December Liner Notes

ver
the years, there’ve been a whole rash of films adapted from sketches on Saturday Night Live. Some, like Wayne’s World, have done incredibly
well; others, like MacGruber, have
achieved a cult following after initial box-office disappointment; many,
though, have been forgettable at best. Even movies centered around characters
that work really well in five minute sketches sometimes, when stretched to
feature length, cannot always connect. It is for this same reason that many
eyebrows were raised at the announcement that SNL alum Jimmy Fallon,
host of The Tonight Show, will soon
have a recurring segment from his show produced as a television series.

Fans
of Fallon’s show will remember the lip sync battles. He brings on a celebrity
like Paul Rudd or Emma Stone and each take turns
pretending to belt out ballads or quickly maneuver through raps. These segments
are immensely entertaining and, of course, immensely popular. They get posted
on YouTube and passed around Facebook and Twitter quickly, sometimes only hours
after the episode airs.

Now,
with the help of John Krasinski (The Office) and Stephen Merchant (The
other Office), Fallon will bring the
sketch to Spike TV and expand it into a 30 minute format. Krasinski and
Merchant battled Fallon on his old gig, Late
Night.

No
host has been announced yet, nor has the structure of the show been made clear.
On The Tonight Show, Fallon himself
battles the guest. While it’s possible that he would make an appearance on the
Spike TV show, he is not expected to take an on-screen role. The pilot will be
filmed early next year in front of live crowds in New York City.

I’m
not sure that this premise has the legs to be a 30 minute show with multiple
seasons. As was the problem with the SNL
film adaptations, there are some things that work for five minutes that just
don’t work when you stretch them out. However, if Fallon’s show has shown anything
with his Lip Sync Battles and several other gameshow-esque segments, it’s that
America loves watching celebrities having fun and being competitive.

On
November 23, the Philadelphia Academy of Music hosted BOB DYLAN for a one-of-a-kind concert. Fredrik Wikingsson, a Swedish TV personality in his early forties, sat
in the second row. The rest of the seats, however, were empty. The whole thing
was cooked up by Anders Helgeson,
director of a film project called Experiment
Alone, in which people attend functions or perform tasks alone that they
would normally experience communally.

Dylan
played a full set with his usual band, playing several covers and old blues
standards. The theater dimmed its lights as if the concert were being performed
in front of a sold out crowd. Wikingsson, who claims to have been a “superfan”
for decades, likened the experience to taking ecstasy. 

In
a survey reported by the Telegraph
with respondents from over 30,000 funerals in the UK in recent years, a trend
became clear: The most popular song to play was Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” The song,
from the 1979 film Life of Brian, surpassed
traditional hymns, pop ballads and 60s crooners.

Many
have attributed its current supremacy to the age of those dying, who would’ve
grown up right at the height of the film’s (and, of course, the comedy
troupe’s) popularity. The lyric “life’s a piece of shit when you look at it,”
too, for the younger deceased, who graduated or were trying to enter the work
force during the recent financial crisis. 
It does set a precedent for using comedy songs at funerals, though.  Who will be the first to use FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS’ “Business
Time” ?