at your river and it’s so shiny. I’ve never seen water so beautiful. Beautiful rainbows and discolorations, it’s great. It’s wearing makeup. Fenty beauty water. Fenty by Rihanna. Rihanna. By the way, you know she was pregnant doing Super Bowl, can you believe that? I said of course she is, she’s not moving at all. It was just arms, right?”He added, “But your train exploded and who do we blame? We blame Buttigieg. Pete Buttigieg. This was his responsibility. Unfortunately he was too busy being a nerd and being gay.”Promising his audience a special guest, Johnson brought out Chloe Fineman, who was playing Emily Kohrs, the forewoman of a special grand jury in Georgia that was investigating election interference by Trump and his allies.Kohrs drew attention for the quantity of news media appearances and interviews she made this past week. Johnson introduced Fineman by saying, “She’s an odd duck but we like her. She’s either seven or 40, we can’t tell.”When he was unable to get the excitable Fineman to reveal the grand jury’s decisions, Johnson said, “Wow, we don’t like that. We don’t like that sound. Because she knows if I’m getting indicted.”He added, “They almost had me and then this little horse girl comes in and saves the day.”Concluding his remarks, Johnson said, “I’m gonna get out of here soon ‘cause the air is full of poison.” He speculated that this could somehow be a benefit for flatulent men. “Blame the train, right?” he said. “You’d normally blame it on the dog but they’re all dead now, aren’t they?”Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on President Biden’s trip to Ukraine and the political responses to the train derailment in East Palestine.Jost began:This week President Biden made a historic visit to Ukraine and met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, where they greeted each other like two action figures having sex. While Biden was in Ukraine, Republicans criticized his delayed response to the Ohio train derailment. But Biden said he was just waiting to shoot the train down until it was over the ocean.Che continued:President Biden is being praised for his surprise visit to Ukraine by taking a 10-hour train ride from Poland. Big deal. You know who else takes a long-ass train ride through an active war zone? Every New Yorker. China is trying to help the war in Ukraine and proposed a 12-part plan for peace. The catch is, the 12 parts have to be assembled by children.Jost then picked up the thread:Donald Trump visited East Palestine, the site of the recent train derailment, because Trump usually tries to make himself look better by standing next to a train wreck. [His screen showed a photo of Rudy Giuliani.] The train that derailed was carrying highly toxic vinyl chloride, which I think is something Trump recommended as a cure for Covid. And while visiting the disaster site, Trump also gave out bottles of Trump brand water. Said residents, “Thanks but we’d rather drink the toxic train water.” I just love that Trump is the one who rolled back train safety standards when he was president and now he’s giving the victims bottles of water. What’s next? Is he going to visit all the migrant kids he put in cages and give them a gift card to Dave and Buster’s?Delayed Gratification of the WeekLongtime fans of “S.N.L.” know that when a celebrity guest hosts the show for the fifth time, the occasion is usually marked with a little pomp and circumstance. But for Harrelson — who took nearly 34 years to finally cross that threshold, having made his first appearance as host in 1989 — there was seemingly no such celebration coming.Harrelson halted his opening monologue a couple of times to extend his arms in expectation of a ceremonial jacket that never arrived. He also cheekily called attention to this when he set up the first musical performance from White, who was also appearing on “S.N.L.” for his fifth time: “You know what,” Harrelson said, halting his introduction, “he’s been here five times, too. Does he get a jacket?”At the end of the show, as Harrelson, White and the cast took the stage to say good night, Kenan Thompson said that on behalf of everyone at “S.N.L.,” he was proud to present a five-timers’ jacket … to White. Not to worry: Harrelson also got a jacket from Scarlett Johansson, Jost’s wife and a fellow five-timer herself. More

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      Eugene Lee, Set Designer for Broadway and ‘S.N.L.,’ Dies at 83

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      He won Tony Awards for “Wicked” and other shows while also overseeing the sets for the late-night franchise’s fast-paced sketch comedy.For decades it was possible for Saturday night theatergoers in New York to get a double dose of Eugene Lee’s work, though it’s likely that few would have realized they were doing so. They might have taken in “Sweeney Todd,” “Ragtime,” “Wicked” or other Broadway shows whose striking sets were designed by Mr. Lee, then could arrive home in time to tune into “Saturday Night Live” — a show for which he served as production designer when it began in 1975, and on which he was still working this season.Mr. Lee, an inventive and remarkably prolific set designer who was also known for his decades with Trinity Repertory Company, a respected regional theater in Providence, R.I., died on Monday in Providence. He was 83.His family announced the death, after a short illness that was not specified.Mr. Lee won or shared three Tony Awards for his Broadway sets — for “Candide” in 1974, “Sweeney Todd” in 1979 and “Wicked” in 2003 — and six Emmy Awards for “Saturday Night Live,” most recently in 2021.In theater, he was known for imaginative designs imbued with authenticity.“Eugene loved real objects, objects with history,” Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater, who worked with Mr. Lee at Trinity Rep and elsewhere, said by email, “but he’d use them in utterly nonrealistic ways onstage.”He was known for reconfiguring entire theaters, as he did for “Candide,” the musical based on Voltaire, which was staged at the 180-seat Chelsea Theater Center in Brooklyn in 1973 before moving to the much larger Broadway Theater in Midtown Manhattan the next year. Mr. Lee, working with his partner at the time, Franne Lee, and the director Harold Prince, turned the Chelsea into “a ramped and runwayed circus midway,” The New York Times wrote, “surrounded by booths and mini-stages that could be changed, in a twinkling, from a corpse-littered battlefield to a vizier’s seraglio.”The “Saturday Night Live” stage crew at work in 2012. Mr. Lee created the basic stage look that has remained largely unchanged since the show began in 1975.Karsten Moran for The New York Times“The audience sat up, down and all around,” The Times said, “on stools, benches and ballpark-style ‘bleachers,’ between the ramps or along the runways or anywhere they wouldn’t be in the actors’ way.”Preserving that staging when the show transferred to Broadway took some effort, which included removing numerous seats, and for the first few performances some theatergoers asked for refunds because of problems with sight lines and other issues. But eventually the bugs were worked out.The show ran for almost two years and won five Tonys, including one for Mr. Lee and Franne Lee for scenic design. (Their relationship lasted for most of the 1970s but they were nevermarried, Patrick Lynch, Mr. Lee’s assistant and fellow designer, said by phone.)Five years later, for the Stephen Sondheim musical “Sweeney Todd” (which, like “Candide,” had a book by Hugh Wheeler and was directed by Mr. Prince), Mr. Lee brought pieces of an old iron foundry from Rhode Island and turned the Uris Theater into a stylized Industrial Age scene out of Victorian London.“The stagehands at the theater still remember how heavy the set was,” Mr. Lee told The Boston Globe in 2007. “You had to knock away bricks to support it. You can still see the scars all these years later.”Kristin Chenoweth left, and Idina Menzel in “Wicked,” for which Mr. Lee won a Tony.Sara KrulwichThe designs won him a second Tony Award, and a third came with “Wicked.” For that show, whose set featured an imposing dragon and a time motif, Mr. Lee drew inspiration in part from smashing apart old clocks in his Providence workshop and fiddling with the innards.Mr. Lee had more than two dozen Broadway credits, including “Agnes of God” (1982), “Show Boat” (1994), “Ragtime” (1998), “Glengarry Glen Ross” (2012) and, most recently, “Bright Star” (2016). While working on those projects and others, he oversaw the sets for “Saturday Night Live,” including creating the basic stage look that has remained largely unchanged since the show began in 1975.Lorne Michaels, the show’s creator and executive producer, said in a phone interview that when he began formulating “S.N.L.,” he had recently seen “Candide” and was impressed with the look the Lees had created.“In those days, television was always on the floor,” he said — filmed on one level, with a polished sort of look — but Mr. Lee, still working with Franne Lee, had a different idea.“He said, ‘Well, I think we should probably build stages,” Mr. Michaels said. “And that meant we’d build a balcony, basically turn the studio into a theater.”“It looked like the city,” Mr. Michaels added of the look Mr. Lee created. “Something about it rang true.”Over the decades — taking a break only when Mr. Michaels did for five years in the 1980s — Mr. Lee would travel from his home in Providence to oversee the show’s design each week, whether it included a living room, a fake Oval Office or a special setting for the musical guest.In his work on “S.N.L.” Mr. Lee encountered many up-and-coming comedians, and he helped some of them branch out, working on the Broadway shows of Gilda Radner (“Live From New York,” 1979), Colin Quinn (“An Irish Wake,” 1998) and Will Ferrell (“You’re Welcome, America,” 2009). He also became production designer for “The Tonight Show” when Jimmy Fallon took it over in 2014.“When we were discussing the ‘Tonight Show’ set, he just had such a clear vision on the look and the stage and the curtain and the color of the wood,” Mr. Fallon said by email. “Every inch of it had meaning.”Whoever was in the “S.N.L.” cast in a given year, Mr. Michaels said, owed a debt to Mr. Lee.“He built this place for us to play in and do the show,” he said, “and it feels whole when we’re in it.”For “Sweeney Todd,” Mr. Lee turned the Uris Theater into a stylized Industrial Age scene out of Victorian London.Martha Swope/The New York Public LibraryEugene Edward Lee was born on March 9, 1939, in Beloit, Wis. His father, also named Eugene, was an engineer, and his mother, Elizabeth (Gates) Lee, was a pediatric nurse.His academic history was a patchwork.“I don’t think I have a degree from any place,” he told American Theater magazine in 1984. “Maybe I have a degree from Yale; I can’t remember.”He started out studying at the University of Wisconsin.“Then I saw Helen Hayes talking on television about Carnegie Tech and the stage,” he told The Times in 2000, referring to what is now Carnegie Mellon University. “So I got in my Volkswagen, which my grandmother had given me, and I arrived at the front door and said, ‘I’m here.’”He had a similarly casual approach to the Yale School of Drama, where he arrived in 1966 and studied for a time, although he did not finish his degree. (Some two decades later, the school granted him a master’s degree — “a real degree, not even an honorary one,” he told Yale Alumni Magazine in 2017.)With or without degrees, by the second half of the 1960s he was getting plenty of design work, including at Trinity Rep, where Adrian Hall, the founding artistic director, brought him in as resident designer. (Mr. Hall died on Feb. 4 in Van, Texas.) When Mr. Hall added the job of artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center in 1983, Mr. Lee worked with him there as well.Wherever he was working, Mr. Lee favored the genuine over the artificial.“Once you start painting, it has a painted look,” he told American Theater. “What please me are real textures used in the way nature left them. There’s nothing like a real piece of rusted tin — really rusted — put up on the stage. I don’t care how heavy it is, how dirty it is.”Mr. Eustis recalled one production — “Hope of the Heart” in 1990 — on which Mr. Lee’s enthusiasm for the realistic had to be reigned in.“Eugene could be risky, even reckless,” he said. “When I first worked with him at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, he insisted that the actors should use live ammunition (mercifully, only BBs) in the course of the show. We had to do a full-scale test, with a dozen of us wearing goggles, to prove to him that BBs would fly all over the auditorium and blind the audience if we used them. Reluctantly, he agreed to abandon the idea.”A model by Mr. Lee, later revised, of a proposed set for “The Tonight Show.” Mr. Lee became the show’s production designer when Jimmy Fallon took over as host in 2014. Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesMr. Lee married Brooke Lutz in 1981. She survives him, along with his twin brother, Thomas; a son from his relationship with Franne Lee, Willie; a son from his marriage, Ted; and two grandchildren.Mr. Lee was known as a man of few words, and a man who loved the water. Mr. Eustis recalled that Mr. Lee took him out on Narragansett Bay on his sailboat when they were working on Trinity’s production of “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in 1995.“We spent a couple hours on the water, talking but not referring to the play, and then he said, ‘It would be too bad if they actually left the stage when they say they are leaving,’” Mr. Eustis recalled. “That was our whole conversation. He delivered one of the most brilliant and beautiful designs I’d ever seen.”Iris Fanger, reviewing the production in The Boston Herald, described that set as a series of rooms “that seem to stretch back into eternity.” More

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      ‘S.N.L.’ Spoofs Merrick Garland’s Hunt for Classified Documents

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      Michael B. Jordan hosted an episode that was saved by a couple of commercial parodies.Classified documents are all the rage these days: They’re turning up in the homes of President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence, and on “Saturday Night Live,” which used these recent discoveries as grist for its opening sketch.This weekend’s “S.N.L.” broadcast, hosted by Michael B. Jordan and featuring the musical guest Lil Baby, began with a dramatic voice-over intoning, “Criminals beware. There’s a new sheriff in town, and he means business.” This person had already put away the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and, the voice-over added, “Now he’s searching for classified documents and he’s coming for whoever has them — Democrat, Republican or whatever Trump is now.”That person turned out to be Attorney General Merrick Garland, played by Mikey Day in an especially nebbishy manner. “I may look like I was born in a library,” Day said as Garland, “but there’s something you should know: Merrick Garland don’t play.” Though his voice was hardly intimidating, his bold assertions were often punctuated with head shakes and whip-crack sound effects.Day noted that “some have said the federal government classifies too many documents.” He added, “This has led people to ask, ‘Does recovering these documents even matter?’ To which I say: I don’t know. But it’s the law. And I am the law.” A pair of pixelated sunglasses then descended upon his face, accompanied by a caption that read “Deal With It.”He introduced three special agents that he had dispatched to the residences of elected officials, starting with Kenan Thompson playing an agent who said he had conducted a search of Pence’s home.“I knew right away this man needed a friend,” Thompson recounted. “When he opened the door, he said, ‘You came!’ with a big smile, and he offered to make us pancakes.”His search turned up no documents, but, Thompson said, “In an envelope marked ‘tax stuff,’ we discovered photographs of the country pop-singer Shania Twain, cut out from several magazines. When confronted with this, Mr. Pence said, ‘I’m sorry; I’m disgusting.’ ”Ego Nwodim played an agent who had searched the home of Vice President Kamala Harris. “Come on now — Joe Biden won’t even give this woman a pen,” Nwodim said. “You think she has classified documents?”Finally, Bowen Yang appeared as an agent who was still star-struck by a recent visit to the home of former President Barack Obama. “No big deal, but it was really fun,” Yang said, adding that Obama had possessed “175 letters from Lin-Manuel Miranda begging the president to attend a performance of ‘Hamilton.’ ”Day shared a final message for anyone still potentially holding onto classified documents: “Do you think this is a game?” he said. “Who do you think you’re playing with?”Thompson said to him, “Hey boss, when we done playing with these little papers, we gonna head down to Memphis and make sure justice is served down there, too, right?”“I sincerely hope so,” Day replied.Commercial Parody No. 1 of the WeekA pair of pretaped commercial parodies really rescued this week’s broadcast, beginning with this segment poking fun at the recent difficulties faced by Southwest Airlines. The carrier canceled thousands of flights around the holiday season, costing the company more than $1 billion.As the airline’s employees (played by Jordan, Heidi Gardner, Devon Walker and others) explain, Southwest has since taken steps to provide customers with a better, more modern experience: The company has upgraded its entire communications system — to 2008 Dell computers, replacing their old 2002 IBM ThinkPad laptops. And the airline has ditched its old pen-and-paper method of air-traffic control in favor of computers: that’s right, 2002 IBM ThinkPad laptops.Commercial Parody No. 2 of the WeekThis weekend’s second noteworthy commercial parody is also an effective little suspense thriller.It begins innocuously by lampooning a line of State Farm insurance ads, with Day and Gardner playing a married couple seeking the consultation of the company’s red-shirted spokesman, Jake From State Farm (Jordan). But as the story progresses, Jordan — who never fully exits the family’s house — begins to displace Day in all of his household roles, taking his wife and children out for pizza and to church and even supplanting Day in his marital bed.Day’s efforts to change insurance providers don’t go so well either: You’ll never hear anyone make a basic sales pitch sound as sinister as Jordan does when he says, “Even if you do find cheaper coverage, we’ll just match it.”Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the discovery of classified documents in the homes of Trump, Biden and Pence. Other jokes targeted Facebook’s decision to reinstate Trump’s account and a Senate hearing investigating the concert promoter Live Nation.Jost began:Facebook announced that it will reinstate former President Donald Trump’s account, but this time they’ll put guard rails in place to keep him under control. Which I think is the same thing they said every time they tried to reopen Jurassic Park. Also, what even are guard rails on Facebook? And can they apply to my uncle? Because he’s posted some very disturbing fan fiction about the green M&M.In the wake of the classified document scandal, representatives for Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama issued statements saying they all turned over all classified records before leaving office. While Jimmy Carter issued a statement saying, “Come and get ’em, you bastards” [his screen showed a photo of President Carter wielding heavy firepower].Che continued:A lawyer for Mike Pence says that after they discovered classified documents in his home, Pence stands ready and willing to fully cooperate. Incidentally, “I stand ready and willing to cooperate” is also what Pence says before sex. During the Senate hearings investigating Live Nation and their monopoly on concert ticket sales, fans of Taylor Swift protested outside the Capitol. Aw, that’s sweet. And only two years after their dads were there [his screen showed a photo of Jan. 6 rioters at the Capitol building]. More

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      Austin Butler Sings ‘Blue Christmas’ With Cecily Strong in Her Last ‘SNL’

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      After a surprise announcement hours before the broadcast, Strong, an 11-season veteran of the show, bid a tearful goodbye.“Saturday Night Live” was lucky to have had Cecily Strong for as long as it did. Since joining the show in 2012, she has contributed memorable recurring characters, like The Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation With at a Party, and an array of celebrity and political impersonations, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kyrsten Sinema and Jeanine Pirro. She performed at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and was a co-anchor of the Weekend Update desk.There was a moment, at the end of the 2020-21 season, when Strong appeared to be saying goodbye to “S.N.L.” — singing “My Way” as she doused herself in a tank that was supposed to be filled with wine — but she nonetheless returned the following year.And while she was not part of the exodus of cast members that preceded the start of its current 48th season, she did not appear in the first three live episodes — instead, she was performing a one-woman show, “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,” in Los Angeles. And now her time on “S.N.L.” has indeed come to an end.The announcement of Strong’s departure was made online just a couple of hours before the start of this weekend’s broadcast, hosted by Austin Butler and featuring Lizzo as its musical guest.Strong herself got to bid farewell to “S.N.L.” in a Weekend Update segment in which she played her recurring character Cathy Anne, a disheveled woman who is always yelling outside Michael Che’s window.In her Cathy Anne guise, Strong said that she was wearing a Santa hat because “it’s covering up a giant open wound — I got a little bit scalped.” (She explained further that this had happened because she “fell asleep on the escalator.”)Strong went onto say that she was “a little emo tonight, because, truth is, I’m here to say goodbye.” She explained that she was going to prison because all of the crimes she had confessed in her various appearances had finally caught up with her: “You know, drug use, trespassing, destruction of property, crack, impersonating a police horse, meth and crack.”But, she said, she hoped prison would give her “much needed stability, and I’m not too scared ’cause I got friends on the inside — they seem to be doing OK.” (Here, the screen showed a graphic of the “S.N.L.” alumnae Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant, wearing orange jumpsuits and prison tattoos.)Strong gradually slipped out of character as she addressed the audience, saying: “Everybody has to go to jail at some point, right? It’s just my time now. But I had a lot of fun here. And I feel really lucky that I got to have so many of the best moments of my life in this place with these people that I love so much.”The tears came later, at the end of the episode, when Butler, who played Elvis Presley in the recent film “Elvis,” joined Strong, Kenan Thompson and several other “S.N.L.” cast members to sing a sentimental cover of “Blue Christmas.”But at the end of her Weekend Update segment, Strong told everyone not to be sad because, as she sang once again to the tune of “My Way”: “I did it high, Che.”Cold open of the weekFormer President Donald Trump pretty much handed “S.N.L.” a script for its opening sketch when he announced on Thursday that he would begin selling a set of digital trading cards depicting him as various fantastical characters.James Austin Johnson brought his studied nonchalance to his recurring role as Trump, pitching the $99 offer — “seems like a lot, seems like a scam, and in many ways it is,” he said — while also mocking the larger concept of NFTs: “You can also get them for free by just going online and just looking at them, maybe, I don’t know, maybe taking a screenshot.”“But we’d really prefer it,” he added, “if you sent the $99.”Celebrity impersonation of the weekIt has been less than a week since HBO aired the season finale of “The White Lotus.” But if you already find yourself missing its star and muse Jennifer Coolidge, then Chloe Fineman has you covered in this holiday-theme segment where she captures Coolidge’s breathless amazement at everyday occurrences.In “Jennifer Coolidge Is Impressed by Christmas Stuff,” Fineman oohs and ahhs about Christmas lights. (“One year I got the blinking ones,” she explains; “I left my Christmas tree on all night and learned my cat was epileptic.”) And she blithely asks a pianist, played by Michael Longfellow, if he was the composer of the tune he just played — that tune being “Jingle Bells.”(Fun fact: the real Coolidge auditioned for “S.N.L.” in the 1990s, along with the future cast members Will Ferrell, Chris Kattan and Cheri Oteri, but she didn’t get the gig. She has yet to host the show, wink wink!)Questionable holiday treat of the weekPerhaps on some Christmas past, you had the misfortune of being served some dry, brittle candy made out of marzipan and formed into some improbable shape like a cash register or a bunch of bananas. (And if not, consider yourself lucky.)But clearly someone in the “S.N.L.” writing staff had a score to settle with marzipan and channeled it into this exceptionally silly sketch in which Thompson and a group of excitable British children (played by Butler and the cast) fail to make it sound appealing, even when they try to sing marzipan’s praises.As Thompson explains, “Just remember, don’t eat it within 12 hours of going to sleep, or after 12 hours of waking up.”Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on Trump’s entry into the NFT market and the arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX:Jost began:Insiders are saying that the House Jan. 6 committee will refer at least three criminal charges against Donald Trump, but after this week, I think he’s pretty much locked down that insanity plea. [His screen shows a trading-card image depicting Trump as a comic-book hero with lasers coming from his eyes.] Semiretired maniac Donald Trump has launched a collection of digital NFT trading cards depicting him in various costumes, including cowboy, superhero and, most unbelievable of all, guy who didn’t dodge the draft.As the screen beside him showed an image of Trump wearing a fighter pilot suit, Jost continued:I’m honestly just relieved that he’s wearing an American military uniform. It’s such a funny move to get into NFTs after the whole market just crashed. It’s like getting into Kanye now. Which Trump also kind of did.Che picked up the thread:Sam Bankman-Fried, the former C.E.O. of the cryptocurrency company FTX, was arrested on fraud charges in the Bahamas — I’m going to guess while swimming in a T-shirt. Prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried took funds from FTX customers to make large political donations. That money will now be used to make sure the cameras outside his jail cell aren’t working. More

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      Adam Sandler to Receive Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

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      The comedian will receive the Kennedy Center’s annual comedy honor at a ceremony in March.Adam Sandler has had a busy 2022: He starred as a basketball scout in a critically acclaimed performance in the Netflix sports drama “Hustle”; he won an honorary Gotham Award, giving a speech that brought the house down; and undertook his first nationwide arena tour in three years. Now, he’ll be able to start off 2023 with at least one sure thing: a comedy prize.The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced on Tuesday that it will recognize the 56-year-old comedian’s satire and activism when it presents him with its 24th Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, given to luminaries who have “had an impact on American society” in ways similar to Twain, at a ceremony on March 19.In his 30-year career, Sandler, who is known for his loopy, lewd sense of humor and amiable charm, has served as a comedian, actor, writer, producer and musician, starring in films like “The Waterboy” (1998), “Grown Ups” (2010) and “Hotel Transylvania” (2012). After getting his start telling jokes in comedy clubs, he shot to fame as a cast member on “Saturday Night Live,” then went on to release blockbuster albums and make critically panned comedies. Though he’s also racked up critically acclaimed star turns in the Safdie brothers’ 2019 dark comedy “Uncut Gems” and “Hustle,” among others.Deborah F. Rutter, the president of the Kennedy Center, said in a statement that Sandler had “created characters that have made us laugh, cry and cry from laughing.”Previous winners of the Mark Twain Prize include Jon Stewart, Bill Murray, Dave Chappelle, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Carol Burnett and Ellen DeGeneres. The award has been presented annually since 1998, excepting the pandemic years 2020 and 2021. More

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      Steve Martin and Martin Short Trade Barbs, and Eulogies, on ‘SNL’

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      The two seasoned comedians brought their playful rivalry to this week’s episode, which featured the musical guest Brandi Carlile.A certain playful rivalry has always been the heart of the partnership between Steve Martin and Martin Short. So, taken to its logical extension, the two should be at their funniest when imagining themselves at each other’s funerals.That was the idea behind their opening monologue on this weekend’s “Saturday Night Live,” which paired the enduringly popular comedians (and stars of the Hulu series “Only Murders in the Building”) as hosts on a holiday-themed broadcast that also featured the musical guest Brandi Carlile.At their entrance, Short and Martin humorously stepped on each other’s dialogue, compared how many times they had hosted “S.N.L.” alone (Martin a whopping 16 occasions, Short a mere three) and indulged in some nostalgia for the early days of the series. Having shown a photograph of himself with Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi and Mick Jagger, Martin quipped that after it was taken, “We tested positive for everything.”Next, a few good-natured zingers at each other’s expense. Martin said that working with Short “is like World Cup soccer — somehow, I just can’t get into it.”Short returned fire, observing that their Hulu show “is like Steve at the urinal — it streams for 32 minutes.”Then Martin set up the central premise of the segment, saying that he realized Short wouldn’t live forever, “and that is sad, because you won’t be able to hear the wonderful things I’m going to say at your memorial.”“So I thought: why wait?” he continued. “So what I did was I wrote up your eulogy so you can hear it now.”Beginning his imaginary remarks, Martin said: “Wow, not much of a turnout. Marty did not want to be cremated — too late. But I’ll always be haunted by Marty’s last words: ‘Tesla autopilot, engage.’”Short then launched into his own tribute, saying: “There are so many great things that I could say about Steve Martin. But this hardly seems the time nor the place.” He added, “I know Steve is looking down on us right now because he always looked down on everybody.”Martin said of Short: “Marty was taken away from us too soon. But sadly, not before he played Jack Frost in ‘Santa Clause 3.’”And Short said of Martin, “Seeing you in your casket reminds me of that classic ‘S.N.L.’ sketch ‘Dick in a Box.’”Finally Martin wondered aloud, “Now that Marty’s gone, who will I ever work with?” That was the cue for a cameo from Selena Gomez, their co-star in “Only Murders,” who asked, “What about me?”New holiday standard of the weekIn this week’s opening sketch, “S.N.L.” skipped its familiar topical satire in favor of a musical segment that found Bowen Yang, Cecily Strong and Kenan Thompson standing at a Christmas tree, wondering how to deal with the buildup of anxieties from recent months. (Yang listed the major causes for concern: “War, climate change, the Prince Harry-Meghan Markle documentary.”)Breaking into song, they explained that the holidays made it OK for them to push off their personal worries for a few more weeks. For example, Thompson sang that he could give himself permission to overlook his drinking: “It’s starting to get out of hand / I knew that it may have / Crossed into a dark place / When Burger King said I was banned.”In another verse, Yang asked: “Since when did Hitler come back? / Didn’t we basically all agree, years ago / Hitler should never come back?” (Thompson added, “And why are his new fans Black?”)Old holiday standard of the weekLike the Irving Berlin composition that inspired it, the 1954 movie musical “White Christmas” may be a seasonal classic. But let’s at least admit that it has a couple of bizarre numbers, like “Snow,” in which Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney and Danny Kaye ride a train while crooning about frozen precipitation as if they’ve never encountered it before.That scene was parodied with an absurdist affection in this sketch, where Short, Martin and Strong sing enthusiastically about snow without seeming to understand what it is, and Thompson plays a fellow passenger who is pleasantly baffled by their antics. (If seeing Short and Martin in Christmas sketches is your thing, enjoy these further segments in which they play a department-store Santa and elf and perform an excessively violent reimagining of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” )Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on the aftermath of the 2022 midterm elections and the release of the basketball player Brittney Griner as part of a prisoner exchange with Russia.Jost began:It was shaping up to be good week for Joe Biden. He got Brittney Griner back, he kept marriage gay, and he’s only got 14 more sleeps until Santa. But then, just when he thought he had it all under control, Kyrsten Sinema said hold my wig. Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, seen here realizing that someone is actually waving to the person behind her, announced that she is leaving the Democratic Party and is registering as an independent. Explained Sinema, “Pay attention to me.”He continued:WNBA star Brittney Griner was freed from prison in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. It’s actually a great trade because Bout was only averaging five points and two rebounds a game.Che then pivoted to the Georgia runoff:Raphael Warnock defeated Herschel Walker in Georgia’s Senate runoff race. But I don’t think this is the last you’ll hear from Herschel Walker. I mean, unless he’s your biological father. With Raphael Warnock’s win, Democrats in the Senate will no longer have to rely on Vice President Harris for tie breaking votes. Harris can now focus on her main priority, waiting for a worse bike accident. [A screen behind Che shows President Biden falling off a bike.]Nineties nostalgia of the weekIf you’re going to bring Martin and Short together on a pop-cultural comedy sketch series, you’d darn well better let them pay homage to either “Three Amigos” or “Father of the Bride.”“S.N.L.” opted for the latter in this fake ad for “Father of the Bride Part 8,” which casts Martin as the titular father, Heidi Gardner as his now-menopausal daughter preparing for her eighth marriage, Short as his flamboyant wedding-planner character and Kieran Culkin as himself, reminding us that yes, he really was in the previous installments of the franchise, and we’ve all gotten much older since then. More

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      On ‘S.N.L.’, President Biden Has Two Words on the Midterms: ‘Big Yikes’

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      Amy Schumer hosted a “Saturday Night Live” episode that contemplated the coming elections and Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter.On the weekend before the 2022 midterm elections, “Saturday Night Live” turned to James Austin Johnson, its resident impersonator of President Biden, to assess how Democratic candidates might fare at the polls. And, well, he wanted to make a lot of last-minute substitutions.This episode, hosted by Amy Schumer and featuring the musical guest Steve Lacy, began with Johnson as Biden speaking directly to the electorate. “My fellow Americans,” he said, “this Tuesday, our midterm elections will determine the fate of our democracy, and let’s just say: Big yikes.”He continued: “What’s going on? I guess the Democrats’ message just ain’t getting through. Plus, I’m over here, talking to people who don’t exist. I don’t know much. Who’s that? Oh, nobody’s there.”Even so, Johnson’s Biden said he was pushing himself as hard as he could: “I’m on the Peloton every morning, tempting fate,” he said. He reminded voters of past accomplishments, like an infrastructure bill that provided red states with broadband internet “so you can share your Paul Pelosi gay erotic fiction at light speed.”The problem with his party, Johnson said, is that “we don’t have any stars anymore — too many Raphael Warnocks and not enough Herschel Walkers.”“Which is why we’re going to make some last-minute changes before Tuesday with the Democrats who are exciting,” he continued.Among them, Johnson introduced the free-spirited 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson (Chloe Fineman). Describing herself as “a prominent author and Level 4 enchantress,” Fineman said, “I am ready to fight for the American dream — which I caught in this Tibetan singing bowl.”Other replacement candidates included the goateed restaurateur Guy Fieri (Molly Kearney), who bellowed, “Do y’all want Dr. Oz’s crudité or a full plate of paid family leave, dripping in donkey sauce?”Johnson brought out the adult film star Stormy Daniels (Cecily Strong) and the rappers Tekashi 6ix9ine (Marcello Hernandez) and Azealia Banks (Ego Nwodim). He also introduced the “S.N.L.” alum Tracy Morgan (played in the sketch by Kenan Thompson), who Johnson said would be in charge of student-loan forgiveness.“Y’all want that money?” Thompson asked. “Why don’t you come on over here, rub my belly?”Host monologue of the weekSchumer, the stand-up comic and star of the sketch series “Inside Amy Schumer,” returned to host “S.N.L.” for the first time since 2018. Since last hosting, she has become a mother, but parenthood and the passage of the years have hardly softened Schumer’s occasionally racy sensibilities (and vocabulary).Among the portions of her routine we can safely recount here, Schumer joked about people who gave her advice during her pregnancy: “I had this one friend, she kept telling me: ‘You gotta do prenatal yoga. It really helps with the birth,’” Schumer said. “So I immediately signed up. For a C-section.”She also talked about life with her husband after he was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. On a rainy night, she said, she told him that being with him and their son had been the best years of her life.“He just looked at me and he said, ‘I’m going to go put the windows up in the car,’” Schumer recounted, adding affectionately: “That’s my guy. It’s one of the times we play the game Autism, or Just a Man?”Fake commercial of the weekIn what begins as a seemingly standard pharmaceutical ad, a voice-over asks: “Are you feeling tired and worn down? Sick of the endless grind at work? Exhausted by your family, desperate for some peace and quiet?”Don’t feel ashamed if you caught yourself agreeing with one or more of those propositions before you learned it was, in fact, a advertisement for Covid — you know, the highly communicable disease responsible for the pandemic — which here is touted for having fringe benefits, like getting you out of work and child-care duties.Probably not a sketch that “S.N.L.” would have attempted a year or two ago, but as the voice-over reminds you: “Side effects of Covid include having Covid, which is still kind of bad, but doesn’t it seem different now?”Obligatory Twitter sketch of the weekEven in an episode that was largely focused on the midterms, you knew “S.N.L.” would find a way to revisit the chaotic energy unleashed by Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. This weekend’s sketch was inspired by Musk’s announcement that the company would establish a content moderation council — in this case, a two-person team (Thompson and Fineman) who say they are the only two Twitter employees who haven’t been fired yet — to consider the reinstatement of suspended users.The council heard the pleas of various characters played by Schumer, Strong, Bowen Yang and Punkie Johnson, and then finally from former President Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson), who wanted his account back, too. “I won’t do anything bad except maybe coup,” he vowed.Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on President Biden’s recent speech about American democracy and on the New Jersey Nets’ suspension of Kyrie Irving for promoting an antisemitic documentary.Jost began:President Biden, seen here begging for one more year before the midterms, warned about Republican candidates who say they will refuse to accept election results, warning they could set the nation on a path to chaos. So wait, this is just the path to chaos? I thought we’d been living in chaos for at least six years. I mean, Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked in their home by a guy with a hammer, and instead of even basic sympathy, Republicans were like, “We heard he gay.”He continued:Donald Trump Jr. mocked the attack on Pelosi’s husband by posting an image of a hammer and a pair of underpants, with the message, “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.” And I would agree that Don Jr. is probably the expert on getting hammered in your underwear. Also, Don Jr., is that your underwear, man? Why is it so dirty and stretched out? You were trying to burn Paul Pelosi, but now I’m just wondering if you wear your dad’s old underwear.Che then pivoted to the news about Irving:After meeting with the Anti-Defamation League, Kyrie Irving announced that from now on, he will pretend to not be antisemitic. Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving was suspended after he tweeted a link to the antisemitic film “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America.” You know, Hebrews II Negroes was also the name of my favorite R&B group in the ’90s.Deskside segment of the weekStrong missed the first three “S.N.L.” episodes of this season while she performed a revival of the one-woman show “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” in Los Angeles. But she has been rapidly making up for lost time with appearances like this one, a companion piece of sorts to her Goober the Clown segment from last season.The name of this latest character, “Tammy the Trucker, Who Promises She’s Here to Talk About Gas Prices and Definitely Not Abortion,” pretty much says it all, and Strong could just barely pretend to turn a steering wheel or care about trucker lingo as she declared, “You shouldn’t have to pull the convoy across state lines to find a doctor who can provide health care for your anatomy without having to call their lawyer first.”In closing, she reminded viewers to vote because, as she put it, “We all love someone who’s had an abortion — I mean, drives a truck.” More

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      Douglas McGrath, Playwright, Filmmaker and Actor, Dies at 64

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      His one-man Off Broadway show, “Everything’s Fine,” directed by John Lithgow, had opened just weeks ago.Douglas McGrath, a playwright, screenwriter, director and actor who was nominated for an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony Award, and whose one-man Off Broadway show, “Everything’s Fine,” opened just weeks ago, died on Thursday at his office in Manhattan. He was 64.His death was announced by the show’s producers, Daryl Roth, Tom Werner and John Lithgow. Their representative said the cause was a heart attack.Mr. Lithgow also directed the show, a childhood recollection of Mr. McGrath’s about a middle-school teacher in Texas who gave him an inappropriate amount of attention.“He was a dream to direct,” Mr. Lithgow said on Friday. “None of us had ever worked with someone who was so happy, proud and grateful to be performing his own writing.”Mr. McGrath in his one-man play “Everything’s Fine,” which opened Off Broadway last month to good reviews.Jeremy DanielMr. McGrath had a wide-ranging if under-the-radar career in television, film and theater. In the 1980-81 season, just out of Princeton and still in his early 20s, he was a writer for “Saturday Night Live.” Over the next decade he wrote humor pieces for The New Republic, The New York Times and other publications.By the 1990s he was making inroads in Hollywood. He wrote the screenplay for the 1993 remake of the 1950 romantic comedy “Born Yesterday,” and the next year he and Woody Allen collaborated on the script for Mr. Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway.” The two shared an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay.In 1996 he adapted the Jane Austen novel “Emma” for the big screen and also directed the film, which starred Gwyneth Paltrow. In 2000 he and Peter Askin shared directing and screenwriting duties on the comedy “Company Man,” in which he also starred, as a schoolteacher who stumbles into a career as a C.I.A. officer.That movie drew some unflattering reviews. But his next, “Nicholas Nickleby” (2002), an adaptation of the Dickens story that he both wrote and directed, was well received. In The Times, A.O. Scott said that Mr. McGrath’s adaptation was rendered “with a scholar’s ear and a showman’s flair.”“The director has produced a colorful, affecting collage of Dickensian moods and motifs,” Mr. Scott wrote, “a movie that elicits an overwhelming desire to plunge into 900 pages of 19th-century prose.”Mr. McGrath, center, on the set of his film “Nicholas Nickleby” (2002), with the cast members Barry Humphries, left, and Alan Cumming.United Artists, via AlamyIn addition to his screenwriting and directing credits (which also included “Infamous,” a 2006 film starring Toby Jones as Truman Capote), Mr. McGrath occasionally took small acting roles in other people’s projects, including several of Mr. Allen’s films. In 2016 he directed “Becoming Mike Nichols,” an HBO documentary about the film director, on which he was also an executive producer. He shared an Emmy nomination with the other producers for outstanding documentary or nonfiction special.Throughout, he continued to work in the theater. In 1996 he wrote and starred in “Political Animal,” a one-man comedy that played at the McGinn/Cazale Theater in Manhattan, in which he played a right-wing presidential candidate.“Beyond the stand-up parody,” Ben Brantley wrote in his review in The Times, “the larger point of ‘Political Animal’ is that it takes a hollow, desperate man to run for president these days.”In 2012 his play “Checkers” — the title refers to a famous 1952 speech by Richard M. Nixon — was seen at the Vineyard Theater in Manhattan, with Anthony LaPaglia as Nixon and Kathryn Erbe as his wife, Pat.Then came Broadway: Mr. McGrath wrote the book for “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” which opened in January 2014 and ran for more than five years. His book was nominated for a Tony Award.Last month Mr. Lithgow told The Daily News of New York that Mr. McGrath had sent him “Everything’s Fine” unsolicited, and that he had no intention of directing a play until he read the piece.“It was so play-able,” he said, “I could simply imagine an audience being completely captivated by it.”The show opened in mid-October to good reviews.“It is impossible to overstate Doug’s pure likability,” Mr. Lithgow said on Friday. “In his solo show, he told a long story about his 14th year, and it worked so well because he had retained so much of his sense of boyish discovery.”Ms. Roth, another of the show’s producers, said that Mr. McGrath had been thoroughly enjoying the way audiences were reacting as he unspooled the tale.“The wonderful response from the audience was cathartic, meaningful and joyful to him,” she said by email. “He often told me he was in his ‘happy place’ onstage telling his story.”Mr. McGrath on the set of “Infamous,” his 2006 film about Truman Capote.Van Redin/Warner Independent, via Kobal, via ShutterstockDouglas Geoffrey McGrath was born on Feb. 2, 1958, in Midland, Texas. His father, Raynsford, was an independent oil producer, and his mother, Beatrice (Burchenal) McGrath, worked at Harper’s Bazaar before her marriage.“People often ask me what growing up in West Texas was like,” Mr. McGrath said in “Everything’s Fine.” “I think this sums it up: It’s very hot, it’s very dusty, and it’s very, very windy. It’s like growing up inside a blow dryer full of dirt.”He graduated from Princeton in 1980.“Planning my future,” he wrote in a 2001 essay in The Times, “I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do, but a very blurry one of how to do it. I knew I wanted to write and perform in my own films in the manner of my idol, Woody Allen. But when I went, that once, to the Career Counseling Center and faced the bulletin board, none of the cards said, ‘Needed: writer-actor-director for major feature, no experience required, must be willing to earn high salary.’”Yet when a friend told him “S.N.L.” was hiring writers, he sent in some sketches and landed an $850-a-week job.“It seemed too good to be true,” he wrote. “It was. My year, 1980, was viewed then and still as the worst year in the show’s history, which is no small achievement when you think of some of the other years.”In a 2016 interview, Mr. McGrath said his disappointment with the way his screenplay for “Born Yesterday” was handled changed the direction of his career.“I remember thinking, well, if I don’t want to spend the rest of my life doing this, meaning watching someone else muck up what I did, there’s only one way around that,” he said. “I have to become a director.”Mr. McGrath, who lived in Manhattan, married Jane Reed Martin in 1995. She survives him, as do a son, Henry; a sister, Mary McGrath Abrams; and a brother, Alexander. More