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Saturday Night Live (season 13)
The thirteenth season of '' Saturday Night Live'', an American sketch comedy series, originally aired in the United States on NBC between October 17, 1987 and February 27, 1988. Although the changes to the cast and writers were minimal, the season was cut short due to the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike. Production During a dress rehearsal for the season premiere, a fire broke out near Studio 8H and was planned to be postponed. However, episode host Steve Martin pushed the cast to carry on with the show, making the Steve Martin/Sting episode the only episode without a dress rehearsal. Following the February 27 episode, the series went on a planned two-week hiatus with plans to return on March 12 (the host of which had yet to be announced). However, on March 7, the Writers Guild of America went on strike. The strike continued until August, thus cutting the season short at 13 episodes, tying the sixth season as the shortest season until it was surpassed by the thirty-th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saturday Night Live (season 12)
The twelfth season of ''Saturday Night Live'', an American sketch comedy series, originally aired in the United States on NBC between October 11, 1986 and May 23, 1987. History The season opened with Madonna, host of the previous season opener, reading a "statement" from NBC about season 11's mediocre writing and bad cast choices. According to the "statement", the entire 1985–86 season was "...all a dream. A horrible, horrible dream." The season included "Mastermind", a skit written by Jim Downey and Al Franken, in which Phil Hartman portrayed two sides of Ronald Reagan; 25 years later Todd Purdum called the skit "surely among the show's Top 10 of all time". Also during this season, singer David Johansen made several guest appearances as his famous persona, Buster Poindexter, performing with the SNL house band. A new logo was introduced for this season: it consisted of a yellow square and a small black rectangle; the yellow square had "SATURDAY" and "LIVE" in it; between ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jon Lovitz
Jonathan Michael Lovitz (; born July 21, 1957) is an American actor and comedian. He was a cast member of ''Saturday Night Live'' from 1985 to 1990. Lovitz starred as Jay Sherman in ''The Critic'' and played a baseball scout in ''A League of Their Own''. He has appeared in 20 episodes of ''The Simpsons''. Early life Lovitz was born on July 21, 1957, in the Tarzana neighborhood of Los Angeles, to Harold and Barbara Lovitz. His family is Jewish, and emigrated from Romania, Hungary, and Russia. His paternal grandfather, Feivel Ianculovici, left Romania around 1914. After arriving in the United States, he Americanized his name to Phillip Lovitz. In a 2011 interview, Lovitz described his comedic influences: "When I was 13, I saw Woody Allen's movie ''Take The Money and Run'', and I wanted to be a comedian. Then when I was 16, I saw the movie '' Lenny'', about Lenny Bruce, starring Dustin Hoffman. I thought the movie was so great, and I'd never heard of Lenny, so I went to the record ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Smigel
Robert Smigel (born February 7, 1960) is an American actor, comedian, writer, director, producer, and puppeteer, known for his ''Saturday Night Live'' "TV Funhouse" cartoon shorts and as the puppeteer and voice behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. He also co-wrote the first two ''Hotel Transylvania'' films and ''You Don't Mess with the Zohan'', all starring Adam Sandler. Early life Smigel was born in New York City, to Lucia and Irwin Smigel, an aesthetic dentist, innovator and philanthropist. He is Jewish and frequently went to Jewish summer camp. He attended Cornell University, studying pre-dental, and graduated from New York University in 1983 with a degree in political science. Smigel began developing his comedic talent at The Players Workshop in Chicago, where he studied improvisation with Josephine Forsberg. Bob Odenkirk was a fellow student there. Smigel was also a member of the Chicago comedy troupe "All You Can Eat" in the early 1980s. Career Smigel first established ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rosie Shuster
Rosie Shuster (born June 19, 1950) is a Canadian-born comedy writer and actress. She was a writer for ''Saturday Night Live'' during the 1970s and 1980s. Biography Shuster was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada to Ruth (''née'' Burstyn), an interior designer, and Frank Shuster, a comedian of Wayne and Shuster fame. She is a cousin of ''Superman'' co-creator Joe Shuster. She is of Jewish descent. Shuster was married to ''Saturday Night Live'' creator, Lorne Michaels, from 1971 to 1980. The pair first met in junior high school, when Michaels, born Lorne Lipowitz, followed her home hoping to meet her famous father. Together Shuster and Michaels wrote and performed comedy sketches through high school, summer camp, and college. They began their TV career on the '' Hart and Lorne'' show for Canadian TV on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Appearing on the show were Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner, among others. Shuster and Michaels moved to Los Angeles to work on '' The Lily To ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herb Sargent
Herbert Sargent (born Supowitz; July 15, 1923 – May 6, 2005) was an American television writer, a producer for such comedy shows as ''The Tonight Show'' and ''Saturday Night Live'', and a screenwriter ('' Bye Bye Braverman''). During his tenure at ''Saturday Night Live'', he and Chevy Chase created Weekend Update, the longest-running sketch in the show's history, and one of the longest-running sketches on television. Biography He was born Herbert Supowitz in Philadelphia on July 15, 1923. He was the older brother of Academy Award-winning screenwriter Alvin Sargent. Raised in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, he studied architecture at Penn State University before serving with the United States Army Air Forces Air Transport Command in the Pacific Theater during World War II. He moved to Los Angeles and graduated from UCLA. Sargent then moved to New York City and began his career in radio. Moving to television, he was one of the writers for the much-acclaimed Steve Allen Show (on N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels (born Lorne David Lipowitz; November 17, 1944) is a Canadian-American producer, screenwriter, and comedian. He is best known for creating and producing ''Saturday Night Live'' (1975–1980, 1985–present) and producing the '' Late Night'' series (since 1993), ''The Kids in the Hall'' (from 1989 to 1995) and '' The Tonight Show'' (since 2014). He has received 21 Primetime Emmy Awards from 98 nominations, holding the record for being the most nominated individual in the award show's history. Early life Lorne Michaels was born on November 17, 1944, to Florence (née Becker) and Henry Abraham Lipowitz. His place of birth is disputed; multiple sources have said he was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, while others state he was born on a kibbutz in the then British mandate of Palestine (now Israel) and that his Jewish family immigrated to Toronto when he was an infant. Michaels and his two younger siblings were raised in Toronto; he attended Forest Hill Collegiate In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Meyer
George Meyer (born 1956) is an American producer and writer. Meyer is best known for his work on ''The Simpsons'', where he led the group script rewrite sessions. He has been publicly credited with "thoroughly shap ng... the comedic sensibility" of the show. Raised in Tucson, Meyer attended Harvard University. There, after becoming president of the ''Harvard Lampoon'', he graduated in 1978 with a degree in biochemistry. Abandoning plans to attend medical school, Meyer attempted to make money through dog racing but failed after two months. After a series of short-term jobs he was hired in 1981 by David Letterman, on the advice of two of Meyer's ''Harvard Lampoon'' cowriters, to join the writing team of his show '' Late Night with David Letterman''. Meyer left after two seasons and went on to write for ''The New Show'', ''Not Necessarily the News'' and ''Saturday Night Live''. Tired of life in New York, Meyer moved to Boulder, Colorado where he wrote a screenplay for a film fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Handey
Jack Handey (born February 25, 1949) is an American humorist. He is best known for his "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey", a large body of surrealistic one-liner jokes, as well as his "Fuzzy Memories" and "My Big Thick Novel" shorts, and for his deadpan delivery. Although many assume otherwise, Handey is a real person, not a pen name or character. Career Handey's earliest writing job was for a newspaper, the ''San Antonio Express-News''. He lost the job after writing an article that, in his words, "offended local car dealerships". His first comic writing was with comedian Steve Martin. According to Martin, Handey got a job writing for ''Saturday Night Live'' (SNL) after Martin introduced him to the show's creator, Lorne Michaels. For several years, Handey worked on other television projects: the Canadian sketch series '' Bizarre'' in 1980, the 1980 Steve Martin television special ''Comedy Is Not Pretty!'', and Lorne Michaels' short-lived sketch show on NBC called ''The New Show'' in 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al Franken
Alan Stuart Franken (born May 21, 1951) is an American comedian, politician, media personality, and author who served as a United States senator from Minnesota from 2009 to 2018. He gained fame as a writer and performer on the television comedy show ''Saturday Night Live,'' where he worked from the 1970s until the 1990s. After decades as an entertainer, he became a prominent liberal political activist, hosting '' The Al Franken Show'' on Air America Radio. Franken was elected to the United States Senate in 2008 as the nominee of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL, an affiliate of the Democratic Party), defeating incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman by 312 votes out of nearly three million cast (a margin of just over 0.01%) in one of the closest elections in the history of the Senate. He was reelected in 2014 with 53.2% of the vote over Republican challenger Mike McFadden. Franken resigned on January 2, 2018, after allegations of sexual misconduct were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jim Downey (comedian)
James Woodward Downey (born ) is an American comedy writer and occasional actor. Downey wrote for over 30 seasons of ''Saturday Night Live'', making him the longest tenured writer in the show's history. ''SNL'' creator Lorne Michaels called Downey the "best political humorist alive". Early life and education Downey grew up in Joliet, Illinois. After graduating from Joliet Catholic High School, he entered Harvard University, where he wrote for the ''Harvard Lampoon'' and later became its president. He graduated from Harvard in 1974 with a degree in Russian. Writing In 1976, Downey joined the ''Saturday Night Live'' writing staff as its youngest member. He was among the first ''Harvard Lampoon'' writers to write for television; writer Steve O'Donnell said "the proliferation of cable and the proliferation of comedy edthe sensibilities of the ''Lampoon'' o becomea little closer to the sensibilities of the mass media." ''Simpsons'' writer Mike Reiss called Downey " patient zero" o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Davis (comedian)
Thomas James Davis (August 13, 1952 – July 19, 2012) was an American comedian, writer, and author. He is best known for his comedy partnership with Al Franken, as half of the comedy duo "Franken & Davis" on ''Saturday Night Live''. Life and career Davis was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. He attended Blake School (Minneapolis, Minnesota), The Blake School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he began his friendship and professional partnership with Al Franken. In 1975, Davis got his big break as one of the original writers for ''Saturday Night Live'' where he and Franken also performed together. The duo wrote the screenplay for and appeared in the film ''One More Saturday Night (film), One More Saturday Night'', and had brief appearances in ''Trading Places'' and ''All You Need Is Cash, The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash''. Davis was a frequent guest on ''The Al Franken Show'', appearing in sketches as various characters. In a well-known sketch on ''Saturday Night Live'', he provi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bob Odenkirk
Robert John Odenkirk (; born October 22, 1962) is an American actor, comedian and filmmaker best known for his role as Saul Goodman on ''Breaking Bad'' (2008–2013) and its spin-off ''Better Call Saul'' (2015–2022). For the latter, he has received five nominations for Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. As a producer on ''Better Call Saul'' since its premiere, he has also received six nominations for Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series. He is also known for the HBO sketch comedy series ''Mr. Show with Bob and David'' (1995–1998), which he co-created and co-starred in with fellow comic David Cross. In 2015, he and Cross reunited, along with the rest of the ''Mr. Show'' cast, for ''W/ Bob & David'' on Netflix. Odenkirk wrote for television series ''Saturday Night Live'' (1987–1991) and ''The Ben Stiller Show'' (1992), winning Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series, Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
