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Also, they do a lot of voices!
The Birth of Hans and Franz
Kevin Nealon:It was like any other sketch.
You pitch it in Lornes office.
We established an outline, and we were just kind of riffing on it and cracking up.
We could have done it all night, right, Dana?
Dana Carvey:We would do it for hours.
Smigel would come in later on and riff with us.
Did it kill at first read-through?
Robert Smigel:It got on the show.
Lorne gave it a shot, but he put it on at the very end of the show.
I remember that distinctly.
DC:The gap teeth.
The wigs were great.
The costume was great.
We did have a lot going for us, but it didnt land that hard.
KN:Your Hans slowly became almost a little effeminate.
RS:He became a dandy.
DC:[As Hans] Yah!
How can you stand it when you see our muscles and you dont have muscles?
Sometimes I get bored and extrapolate things.
I was probably showboating a bit, as I do.
It was a great back-and-forth.
I started doing the cocky little guy later on because of that.
DC:I thought they had muscles.
That was my internal logic, but it could have gone either way.
KN:I dont think they did.
DC:Thats amazing.
KN:I didnt think so, because they couldnt pick anything up.
They werent strong, and they were hiding.
Its just like they were characters.
Thats my take on it.
Why Read theHans & FranzMovie Now?
KN:We wanted to get the script out there.
Then youve gotta sell it, and then youve gotta get a distributor and cast it.
Theres a lot of reasons to not make it, and maybe only one propelling reason to make it.
He would have been hysterical in it.
Id like to go on Weekend Update now with Kevin and say something about 2023.
[As Hans] You never do recurring characters!
You just sit on Update!
You dont even have a catchphrase!
We have more than it’s possible for you to even count!
Theyre still funny, because theyll never let the flag touch the ground.
KN:It would have been a really funny movie.
They were written in a hotel down in Santa Monica, room 1701.
I remember I had just gotten a new laptop, and Robert liked to do the typing.
Im sitting there on the couch watching TV and thinking,This guy is killing my computer!
KN:This is the opposite of that.
I was listening to it thinking,Thats funny.
I forgot about that joke.
RS:Theres very little that I was like, Oh, well, we wouldnt do that now.
But overwhelmingly, it was just this joyous discovery of something that we uncovered that wed practically forgotten about.
It would have been fun to see those scenes mounted.
Theres some fabulous set pieces in that.
RS:And the songs were really, really silly.
It was very classic theatrical Broadway kind of stuff.
like a Whistle While You Work Disney thing.
Weve got to meet Stallone!
Heres a movie idea!
Arnold goes, Guys, guys, youve got to play it cool.
Theres a way to do Hollywood.
Theres a five-step plan.
First, glom on to a celebrity!
Second, hold on to dear life while that celebrity visits other people!
Then at one point he was going to go, like, Play it cool!
and then his pecs were going to go boom boom, boom boom.
Like in those old movies.
Thats how I got started.
Andy Kaufman would hang out there.
I loved everything he did.
He was so unique and so absurd.
I always wanted to talk to him, but I was afraid.
One day he was standing out in front of the Improv, and he was leaning against the wall.
I knew that he was into TM, Transcendental Meditation.
So I went up to him and I said, Andy, what can you tell me about TM?
Im really thinking about getting into it.
I was not really even listening to him, I was just looking at the moles on his face.
I didnt care about meditation!
DC:When I read forSpinal Tap, I was very nervous and young.
I was auditioning to be the drummer.
I came in and it was Christopher Guest, Rob Reiner, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean.
As if they were the Marx brothers, they all immediately go, All right!
and left the room.
And I just sat there and waited a little bit.
Then they knocked, came in, and said, You feel better now?
But they liked me enough to put me in the film.
Me and Billy Crystal played mime waiters in the film.
RS:Yeah, that happened to me with Steve Martin.
I wrote thisHoliday Wishsketch for him my second year at the show when he hosted.
They play it on the Christmas episodes every year.
And he said, Its very rare that I get a monologue written for me like that.
You guys probably all had an encounter with Don Rickles.
Whats the first insult he did for you?
For me it was Hello rabbi!, which I found out he uses on a lot of Jews.
Thats what he used on Jon Stewart.
DC:He looked at me and he went, Do an impression of a gorilla!
You want to be insulted more and more.
KN:Johnny Carson was another one for me.
If you didThe Tonight Show, that validated you as a stand-up.
Were coming back from a commercial and about 30 seconds later, hes laughing.
Thirty seconds later, he laughs, and I see this brown kind of a haze coming out.
He said, This is state-of-the-art comedy, on the air, to Conan.
Im not sure the show would have survived if he hadnt done that, so God bless that man.
These interview excerpts have been edited and condensed.
