Dana Carvey Is Mystified By the Enduring Legacy of ‘Choppin’ Broccoli’
Dana Carvey is old enough to be part of contemporary SNL cast members’ fondest childhood memories. “‘Choppin’ Broccoli’ was one of the first laughs I ever remember getting in my life,” remembered Alex Moffat on the most recent Fly on the Wall podcast. “I was just imitating ‘Choppin’ Broccoli’ to my parents and sisters and them being like, ‘Look at this precocious little ham.’”
Carvey was pretty young himself when he auditioned for Saturday Night Live with the song:
He eventually performed the sketch on his very first Saturday Night Live. (He also debuted the Church Lady that night — not a bad start.) “When I hear other people do it, it makes me laugh,” Carvey told Moffat and co-host David Spade. “But I’m still mystified by how long (the sketch has endured). … It may be the thing I’m referenced to most, in many ways. I don’t know what it is about it.”
Spade had a theory: “It’s so dumb and stupid, Dana.”
In some ways, it is. But “Choppin’ Broccoli” has endured like few others. Carvey performed the sketch in 2014 with a full orchestra:
And it’s found a new life on Gen X TikTok as the soundtrack to life’s most mundane chores:
@higgsboson1376
@beckybusby
@wallawallawendro
@missnikki881
@variantsorceress
The sketch likely wouldn’t have lived as long if Carvey had been allowed to go with one of his original concepts. “We gave him a name, Derek Stevens,” he told Moffat and Spade. “And I wrote an idea that the record company … you know, they have to kill him because they’ll get more record sales.”
Unsurprisingly, that version just “laid there,” and SNL went with dumb and stupid.
But Carvey knew what he was doing. “My dream is always to put stuff out into the future,” he once told Yahoo! Entertainment. “Who cares if something kills this week — what if it could be funny 50 years from now? So, that’s why a lot of people go, ‘Well, he’s just being silly and stupid.’ No, I’m trying to have something be funny in 2060.”
How does a comic do that? “It has to be nonsensical and rhythmical, so it’s timeless,” Carvey said, singing “Choppin’ Broccoli” for the interviewer. “You can’t get that out of your head, can you?”
“That might be your legacy,” the interviewer told Carvey. “The song everybody in America sings while they’re chopping broccoli.”
