Sunday, January 11, 2009

dear saturday night live

watching a group of actors (neil patrick harris and the snl cast, on tonight's show) lampoon another group of actors for...uh...being unemployed – while show after show is closing on broadway – really isn't all that funny.

see, while you guys (actors and comics who are getting paid) make fun of those folks in phantom or wicked (p.s. snl, annie, cats, fiddler, music man all haven't been on broadway in years) the actors who were employed in shows like hairspray, gypsy, grease, young frankenstein, rent, spring awakening, legally blonde, chorus line, spamalot, all my sons, speed the plow, and boeing-boeing will all be looking for work soon. their health insurance could eventually run out, and so could their savings.

it'd be like the group of factory workers who got to keep their jobs, mocking the guys who got laid off – those guys who are wondering how they're gonna support their families, buy medicine for their kids, put food on the table.

now that's funny.

UPDATE 1/11/09 - 1:02 a.m. – wow snl, you're on a roll! on the same program you were able to be incredibly insensitive to actors and romanians. offering poor (stupid?) romanian villagers a whopper taste test, and then laughing while they tell the spokesman that two burgers could feed their village for days? funny! (btw, romania is often referred to as the poorhouse of europe – nearly 14% of romanians live below the poverty level. you guys sure know comedy.)

UPDATE 1/11/09 - 11:20 p.m. –
about the "save broadway" sketch, reader katie reminds us that it's not just the actors who suffer when a show closes:
"what most (well, a lot of) people don't get is it's not just the highfalutin' actors (present company excepted, of course) but the ushers, and the stage managers, and the musicians, and the bartenders, and the tchotchke sellers and the cabbies and the restaurants and the hotels...and on and on."
yes. let's hear it for the tchotchke sellers. angie is worried about there being something to see:
"we're taking another group of theater students to new york this summer again to, uh...see shows. we hope there will be some!"
and leslie sums it up for the snl cast quite succinctly:
"one word: karma."

3 comments:

  1. Couldn't agree with you more, Tony. I just watched the clip and it's not only terrible to be making fun of non-working actors, its also just terrible writing in general. I continue to be reminded of why I stopped watching SNL (except for a short stint prior to the election).

    -p.

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  2. I thought the homophobic lampooning of Rachel Maddow was far worse than those two segments. She's gay! Hilarious! Very 8th grade. Better summed up here: http://tinyurl.com/79rqhz.

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