Steve Martin Starred In Andy Samberg And Jorma Taccone's Worst Saturday Night Live 'Failure'
Pulling together an episode of "Saturday Night Live" is a rigorous, high-pressure exercise. Though creator-producer Lorne Michaels has the process down to a science of sorts after supervising the series for most of its 48 years on the air, the tight Monday-to-Saturday window leaves little room for refinement. Watch the fascinating 2010 documentary "Saturday Night," which examines a week in the life of the show (hosted, in this case, by John Malkovich), and you'll see some of the funniest people on the planet bomb repeatedly as they scramble to fill 67 minutes of airtime with reasonably funny material.
"SNL" has had its ups and downs over its remarkably long run, but if you ask long-time fans to name some of the series' most consistently funny performers, their list must include the Lonely Island trio of Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer. Their "Digital Shorts" were the most anticipated segments of the show, and they almost always delivered. Almost. No one has ever pitched a perfect game in comedy, and the boys certainly wrote their share of duds for "SNL." For example, you probably don't recall a sketch called "Surf Meeting," but Taccone sure does.
A botched meeting of great comedic minds
During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Taccone revealed that the skit featuring Steve Martin was possibly the "worst failure that we've ever had on 'SNL.'" As the "MacGruber" auteur related to Fallon:
"[T]here was a thing that would happen, like, when we were at 'SNL,' where if it would get to a certain point at night and I 'd be laughing a certain way, Andy would always be like, 'It's not gonna work. Jorm's laughing in that Jorm way. It's not gonna work.' But we wrote this sketch called 'Surf Meeting' [...] and it's a group of surfers. Andy's running the surf meeting, and he's like, 'There's somebody in our crew that just doesn't fit in, you guys. Like, we don't like him.' And then it just cuts to Steve [Martin]. And he's like, 'Who is this un-gnarly dude?'"
It's a wafer-thin premise, but Martin can sell a bit like none other. He tried his damnedest, but, alas, it wasn't happening. As 11:30 p.m. approached on the East Coast, Taccome realized the sketch was going to air, and it was going to bomb. Taccome vividly remembers Martin arriving at the same conclusion. "[B]etween dress [rehearsal] and air, I went in to give [Martin] last-minute notes, and he was like, 'It doesn't work, does it?' And I was like, 'No, it doesn't.' I was like, 'Good luck, man.' And he was like, 'Yeah, sorry.'"
Steve Martin might be a certified comedic genius, but he's also survived "Mixed Nuts," "Bringing Down the House," and two dire "The Pink Panther" remakes. He can take it.