Jodi Foster on SNL

When talking about entertainment acting as time machines, I haven't really spent a lot of time talking about Saturday Night Live. Probably one of the most effective time machines in our tool box.

Matt Rusnak was the one that introduced me to Saturday Night Live in the 1980's. Of course. You may remember Matt from former blogs such as this. Matt was largely responsible for pulling my teenage head out of my ass and showing me that the world is bigger than a stack of comic books. At some point, I'll tell you about the horror movie nights in Clifton.

Saturday Night Live has several different elements that make it an effective time machine. First, it started in 1975 and has aired every year since then. That gives us thirty-eight seasons of the show. Second, many of the players on SNL have gone on to be stars in their own right, which makes SNL a microscope through which to examine what made these people special in the first place. Third, the show is a cultural touchstone. The fact that it's filmed live and not six months in advance gives it an edge to staying extremely culturally in-the-now. The fourth element that makes it an effective time machine is the Weekend Update section of the show. The fake newsroom format reports actual news with a humorous spin and has been the most popular part of the show since SNL began.



All the seasons are currently available on Netflix. I've been slowly working my way through from the beginning. I'm only in the second season, but I love the thing so much. Lorie won't watch it with me, though. So progress is slow.

Last Saturday afternoon I finished the broadcast from November 27th, 1976. The special guest was Jodi Foster. That alone was the most interesting thing about the show. She was fourteen years old.



Foster was already a very experienced actress and obviously popular, but to see her here at what felt like before the bulk of her career was interesting. There's a scene where she plays a smitten school girl with Dan Ackroyd as her uncomfortable teacher. But it doesn't work completely because there's a part of my brain saying "THAT'S JODI FREAKING FOSTER!" She's no smitten school girl.



It was pleasant, seeing her before the eighties and everything that she would go through in her adult years.

And then there was the musical guest. In dark, terrifying contrast with the fresh-faced beginnings of Jodi Foster was Brian Wilson, former front man and creative force behind the 1960's Beach Boys.



I had recently been studying the history of the Beach Boys in my desperate search to find a band even half as interesting as the Beatles. The Beach Boys discography spirals into descent after Brian Wilson left in 1967. His last hit before that drama was Good Vibrations. And he sang that here on SNL in 1976. As the last segment of the show. Alone on stage sitting at the piano.

It was painful, terrible, a horrible performance of a song that all of us know so well. And the fact that it was being performed by the main originator of the song made the experience just so embarrassing. Lorie actually called out from the kitchen demanding to know what the "crap I was watching" was. It was Wilson's third performance of the show, and it felt like last second filler material that the show is famous for in it's final half hour.

Some other elements of the show that get me are the original 'Not Ready for Prime Time' players. Bill Murray still hasn't been added to the cast and Chevy Chase has just left in order to move to Hollywood and try to capitalize on his stardom. I find Gilda Radner magnetic. She keeps popping up through this particular episode with the ongoing joke that she doesn't have much of a role in this show. From my perspective, the roles that she usually filled were young naive silly girls. And with Jodi Foster there, well... not much for Gilda. She still worked herself in at several opportunities. And you can see why she was a star. And then you remember she died twenty-four years ago and you ache right down to your toes.



Garret Morris is fun to watch. Matt and I used to always marvel at him because we knew him the least of all the original cast. "What ever happened to that guy?" Matt would ask rhetorically. Currently, he's a welcome addition to a sitcom Lorie and I watch called Two Broke Girls. But he's old. In this episode of SNL he's given a song to sing towards the end. It's a funeral dirge for King Kong. The song is played for laughs, but Garret Morris performs it expertly. Belting out strong chords as if he was born to be broadway singer, not stage comedian.



1976. Jodi Foster young and bouncy and engaging and fun and fresh and full of future. Brian Wilson, old and drug addled and torn down and burnt out and full of a bright past. The Saturday Night Live time machine.

Thanks,
DCD