The Very Animated History of ‘SNL’s ‘TV Funhouse,’ According to Robert Smigel

Entering the Funhouse

Lorne (Michaels) never really wanted me to leave SNL. He doesn’t like it when people leave, but I went to go do Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Then, after I left Conan, they wanted me to come back to SNL and produce just under Lorne, but I never really wanted to do that. The Dana Carvey Show was much more exciting to me at the time because it was brand new. I really like the idea of coming up with new ideas and approaches to sketch comedy, so I did that instead.

The Dana Carvey Show was where “The Ambiguously Gay Duo” debuted. That happened because I wanted to think of things that would never be on SNL at the time — that was ironically the idea. Then that show got canceled, and, over the summer, just daydreaming, I had ideas for different bits like “Fun with Real Audio” and this thing with Michael Jackson as a Yogi Bear kind of character who steals kids the way Yogi stole picnic baskets. 

I called Lorne that summer and said, “I thought of something that I’d like to come back to Saturday Night Live and do.” It was the easiest job I ever got. He was way into it. 

Bringing the Fun(house) to Saturday Nights

I didn’t want to call it “A cartoon by Robert Smigel” like “A Film by Albert Brooks” or “A Film by Gary Weiss,” so I came up with the TV Funhouse concept, which was a tribute to The Archies cartoon show. They did like five variations of Archie cartoons in the 1960s and 1970s, and one was called Archie’s Funhouse. 

I liked the idea that this wasn’t really part of the show — that it was taking over the show for that moment. That’s why we always started with one of those bumpers with the “classy” pose of the host, then there’s this dog tearing away the image. The “Saturday” would stay, and it would reveal TV Funhouse. Then, this little cartoon Lorne came on and chased the dog, saying, “Come back here with my show!”

The first time I watched Lorne watch that intro, I was suddenly like a 10-year-old misbehaving at school again. I laughed so hard, hee-hee-heeing like a little child at my boss watching himself being represented as a silly cartoon. Lorne walked offstage with me after dress rehearsal and asked me, “Do I really sound like that?” I said, “It’s a cartoon. So it’s an exaggeration of how you sound.” 

The first one we put on was “The Ambiguously Gay Duo,” the same one from The Dana Carvey Show, and it went great. Lorne loved it. As a joke he said, “I’m the enemy of creativity. If it was up to me, you would just do 12 of these and that would be fine,” meaning just “Ambiguously Gay Duo.” I ended up doing like five cartoons that first year of Ace and Gary, but I did 13 cartoons overall. “X-Presidents” was a big hit, as was “Fun with Real Audio.” I was inspired to have this new plaything — this new approach to sketch comedy.

Saying Goodbye to the Funhouse

I did it for 11 years and I would have stayed longer, but it was a downtime for SNL. I think, if I’d hung on for one more year, I’d still be there. See, with Will Ferrell and George W. Bush, the show had this upwards arc. Then Will left, and there was no Bush anymore. I thought Will Forte was great, but it wasn’t the same to people there somehow. The show itself was doing fine in that era, but it wasn’t the center of the universe.

They were cutting the budget of the show every year, and in 2007, they made Lorne cut Rachel Dratch and Chris Parnell. It was nothing he wanted to do, but they were insisting on budget cuts. The next year, they came after the cartoons. The cartoons were pretty expensive. They were probably less expensive than the short films they do now, but they were still pretty expensive, especially since we did them fast. It’s not like we were outsourcing them to China or something. They were all done by animators, first in White Plains, then in other parts of New York. 

Unfortunately, they cut it in the middle of the 2007 writers’ strike. Networks always use the writers’ strike to avoid contracts and get rid of people. So that writers’ strike happened, and I was told when the strike ended that they’re not going to have any more cartoons. Lorne got them to agree to do one more cartoon, and that was it.

The reason why I say if I’d hung around for another year that I’d still be there is because, at the beginning of the next season, it was another election with John McCain against Obama. Tina Fey played Sarah Palin, and the internet exploded. That was the next upward swing for the show — not in terms of it getting better than it was at any other time, just in terms of the way everyone was talking about Saturday Night Live in a way that I’d never experienced when I was part of the show. That’s how big Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impression was. 

Later on, I joked to Lorne, “I felt like, the second I stepped out of the building, fireworks went off.”