Andy Samberg and the Lonely Island were not the first to produce pre-recorded material for Saturday Night Live. The show has a long tradition of commercial parodies, short films by directors like Albert Brooks and Tom Schiller, and animated work like Robert Smigel’s TV Funhouse sketches. They weren’t even the first to use the “SNL Digital Short” tag. What they did do, was usher SNL into the age of digital online content in a time when it needed to tap into that relevance more than ever. And because they were able to tap into the early rising of the online video tide, as well as produce work prodigiously [...]
Last month, Saturday Night Live hired everyone from the LA-based sketch group Good Neighbor onto the show except for member Nick Rutherford. Good Neighbor's Kyle Mooney and Beck Bennett were hired as featured players, while Dave McCary was brought on as a director, with all of them set to debut on tomorrow night's season premiere. Rutherford, an actor/writer/standup, spoke about the situation publicly for the first time on the latest episode of DJ Douggpound's podcast, The Poundcast.
Rutherford tells his side of the story, explaining that he and Beck Bennett auditioned for Lorne Michaels individually at a showcase in LA this summer. Kyle Mooney had been flown [...]
In 2005, when SNL hired the three members of existing sketch group The Lonely Island — Akiva Schaffer, Andy Samberg, and Jorma Taccone — it was something that the show had never done before. But it sure worked, with the trio creating the SNL Digital Short format that became incredibly popular and injected new life into the show. Now, it looks like they're doing it again with the sketch group Good Neighbor, which consists of Beck Bennett, Kyle Mooney, Nick Rutherford and Dave McCary. In addition to hiring Bennett and Mooney as featured players for the upcoming season, we've learned that SNL has also hired member McCary [...]
In Sketch Artists, Colin Perkins profiles the many sketch comedy groups who produce videos for the internet. Up first: Good Neighbor.
After forming sketch troupe Good Neighbor in college, the members – writer/performers Beck Bennett, Kyle Mooney, and Nick Rutherford, and director/editor Dave McCary – embarked on an ambitious journey.
"When we graduated, we had the idea of going on a cross country grassroots road tour, complete with a Bio-diesel converted bus/camper,” says Rutherford.
“Most of our shows were completely empty,” recalls Mooney. “In Bridgeport, Connecticut our only audience members were this racist liquor store owner we’d met the night prior, and his son. I think they liked us.”
Their [...]
