Backstage at Saturday Night Live 😁

April 6, 2024

“Any questions?”

David S. Pumpkins, SNL S42E04

Played by Tom Hanks. Aired October 22, 2016

“Any questions?”

David S. Pumpkins, SNL S42E04

Played by Tom Hanks. Aired October 22, 2016

Hey y'all. With the Writer's Guild of America on strike, you might be hearing a lot more about something called "residuals," which are payments that the writers get for the studios continuing to air their work on reruns and such. Already I'm seeing people trying to frame the union trying to bargain for better residuals as greedy and unreasonable, so I just wanted to give you guys a peek into my dad's full, 100% real residual payments for writing some of the most watched episodes of American late night television.

Yeah lol. If u hear anyone trying to frame the conversation around residuals as writers being greedy, please do me a favor and punch them straight in the face ❤️🙃🙃

The last time I saw any real money from film and TV was in 2008, when I got a substantial cheque from the WGA (who administer residuals and such) for my share as cowriter of the Beowulf DVD. And then DVDs were done and became a niche market.

These days residuals are... well, something you can take a friend to dinner with. Not something you could pay a monthly mortgage or the rent with.

(And I'm fine. My TV work over the last 5 years has been subsidised by my book and comics work.)

But I just got one even smaller than the one cent residuals...

Again, this has been happening from the get-go in the music world… here’s an example of some of the royalties I get with music streaming (I made almost a whole $0.50 in April! Woo!):

We need to fix this broken system. At least writes get paid to write the script, but as pretty much the first step to getting the show made, they deserve to be compensated for its success too.

Meanwhile, most composers and musicians don't get paid to create an album. They only get paid royalties from its sales or streams. And as you can see, if you're not extremely famous enough to be paid upfront by the label, you aren't doing this for the money, you simply can't.

This whole system needs to change. The people who create the things we love deserve to be compensated for that.

this is the funniest thing i’ve seen on snl in a while

It’s time to start singing Christmas songs!

television history

i’ve been trying to explain this sketch to people for years

there is literally no way to explain this sketch it’s just a thing you have to see and even then I’m not sure why it’s so funny

It’s a parody of the series finale(?) of this really popular teen/young adult soap opera called The OC that aired in the mid 2000s (I think it started in 2005? I can’t remember). There was this really drawn out scene where two characters (A and B) are fighting, then a third © sees B about to kill A so C shots B that song (Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap) was played over it when C pulled the trigger. Then B dies really dramatically, holding his chest, looking at his bloody hands, etc. Like longest most dramatic death on white TV (I’m sure the telanovelas and Korean dramas can do better lol, not to mention Bollywood). Just watch it here. Yes this is the original aired scene no that song wasn’t added after this is real folks. Then this happened (I want to say it was from the mind of Andy Samburg/the Lonely Island, which tbh explains a lot). But regardless of the why, it’s the most beautiful skit SNL has ever made

Saturday Night Live 47x09 Paul Rudd

“Any questions?”

David S. Pumpkins, SNL S42E04

Played by Tom Hanks. Aired October 22, 2016

I’ve never seen this before and I love it

“Any questions?”

David S. Pumpkins, SNL S42E04

Played by Tom Hanks. Aired October 22, 2016

Bill Hader Breaking Meme: Stefon on Autumn [20/?]

— Paul Rudd, as quoted in the book Live from New York by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales

When Paul Rudd hosted SNL with One Direction

Watch the sketch here: https://vimeo.com/226472610

SNL Episode aired 7 December 2013