Saturday Night Live: "Mardi Gras Special"

Premiered February 20, 1977.

For this review, we depart from our usual summary-review format.  Because that wouldn't be fair to this special.

We're both huge fans of the "original cast" era of Saturday Night Live.  This Mardi Gras special was broadcast once and never re-shown on television.  This gave it a legendary status among fans of SNL.

Part of the allure of SNL is that "anything can happen" on live tv.  But cast members and hosts have rarely gone off script, nor have any major on-air accidents occurred.  In the Mardi Gras special, just about anything that could have happened did happen, and the result was mixed at best.  This special only aired once and was unavailable until the recent DVD release of the series.

What works:

Dan Aykroyd begins the festivities, doing his perfect impression of Jimmy Carter.  When the camera pans out, we see he's sitting on the back of the equestrian Andrew Jackson statue, located in Jackson Square!

Instead of the usual "Live from New York", Aykroyd/Carter exclaims "Live from Mardi Gras, it's Saturday Night!"

After the cold-opening, Randy Newman sings his song "Louisiana 1927".  It's about the Great Mississipi Flood of 1927, but the song (sadly) gained new currency after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. Newman later performs another Lousiana-centric song called "The Kingfish", about Gov. Huey Long.

Jane Curtin and Buck Henry had the thankless task of covering the Bacchus Parade, surrounded by thousands of drunken revelers.  They did the best they could, under difficult circumstances, with writers composing jokes on the fly, projectiles being hurled at them by the crowd and the parade running way behind schedule.

We get a scene featuring guest Penny Marshall and recurring SNL characters Sherry the stewardess (Laraine Newman) and Rhonda Weiss (Gilda Radner) looking to meet guys.  The guys they meet are members of the Wild Bees Motorcyle Club!

Garret Morris performs a K-Telesque commercial for an album called "Garrett Morris Sings Fats Domino".

Baba Wawa (Radner) interviews Henry Winkler, who was very famous at the time for his role as Fonzie on Happy Days.  In a humorous exchange, Winkler seems confused about where his personality ends and Fonzie's begins.  Winkler served as King of the Bacchus Parade during Mardi Gras '77.

Eric Idle reports on the Mardi Gras festivities being held at a local restaurant.  Unfortunately, the party has ended and emptied out by the time Idle goes on the air!

Awkward (presumed) ad-libbing at its finest

SNL's resident filmmaker Gary Weis gives us two short films that capture the spirit of New Orleans.

The New Leviathan Oriental Foxtrot Orchestra performs a nice, 1920s flavored performance of the song "Rebecca Came Back From Mecca".

Paul Shaffer (then part of SNL's house band) sings "The Antler Dance"...

You've gotta love Paul Shaffer's "groovy" 70s shirt!

...while Michael "Mr. Mike" O'Donoghue does the Antler Dance on a balcony in the French Quarter.  Many in the crowd below O'Donoghue attempt to do the Antler Dance as well.

"Put your hands on your head, like a big ol' moose
Keep your elbows high, and your legs real loose
Groove around the floor, kinda leap and prance
Shake your middle just a little, and you're doing the Antler Dance!
Well, well, well, the Antler Dance!
Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!" 

Emily Litella (Radner) confuses the words "liver" and "river" while interviewing a riverboat captain.

New Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu gives native son Garret Morris the "Combination To The City".  In the background, a random masked man approaches them before he's restrained by security.  Kind of creepy
.

In a bizarre (but funny) sketch, Weekend Update anchor Laraine Newman interviews people who are celebrating "Mouse Sunday".  This involves taping white mice over their eyes!

The high point for us was John Belushi's reenactment of the "Stella!" scene from A Streetcar Named Desire, with unexpected results.  Belushi's Brando impression was great as always, plus Streetcar was set in New Orleans, giving it extra resonance.

"STELLLAAAAA!"

I won't spoil it, but the absolute best joke of the whole special comes from Jane Curtin at the very end.

While they "work", most of the above aren't exactly hilarious.  

What doesn't work?
Just about everything else.  Don't get us wrong, it's interesting to watch a live broadcast struggle to keep from falling apart.  But the rest of the show isn't very funny or entertaining. 

I've always loved Aykroyd's impression of Tom Snyder.  But the sketch where Snyder investigates topless & bottomless strip clubs starts out well, but goes on forever, to no effect.

Tom Snyder (Aykroyd) interview a stripper named Velocity (Cindy Williams).

While I like Randy Newman's music, this show has too much Newman.  Four songs in a 90-minute special is about two too many.  This was done because Newman's theater location was the most stable spot they had to work with and served as "home base" for the chaotic production.

The show's coverage of the Apollo Ball is hampered by bad camera work and sound.  Plus, Cindy Williams was lost in the crowd outside when they first cut to the ball, and poor Penny Marshall seems uncertain of how to cover for Williams' absence.

Belushi's "reenactment" of Mussolini's speech seems pointless, all build-up with little pay-off.  And the drunken crowd chanting "Duce! Duce!" is a bit ... unsettling.

Belushi as Moussolini.

Bill Murray portrays legendary New Orleans pirate Jean Lafitte, in a one-joke sketch.  Lafitte doesn't like to be called a pirate.  He proceeds to shoot everyone who calls him a pirate, it gets old fast.

Don't call Lafitte a pirate.

This isn't a great special, but if you're a fan of Classic SNL, you owe it to yourself to watch it.  This special can be found as a bonus feature of Satuday Night Live:The Complete Second Season (disc 8, to be exact).

The cast and everyone who worked behind the scenes deserves an A for effort, but this special is no lost classic.

J.A. Morris and RigbyMel's rating:

2 and a half King Cakes.

Groundhog Day

Premiered February 12, 1993.

"What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?"
-Phil Connors

Local TV weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) is assigned to travel to Punxutawney, PA to cover the annual Groundhog Day event.  Phil is a generally cynical person who worships at the temple of his own narcissism and treats his co-workers like dirt.

He dreads the trip to Punxutawney, dismissing the townspeople as "hicks".  His new producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) is charmed by the town and the groundhog.

They leave later in the afternoon, but are turned back by a blizzard (that Phil the weatherman, failed to correctly predict).  Phil, Rita and Larry (Chris Elliot), their cameraman, are forced to stay in Punxutawney for another night.  When Phil wakes up the next morning, he realizes it is still Groundhog Day.  So  is the next day, and the day after, and every day for...a very long time.

Phil will be forced to live the same day over and over again until he gets it right.

RigbyMel says:

This movie holds a special place in my heart.   I was still in high school when it came out and I went to see it around my birthday with friends at the movie theater in our local shopping mall. I enjoyed it at the time, and it became a film that seemed to keep cropping up in my regular viewing.

During my grad school years,  my travels brought me to northwestern England and a residential internship program in a small museum located in a tiny, but well-known village. The months of January and February in this small, rural community were devoid of the tourists common in the spring and summer months.   I began to feel a strong sense of empathy with Phil's plight (not the narcissism so much, but the repetition), as at the time, I was seeing the same people in the same places over and over again during the bleakest part of the winter.  (Needless to say, I am glad it wasn't actually the same day repeating, but I was very glad when spring arrived that year!)  I semi-ironically bought a copy of the video while there and wound up bequeathing it to the shared house I'd stayed in as a remembrance of January and February when I moved on.

And here it is over twenty years later and I find myself watching Groundhog Day almost every year and finding new things about it to enjoy.   That's quite an impressive thing and leads me to bandy about words like "modern classic" where this movie is concerned.  (I am not alone in my affection for it, I might add.) This movie remains funny and poignant. Its themes of redemption and making the most out of the time you have are pretty universal and are pulled off without being cloying or feeling dated.  Not many romantic comedies can lay claim to pretty heavy metaphysical and  philosophical underpinnings.  And none of it would work without cracking good performances from Bill Murray and a very talented supporting cast.

On a side note,  Groundhog Day was not actually filmed in Punxsutawney, PA -- the filming took place in Woodstock, IL -- but the Groundhog Festival featuring the real Punxsutawney Phil takes place every year at Gobbler's Knob in PA.  You can read all about Phil the groundhog and his activities here:  www.groundhog.org.

If you have never seen Groundhog Day,  or if it is an old favorite,  it's well worth re-visiting on a cold winter evening  (or anytime, really).

Rigbymel's rating:

4 Groundhogs!

J.A. Morris says:
I share my co-blogger's admiration for this movie.  I saw it in the theater back in '93 and I've been a  big fan ever since.  It's a great tale of redemption and unlike many of those, it doesn't feel contrived at all.  Phil is a loathsome human being who becomes a better person due to his time in purgatory.

It's something I watch every Groundhog Day (hey, there aren't many Groundhog Day specials or movies!) just like I watch various Christmas movies in December.  It still makes me laugh and think more than two decades after its release, and probably always will.

J.A. Morris' rating:

4 Groundhogs!

Scrooged (1988)

Dickensfest 2012 continues with a guest review by Ian Rennie, a long time friend of ours.    RigbyMel first met Ian via a Ben Folds Five message board back in the late 1990s. He has worked as a librarian in both the U.S. and the U.K. We at Holiday Film Reviews have always enjoyed his writing talent and wit -- you can check out some of his flash fiction on 365Tomorrows.com and can follow him on Twitter as @theangelremiel.  Many thanks for being a part of our Dickensfest 2012 project, Ian!

Scrooged (1988)

When RigbyMel and J.A. Morris approached me with the idea of reviewing a Dickensian holiday movie for the blog, I had a hard time saying yes, for two reasons, both of which were kind of stumpers.

1) I don't really like holiday movies.  Without becoming too true to type, I tend to say a mild "bah, humbug" at films that depend on the season for their effectiveness.  I'm not joking at all when I say that my favourite christmas film is Die Hard.  I can see the appeal, but at the same time I know in my heart that they're not for me.

2) This one may get me crucified, but... I don't think Dickens adapts all that well to the screen.  I want to like films of his books, and some of his books I absolutely love.  I love The Mystery of Edwin Drood enough that I once read an Italian novel called "The D Case" which features Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot trying to work out how the novel would have ended.  Unfortunately, and again this is only my opinion, but the Dickensian dialogue that thrives on the page dies in the mouths of actors.

So, I was going to politely decline and wish RigbyMel and J.A. the best, and then my wife reminded me of Scrooged.

Oh yes, I'd forgotten about Scrooged.

Bill Murray in that magical period between the two Ghostbusters movies.  Karen Allen. Bobcat Goldthwait. John Glover.  Robert Mitchum. ROBERT MITCHUM.

A razor sharp self-aware script by Mitch Glazer, who would go on to be one of the writers on the Alfonso Cuaron version of Great Expectations.  A score by Danny Elfman at the height of his powers.  And just to make it perfect, the following words:

"A Richard Donner film"

I've changed my mind.  I love holiday movies.

Scrooged, for those who haven't seen it (and if you haven't you should go get it on Netflix right now.  This review can wait) is, as the title suggests, a rather loose adaptation of A Christmas Carol.  Loose enough that there is a film-within-a-film adaptation of A Christmas Carol inside it.  It might be more true to call it a modernization of A Christmas Carol, or even a "scroogealike".  Nonetheless, even though it is somewhat of a potsmodern look at its subject matter, the atmosphere of the original shines though.

Frank Cross is a TV executive who views Christmas as a commodity.  It's there to be sold for ratings, not enjoyed.  The years as a TV executive have made him cold and hard, to the point where he fires an employee on Christmas Eve merely for expressing an opinion about a trailer for their Christmas programs. 

When Frank is given personal responsibility for the success of the station's live action presentation of A Christmas Carol, his life begins to mirror that of Ebeneezer Scrooge.

Much like Scrooge, he is visited in the night by his former business partner, Lew Hayward, who is a little more zombified than Jacob Marley, and adds an unsettling touch of An American Werewolf In London to the proceedings.  Like Scrooge before him, he is told he will be visited by three spirits.

The first finds him as he leaves his office and hails a cab.  The Ghost Of Christmas Past is a crazy taxi driver played with scenery chewing zeal by David Johansen.  Yes, as in the singer of the New York Dolls. The ghost shows him his past, as a young and idealistic gofer at a TV station, and shows him meeting Claire, the love of his life. 

In this sequence we see the slow jading of a man as he falls out of love with everything but success.  By the end, when he chooses his first onscreen TV job over his three year relationship, the seeds of the man Frank Cross would become are planted.

Christmas Present appears in the form of Carol Kane, and shows Frank the people he has shoved out of his life: his assistant Grace who hardly has time for her mute and possibly autistic son, his brother who still loves him, Claire, the woman he had loved who now runs a homeless shelter.

The next visitor Frank receives is a sharp left turn from the source material, as Frank encounters the disgruntled employee he fired earlier in the day, who has come back to his former workplace with a shotgun.  A near miss leaves frank running into an elevator, only to be faced by a shrouded figure with a TV screen as a face: the ghost of Christmas Future.

The future is just as dystopian as might be expected.  Claire has become as cold and uncaring as Frank ever was.  Grace's son is committed to an institution.  Only Frank's brother cares that he has died.

 From here, proceedings take not so much a sharp left turn as a gentle right.  A Christmas Carol had Scrooge waking up and being a better man, but this being an eighties movie, Frank Cross still has to deal with a man with a shotgun in a TV studio and a live broadcast.

 In a spectacular fireworks show of loose-end tying, we manage to get a happy ending that includes impromptu singing, a soliloquy about the true meaning of christmas, and a mute boy being healed by the power of love.  His first words?  You guessed it: "God bless us, every one".

This could have been a spectacular failure.  Attempts to modernize classic literature are frequently terrible, especially when they play for laughs.  What makes this work is that it feels like everybody involved is willing this into being a good film.  The ensemble cast is astounding, and I know I've missed out half a dozen names from it.  Richard Donner does as good a job on this as he did on Superman.  Danny Elfman is Danny Elfman and thus the music is amazing.  Everythinhg about it has a pace and a joy that it feels more like an hour than 101 minutes.

Plus, in a very important way, it's an eighties comedy.  It's cynical, it's snarky, it's ultimately family friendly.  It goes for the smart joke rather than the dumb one in a way that mainstream comedy movies seem to have forgotten.  It's part of a dark but not mean-spirited action comedy tradition that includes Gremlins, Ghostbusters, Coming To America and Trading Places.

If you want your costume drama to feature shoulderpads instead of silk bonnets, if you feel like Bob Cratchit should have gone postal on Scrooge, if you want your Christmas Carol to feature trumpet from Miles Davis... 

This is the film for you.