deadline.com/2023/05/snl-officially-goes-dark-following-writers-strike-1235354127/
‘Saturday Night Live’ Officially Shuts Down Following Writers Strike
"At the time Louis CK was a very well respected comedian. At the time."
Louis CK’s newest, at the Dolby, is as good as anything I’ve seen in the last few years… and I was in Baltimore to see Rock.
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1.1y
bruh this comment is unnecessarily long
I was 60% sure this was going to end with the undertaker throwing mankind off hеll in a cell
It's Louis on his burner
Yeah this comment somehow doesn’t feel like it’s about Louis CK
But I'm sorry, at some point can we just fucking allow people to learn and grow? Especially if they haven't crossed some permanent unforgivable lines? I don't want to minimize what those women went through, I'm sure it was terrifying. But at some point we do have to allow folks to learn and grow.
Who's not allowing him to learn and grow? He's selling out shows across the country. Earlier in your comment you say that it's up to the individual if they want to support him or not and then later you make a comment like this implying people should just get over it.
I don't care if people watch his stuff but personally, it makes me uncomfortable because of what he's done. I don't really give a shit if he's learned and grown because his absolution isn't my responsibility. I'm just gonna continue not watching his stuff.
Ok while I really don’t feel like getting into some huge debate about the morality of this whole situation and I don’t at all think he should be canceled or that he shouldn’t be getting work but a lot of what you said is very wrong. He absolutely has minimized the situation, bitched and defend his actions, when he came back he pushed back hard at the backlash and his “cancellation” which it’s fine it’s his life but let’s not act like he’s this super remorseful understanding dude. He’s not. There’s a decently long list of comments, responses and jokes after the fact that imo is the reason he hasn’t really been accepted back into the mainstream public.
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1.1y
He really ruined the Christmas special of Murderville. I was excited he was on it and ready for it to be hilarious then I realized finally why you're never supposed to say no in improv.
I kinda get the joke of someone coming out at the very last second who has no knowledge of the case but he was the worst person. Completely killed the momentum and turned the energy into "ah fuck it who cares, let's just end it"
EXACTLY. The worst part was the apparent frustration and disappointment of Will Arnett. All the other guests tried to play along and flex their improv comedy skills but Pete's goal seemed to be "I'm going to do everything to derail this."
Didn’t he leave in 2022?
he was set to host the next episode
That’s hilarious.
that /s is holding you back my dude. If you’re going to make the joke then you gotta own that shit.
The problem is, like Pete Davidson, I'm afraid of what Reddit thinks of me
So that explains why he was booked as the host… so they wouldn’t have to cancel on a big-name star.
Poor guy will have to go back to making TV/movies and sleeping with women like Kate Beckinsale and Emily Ratajkowski. Must be terrible.
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1.1y
As a weird looking guy, sadly I cannot confirm
Just another day in the life of Weird Al Yankadic
Defoe’s dick is not huge.
It is confusingly large.
Like half his face?
Steve Buscemi is definitely packing an absolute python.
Can confirm
What if you're a normal-looking guy with a weird-looking dick? Do ladies go for that? 🎷
Weird Al has a fat hog.
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1.1y
Big lips and bulging eyes.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you, but as dudes we need to call good looking dudes weird looking to boost our self esteem.
Ultimately, he is a bit weird looking, but weird doesn't mean ugly.
It's a matter of opinion, and mine is that Pete Davidson looks like he smells bad.
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1.1y
I semi regularly think about how much Pete boosted his popularity by chain dating some of the best looking woman of our time.
You say that like we could all do it if we thought of it first lmao
Do I lol? It’s more just an observation that he gained popularity due to his ability to punch up so consistently. He’s definitely got some magic going on. People took notice because it’s something most people couldn’t do lol.
He’s like Roger Rabbit. He makes them laugh.
Oh yeah no doubt man has jokes and that’s a huuuge factor
I'm a lesbian and don't really get the pete davidson thing, naturally. Most of my friends don't like men either. I was always curious what the fuss was about with him but i never really had anyone to ask. Cut to last year I was drunk at a pizza place outside MSG in NYC after a concert, alone waiting for my train. Some girls who were also at the concert asked if they could join me since i was alone and i said yes. Some drunken rambling later after i figure out that one of them is straight, i ask her what she thinks of pete davidson. She tells me "i dont know, yea he looks like he's kind of about to die but i wanna fuck him anyway."
I’ve heard him described as “line cook sexy”
People used to shit on Fred Durst's appearance all the time, but the guy did pretty well for himself in the 2000s.
Two of my biggest crushes have dated Pete. Idk if I have bad taste in women or Pete has great taste in women.
Question: have you ever met these crushes ?
Many times. When I drift away to sleep at night. Actually have met Kate by a Roscoe’s in Hollywood, but was more of an awkward “hey”. It was really all I needed to know tho.
This comes across as more of a “haha, Davidson isn’t a big name” insult joke, but it’s also probably pretty accurate. Someone they knew wouldn’t mind if they pulled the plug mid-week
"Sources say that after Davidson was informed of the cancellation he replied 'OK'."
"Sources close to Davidson reported that he took a hit from his bong before going to bang his newest hot girlfriend"
Loss of programming is probably the biggest pressure point guilds can press.
Pay the fucking writers!
Are you even giving any thoughts to the executives who won't be able to buy a new yacht this year?! What are they supposed to continue sailing their 2022 models like some sort of degenerate??
This is a bit of a tangent but on the Fly on the Wall podcast Ellen Cleghorne said that during her first year as a SNL cast member she was paid a ridiculously low amount. I don’t remember the exact amount but it was somewhere between $250-$450 per episode. The executives maintained that she was only getting paid for her stage time on Saturday night, but she was still expected to be at the office for the entirety of the week leading up to the performance.
That’s some world class cheapskating on behalf of NBC.
I've read that cast pay for SNL is low across the board. Given the production team strike earlier this year, SNL seems like it is cheapskating across all departments.
I think it’s one of those things where it’s so prestigious people want to do it no matter the pay, and then it leads to a lot of opportunities down the road, or if you blow up then you can negotiate better pay next season. But everyone should be getting paid fairly from the get go
Exactly, the base pay should be a living wage.
A living wage in NYC
There's a reason Andy Kaufman also moonlighted as a restaurant bus boy during his time at SNL.
This is literally the mentality they try to push for everything. There will be someone who wants to do it no matter what.
Don’t accept garbage from anybody.
I think Dana Carvey and David Spade said they were getting about $4,000 an episode when they were cast members. In contrast, for the final season of Cheers Ted Danson reportedly made $450,000 per episode, (and at the time was the highest paid actor in sitcom history). Same company. Same basic timeline.
Ed O'Neill was making $2k per ep when Married With Children started at Fox's infancy, I think they ended up cancelling it in '97 because everyone was getting $100k per, it was the longest running thing on there at the time and Seinfeld cast getting $1 million and ep to come back each of the last two years probably indirectly blew up salaries across the board. I think Helen Hunt ended up getting $1 million per for Mad About You as her film career had just exploded midway through
I am not a huge fan of "Friends" but the actors/agents collectively bargaining for each performer to be paid same amount per episode was great. There was no writing off of over character to introduce a sexy younger badboy into the dynamic. It was an ensemble cast that each actor played of the other actor. And they collectively agreed at some point we're all getting paid the same right fair negotiating tactic?
Look into Thirty-something, where after the fourth season, the cast agreed to collective bargaining. And the network decided to just end the show, instead.
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1.1y
Norm was making $200k per episode. i don't have a dog in this fight, but once you asked i was curious. fuckin loved Norm.
I watched some interior design video and was surprised to see that Cecily Strong still lived in a studio, well into her snl run.
From her book, it sounds like she lived in that same appartment for 9 years (until 2021). She felt like she could afford a small house in LA when she got a Triscuit commercial and from her latest interview on Fallon she bought one in Hudson Valley that must have been Verizon-funded (this one looks nice and spatious).
So they rely very heavily on side-gigs for financial security. It’s a bit of a shame given that it’s probably one of the most grueling jobs in the industry.
Colin Jost mentions in his book that he lived with roomates for the first few years of being a writer and tried to save as much as possible in case he got fired.
New cast member get $5k per episode and graduate to higher pay 2-3 years in. Keenan is making $15k now I think
Can you even sleep on the subway for $1000 a month in NYC? Bloody hell
Roommates and couch surfing has always been the norm for entry level writers for SNLs entire history. During season they mostly live in 30 Rockefeller anyway.
If you’ve made a name for yourself you go get a job writing sitcoms or movies at a normal pace. If you’re a nobody and desperate for a shot at comedy you might settle for bad pay and grueling hours chasing a hard weekly deadline writing sketches for SNL. Lorne built that show by constantly churning through cheap up and coming talent
Yeah, if you look at the tenures of all the cast members you'd notice that on average they only last 5 years, since by that point either they can get better acting or writing positions or have burned out and may be leaving the show business entirely.
In SNL's almost 50-year history, only 10 cast members have lasted over 10 years, and six of them were a member within the last 2 years.
Apparently salaries really went up after Will Ferrell got the highest SNL performer salary. All of a sudden top talent was hard to hold even for a couple seasons.
The better salaries in the 2010 probably led to many cast members sticking around longer.
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1.1y
I mean, Dr. Evil is based on him lol
I do kind of get why SNL pays low. It is on Saturday night around midnight after all. The entire origin of the show was that no one watches TV at that timeslot so NBC figured why not throw it to a group of rookies to scout and develop up and coming talent. The cast was literally called Not Ready For Primetime. Lorne’s explanation to talent over the years when they come demanding raises was along the lines of “then graduate from a late night timeslot and go make primetime TV or movies” which is why attempting to make a leap to movies is such a common exit for cast members
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1.1y
A show airing with a small audience and low ratings is certainly a reason to not pay as high as other shows commanding prime time slots or prominent theater positions. But, Lorne certainly seems to have relaxed over the years. Like I can’t imagine Kenan would have stuck around for two decades if he wasn’t getting much better concessions and compensation than was available to prior cast members.
Tina Fey said that SNL was a schedule based around cocaine.
Well TBF, even though it is an NBC show, I believe that Lorne is the cheapskate here.
This is obscene considering most of the work happens off-camera before the show.
“Why are you in a new yacht?”
“It’s after six. What am I? A farmer?”
Without the writers, everyone is going to make less money though. It's the same shit in every industry, everyone wants to cut costs on "production", reward Sales and Executives for anything good that happens and then go shocked Pikachu when their product/workers go to shit.
the writers are demanding more than $, they've got demands about AI usage in there too
Greedy assholes aren't reasonable or rational. It's why unions exist in the first place.
These execs are going to lose more money fighting than they will by giving out an acceptable pay bump. Why do they fight? Because these pricks want to feel powerful.
Times are tough now. We all have to do our part…
Let’s be reasonable, people. Do you expect our hardworking megarich executives to do something? Like some sort of common mortal?
You joke, but Bezos just bought a $75 million yacht whose job is to trail behind his $500 million yacht.
Yeah, the suits can spare a few bucks.
You take a boat from here to New York, you gonna go around the horn like a gentleman? Or cut through the Panama Canal like some kind of democrat!?
And pay the rest of the crew better too in terms of all this streaming stuff using loopholes and semantics (just like rideshare did) to get out of laws required to follow by everyone else. Day rate and overtime on grace can’t be a thing just because they’re not broadcast to the wold the same way.
To be fair, this strike is centered around streaming services and the loss of residuals from not airing on TV. Any show that actually airs on television is just kind of caught up in this battle between writers and streaming services.
And pay the non fucking writers too
Pay the writers, gotcha.
Agreed. Just because a writer is abstinent doesn’t mean they should get paid less than the writers that fuck.
Mike Schur spoke on the strike today. They aren't striking over money, at least not directly. https://open.spotify.com/episode/0GaeM0GrZARIBpEKFQxlvu?si=QAjMOCzYSyS9bAH6RVDWHg&t=1850
Basically as streaming takes over and episodes are dumped out a season at a time, the production is compartmentalized. Also seasons of a successful show used to be 30 episodes, and now they are maybe 10.
So instead of writers working a few weeks ahead of the episode airing that week. The writers are brought in, they write everything over the course of a few weeks, and are let go until the next season when they need to write again.
And then for late night shows, soap operas and other daily variety shows, writers aren't covered by the writers union, and the proposal was to basically make each writer on those shows day laborers.
And then there is the issue of AI generated scripts.
So it's not that the writers want X and are offered Y. It's more of a disagreement of structure and procedure.
It's not just pay. There's a lot of different working condition things also. I suspect if it were purely pay they disagreed on, the strike would have probably been resolved before it got this far.
https://www.wgacontract2023.org/uploadedfiles/members/member_info/contract-2023/wga_proposals.pdf
Realistically the AMPTP probably came into this knowing that if it looked sketchy they were going to hold out to see what the DGA said as that negotiation is happening in 8 days.
“We have ChatGPT now!”
The writers are actually lobbying to get the studios to agree that they will never use AI generated content for tv shows - I heard Mike Schur talk about it today on a podcast. It caught me by surprise that this was such a large concern to the writers.
God, an AI generated show sounds like the most boring thing ever. By design, language AIs have no personality. Even Big Bang Theory had some personality.
Lol without copywriting. Imagine ChatGPT makes a hit and then their IP gets stolen everywhere.
No, let them work for tips. That way they are incentivised to write good skits. Works for waiters, let the rest of them do it
I think people are missing the fact that you are employing sarcasm in your comment. At least, I hope you are.
That's that, then. I guess I'll re-watch I Think You Should Leave as a replacement.
New season May 30!!
Oh man I need to call Spectrum and get Corncob TV back
Only decent thing on there is Coffin Flop and I'm pretty sure that show's rigged anyway.
He didn’t rig shit. He didn’t rig fucking shit. He didn’t do anything.
It's impossible that that many dead bodies are falling out of coffins every day! And it's impossible that 1 out of every 5 of them are nude!
Dude, it’s just dead bodies falling out of shit wood and hitting pavement
Jizz.
oh my god he admit it
My wife is slowly going insane because anytime she says the word tables in any context I angrily yell "TAY BULLS" in response.
I can't know how to hear any more about your wife!
He actually didn’t say anything about his wife! I’ve read this thread a ton of times!
Our wifi name is currently TABLES haha
Saturday Not Live
I've been enjoying this season a lot so it's a shame it got cut at the knees at the end.
But for the good of the WGA, hopefully they win this strike.
Yeah hoping they get what they deserve. I seem to remember when the pages went on strike they just got a piece of paper that said “I am a big ol’ liar”
Massage the truth, Kenneth.
“No! It wasn’t!”
Hey, that guy runs NBC now, so good on him.
Hey just wanted to piggyback off the comment and say I'm really digging the new generation/cast. Even that group of three writers who have their own segment where they act like nerds and such.
It’s a strong cast, imo! I’m curious to see who shines and goes on to other things. Can almost tell already who that will be.
Yang gang checking in.
Also, apparently Please Don't Destroy have a movie coming out this year. Pretty interested to see how they translate to a longer format.
That’s great to hear! We need more comedy movies
Last time the writers' strike disrupted a lot of shows and led to a lot of reality TV being produced as a substitute. I wonder what the effects will be this time?
We did get Dr. Horribles sing along blog out of it though.
Is that why it was created? That’s awesome
Yup - Whedon funded it himself without any studios. He was also able to give some crews jobs
I saw someone in another thread suggest a focus on foreign shows. Squid Game did very well, and there must be troves of things in many languages up for grab.
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1.1y
Law of diminishing returns. Fact is that most domestic content in any country is pretty shit, but international audiences generally only see the cream of the crop.
Yeah I’m in Australia and all our shows are pretty terrible
AI-generated scripts.
This is actually part of the problem. The writers want it in their contracts that production companies won't use AI generated scripts or ask writers to edit AI generated scripts and the production companies refused.
More broadly, the WGA requested that guidelines be developed prohibiting the use of AI in "source material," referring to adaptations of AI-generated works, as well as use in "literary material," broadly referring to pretty much all written material created for the adaption of the source material. They also requested that their existing work not be used to train the AI.
In response, the studios rejected the proposal and instead offered to meet with the WGA once a year to tell them about advances in technology. lol
They saw that ai Seinfeld show and were justifiably terrified.
I love how the ai gradually renamed all the characters, I’m seriously going to miss the avant garde era of ai usage before it’s started being used seriously.
Is there a link to this?
This is why I’m following the WGA strike closely, and why I think it’s at an opportune moment. I’ve used ChatGPT in my fiction writing minimally and it’s actually been surprisingly great, but has obvious shortcomings that an experienced writer could work with but profit-hungry management/executives would overlook. Hoping the WGA strike can set some standards on AI use across the creative arts.
I have a lot of sympathy for the writers, but it's naive to think that production companies would agree on that.
We're not even a year into this new language model tech being usable by the public, and it's already showing promising results, so these companies also know that 5 years down the line this stuff will be unmissable.
Have you seen the episode of South Park where Chat GPT wrote some of the script? The AI generated parts were odd but it had the essence of some of the characters right.
Maybe in the '23-'24 season every character will act a little strange...
Is that confirmed about South Park? I thought it was satire. I know they gave credit at the end to chatGPT but wasn’t it all a joke?
It feels pretty on brand for them to actually do it.
That's actually one of the things their fighting against with this strike. They want some kind of regulation or oversight on AI scripts.
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1.1y
Anyone that's used ChatGPT to write a story for them knows that it fucking sucks at writing. Humans aren't getting replaced any time soon.
Compare it to how it was doing last year, and think how it will do next year. Maybe we're past the hockey stick, but I don't think so.
IRewatching old shows and you come across an weirdly short season and remember oh yeah, the writers strike! Good for them, I hope it lasts a painfully long time.
I miss the 22 - 26 episodes per seasons .... actually I also miss having many seasons that came out regularly. Not this streaming reality where you get a 10 episode season and wait 3 years for like 6 season(if it even comes that is)
Don't miss it all. There were exceptionally few shows that had enough good content for 24 episodes a season. I like that shows are generally as long as they need to be nowadays.
The years between seasons bit I agree with 100% though. It's really killing some shows.
I don’t really think there will be a dearth of content in the way that’s comparable to last time. They’ll delay shit that they already had but they don’t have the same kind of captive audience.
Whore island here we come!
Last time it destroyed Heroes, still mad about that.
BSG never recovered either. It went from a tight, scary show to mystic mayhem pretty quick after the writers strike.
I mean there were elements there before, but WOOF.
BSG?
Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.
It’s so annoying when people throw out acronyms and expect everyone to know what they’re talking about.
IKR
Same with Friday Night Lights, although they recovered thankfully because the second season was essentially retconned, and they don't mention a whole bunch of storylines from that season ever again. Like one of the characters kills someone and then it's literally never brought up again.
That’s hilarious. A murder in a high school show and they just hand waved it away? Haha, I can only imagine. I actually don’t mind if shows do that if something is that stupid and ruins the rest of the show, but still pretty funny.
Netflix and other streamers have been stock piling scripts for this very moment. Probably so they can hold off for as long as possible
They'll have a problem then - Teamsters have already said they won't cross a damn picket line and this time round, the WGA has said if non-members become the "on set" writers (or cross lines in general) they will lose their eligibility to become members of the WGA. That isn't just a club, either - that risks not only contract negotiation protections but health benefits, etc.
They will probably start relying more on foreign content and competition. Usually the movies and shows that have trailers playing when I log on to Netflix are foreign. For the last few weeks or even months the top shows for the week have had at least one foreign show in it and reality TV shows. They can also continue producing cooking competitions and game shows. I think Netflix executives are planning to hold out for a long time. They can still air the Squid Games sequel. Stranger Things might be a problem but it's the last season.
I hope you're ready for a deep dive into the 90 Day Fiance Universe.
150 day fiancé- they need to pad the episode count
I know it would never happen but a fully improvised/non-scripted episode would be interesting
Reminds of the time Conan O'brien did an episode in the dark.
He did loads of them during the strike. The first episode of Conan I ever watched having just become a teenager was his first writer strike episode. The absurdity of it made me a fan for life.
Honestly, Conan's show was poised to survive the writer's strike better than anyone, since Conan himself was a funnier writer than just about anyone on his staff.
The problem with Conan being in a talk show is that he needed to come up with new stuff every single night. Now that he's out of the late night game, I'm looking forward to the stuff his brain comes up with. His podcast's a blast, and his new show which seems to be about visiting fans all over the world opens up endless possibilities for his quips. I love it.
Fingers crossed we finally get that Dr. Horrible sequel.
Given that it's owned by Joss Whedon who would probably be involved, ehhhhh.
Welp. Sucks to be Pete Davidson, and my heart goes out to the crew.
WGA all the way!
Lol, I'm sure he's happy with this outcome. I'm pretty sure he even said he was hoping for something like this.
Pete Davidson is doing great for himself he has a show hitting Peacock on Thursday and an A24 movie that’s supposed to release this year.
This strike affects shows on peacock and other wga productions as well (I believe a24 isn't affected bc theyre not part of wga, but if they were looking at wga writers, they'll be on strike)
Holy shit this article is absolute garbage
I guess their writers are on strike too
Hell, maybe with the writer's being on strike and production for a lot of things being halted, I might have a chance to try and catch up with the hundreds of hours of shows I need to watch.
Probably not a bad time to start watching some foreign shows. I have some great Australian ones if anyone is interested. Note that because I'm in Australia, I'm not sure how these can be accessed overseas. Not in any specific order.
Mr Inbetween - A dark dramedy about a hitman balancing his work and his real life
Colin From Accounts - A romcom about a couple who meet after one of them accidentally hits a dog
Love Me - A remake of a Danish show, this dramedy stars Hugo Weaving and is about different members of family finding love.
Rosehaven - A dry comedy set in a small Tasmanian town. Reminds me a lot of The Detectorists.
Fisk - A comedy about a lawyer who starts at a small Wills and Testaments law firm after suffering a marriage and professional breakdown.
Class of 07 - A dark comedy about a girls school class reunion that gets interrupted by the apocalypse. Think Yellowjackets-lite
Mystery Road - A mystery/crime neo-noir show set in the outback about an indigenous Australian cop.
Utopia (apparently called Dreamland internationally) - A comedy centered on a government infrastructure planning department. Think the Office but with more parody and less wacky shenanigans.
Kath and Kim - A classic comedy about a dysfunctional family. Pretty much any Australian I know quotes from this.
I'll throw out Taskmaster as well because it's foreign and funny as fuck
Yeah, Aussie Taskmaster was surprisingly good, especially since it was it's first season
Honestly, all the Taskmaster spin-offs I've seen have something to offer, aside from the horrid American one. We should be able to pull it off, but I think we had some really bad casting choices that dragged it down big time. Lisa Lamponelli, blegh...
+1 for Mr. Inbetween. I binged it all in like a week. Amazing stuff. Hilarious at times, and incredibly dark at others. If you like Barry or Breaking Bad, you’ll probably enjoy this too.
Well pay your damn writers
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1.1y
Save the writers, save the show :(
I fear for Yellowjackets. They were in day 1 of the writers room when the strike kicked off. Obviously solidarity forever, but selfishly I’m worried about a show I like getting bad.
Not surprising. Even if they do pay their writers enough, that entire show and legacy is built on the writing. They'll always side with him similar to how Conan always will (which is a great thing).
Man, Pete Davidson will do anything to avoid going to work
/s