That’s a compliment, as the Lonely Island does dumb as well as anyone. “Lettuce,” it’s worth noting, is extremely dumb. And a few weeks later it got on air… We had total freedom.” “It would have cost a lot of money and been a big deal, so we just decided to skip all that. “We knew if we had to pitch it and go through the table and get a budget, we weren’t going to be allowed to do it because we were so new,” Schaffer told GQ back in 2012. Live from New York, baby! But that’s not what the Lonely Island guys did for “Lettuce.” As newbies, with Taccone and Schaffer as writers and Samberg as a featured player, they made it during their spare time. Then there’s a read-through, set building, makeup and costuming, and rehearsals, all while the soul of the joke slowly drains away through repetition. And if you’re lucky enough to get a laugh in the room, you have to actually write the sketch. The way things usually work at SNL is that if you have an idea for a sketch, you pitch it to your fellow cast members, writers, and the Grand Poobah himself, Lorne Michaels. We never find out who the “he” is, but we do learn that the conversation between two grieving buddies is actually a commercial paid for by the “United Lettuce Growers Association.” Through good times and bad… lettuce. Samberg later does the same with his own lettuce head. But the pain goes away.” Forte then reveals that he’s been holding a head of lettuce this whole time, and he takes a huge honking bite out of it.
“I just keep trying to tell myself he’s in a better place, you know?” Samberg says to his pal, who responds, “You know, it’s all right to feel sad. Will Forte walks up to a glum-looking Samberg on the stoop of a New York City apartment. “Lettuce” - which was cut during dress rehearsal from the Eva Longoria episode (November 19) before airing during the Dane Cook-hosted, James Blunt-musical guested episode (December 3) - is charmingly simple, lacking the catchy songs, CGI imagery, and guest stars of later Digital Shorts. I’m not going to claim that the Lonely Island guys are also the voice of a generation, but, hypothetically, if they were, “Mona Lisa, you’re an overrated piece of sh*t / With your terrible style and your dead shark eyes” is a better era-defining lyric than that “blowin’ in the wind” hooey. It would be a curiosity and otherwise forgotten, like many other mid-2000s SNL sketches ( “Art Dealers” anyone?), if it didn’t, years later, lead to Palm Springs ( so good) and “Jack Sparrow.” Bob Dylan didn’t become BOB DYLAN with his self-titled album - he became the Voice of a Generation with his second album. It’s not available on Hulu or NBC.com or YouTube (the only active clip is on Tumblr, which is to say, it’s extremely low-res), and you won’t find it on any The 10 Best Lonely Island Sketches list. There’s a reason you probably don’t remember “Lettuce,” which aired two weeks before “Lazy Sunday” reclaimed Magnolia Bakery from Sex and the City. It definitely felt like something changed overnight.”īut “Lazy Sunday” wasn’t the Lonely Island’s SNL debut. On the morning of December 17, 2005, the day the Jack Black-hosted episode of SNL aired, the Lonely Island, made up of Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone, were a niche comedy group by the following Monday, the trio were iTunes chart-toppers and, as Samberg told the New York Times at the time, “I’ve been recognized more times since the Saturday it aired than since I started on the show. “Lazy Sunday” was an immediate sensation. Without Andy Samberg and Chris “Parns” Parnell catching a screening of The Chronicles of Narnia on the Upper West Side, it’s fair to wonder if there’d be no Hot Rod, no “Dick in the Box,” no Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, which would be a tragedy.
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