Somehow I hadn't heard about Saturday Night Live: The Exhibition until it was almost too late. I was passing by a building on my way to somewhere and saw these windows with all these Saturday Night Live scenes and the words "Saturday Night Live: The Exhibit" and quickly googled. We bought some tickets on Groupon (technically it's a dollar more than the general admission price, but you do get a $10 credit to use at the gift shop. And the gift shop is awesome.)
We loved the exhibit because of how interactive it is. You could take pictures behind a Celebrity Jeopardy podium and sit in the "control room" while watching the behind the scenes of sketches.
But you don't want to read about it, so here are the pictures!
[A mailgram from Lorne to Dick Ebersol. In this bit of the mailgram, Lorne listed the "ingredients" for the show, including Albert Brooks shorts, Muppets segments and more. These were dropped after the first season, but the outline of the show still remains the same]
[A letter from Al Franken to Richard Nixon, asking him to guest on a prime time political special the show is planning. click to enlarge]
[Dooneese]
[Goat Boy]
Bonus: The Story of Goat Boy
I'm a terrible fan for not knowing
[King Tut]
[Stefon]
[Do I really need to caption these two?]
[Sweeney Sisters. I totally miss Jan Hooks. She was amazing]
[Behind the scenes look of making a head mold]
[Head molds]
[Collette and Rita were my favorite Cheri O'Teri characters]
[I just love this picture of underrated Jay]
[Justin Timberlake joining the Five Timer's Club]
[You can see the shaking stage here. Now I'm going to pay attention more to the sets to notice any other shaking stages]
[miniature version of the soundstage]
[Winning Emmy ballots]
[Colon Blow!!]
[Control Room recreation]
[Cue cards]
This was a cute and fun thing. At the end of the exhibit you enter a smaller version of the studio, including the stage, they pull out a screen, show a "cold open," then Tina Fey comes on screen and does the typical opening cues "it's great to be here," "stick around," etc and they proceed to show you a Celebrity Jeopardy sketch to the right and a musical montage on the "musical stage" to your left and end the show with the goodbyes from the 40th Anniversary Special.
[Thank you notes from ?, Diddy, Elle Macpherson, Paul Simon, Eric Idle]
[Thank you notes to Lorne from Giuliani, Phil Hartman, Whoopi Goldberg and I think Jimmy Fallon]
All in all it was a fun experience. Lots of "OMG! LOOK AT THIS! AH, SO CUTE! WAIT! LOOK AT THIS SCREEN! REMEMBER THIS SKETCH???"
I wish they had more trivia and history. I can understand not having a lot of costumes from the first two decades or so but some set recreations or more tributes would have been nice. As well as more about Weekend Update.
So if you're in NYC, get on it!
Now, buh bye.
