Saturday Night Live generates a lot more headlines for its topical political coverage and impressions of pop culture figures, but the lifeblood of the show has always been evergreen weirdness. Many of the best sketches of all-time involve original characters just living their lives or parodies of movies and TV shows that have been off the air for decades. The recent Christmas episode was a good reminder of that, as arguably the most viral sketch of the entire night was a parody of 1990’s Home Alone.
Given the popularity of the spoof, SNL dropped a behind the scenes video of the breakout sketch this week, and it’s a fascinating look into what it takes for the show to produce such a sophisticated pretape. Extensive work is needed from the production design team, the costume team, the effects team and, of course, full buy-in from the host.
The host part might sound like the easiest, but fifty years of SNL lore have told us that’s not the case. What gets on the air tends to be the material the host responds to and wants to be involved with. That’s why they used words like “luckily” behind the scenes when describing her reaction to the sketch. Not only was she into it, she wanted to take it even further.
Ariana was like ‘I want as much blood as possible. I want to look like Carrie by the end of this thing.
The entire behind the scenes video, which runs a speedy three minutes, is a great overview of all the effort that went into the sketch. They talk about having to make their own green bathrobe because no one sells green bathrobes anymore. They talk about trying to mirror the set and camera shots of the house from the original movie as much as possible, and they talk about Colin Jost realizing how much he looks like Buzz and that he needs to be the one to play him.
You can watch the video in all its glory below…
The Home Alone sketch is, of course, the latest in a series written by Mikey Day and Colin Jost that have made classic movies more violent. The most famous of the first four is definitely Dead Poets Society, which is an absolute gem, but this Home Alone one already has three million views in just a few weeks and is climbing. I suspect it’ll carve out its own long-term reputation, as fans really enjoyed how it was put together and the performances from the various cast members.
SNL is currently off for the holiday break, but it’ll return next week with Finn Wolfhard from the recently concluded Stranger Things, followed by subsequent episodes featuring One Battle After Another’s Teyana Taylor and Alexander Skarsgard for the last week of the month. I can’t wait.
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