the old snl genius: the writers are so invisible

July 19, 2010 9:37 PM

who wrote the SNL skit "Japanese Gameshow" with Chris Farley?

Bonus: who were some of the best SNL writers in the early 90s when farley, hartmann, carvey, mike myers, et al were on? I know al franken wrote a bunch of skits but who else?

Is there any place online listing the writers' names next to sketches they wrote, for this era? My google-fu isnt good enough apparently.

posted by jak68 to society & culture (3 answers total)

The sketch "Japanese Game Show" aka "High Stakes Japanese Game Show" was from this episode:

Air Date: December 10th, 1994
Host: Alec Baldwin
Musical Guest:Beastie Boys
Special Guests: Christian Slater

Apparently the writers from 1994 were:
Adam Resnick
Al Franken
Bob Odenkirk
Brian Kelley
David Mandel
Drake Sather
Fred Wolf
Herb Sargent
Jim Downey
Laura Kightlinger
Lewis Morton
Lorne Michaels
Margo Meyer
Marilyn Suzanne Miller
Norm Hiscock
Robert Smigel
Ross Abrash
Steve Lookner
Steven Koren
Tim Herlihy

Although I'm not sure who exactly wrote the sketch. Maybe someone else can narrow it down more.
posted by sharkfu at 10:08 PM on July 19, 2010

I very much doubt that you would be able to pin it down to a single writer. It's not like everybody toils away separately in their own office -- everyone is in a room and someone pitches an idea, someone else riffs on it, a few others contribute jokes, someone writes the first draft, someone else does a rewrite, etc. TV is highly collaborative as it's the only way to churn out a polished script every week. I mean, maybe in some cases a sketch is entirely the work of one person, but that's got to be a very small minority.
posted by Rhomboid at 1:45 PM on July 20, 2010

thanks guys
posted by jak68 at 8:40 AM on July 21, 2010