Posted in: NBC, TV | Tagged: alec baldwin, chris farley, dana carvey, David Space, Fly on the Wall, Janeane Garofalo, Laura Kightlinger, saturday night live, snl
SNL Sketch Performance From Mike Myers Still Impresses Alec Baldwin
During the Fly on the Wall podcast, Alec Baldwin discusses why he was so impressed with Mike Myers in SNL's "Japanese Game Show" sketch.
Before his recurring stint as Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live, Alec Baldwin was already a regular favorite and frequent host of the NBC late-night program. The actor holds the distinction of hosting a record 17-times winning an Emmy for his portrayal of the former president. Appearing on Dana Carvey and David Spade's podcast Fly on the Wall, Baldwin told the SNL alums calling Mike Myers' performance on a "Japanese Game Show" sketch "one of the deftest, most unbelievable things" he ever saw.
Carvey and Spade, who weren't featured in the sketch, were castmates of Myers through much of the 1990s era SNL. Myers played the host while Laura Kightlinger played his assistant on the show, with contestants played by Baldwin, Janeane Garofalo, and the late Chris Farley as the wayward American tourist who doesn't speak the language. The rub is that all the major players involved were "Japanese" but Farley, the unwitting contestant from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, competing in a game show with Myers learning most of the Japanese dialogue. Baldwin compared Myers' performance to Sir Lawrence Olivier, calling him "so brilliant in that part."
"That's such an all-time sketch," Spade said. "It is potent, man. Some sketches are like that. You can't look away," Carvey added. The format of the game show was not subtitled for the audience but involved a series of trivia questions. There are three rounds. During the first round, Baldwin and Garofalo's characters get the question wrong while Farley awkwardly answers the question right. In the second round, the stakes are raised with the results repeated, and a wrong answer had a contestant cut a finger off Yakuza-style to play off the Japanese stereotype. When Larry (Farley) reaches the final round, the pressure is on him to answer the question correctly, or he gets the car battery treatment in all the expected places where the jumper cables go. You can check out the sketch below.