Everything You Need to Know About Saturday Night Live: A Deep Dive into Every Season of the Iconic Comedy Show

in Comedy, History, Television | January 13th, 2025

Sat­ur­day Night Live began its 50th sea­son last fall, around the same time as the pre­miere of Jason Reit­man’s film Sat­ur­day Night, which dra­ma­tizes the pro­gram’s 1975 debut. All of this has put fans into some­thing of a ret­ro­spec­tive mood, espe­cial­ly if they hap­pen to have been tun­ing in since the very begin­ning. For oth­ers, SNL is a show they haven’t been watch­ing all that long, used to watch, or watched at one time and have start­ed watch­ing again. With its ever-chang­ing cast, writ­ers, sketch con­cepts, and over­all comedic sen­si­bil­i­ty, it’s nev­er remained the same for too long at a stretch, and though many view­ers have their favorite sea­sons, few grasp the full sweep of its his­to­ry as a tele­vi­sion insti­tu­tion.

Now, any­one can get a sense of SNL in its entire­ty with Every­thing You NEED to Know About Sat­ur­day Night Live, a YouTube series that, true to its title, recounts the show’s most notable per­form­ers, char­ac­ters, inno­va­tions, trou­bles, and moments planned or oth­er­wise (often the lat­ter, giv­en the nature of the broad­cast). Each sea­son gets its own episode, start­ing with the first, whose Not Ready for Prime Time Play­ers includ­ed such young up-and-com­ers as Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Gil­da Rad­ner.

As that list of names would imply, this “hip com­e­dy vari­ety pro­gram for baby boomers that dared to stay up late” soon became a ver­i­ta­ble force of era-defin­ing fun­ny­men and fun­ny­women. Then as now, SNL tends to send its break­out stars to Hol­ly­wood, albeit with vary­ing results.

That con­tributes to the con­stant churn that has brought onto the show’s ros­ter such house­hold-names-to-be as Bill Mur­ray, Eddie Mur­phy, Bil­ly Crys­tal, Adam San­dler, and Tina Fey, while also fea­tur­ing non-cast-mem­bers like Penn and Teller or guest hosts like Steve Mar­tin, whose appear­ances great­ly raised their own pro­files. To watch through these encap­su­la­tions, which as of this writ­ing have reached sea­son nine­teen (1993–94), is to take a jour­ney through Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture itself. Cre­ator Lorne Michaels’ recent­ly declared lack of intent to step down any time soon bol­sters SNL’s aura of unstop­pa­bilty, built up over five decades of influ­en­tial per­son­al­i­ties, still-quot­ed gags, and instant­ly rec­og­niz­able char­ac­ters — if also the occa­sion­al unco­op­er­a­tive host, chem­istry-free cast, or acci­den­tal­ly uttered bit of pro­fan­i­ty. But what’s the fun of doing half a cen­tu­ry of live TV if it goes with­out a hitch?

Fol­low Every­thing You NEED to Know About Sat­ur­day Night Live here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Lorne Michaels Intro­duces Sat­ur­day Night Live and Its Bril­liant First Cast for the Very First Time (1975)

Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in Octo­ber, 1975

Cre­at­ing Sat­ur­day Night Live: Behind-the Scenes Videos Reveal How the Icon­ic Com­e­dy Show Gets Made

Clas­sic Punk Rock Sketch­es from Sat­ur­day Night Live, Cour­tesy of Fred Armisen

RIP Nor­man Lear: Watch Full Episodes of His Dar­ing 70s Sit­coms, Includ­ing All in the Fam­i­ly, Maude, The Jef­fer­sons, and More

Revis­it Turn-On, the Inno­v­a­tive TV Show That Got Can­celed Right in the Mid­dle of Its First Episode (1969)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Its Beloved Soundtrack Album, Almost Never Happened

in Music, Television | December 24th, 2024

A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas uses a cast of ama­teur child voice actors, deals with the theme of sea­son­al depres­sion, and cul­mi­nates in the recita­tion of a Bible verse, all to a jazz score. It was not, safe to say, the spe­cial that CBS had expect­ed, to say noth­ing of its spon­sor, the Coca-Cola Com­pa­ny. In all like­li­hood, it would have been can­celed, but see­ing as it had already been announced and pro­mot­ed (and in any case, was com­plet­ed only a few days before it was sched­uled to air), the show went on. In the event, not only did it please the view­ers of Amer­i­ca, it went on to become one of the most beloved pieces of Christ­mas ani­ma­tion — and that jazz score went on to become one of the most beloved Christ­mas albums.

In the new Dig­ging the Greats video above, bassist Bran­don Shaw breaks down some of the dis­tin­guish­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of Vince Guaral­di’s score, with help from drum­mer Ryan Shaw (not just Bran­don’s broth­er, but also a musi­cian with his own direct con­nec­tion to Peanuts pro­duc­tions) and pianist Jon­té Moore.

“There’s beau­ty, because of the major 9 sound­ing, but there’s, like, this ten­sion,” Moore explains while play­ing the imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able chords of “Christ­mas­time Is Here.” “Some­thing’s maybe miss­ing: it could be peo­ple who have lost a loved one, or are maybe just tired of the hol­i­day sea­son, so they have this weight that they car­ry.” We’re a long way indeed from the insipid cheer of many a hol­i­day pro­duc­tion.

“Christ­mas­time Is Here” may be the sin­gle most influ­en­tial piece of A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas’ musi­cal lega­cy. But it’s best heard in the con­text of the whole sound­track, where it sounds of a piece with the “jazz arrange­ments of Christ­mas clas­sics,” as Shaw puts it, as well as with “Linus and Lucy,” the Peanuts theme song Guaral­di had pre­vi­ous­ly com­posed. This coher­ent aes­thet­ic and sen­si­bil­i­ty — the com­poser’s, of course, but also that of the world Charles Schulz cre­at­ed — goes a long way toward mak­ing the project not just a col­lec­tion of Christ­mas songs, but an endur­ing Christ­mas album: one that, over the next cou­ple of days, even those of us with­out enthu­si­asm for Christ­mas music in gen­er­al will be spin­ning as many times as we can get away with.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Vince Guaral­di, the Jazz Com­pos­er Who Cre­at­ed the Best Christ­mas Album Ever, A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas

Enjoy Clas­sic Songs from A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas, Per­formed by Vince Guaral­di Trio Drum­mer Jer­ry Granel­li

How Inno­v­a­tive Jazz Pianist Vince Guaral­di Became the Com­pos­er of Beloved Char­lie Brown Music

Charles Schulz Draws Char­lie Brown in 45 Sec­onds and Exor­cis­es His Demons

The Endur­ing Appeal of Schulz’s Peanuts — Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #116

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Richard Feynman Enthusiastically Explains How to Think Like a Physicist in His Series Fun to Imagine (1983)

in Science, Television | December 19th, 2024

“It’s inter­est­ing that some peo­ple find sci­ence so easy, and oth­ers find it kind of dull and dif­fi­cult,” says Richard Feyn­man at the begin­ning of his 1983 BBC series Fun to Imag­ine. “One of the things that makes it very dif­fi­cult is that it takes a lot of imag­i­na­tion. It’s very hard to imag­ine all the crazy things that things real­ly are like.” A true sci­en­tist accepts that noth­ing is as it seems, in that noth­ing, when you zoom in close enough or zoom out far enough, behaves in a way that accords with our every­day expe­ri­ence. Even the nec­es­sary scales — in which, for exam­ple, an atom is to an apple as an apple is to Earth itself — are dif­fi­cult to con­ceive.

Despite his much-cel­e­brat­ed bril­liance as a physi­cist, Feyn­man also admit­ted to find­ing the quan­ti­ties with which he had to work unfath­omable, at least when exam­ined out­side their par­tic­u­lar con­texts. At the atom­ic lev­el, he explains, “you’re just think­ing of small balls, but you don’t try to think of exact­ly how small they are too often, or you get kind of a bit nut­ty.”

In astron­o­my, “you have the same thing in reverse, because the dis­tance to these stars is so enor­mous.” We all have an idea of what the term “light year” means — assum­ing we don’t mis­un­der­stand it as a unit of time — but who among us can real­ly envi­sion a galaxy 100,000 light years away, let alone a mil­lion?

Feyn­man dis­cuss­es these mat­ters with char­ac­ter­is­tic under­stand­ing and humor across Fun to Imag­ine’s nine seg­ments, which cov­er phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­na from fire and mag­nets to rub­ber bands and train wheels. Those who know their physics will appre­ci­ate the vivid­ness and con­ci­sion with which he explains this mate­r­i­al, appar­ent­ly right off the top of his head, and any­one can sense the delight he feels in mere­ly putting his mind to the behav­ior of mat­ter and ener­gy and their rela­tion­ship to the world as we know it. And how­ev­er much plea­sure he derived from under­stand­ing, he also got a kick out of how much mys­tery remains: “Nature’s imag­i­na­tion is so much greater than man’s,” he says toward the end. “She’s nev­er going to let us relax.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Life & Work of Richard Feyn­man Explored in a Three-Part Freako­nom­ics Radio Minis­eries

What Made Richard Feyn­man One of the Most Admired Edu­ca­tors in the World

Richard Feynman’s “Lost Lec­ture:” An Ani­mat­ed Retelling

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

Watch a New Ani­ma­tion of Richard Feynman’s Ode to the Won­der of Life, with Music by Yo-Yo Ma

“The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law”: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Binge-Watch Classic Television Programs Free: The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Lone Ranger, Dragnet, That Girl & More

in Television | December 12th, 2024

Ear­li­er this week, we fea­tured the 99-year-old Dick Van Dyke’s per­for­mance in Cold­play’s new music video, full of visu­al ref­er­ences to the sit­com that made him a house­hold name in the ear­ly nine­teen-six­ties. And a house­hold name he remains these six decades lat­er, though one does won­der how many of those who appre­ci­ate his extreme longevi­ty — both cul­tur­al and bio­log­i­cal — have ever seen an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. I myself only caught the occa­sion­al late-night rerun in child­hood, but how­ev­er much he indulged his char­ac­ter­is­tic goofi­ness, the thir­ty-some­thing Van Dyke in the role of com­e­dy writer Rob Petrie always struck me as the very image of mature adult­hood.

Whether or not you saw it in the first place, you can now watch The Dick Van Dyke Show’s five sea­sons free on Youtube, start­ing with the first here. They’ve come avail­able at a chan­nel called Film­Rise Tele­vi­sion, on whose col­lec­tion of playlists you’ll also find such pil­lars of mid-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion as Drag­net, The Lone Ranger, Bonan­za, and That Girl.

Hard though it may be to under­stand for any­one who came of age under the fire­hose of on-demand con­tent these reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled enter­tain­ments became ver­i­ta­ble cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions when they orig­i­nal­ly aired on major net­works in the fifties and six­ties, with an influ­ence that extend­ed far beyond their already con­sid­er­able view­er­ship.

The mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion grew up regard­ing shows of this kind as hokey but suf­fi­cient­ly amus­ing diver­sions when noth­ing more irrev­er­ent or post­mod­ern hap­pened to be on. At worst, they felt like infe­ri­or pre­de­ces­sors of the then-cur­rent sit­coms and dra­mas we were watch­ing in prime time. But then began the long “gold­en age” of pres­tige tele­vi­sion, with its new lev­els of aes­thet­ic and nar­ra­tive com­plex­i­ty, which changed our very con­cep­tion of tele­vi­sion.

Today, watch­ing The Dick Van Dyke Show or any of the oth­er hits with which it shared the scarce air­waves feels almost exot­ic, like trav­el­ing to the past: a for­eign coun­try, as L. P. Hart­ley famous­ly put it, where they do things dif­fer­ent­ly — and a few of whose cit­i­zens are, for­tu­nate­ly, still around to enter­tain us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

99-Year-Old Dick Van Dyke Sings & Dances in a Touch­ing New Cold­play Video, Direct­ed by Spike Jonze

RIP Nor­man Lear: Watch Full Episodes of His Dar­ing 70s Sit­coms, Includ­ing All in the Fam­i­ly, Maude, The Jef­fer­sons, and More

757 Episodes of the Clas­sic TV Game Show What’s My Line?: Watch Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Louis Arm­strong, Sal­vador Dali & More

Dick Van Dyke Still Danc­ing at 96!

Revis­it Turn-On, the Inno­v­a­tive TV Show That Got Can­celed Right in the Mid­dle of Its First Episode (1969)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Predicted the Rise of Artificial Intelligence & the Existential Questions We Would Need to Answer (1978)

in History, Technology, Television | December 9th, 2024

We now live in the midst of an arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence boom, but it’s hard­ly the first of its kind. In fact, the field has been sub­ject to a boom-and-bust cycle since at least the ear­ly nine­teen-fifties. Even­tu­al­ly, those busts — which occurred when real­iz­able AI tech­nol­o­gy failed to live up to the hype of the boom — became so long and so thor­ough­go­ing that each was declared an “AI win­ter” of scant research fund­ing and pub­lic inter­est. Yet even deep into one such fal­low sea­son, AI could still inspire enough fas­ci­na­tion to become the sub­ject of the 1978 NOVA doc­u­men­tary “Mind Machines.”

The pro­gram includes inter­views with fig­ures now rec­og­nized as lumi­nar­ies in the his­to­ry of AI: John McCarthy, Mar­vin Min­sky, Ter­ry Wino­grad, ELIZA cre­ator Joseph Weizen­baum. It also brings on no less a tech­no­log­i­cal prophet than Arthur C. Clarke, who notes that the dubi­ous atti­tudes toward the prospect of think­ing machines expressed in the late sev­en­ties had much in com­mon with those about the prospect of space trav­el dur­ing his youth in the thir­ties. In his view, we were already “cre­at­ing our suc­ces­sors. We have seen the first, crude begin­nings of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence,” and we would “one day be able to design sys­tems that can go on improv­ing them­selves.”

If com­put­ers were there­by to gain greater-than-human intel­li­gence, it would, of course, “com­plete­ly restruc­ture soci­ety” — not that the soci­ety he already knew would­n’t “col­lapse instant­ly” if its own rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple com­put­ers were tak­en away. Clarke not only asks the ques­tion now on many minds of what “the peo­ple who are only capa­ble of low-grade com­put­er-type work” will do when out­stripped by AI, but more deeply under­ly­ing ones as well: “What is the pur­pose of life? What do we want to live for? That is a ques­tion which the intel­li­gent com­put­er will force us to pay atten­tion to.”

Few view­ers in 1978 would have spent much time pon­der­ing such mat­ters before. But pre­sent­ed with footage of all this now-prim­i­tive pro­to-AI tech­nol­o­gy — the com­put­er chess tour­na­ment, the sim­u­lat­ed ther­a­pist, the med­ical-diag­no­sis assis­tant, the NASA Mars rover to be launched in the far-flung future of 1986 — they must at least have felt able to enter­tain the idea that they would live to see an age of machines that could not just think but, as the nar­ra­tor puts it, pos­sess “the most cru­cial aspect of com­mon-sense intel­li­gence: the abil­i­ty to learn.” Per­haps anoth­er AI win­ter will fore­stall that age yet again — if it’s not already here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Instan­ta­neous Glob­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Remote Work, Sin­gu­lar­i­ty & More

Before Chat­G­PT, There Was ELIZA: Watch the 1960s Chat­bot in Action

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The BBC Creates Step-by-Step Instructions for Knitting the Iconic Dr. Who Scarf: A Document from the Early 1980s

in Fashion, Television | December 5th, 2024

Knitting-Pattern-4th-Doctor

When Jon Per­twee rein­car­nat­ed into Tom Bak­er in 1974, the Fourth Doc­tor of the pop­u­lar sci-fi show Doc­tor Who ditched the fop­pish look of vel­vet jack­ets and frilly shirts, and went for the “Roman­tic adven­tur­er” style, with flop­py felt hat, long over­coats and, most icon­i­cal­ly, his mul­ti­col­ored scarf.

Fan leg­end has it that cos­tume design­er James Ache­son picked up a load of mul­ti-col­or wool and asked knit­ter Bego­nia Pope to cre­ate a scarf, and Pope, per­haps mis­hear­ing, used *all* the wool, result­ing in a scarf that ran 12 feet long. The mis­take was per­fect, and sud­den­ly many UK grand­moth­ers were being asked by their grand­chil­dren to recre­ate their hero’s look.

The above memo isn’t dat­ed, but comes from some­time in the ear­ly ‘80s when the BBC sent detailed instruc­tions to a fan’s moth­er on mak­ing the scarf. (Click here, then click again, to view the doc­u­ment in a larg­er for­mat.) The col­ors include camel, rust, bronze, mus­tard, grey, green and pur­ple and should be knit­ted with size four nee­dles (that’s #9 US size). The requests must have come reg­u­lar­ly, because a sim­i­lar memo is reprint­ed from many years lat­er to anoth­er fan’s fam­i­ly.

The orig­i­nal scarf only last­ed a few episodes, then was altered, replaced, and sub­tly changed as the show went on. There were stunt scarves for stand-ins.

Come Sea­son 18, cos­tume design­er June Hud­son rethought the entire cos­tume and stream­lined the col­ors to three: rust, wine, and pur­ple, to match the Doctor’s more swash­buck­ling look. It also became the longest scarf of the series, some 20 feet.

The fol­low­ing year, the Doc­tor rein­car­nat­ed again into a crick­et-jumper and striped trouser-wear­ing young blonde man. The Scarf Years were over.

For a very in-depth look at the scarves, includ­ing Pan­tone col­or ref­er­ences and wool brands, there is noth­ing bet­ter than DoctorWhoScarf.com. So, get knit­ting, Who-vians!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Doc­tor Who First Start­ed as a Fam­i­ly Edu­ca­tion­al TV Pro­gram (1963)

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Mary Tyler Moore Accidentally Nails a Perfect Pool Shot on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1962)

in Random, Television | December 2nd, 2024

Let’s rewind the video­tape and revis­it a clas­sic moment in The Dick Van Dyke Show. In the 1962 episode called “Hus­tling the Hus­tler,” Mary Tyler Moore (as Lau­ra Petrie) plays pool and sinks three balls in a sin­gle shot. The orig­i­nal plan was to splice in footage of a pro­fes­sion­al pool play­er mak­ing the shot, but Moore sur­prised every­one, includ­ing her­self, by nail­ing it on the first try. Watch­ing Moore and Van Dyke recov­er from their aston­ish­ment and impro­vise through the scene is priceless—a per­fect way to start your Mon­day.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Zaibat­su and Slash Film

Relat­ed Con­tent

Joan Jett and the Black­hearts Per­form a Rol­lick­ing Cov­er of the Mary Tyler Moore Theme Song (1996)

Jack Ker­ouac Plays Pool, 1967

Dick Van Dyke Still Danc­ing at 96!

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How Magician David Copperfield Made the Statue of Liberty Disappear (1983)

in Television | November 19th, 2024

In April, 1983, 50 mil­lion tele­vi­sion view­ers watched the illu­sion­ist David Cop­per­field make the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty dis­ap­pear, straight into thin air. If you’re north of 50, you per­haps remem­ber the spec­ta­cle. How did he do it? 40 years lat­er, the YouTube chan­nel Mind Blown Mag­ic Illu­sion demys­ti­fies the large-scale mag­ic trick, explain­ing how Cop­per­field dis­tract­ed the audi­ence, rotat­ed the stage, and shift­ed Lady Lib­er­ty out of view. That’s appar­ent­ly the gist of the illu­sion. How­ev­er, in the com­ments sec­tion on YouTube, one com­menter adds a lit­tle more impor­tant detail:

You missed the most impor­tant mis­di­rec­tion. He had a heli­copter with a bright spot­light shin­ing on the stat­ue for a con­sid­er­able length of time dur­ing which he apol­o­gized to the audi­ence and said they were hav­ing “tech­ni­cal prob­lems.” Even­tu­al­ly the cur­tain came across and the stage began to revolve imper­cep­ti­bly slow­ly. How­ev­er the heli­copter moved in sync with the stage. The beam of light appeared to be sta­tion­ary in rela­tion to the stage. When the cur­tain was lift­ed they saw the heli­copter in the same place but with no stat­ue. The beam of light also helped black out the back­ground. Oth­er­wise the audi­ence would have seen a dif­fer­ent sky­line. Pure genius!

For Open Cul­ture read­ers, it’s worth men­tion­ing that the leg­endary film­mak­er Frank Capra (It’s a Won­der­ful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton, It Hap­pened One Night) played an unlike­ly role in the pro­duc­tion. In an inter­view with Judd Apa­tow, Cop­per­field recalls how he enlist­ed Capra to help write the script for the episode:

So then I said [to myself] “Now the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty is going to dis­ap­pear, but I’ve got to make this have more mean­ing.” So I went to vis­it Frank Capra, one of my idols, and did a kind of Judd Apa­tow inter­view with him. I said, “I’d like the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty to dis­ap­pear, but I want to do it as a les­son in free­dom, how valu­able free­dom is and what the world would be like with­out lib­er­ty.” And Frank Capra looked at me and said, “David, I love your idea, but here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to try and it’s not going to work; it’s not going to dis­ap­pear.” And I said, “Mr. Capra, I can’t do that.” You know? [laughs] And I got to watch Frank Capra, in his eight­ies, in action.

You can watch some of the orig­i­nal 1983 footage below. Enjoy!

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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