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roger1 (4046)
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Saturday Night Live 50: Celebrity Healing?
NOT OT: TONIGHT, February 16, 2025 -- The 50th Anniversary Special of Saturday Night Live
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They sure showed him a lot(sitting next to Cher yet, a former musical guest.)
Cher performed her "Turn Back Time' mid-'80s hit *in costume* at Peacock's SNL-Homecoming concert:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTz4w0VYh0o
Amazing - utterly amazing. Costner is shown agog a few times in that clip too.
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Fun clip. I'll be watching that concert show on Peacock.
Given her physical energy and lung power I guess we can add the 78-year old Cher to my list of 70, 80 and 90 year old MALE stars, on the FEMALE side. We can only hope to have that energy at those ages. (Shirley MacLaine, trained as a dancer, held that energy too, and is still with us at age 90.)
The downside to trying to live as long as them: movie stars and music stars are rich, have great health care, exercise, sometimes do the RIGHT drugs and are often possessing of a sort of superstrength that the rest of us don't have.
But we can keep up at our own pace. To the gym and the walking track!
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Costner does look pretty amazed in that clip and perhaps finagled his way into a seat on the reunion show next to Cher.
Costner's going through a funny time. He was one of the biggest stars of the 90s(complete with Best Picture/Best Actor win for Dances With Wolves), then crashed and burned, then worked in smaller movies for a coupla decades, then bounched back with Yellowstone, then left Yellowstone for his failed(maybe) passion project "Horizons," caught a fairly embarrassing divorce(his wife pretty much left him for a non-movie star and married the guy, stat) and yet...
....at age 70, he's a real good looking guy and he's one of those guys that "aged more handsome" (more handsome than the callow skinny fellow with the surfer dude voice in Silverado and The Untouchables) and even though I think he's kind of nuts...I kind of like him.
His masculine somewhat macho presence in the SNL 50 audience was reassuring in a weird way.
Who knows why stars are stars?
One of the reasons "Tom Hanks makes you cry(or DID) is because he did have a gift for accessing his own deep emotion. I think BOTH times he won the Oscar, Hanks cried on stage. He's a pretty soft guy beneath it all and I guess that shone through in his movies.
So that's why Hanks was so big and why he gets honored today , in the later downside years of his career:
Comedy unto drama.
A comeback in the early nineties
Two Best Actor Oscars back to back.
And most importantly at the box office: Tom Hanks Makes You Cry!
And then, history -- just like , hey -- SPENCER TRACY -- Tom Hanks won the Best Actor Oscar back to back, two years running, first for a "switch to drama" -- and playing gay -- and dying -- in Philadelphia; and then playing an iconic role in a super blockbuster, Forrest Gump. THAT did it. Hanks was launched for the rest of the 90s and an almost unbroken string of 100 milliion grossing(in the US) hits -- back when that was a big number:
Forrest Gump(well, 300 milliion actually)
Apollo 13
Toy Story(voice only)
Saving Private Ryan
You've Got Mail
The Green Mile
and in 2000: Cast Away
..things finally started to slow down in the 00s for Hanks as a superstar but he remained viable.
Now, the REAL Key to most of the hits of Tom Hanks, simplified down to one sentence:
"Tom Hanks makes you cry."
Oh yes he does. Or DID. A movie director named William Friedkin(The French Connection, The Exorcist) said "people go to the movies for one of three reasons: to laugh, to scream, or to cry." At least that's why they go to hits. Tom Hanks made us laugh a few times, but by the end of his movies, he made us cry. Look(SPOILERS FOR ALL)
Big (the man becomes a boy again, helped by sad music, we cry.)
Turner and Hooch (the dog dies saving Hanks life, Hanks cries.)
A League of Their Own(Hanks is dead of natural causes by the end.)
Philadelphia(Hanks dies of AIDs.)
Forrest Gump(everybody ELSE dies and Forrest meets his little son.)
Saving Private Ryan(Hanks dies and then we hit an even bigger tearjerking ending with modern-day Ryan for the end.)
You've Got Mail(the romance finally connects with a kiss-- all the way after Sleepless in Seattle -- and everybody cries.)
Cast Away(Hanks survives the island and is rescued but comes back to find his woman married to another man , and with a baby.)
I saw a sneak preview rough cut of Cast Away where folks didn't cry at the end. Hanks(I guess) had it re-shot and it became a big boo-hoo with the new scenes.)
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People liked to compare him to Spencer Tracy.
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And to James Stewart -- one supposes in his "It's A Wonderful Life" mode because Hanks didn't have Stewart's late career capacity to play tough and hit massive deposits of rage -- in his Westerns of the 50s -- and his deep emotional weirdness for Hitchcock -- capped in Vertigo.
Hanks hasn't really panned out as a modern-day Tracy(Gene Hackman and George C. Scott were closer to that) or Stewart, but he did what was necessary to become a big star:
In the 80s -- when he was actually pretty handsome in a goofy guy way, he was sort of a light comedy guy-- considred pretty much "the other Steve Guttenberg" (remember him?) until he got the role as a "boy as a man" in Big and an Oscar nomination and was considered "possibly important."
Then came a slump -- The Burbs, Joe Vs. The Volcano, the ultra-bomb Bonfire of the Vanities.
He had a sleeper hit with a KEY Hanks element to it(which I will discuss below)in Turner and Hooch ("A cop and his dog.")
And then the REAL turnaround began in the 90s:
A League of Their Own (like with Jack Nicholson in Terms of Endearment, he was the island of a male star surrounded by women in a chick flick, and his drunk baseball manager was the kind of role that Bill Murray could have played at the time, or Walter Matthau 20 years previous(think Bad News Bears.)
Next came Sleepless in Seattle. Another hit, a romance where the couple didn't meet til the very end (and didn't kiss until 5 years later when Hanks and Meg Ryan teamed again in You've Got Mail.
CONT
Quite the party to see, and even more so to participate in I'm sure.
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Yes, for once I felt like a PART of that crowd. Grew up with most of them -- though not the new young ones on the current season.
They were TV stars AND movie stars and somewhere in between.
And take note: 10 years ago , Jack Nicholson introduced political clips -- mainly about lots and lots of Presidents. We were spared that this time.
Instead Nicholson introduced his "old pal and fellow superstar" Adam Sandler. They made a terrible movie together called Anger Management and Jack looked like he was wearing the beret and goatee he wore in that movie.
Last night was a great sequel to a bad movie.
Revelations: didn't know that Wiig had a Broadway-quality voice.
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There you go -- indeed SNL has always had some of its "comic actresses" do singing acts -- usually in "girl groups."
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loved all the clip bits about Physical Comedy and Commercail Parodies etc..
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I texted some friends during this and word came back that they thought the show was woefully short on clips. but those two packages were funny enough and the physical comedy did what physical comedy does -- makes you laugh hard - Molly Shannon put her ALL into her reversed pratfalls.
I think I read somewhere that Michaels didn't want clips, he wanted live sketches -- mostly re-dos of "the best ones."
Anyway, the clips are on a four-part documentary special I haven't gotten around to yet, on Peacock. Peacock also has the big "SNL musical act concert" from the night before. I'll be watching it all. Epic events -- and even that little movie from back in October as part of the package, IMHO.
Speaking of musical acts -- Keith Richards was there. Talk about a guy who lived long past his supposed shelf life!
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Paul Simon and Paul McCartney's voices both seemed shot (whereas they've been ptretty good until fairly recenty).
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I didn't know that last part. Simon paired with the younger stronger-voiced Sabrina Carpenter was a little painful a mix - but no way Lorne Michaels wasn't going to let his Best Bud(and early SNL host) NOT get that moment in the sun again. The song was relevant too ("Homeward Bound") as was McCartney taking the Abbey Road section to "and in the End..." Moving.
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Those guys may have to hang it up or maybe a week's partying in NYC killed them?
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Ha. You aren't supposed to stay up that late at that age! I continue to "eat up with a spoon" all these 80 and 90 year old celebs(and 100 year Eva Marie Saint.) And sexiest 70-year old man alive Kevin Costner. Role models, I tell ya!
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CONT
...and that brings me to what I took awhile to notice, but collectively it became really apparant , maybe in retrospect:
Some very big names who have recently been embroiled in tragedies or controversies seemed to decide to use the SNL 50th(a bigger pulpit than the Oscars OR the Globes OR the Emmies if only for its historic value) to "come back out into the public eye":
Consider;
Aubrey Plaza: Having cancelled the Golden Globes as a presenter, came out more quietly here.
Ryan Reynolds(really big star) and Blake Lively(pretty big star) having cancelled at the Golden Globes as presenters, came out here to kinda/sorta say they're OK in the middle of their big lawsuit(such a Hollywood-silly crisis in a time with a lot more serious things going on.) Note that Ryan handled the comedy and Blake said nothing.
Alec Baldwin: He's hosted the show like 17 times and Lorne Michaels was never going to throw him overboard, Baldwin still has his problems but SNL seems determined to give him some work and keep him in the spotlight. (Baldwin was ALWAYS a funny guy with his whispery voice and arrogant line delivery.)
Kevin Costner: I looked it up: Costner never hosted SNL. So why was HE there? They sure showed him a lot(sitting next to Cher yet, a former musical guest.) My guess: Costner still needs some "career rehab" after quitting Yellowstone and watching his vanity project "Horizons" crumble. (And there was that divorce last year to release him out there as a 70-year old sexiest man alive.) So this SNL appearance was probably deemed in his interest.
Jack Nicholson: Rumors of his cognitive and physical decline proved premature and just hearing that voice was a nostalgia high.
CONT
Aubrey Plaza (in passing and looking understandably a bit sad)
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That was a brief and very moving moment. I've watched the clip several times.
She wasn't wearing much in the way of make-up - particularly around her famous eyes -- and in the second it took to realize who she was, her one-sentence moment was pretty much over: "Ladies and Gentlemen: Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard."
She was subdued, and her voice wobbled a bit, a bit frightened. You could do some quick thinking: Michaels and the producers gave her the least obtrusive, most serious thing to say on that show -- it is rarely said for laughs --and the shortest. But to me you could still tell that she understood the gravity of the moment, and it "got to her" a little. Also, I've read that she was wearing a tie-dye shirt to honor her late husband, who made it.
Beyond a personal tragedy of which we know nothing other than the pain, there is the "career" aspect. Aubrey Plaza had a hip, cool, deadpan, sometimes macabre comic persona going and now she has to pause it for awhile.
The most cogent comment I read on that was "Joan Rivers eventually started telling jokes again" after her husband took his life. I'm sure things will work out. Still a powerful little moment.
CONT
Enjoyed seeing Nicholson, De Niro, Streep, Stone, Drew Barrymore, Miles Treller, Aubrey Plaza (in passing and looking understandably a bit sad) and in Audience Q&A segment Hamm, Cher, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and many more who didn't speak up like Seinfeld.
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Interesting about Seinfeld. "Up-thread," I repeated the routine that Seinfeld and Larry David did 10 years ago on the 40th about how Larry David got fired from SNL in one year and he and Seinfeld instead became multi-millionaires off Seinfeld. I expect most of us remember that bit(10 years isn't that long), so they just seated the two near each other and -- probably knew we would REMEMBER the bit from 10 years ago.
Also 10 years ago, Eddie Murphy finally showed up to the 40th after passing on 10, 20, and 30. He'd been enraged by a joke David Spade told on air(after Murphy left the show) about being a "falling star' at box office. What enraged Murphy is that he felt he single-handedly saved SNL from cancellation and gave the show a genuine new movie star.
Well, 10 years ago, Murphy finally showed up to make a brief, nice speech from the stage --- and was cut off, pretty much.
THIS year, Murphy threw himself into two sketches and it felt like all was forgiven -- even David Spade was there at the show(probably hiding from Eddie a lot.)
In the Black Jeopardy sketch, Murphy did a spot on Tracy Morgan impression with Morgan standing right next to him and then Tom Hanks came on to stand near Murphy and I thought: "There they are, arguably the biggest star of the 80s next to the biggest star of the 90s -- that's pretty historic." (Yeah, Tom Cruise is in the mix but he hasn't won Oscars yet.)
CONT
but otherwise the huge number of participants was a flat-out winner.
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Flat out winner is right. I believe the Oscars are coming soon, and that show will be hard pressed to match the stars shown last night. Of course...50 years is a big deal.
In fact, here's a sad but true thought: the Grand Maestro, Lorne Michaels, is 80, so when the 60th Anniversary comes, if he is still around, he will be one of those admirably cogent 90 year olds -- but it won't be the same. And he may retire soon. And some of those original Not Ready For Prime Time players are looking at the same age numbers.
Which makes this 50th Anniversary sort of "the end of an era." Except they have so many decades of still-pretty-young stars to keep these reunions going...forever?
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