{"id":5207,"date":"2009-12-20T13:25:20","date_gmt":"2009-12-20T20:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=5207"},"modified":"2009-12-20T13:25:20","modified_gmt":"2009-12-20T20:25:20","slug":"three-elliotts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2009\/12\/20\/three-elliotts\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Elliotts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The low point in the low point laden history of Saturday Night Live just have been the 1995-1996 season.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a season between two “epocah” casts — or to put another way, two Bill Clinton impersonators.\u00c2\u00a0 The lowest moment might have been this single sketch — Jeff Daniels was interviewed on a movie review show, and a single clip from “Dumb and Dumber” — where Daniels is on the toilet — is shown over and over and over again, and over and over and over again, and over and over and over again.<\/p>\n

Chris Elliott was a cast member that season.\u00c2\u00a0 I read parts of the oral history Live from New York<\/a>, so know Chris Elliott’s thoughts on his stint at Saturday Night Live.\u00c2\u00a0 It was the low point of his career, and he was out of sorts there.\u00c2\u00a0 He and a couple of other mismatched cast members formed a bit of a bond to endure the season — Jeanine Garaolo managed to get out of the last few episodes, something which I am sure Chris Elliott would have done if he were able to do.\u00c2\u00a0 Years later, the obviousness of just how mismatched Chris Elliott was becomes ever more acute.\u00c2\u00a0 Why did Lorne Michaels, or anyone else on the show, think he fit this show?<\/p>\n

At the time I watched a bit wearily, and had the vcr ready to record.\u00c2\u00a0 All in all, there were three or four sketches that struck as belonging to Chris Elliott.\u00c2\u00a0 Tellingly, in Central Central’s shortened re-runs, they were cut out.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not entirely sure if one of the bits survived the rerun redactions — George Foreman reading to Chris Elliott “Good Night Moon” — was that one ran?\u00c2\u00a0 (I guess now we’ll never know.\u00c2\u00a0 Comedy Central has moved on from stacking its schedule with SNL reruns.)<\/p>\n

I’ll mention two other other sketches — I suppose to be inserted into the long-delayed “Best of Chris Elliott” edition of a SNL collection.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s this one where Elliott is taking a survey at the new Denver Airport to guage opinions on a possible new opinion — a Penis Extender.\u00c2\u00a0 This is not an especially remarkable sketch, except that it’s basically a set up for Elliott to break the fourth wall, declare that he’s quitting the show to work on such devices for “The Future” — and walks out… Lorne Michaels and — um… John Connaly (?) in tow.\u00c2\u00a0 To the groans of the audience who knows where this is going, with Chris Elliott being assassinated.<\/p>\n

The other sketch, I am a fan of, and quite possibly the only fan on the face of the Earth.\u00c2\u00a0 It is a bit which was the perfect display and demonstration of just why Chris Elliott probably should not have been on Saturday Night Live.\u00c2\u00a0 Chris Elliott is a novelty gag store owner, and so has one customer after another coming in to ask for a classic novelty gag or other — Chris Farley comes in asking for some fake vomit, for instance.\u00c2\u00a0 Chris Elliott has to forlornly explain that his store does not carry such things — that this is a “Funny Strange” store, and not a “Funny Ha Ha” store, but they do have — say, a file full of Insect Vomit.\u00c2\u00a0 When asked then where they go to get fake vomit or a whoopie cushion or chattering teeth, Chris Elliott has to wearily give directions to a different store across town.\u00c2\u00a0 In the end, Chris Elliott closes up the store, groaning about how lousy business is, and in walks his identical twin brother to gloat about how terrific business is going at his “Funny Ha Ha” business.\u00c2\u00a0 Angry, Chris Elliott strangles his more successful and mainstream identical twin brother to death, next there’s a dramatic close up of chattering teeth, and a pointless add on from Kevin Nealon and his identical twin.\u00c2\u00a0 I think the studio audience was more puzzled by this than anything else — though I guess it could fit as a highlight on an SNL collection of sketches of the sort inserted as the second to last bit, ready to be cut if need — right next to your “Big Ear Family”s or whatnot.<\/p>\n

It should be noted that the infamous Dumb and Dumber toilet clip sketch was on the Comedy Central reruns.\u00c2\u00a0 But I suppose there’s not too much confusion on the bit.<\/p>\n

Today, Abby Elliott is a Saturday Night Live cast member, and the New York Times Magazine ran a story about the Elliott Comedy family tree<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Some things pop out in this NY Times article.\u00c2\u00a0 It appears that a secret to Abby Elliott’s success lies somewhere with the fact that she has made a relative break from the comedy traditions of Bob and Chris Elliott.\u00c2\u00a0 See:<\/p>\n

What Chris did on Letterman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s show \u00e2\u20ac\u0153wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t an attempt at a mainstream type of comedy,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Adam Resnick, who wrote with Chris in those years, told me. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Chris on Letterman was abrasive. That was part of the joke. If you weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t smart enough to get it, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d hate him.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

Of course, the price a performer pays for causing part of the audience to hate him is reduced popularity. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think he has a really powerful legacy to live up to,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Saturday Night Live,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d where Chris worked as a writer and performer during the 1994-95 season (he and Abby are the show\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first parent-child cast members). \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When you grow up around show business and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re determined to have some notion of integrity. . . .\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He paused, then finished the thought: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There are so many easy ways to hack out. I think he was so rigorous that he would quite often not want to do things that might have made the audience like him more, because he would have thought it was false.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

Chris acknowledged the audience\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ambivalent feelings toward him every time he walked out on Letterman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stage. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d take huge sweeping bows and blow kisses to the audience as if he were a Judy Garland impersonator at a gay-pride concert instead of a guy whom half the audience found simply puzzling \u00e2\u20ac\u201d making a joke of the fact that some people didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think he was funny.<\/em><\/p>\n

And compare that to the Abby Elliott’s approach to comedy…<\/p>\n

After 35 years, the humor of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Saturday Night Live\u00e2\u20ac\u009d has long since become the norm, and Abby has not had the opportunity, or inclination, to display the kind of audience-confounding humor that her father and grandfather often favored. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I want to make people laugh,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and making a lot of people laugh on TV is amazing. If I want to do something superweird and out there, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll do it for an audience of 30 people drinking beers at U.C.B.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

And really the “Funny Strange” sketch resembles nothing but a metaphor for his own frustrations on SNL.\u00c2\u00a0 Subconscious or not , I do not know.<\/p>\n

………………………………………<\/p>\n

One odd last note about this quasi-accusation <\/a>— somewhat worth mentioning from the NY Times article by way of suggestion:<\/p>\n

By this time, Chris was ready to enter show business himself. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember wanting to do anything else,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he told me (he did toy briefly with the idea of becoming a professional hockey player, he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153but I never learned how to skate\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). Seeing no need for college, he got a job as a tour guide at Rockefeller Center, where David Letterman, before \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Late Night\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but already a successful comedian, showed up one day with his mother to show her the observation deck. Because he was with a parent, Chris sold Letterman a reduced-price child\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ticket. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He giggled,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Chris recalls, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and walked to the back of the elevator. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the cool part of the story. The uncool part is I blurted out who my dad was. He said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve always tried to get your dad on when I host the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tonight Show\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for Johnny Carson.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 And I said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWell, yeah, he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do the show unless Johnny\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hosting.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u009d Which, according to Chris, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153kind of weirded Dave out.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

Chris Elliott was hired as a gopher at the start of Late Night with Letterman’s run — which morphed into his reoccuring appearances.\u00c2\u00a0 And it is worth mentioning that Bob Elliott was a guest on Letterman within the first two weeks.\u00c2\u00a0 Add two and two together, and perhaps Chris Elliott was in the position of doing Letterman a favor with that one?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The low point in the low point laden history of Saturday Night Live just have been the 1995-1996 season.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a season between two “epocah” casts — or to put another way, two Bill Clinton impersonators.\u00c2\u00a0 The lowest moment might have been this single sketch — Jeff Daniels was interviewed on a movie review […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5208,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5207\/revisions\/5208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}