Today we celebrate the long strange life of actor, writer and director Buck Henry whose contributions to Saturday Night Live and scripting of The Graduate were crucial contributions to the countercultural voice that paved the way for the best of today’s contemporary comedy. Buck is 85 on December 9. Here he is discussing his twisted, gnarly, celebrated writing…

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This weekend I watched a preview screener for Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead, the new National Lampoon documentary. I really loved it and it’s required viewing for any long time fans of Saturday Night Live. American humor of the last half of the 20th century would be drastically different without the impact that the magazine had on every kind of media, and even the radio shows can still make for hilarious listening.

Here’s a show from 1974 that features a parody of Hunter S. Thompson…

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Insomnia loves Gilda Radner not only for being a proud daughter of Detroit, Michigan, but also for being a counterculture hero as one of the best original members of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players when Saturday Night Live debuted in 1975.

Radner played outrageous characters like Roseanne Roseannadanna and even did spot-on impressions of celebrities ranging from Lucille Ball to Patti Smith. Radner brought a manic, physical energy to her performances, but, more importantly, she was a comedian whose joy always showed through her mask, and it endeared her to her audiences and fellow performers alike.

On the 25th anniversary of her death from ovarian cancer in 1989, here is Gilda as Roseanne Roseannadanna giving a commencement speech at Columbia University in 1980…

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Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive most of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Counter Culture posts.

Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video is a film from 1979 written, directed and hosted by Michael O’Donoghue. O’Donoghue was a writer and a featured player during Saturday Night Live’s first seasons and this flick features appearances by many of the original Not Ready for Primetime Players including Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Gilda Radner.

The film is a satire that is loosely hung on the original Mondo Cane travelogue film that sought to shock viewers by displaying bizarre human customs from around the world. After a lengthy warning, an oddball title sequence and an extended intro that features a mini-documentary about a cat swimming class Amsterdam, Mr. Mike’s zany ride really starts rolling. The film’s Wiki page points out some of the oddest bits:

The film is largely plotless; a series of vignettes linked together by interstitial pieces featuring Mr. Mike discussing how upsetting and odd the sequences were. He introduces some of the pieces via voice-over, and some open with no introduction.
Sequences include:

Aykroyd displaying his webbed toes which he prodded with a screwdriver to prove they were not make-up.
A church that worships Jack Lord as the one true god (also featuring Dan Aykroyd.)
A French restaurant that prides itself on how poorly it treats American patrons.
“Dream Sequence”, a series of surreal film pieces bracketed by large light-up signs reading “Dream Sequence” and “End Dream Sequence” that tracked towards and away from the camera. One of these was merely performance footage of Klaus Nomi, while another featured home movie footage shot by Emily Prager intercut with stop-motion animation.

If you are an SNL nut, you’ll love this. If you’re not into the show, watch Mr. Mike’s flick for the Sid Vicious cameo and for Laserbra 2000.

Mr. Mike’s was made in 1979, beating out the Blues Brothers by a year and qualifying it as the first SNL film spin-off. The flick is really silly – of course – but it demonstrates how much of the original SNL’s surrealistic edge was owed to O’Donoghue.

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Joe