fred armisen
Obama Vs. Boy George: A Study In Fred Armisen-Impression Contrasts
8:18AM Seth | This weekend’s John Malkovich-hosted SNL featured a great many virable moments, if you’ll indulge us the coinage of an incredibly annoying e-jective (make that two incredibly annoying coinages), but we’ll set aside the toe-tapping pleasures of interslack ejaculation for a moment to focus instead on the work of Fred Armisen. Always a strong SNL soldier, Armisen’s star has dimmed of late for what has been deemed a substandard Obama impression—indeed, by Obama himself. More »
To Barack Obama, Fred Armisen Is No Tina Fey
6:31AM Kyle Buchanan | This could make that planned Nov. 1 appearance on SNL a little awkward: during an interview with a D.C. news station, Barack Obama was prompted by some “gotcha journalism” to dis his Saturday Night Live portrayer, Fred Armisen. “Are you disappointed at all that the person who parodies you on Saturday Night Live just isn’t very funny?” said the interviewer, asking the late-night comedy version of “So when did you stop beating your wife?” A trapped Obama then conceded that Armisen’s interpretation was definitely a run or two below its high Tina Fey watermark. Clearly, Obama is in the tank for 30 Rock. [WUSA9.com] More »
Here’s What Happens When ‘SNL’ Does a Debate Sketch Without Tina Fey
2:15AM Kyle Buchanan | After weeks of massive ratings and huge buzz derived from its Tina Fey-as-Sarah Palin guest appearances, Saturday Night Live extended its political satire into special Thursday episodes beginning last night. So how did the Not Ready for Primetime Players weather the transition to the only NBC timeslot not currently bought up by Barack Obama?
Obama Loves Fey and Armisen on ‘SNL,’ Biden Totally Jealous
9:00AM Kyle Buchanan | Have you heard? Comedienne Tina Fey has played lady candidate Sarah Palin on the tee-vee! Twice! So completely has Fey-as-Palin penetrated the pop culture landscape that Barack Obama found himself on Entertainment Tonight, grilled by Mary Hart not on the economic collapse but on the one issue most important to voters: what does he think of Fey’s Palin impression? Obama notes the resemblance is “remarkable” and even heaps praise on Saturday Night Live player Fred Armisen’s Obama performance — at which point vice presidential candidate Joe Biden pipes up to remind America that he, too, was impersonated on SNL once! More »
Sudden Ratings Magnet ‘SNL’ Hoping Election Season Never Ends
4:25AM Defamer Hollywood | When Rome burned people enjoyed watching the fiddler, and now that this country is more effed than ever before, we enjoy watching SNL. According to a new report in Variety, “SNL has experienced a hefty bump in the Nielsen polls this election season, boasting a 50% gain over last season’s first two episodes.” The political climate has to be the reason, because it certainly wasn’t Michael Phelps’s mush-mouthed delivery or the searing star power of James Franco that got people to tune in. No, it’s because the cast of characters who parade across CNN on a daily basis are so ripe for parody. There’s McCain, Palin, Hillary, and Obama, and all of them are just begging to be made fun of. More » Advertisement
New P.T. Anderson Play Shatters Snoopy-Humping Taboo
The Paul Thomas Anderson Stage Revue we’d mentioned a while back was finally unveiled last night at Largo, where Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph reportedly performed a succession of new sketches with Jon Brion’s musical accompaniment. And according to one eyewitness who espied Jack Black and Paul Dano among his fellow attendees, the show was a little less There Will Be Blood than Punch-Drunk Love, with liberal, Altmanesque doses of I Really Don’t Feel Like Writing Another Feature-Length Screenplay Right Now tossed in for good measure:
