Is there a difference between parody and satire? I mean, obviously parody is... Man, I don't know! Well... You know, Jerry, my brother, and Jim Abrahams always have an answer for that. Erm, I... I think of...of... I don't know. You look it up in a dictionary, I'm sure they have a wonderful, better description of what the word is. Parody is essentially a take-off. Parody is like what 'Weird Al' Yankovic does. I think we're done here! LAUGHTER Hold on one second. Satire's hard. Satire is a more serious and intensive form of comic derision. Satire is humour with a moral purpose. Making fun of things so that they might get better. You are trying to make a social point. To me, good satire is... The greatest weapon against assholes and, you know, the world is full of assholes. EXCITING MUSIC MUSIC CONTINUES Subtitles by Ericsson. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Able 2018 This is Captain James T Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. Identify yourself. SNL does parody all the time. Name a cartoon - they trade in it. Lord of the Rings... Name a late night talk show - they trade in it. Why? Because it's a common reference, like we all know the thing they're parodying. Parody is very much taking something that we recognise - a song that everybody knows, a movie that everybody knows. It's a very grand tradition of taking known forms and skewing them just enough to make a comment about them. In Your Show of Shows in the 1950s, they were parodying things that people knew, like the famous kissing scene in From Here To Eternity. Everybody in America had seen that movie. It was something everybody could relate to and then everyone feels like, 'Yes, we're all in this together.' When we did a take-off on Gone With The Wind, the younger audience didn't know the original movie. For those who DID know the movie, it was a double whammy. The gown is gorgeous. Thank you. I saw it in the window and I just couldn't resist it. Parody tends to make me laugh harder, but satire tends to make me go, 'Oooh, that's good!' That's 11 votes for Amy Schumer not hot enough for television. Anybody voting the other way? VOICEOVER: Amy Schumer did a piece about 12 Angry Men. That's a great gem piece of satire. You look at people who just get it. They get what it is and they don't try to make it too big, they don't try to go too broad with it. They just stay a little close to the bone and just twist it a little bit. It's an undisputed fact that a woman's value is mostly determined by her looks. As it should be! The verdict is in. The jury agreed that they would bang you. SHE EXHALES HEAVILY Yes! You're hot enough for basic cable television. Thank you, Your Honour. Thank you so much. You earn the right to be transgressive by being funny, really funny, and then making sure that you're not making fun of the victims. Satire is comedy aimed at the powerful. Is that who I think it is? Yes, that's Adolf Hitler in a home movie! Looks a little like Mel Brooks. In terms of parody and satire, there really is Mel Brooks and there is everybody else. When I was a kid, VHS tapes were invented so we had the Godfather and then we had every Mel Brooks movie and he was just the funniest. I'd like to go back to your television days cos I mean you were in television for something like 20 years writing for Sid Caesar. It was very good for me to be part of the writing staff of the Show of Shows, the Sid Caesar show. You talk about it as though it was a training ground for your film work. Is that how you see it? Comedy University, it really was. Mel Brooks was one of the highest paid comedy writers in the history of show business when he worked for Your Show Of Shows. So, by the time of The Producers, he was one of the most critically acclaimed people in comedy. Josef, you are smoking in the presence of the Fuhrer. I'm sorry, big daddy! The Producers was not the first attempt to parody Hitler. Ernst Lubitch had done it. Heil myself. The Three Stooges did it in a couple of film shorts, but it really was the embodiment of a lot of what Mel Brooks was about. He does have this Hitler obsession. There's only one way to get even. You have to bring him down with ridicule and it's been one of my lifelong jobs has been to make the world laugh at Adolf Hitler. # Means that soon we'll be going... Bullshit. All my films are serious. You examine any one of them, they're serious because they are passionate and they depict human behaviour at given points in the history of humanity. SONG ENDS WITH FLOURISH INTRIGUING, GROOVY MUSIC Mel Brooks grew up loving Westerns... and as he got older, still loved them from his childhood, but you look back on some of them and go, 'Wow, that's really racist!' Some of that stuff is really messed up and that's where Blazing Saddles comes from. Blazing Saddles was very satirical, but it did it by making you shit your pants laughing. HE BREAKS WIND What he manages to do with the high in the low I think is astonishing. You can have one scene where a horse is knocked out with a punch and then deal with race relations about an African-American sheriff. That's pretty heady stuff. As chairman of the welcoming committee, it is my privilege to extend the laurel and hearty handshake to our new... nigger. VOICEOVER: Mel Brooks tells a story about saying to the head of the studio, 'Can I do this?' And the head of the studio saying, 'Well, if you're going to walk up to the bell, you've got to ring it,' and Mel Brooks rings it. You can't make a successful comedy that doesn't say something about the system, about the social structure, about prejudice, about people, about behaviour. Blazing Saddles is all about racial prejudice. It's all about the hypocritical West shitting all over a black sheriff and wanting him dead. MEN EXCLAIM And now for my next impression - Jesse Owens. Seize him! Satire is something that touches the heart of everyone. We can go, 'This is a problem that our society has.' VOICEOVER: Blazing Saddles as comedy as an indictment of racism... They're darker than us! ..and showing its absurdity in this great parody of an American genre. ELECTRIC SURGE Life! Life, do you hear me? There is a certain grammar to those old movies and Mel Brooks stuck to the form of them,... just twisted it a little bit here and there and it's brilliant. You see his love of cinema in all of his parodies. High Anxiety is a satire of all the Hitchcock films and Silent Movie obviously a satire of silent movies and Spaceballs a satire of George Lucas. May the Schwartz be with you! What I love about him is lots of times, people say, 'Oh, that is very funny, but we can't say that.' Mel would go, 'That's very funny. We're going to say that.' SHE GASPS It's good to be the king. The magazine - Mad Magazine. The edition - number one. The date - 1952. In the '40s, there were things that you should never joke about - religion, politics. Things were still sacred. Mad Magazine helped change that. It was very, very influential. It was embraced by the comedy community and it was sort of like a precursor to underground comics in the late '60s. I'd never been exposed to that kind of irreverent humour before. It was sort of like shaking your fist at authority in a very clever and funny way. In case you're not familiar with Mad, it's a magazine of broad satire aimed at practically everything Americans hold dear - sex, success, duty, patriotism, anti-patriotism, pro-war groups, anti-war groups. You name it - in one issue or another, Mad has aimed its blunt instrument at it. I remember when I was a kid begging my father to buy the issue of King Kong Mad Magazine because Network was also parodied and I remember telling my dad, 'Dad, they're doing Network. 'It's called Nutwork and you liked Network,' trying to sell him on it. 'You'll enjoy this,' as if he'd ever read Mad Magazine. Mad Magazine was aggressive to a certain extent, but they always pulled their punches. It was nothing that would get you thrown out of school. Now, National Lampoon put nothing in there that WOULDN'T get you kicked out of school! HE LAUGHS Here was a magazine to hide from your parents... and your wife. It had, like, some nasty pictures in it. These are not magazines you can open in this office now. That's all I can say! HE LAUGHS They are SO politically incorrect. To see people using humour as a weapon in the way that the kids that started National Lampoon did was just... I thought, 'This is great!' It's often the only magazine that a lot of younger hep people today read and why that is... is I think they trust us. Another clue to the success of the magazine was that unlike Mad Magazine, all the artwork was done very intentionally to replicate whatever was being parodied and now there's a big difference from what had been in the counterculture prior to that. The 1970s were a fertile time for humour and you people were bitter, caustic, smutty, dirty, funny and... Drunk? Drunk. And outrageous. The hopes of the '60s had given way to the frustrations of the '70s. The Vietnam War was obviously lost, the civil rights movement had won and the argument was over, but of course it wasn't. The craziness of that period is one of the things that made National Lampoon a success. People needed a laugh. You did a very interesting parody of The Joy of Sex - The Job of Sex. We called the book The Job of Sex and divided it up into Punching In, Downtime Overtime, On The Job Injuries... and Workmen's Compensation. At the National Lampoon, there was certainly an enjoyment of being edgy and shocking. You're listening to the National Lampoon Radio Hour. The National Lampoon Radio Hour was a syndicated radio show written and produced by the National Lampoon, which was the magazine in audio form and that's where I was first exposed to people that went on to much bigger fame - people like Bill Murray. A lot of the Saturday Night Live people started out as National Lampoon people. Let's do 20 face slaps. Gilda and John did this show in this sort of weird space that was under the Time Life Building. NEWS REPORT: They are the cast of the new National Lampoon show, which opens this Friday at the new Palladium Cabaret. And then Lorne Michaels, he came in and poached all these people. Gilda Radner. Gilda. John Belushi. And, er... Laraine Newman. Lorne Michaels pitched SNL to me as a cross between Monty Python and 60 Minutes. He said, 'It's gonna work.' For Outstanding Comedy, Variety or Music Series, NBC's Saturday Night. I'd also like to thank the city of New York for the correct combination of... rejection and alienation which keeps the comedy spirit alive. LAUGHTER HE GASPS When something really revolutionary happens, when you first see it, it should look wrong. I mean, Saturday Night Live when you first saw it, 'What IS this?' Rule number one is if you're going to do parody, you'd better have somebody who can deliver it, both in the writers room and on stage. Hey! Hey! What made Saturday Night Live different was this phenomenon that happened in the '60s which was the youth culture and the youth market. Our show was the first one to really have a voice for a younger generation. Land shark - still the cleverest species of them all! It was the first time that our generation was allowed to do TV and be on TV and write TV... and so we were parodying things The Carol Burnett Show didn't parody. DEMONIC VOICE: Your momma eats kitty litter! Nobody talks about my momma! I got put in charge of producing the commercial parodies because I had worked in advertising. You have to establish the product, say why people need it and also allow for the comedy. I have a certain fondness for Royal Deluxe II where the rabbi circumcises a baby in the back seat of a car to show how smooth the ride of the car is. Commercial parodies became a kind of trademark of Saturday Night Live. SEDUCTIVE FEMALE VOICE: Hey, You! Just one whiff... does the trick. HE MOUTHS Some of their parodies were really speaking to the times WHISPERS BREATHILY: Hey, You! In the sexual awakening of the '60s and '70s, there was a connection to reality. Hey, You! - for that special someone you never expect to see again. When you have 18 minutes of commercials in your time period, then to not comment on commercials would be ridiculous. Who am I? Why am I here? When I'm done rolling up this booger, should I eat it or throw it out the window? The commercial parodies endure because they reflected not only the culture of the time... Super Colon Blow? ..but also the way that Madison Avenue tried to sell things. We're all out of Cracklin' Oat Flakes. Now about New Cracklin' Oat Flakes, now with ecstasy? We get to talk back to these corporate monoliths. Everywhere we go, there's billboards. Every time we turn on the TV, there's commercials and it's the one time SNL has really figured it out where you can strike back. PNEUMATIC DRILLING I can't hear you, dude! What? Piece of crap! Hey, I think that phone you bought me is busted. TRAILER VOICEOVER: Never again will one man and one woman defy such incredible odds. Together, no-one could stop them. I don't think parody and satire is important. But it's important to me because, you know, I've done it a lot. Kentucky Fried Movie started with Kentucky Fried Theater. We did these sketches in 1971 in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1970, moved the show to LA. DIRECTOR: Quiet, please! Hold still. We wanted to make that show into a movie. Poisonous fish. Poisonous fish. Kentucky Fried Movie was just doing individual bits without a story. I'm Not Wearing Any Pants - film at 11. What we were trying to do with Kentucky Fried Movie was get into the movie business! There's a certain ZAZ sense of humour, whatever that is. For me, the most fun was making Dave and Jim laugh. We each trusted the other two as arbiters of whether our ideas were funny or not. Something about the three of us, we had a common vision. Sound your alarm bell, now! SIREN WAILS All right, now, everybody, get in crash positions. Airplane had that anarchic, 'anything can happen' quality. That to me is a seminal movie. That to me is a movie that changed my perspective on comedy. OK, boys. Let's get some pictures. These brilliant people had collected 100,000 of the funniest jokes and crammed them into a movie and they were so relentlessly funny. What the hell's going on up there? Every moment of it, it transports you to the land of magic mushrooms. If you're wondering what magic mushrooms feels like, it feels like you ARE Airplane. Was the idea for this motion picture a well-planned vehicle or more accidental in nature? We were all watching a movie on late night television called Zero Hour! and that actually was lucky because it was essentially at least a very similar plot to what Airplane is. We have never found a movie since that was as perfect for satire parody. It worked great. Not a joke in the whole thing, but we thought it was hilarious. You'd better tell the captain. We've got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital. What do you think it is? Well, I can't be sure yet. But I know it's serious enough to land at the nearest city with hospital facilities. Better tell the captain I want to speak with him. Certainly. It's really film noir acting. Please help me. VOICEOVER: Not only does it fit the style of acting that we love, but also because we had the film to look at, there were a lot of shots that we just took. We said, 'Hey, this is great!' We wanted to go shot for shot so it really would look like an old movie. In fact, scene for scene, we just copied it. Because of my mistake, six men didn't returns from that raid. Because of my mistake, six men didn't return from that raid. We have visitors. Hello! Hi! We have a visitor. Hello! Hi! Basically, what we do is just set up familiar situations and then we reverse the audience's expectation of the outcome. Would you like to have it? Thank you! Thanks a lot! Sure. You ever been in a cockpit before? No, sir, I've never been up in a plane before. You ever seen a grown man naked? The acting style and the committing to the absolutely serious dramatic portrayal of the roles is the essence of the film and why we insisted on directing it. You've got to tell the captain we've got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital. A hospital? What is it? It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now. Tell the captain I must speak to him. Certainly. Leslie was such a character actor, unknown at the time. I'm amazed that he could have done all those serious movies all those years cos he really is a closet comedian and... Well, out of the closet after we got through with him. When I see five weirdos dressed in togas stabbing a guy in the middle of the park in full view of 100 people, I shoot the bastards. That's my policy. That's why a Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar, you moron! Even the most crazy, zany comedy still needs a good story. By the time we got to the Naked Gun, we knew how to do the plot and the character. Everywhere I look, something reminds me of her. We love doing visual puns. You just have to stay ahead of the audience. A lot of people see the joke developing. It's always a contest to beat them to the punch. Bingo! The audience can't be expecting it, otherwise, I mean, it won't be funny. Nice beaver! Thank you. I just had it stuffed. Let me help you with that. There are certain kinds of jokes that the sexual content is in the eye of the beholder. We're just talking about this stuffed beaver up there. We don't mean anything sexual, you know! And so that's your fault if you think that. The Zucker brothers have proved this time and again - it's somehow not as funny to have some kind of goofy guy being goofy, but it works when you have serious people doing outrageous things. If we had anything to do with all the great satires that came after us, I'm thrilled if we encouraged people. That smells like pure gasoline. They've done studies, you know. 60% of the time, it works every time. That doesn't make sense. Maybe people said, 'Oh, gee, I could do that. 'That doesn't look that difficult!' Oh, behave! HE CHUCKLES Yeah! YEAH, BABY! Is there a difference between parody and satire? I mean, obviously parody is... Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to reaffirm that the art of ventriloquism is not dead. Would you welcome the very funny Mr Albert Brooks? APPLAUSE I was around a lot of comedians in my group, with Billy Crystal or Robin Williams. Whenever Albert was in a group, everybody recognised that there was nobody like that. It was like a challenge dance - you just step back and let him go. Well, good evening, everybody. Yes, hello, everybody. I'm Dave. And I'm Danny! When you see early Albert Brooks footage, he's often parodying old-school show business. That's what he knew. His father was a comedian. His brother is a comedian. Albert was very meta and all of his stuff was about the conventions of the trade. Danny and Dave was about the lameness of ventriloquism. You know, Danny, I'm a little nervous being here on television and everything. Well, why don't you have a cigarette? That always comes you down. Great. There was content, there was funniness, but the target of the comedy was the standard forms of show business. Hello, I'm Albert Brooks and I'm speaking to you... on behalf of the Famous School For Comedians. One of the first things I ever saw him do was the School for Comedians. Let's see how these kids are doing. He was walking past the spit-take class. I've just walked into the room. Now, start to drink. Good. Now, I speak. Guess what? I just heard from the bank and not only don't you have any money, but your sister is dead! That was funny. What was special about him was his singular vision, his style. This was alternative comedy, for sure. During the next hour, you will see the first in a series of programmes entitled An American Family. Albert have been watching An American Family, which was the first reality show. It was on PBS. They spent a year filming a real family, the 'Loud' family. You got all the boys, I got all the girls. I think you can't beat it. Both of us shared the sense that there was a lie at the heart of this which is that the camera can be there without changing things. When we did Real Life, the movie together, the underlying notion was to poke fun at that idea. Welcome home! Aloha! Look at this now! Albert Brooks plays himself a film-maker and I play the head of this American family that has been chosen to be filmed for a year. Honey, do you think it's safe for you to be eating with your heating pad in your lap? I have terrible cramps. I am bleeding profusely and I want to vomit on the table. HE LAUGHS What are you doing? I just want to let them know that this is not the way we usually talk, especially at the dinner table. Real Life is about reality TV... and this was years before it even existed. So Albert Brooks is dealing on a whole different level, whereas with Spinal Tap, you're making fun of a group of idiots who are likable but not the smartest people in the world. Hi, I'm Rob Reiner. I've just directed my first feature film for Embassy Pictures. It's called Spinal Tap. It's a comedy about a British rock and roll band. Spinal Tap is a mockumentary. It was a mock documentary. Dialogue wasn't written, it was improvised, but it was shot like a documentary. During the flower-people period, who was your drummer? It was tragic, really. He exploded on stage. Just like that. He just went up. He just was, like, a flash of green light... and that was it. Nothing was left. You know, dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It's just not really widely reported yet. BAND PLAYS ROCK MUSIC Movies kept getting rock and roll wrong and so the real drive of the project was,... 'It's not that hard. Let's get it right.' # My baby fits me like a flesh tuxedo # I'd like to sink her with my pink torpedo # Big bottom... # It helps to really like something enough to pay close attention to it so then when the time comes to parodise it, it comes naturally. It's not 'Parodise Lost'. Ooh! That's not bad. Is that in the film? No, it'll be in the sequel. How much more black could this be? And the answer is... none - none more black. Is that good? Let's rock and roll! We made this movie and the guy who was shooting it, I hired him because he had shot all these rock-and-roll documentaries and I thought, 'He'll be perfect.' Hello, Cleveland! Hello, Cleveland! And he's watching this and he says, 'What's funny about this? 'This isn't funny. This is exactly what goes on.' But to me that was a great compliment because it was saying we're capturing real life, what people actually experience in that rock-and-roll world and that to me is the best comedy - the comedy that connects with real experience. People say, 'Oh, this is so new.' And then you say, 'Well, no, actually you could take that back 'to Woody Allen's Take The Money And Run.' Woody Allen's Zelig, The Rutles with Eric Idle was a mockumentary that was a precursor, but Spinal Tap was the one that really became a huge critical success. Now, mockumentary is a style... that has infiltrated not just cinema but television, that herky-jerky camera motion that we see on Modern Family or The Office. Christopher Guest's whole trajectory has been mockumentary. Hey, Judge. Look at me! His stuff is very specific. It's in the crate. Where is it? It's in the crate! The fact that it was improvised, that became a style of storytelling. # Midnight at the Oasis... # And any time that you introduce something that is effective and nothing like everything else... Really good. ..that's where you get something that's revolutionary. # Like a surgeon # Cutting for the very first time... # I've just always thought that rock and roll should be fun, which is why it's healthy for me to sometimes prick the bubble of pretentiousness that sometimes pervades the industry. # Baby, I love Rocky Road # So won't you go and buy half a gallon, baby # I love Rocky Road # So have another triple scoop with me... # I give myself several guidelines and parameters when I'm writing my parody songs. It needs to be funny, even if people aren't familiar with the original source material. But I'd say probably 90% of the time, I'm just dealing with what is a very current, popular mainstream song and how can I somehow make that strange? # Just eat it # Eat it # Open up your mouth and feed it # Have some more yoghurt # Have some more Spam # It doesn't matter # If it's fresh or canned # Just eat it... # NEWS REPORT: Eat It is Weird Al's most successful parody to date. As you can see, it is a video as well as a musical parody of Michael Jackson's work. I did a parody of every single shot in that video because people were so familiar with it and it was like they knew every little detail so all I had to do was just tweak everything just a little bit and it became fine. # We been spending most our lives living in an Amish paradise... # Weird Al Yankovic, when he does a parody or a satire of a song, it's a song that he has to admit on one level, 'That is a good song, 'but I can have some fun with it.' When he did the song Perform This Way, he asked Lady Gaga and she said, 'That song is very important, I'd really rather you not, and her fans said 'You let Weird Al do that' like they got her to say 'Oh, sorry. I didn't know. Never mind. Go ahead.' # I'm sure my critics will say it's a grotesque display # Well, they can bite me, baby, I perform this way # I might be wearing Swiss cheese or maybe covered with bees # It doesn't mean I'm crazy, I perform this way... # What I like about my job is I am a pop culture Cuisinart. I get all this input from everywhere and I mix it all up, then I spew it out. I'm providing cultural commentary and hopefully it's amusing to people. # I'm really not insane, I just perform this way-hey. # ENERGETIC MUSIC That's dandy. Ho-ho, that's rich, I'll say. Now, how about some colours, stupid? Hey! My big influence when I was a kid was Warner Brothers cartoons. The timing on those is brilliant. They were parodying things that I didn't understand. But it was still really funny. Heil Hitler. One of the things that animation has that gives it certain advantages is that on the surface it has the appearance of being very safe, and so animators can be more satirical. It just feels a little bit more benign because it's animated. Well, Dave, I have a hilarious new movie coming out on HBO next month. It's all about 9/11. The movie is called September 11th - Two Thousand Fun. AUDIENCE GASPS Anybody that's going to do parody or satire can say so many things, you could go so many places. Just the practicality of not having to build these things in the real world and having an actor do them. You can have Homer roll out the door, roll down the hill, and roll back into the car as it then plummets off the cliff. HOMER SCREAMS The Simpsons can cram 650 pop culture references quietly into an episode, and you either pick it up or you don't. But it's there. So, they're just these little parody Easter eggs all over the place. The Simpsons, to pretty much all comedy writers, they're the cathedral that you walk 800 miles to go see. I mean, they are definitive. I always had a little bit of a cartoon sensibility. And then, lo and behold, all these years later I get a job at The Simpsons. There was an episode when I worked there that was a Cape Fear parody. It was all about Sideshow Bob coming to get his revenge against Bart. What's great is that you don't need to have seen Cape Fear. The beauty of the Simpsons is you don't need to know the reference in order to still think that something funny is happening. # Doodoo doot doo, dadada da, heydy heydy heydy, how's it going, guys? # When South Park happened, the vessel of animation, it could look like shit, it could look like your kid did it. The car that gets you there don't matter, it's what's inside the car, it's the content that's travelling. Ramadan! Hey, look, an infidel. Oh, pita kebab! Don't let the fact that it's animated, and don't let the fact that it's about a bunch of children fool you. It is about satire. This year we're taking the boys on a weekend boat trip to discuss Jesus's role as a navigator of our lives. A Catholic boat trip? # The Catholic boat # It's gonna be heading on out today... # HE SCREAMS People who hate religion have, like, really glommed onto our show too, cos we make fun of a lot of religion, we've made fun of everything. I have, in my possession, an ancient book written on gold plates that tells of Jesus Christ's second coming. Here, in America. In America? Really. That sounds kind of... # Dum dum dum dum dum. # Those South Park guys clearly just live in a bunker or they're sociopaths. They do not care who they offend. They burn every bridge, and they have absolutely no fear. The category is People Who Annoy You. Audience, keep quiet. I know it, but I don't think I should say it. Five seconds, Mr Marsh. All right, I, I'd like to solve the puzzle. Niggers! INCORRECT BUZZER Huh? I don't think we've ever come up with something and been like, 'Oh, that's really going too far,' because you can't do that. The groups that come and get angry at us, once we start saying, 'OK, 'we'd better not make fun of them any more,' then all of a sudden none of it's OK. It either has to all be OK, or none of it's OK. There is just one thing you didn't count on. That more people besides me hate Family Guy. Yeah. Tonight, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. He's an equal opportunity offender. Christians. Gays. Sarah Palin. You name it. Nothing, no-one off limits. I live in a crummy neighbourhood. The Bradys? Oh, hell, yeah. They got robbers, thugs, drug dealers, you name it. You folks want some pancakes? No, thank you. See that's the worst we've got is, uh, Jemima's Witnesses. What is the line for you? Is there a line? The JFK Pez dispenser, I wish we'd never done. Really? Yeah, that was just over the line. Take him out. No! GUNFIRE Check it out. It's John F. Kennedy Pez dispenser. Oh. Good thing I still have my Bobby Kennedy Pez dispenser. Seth MacFarlane pushes the envelope more than I've ever seen anyone else do. Screw this, I just came over to buy some fireworks. It's a little bit hateful, a little bit hurtful, but it's... Oh, my God, it's so fucking funny. Sorry, Wonder Woman, I've got three kings. Now, let's see your pair. SHE SIGHS All right! Robin, what are you looking at me for? Look at her. Animation allows you to do whatever you want. It's probably the freest form for your imagination there is. Down in front. In that sense it's a comedy writer's dream. If I were 23 again and starting over I would beeline towards animation. You may not be old enough to drive, but if you're a safe passenger you've got a job to do. Gary is checking to make sure that the parking brake is in the proper release position. All clear, Gary? The ability to tell outlandish stories and very small jokes at the same time is yours if you've mastered animation. I'm Hans Solo, captain of the Millennium Falcon and the only actor whose career isn't destroyed by this movie. INTENSE ROCK MUSIC Ewokoniad Sigourneth Juniorstein. Oklahoma State University. Eqqsquizitine Buble-Schwinslow. University of Nebraska. I don't know that the internet has changed comedy itself that much. There's a lot more of it. But still when you look at the individual pieces, it's still comedy. Rushing. It's the way we experience it that's changed. The reason that parody is so enduring and is even stronger now is because we are in this viral Internet culture where most stuff is now watched online in little bits and it's presented in that, 'Oh, you've got to see this, click on this 'and you're not going to believe...' Don't call me bitch, I'm a grown man! God, you're mean. HE SOBS CHILD LAUGHS The idea was everything. The idea was parody. Why are there newspapers all over the place? Political satire, crazy characters, sketches, it was anything that was fun that you wanted to try that a network would never put on. I would like to welcome my first guest, Jessica Cheststain. Jessica Chastain. With Between Two Ferns, you had a programme that, it's a send-up of talk shows. So, it's a satire of talk shows. Real interested in the work you've been doing down in Haiti. Tell us a little bit about that. Well... Is there a Six Flags down there? There's not, no. Um... We can move on. The new media stuff, especially sites that are just for comedy, I think that they're a good thing for the business. Especially Funny Or Die which is great because there is a democratisation there. Hey, dude, you wanna play Madden? The things that succeed on the internet, it's happening organically. If I'm seeing a really hilarious video, it's largely because someone shared it. # It's the chronic-what-cles of Narnia # We love the chronic-what-cles of Narnia... # It all began with this. When a comedy rap video pirated from Saturday Night Live... # Pick up Yahoo Maps to find the dopest route...# the suits at NBC took notice. They didn't like the piracy, but they sure loved the buzz. It spread like wildfire. Six million streams. Baby boomers who grew up with SNL, they stopped watching at a certain point. And if you're going to be on network television for 40 years, you adapt or die. Lonely Island and these digital shorts gave a whole new port of entry for younger viewers who maybe hadn't even seen the show. # He ran for the president of Iran # We ran together to a tropical island... # Digital Shorts are obviously how you made your name. My favourite is Blank In A Box. Blank In A Box. Yeah! That's all we can say in the morning. # One # Cut a hole in a box # Two # Put your junk in that box # Three # Make her open the box # And that's the way you do it # It's my dick in a box. # What they do isn't direct parodies like I'm famous for, but they'll take various memes, if you will, in pop music and they'll make it more ridiculous than it is already. It's kind of a caricature. And we have breaking news. Baby Lakeisha has gone missing. For the next hour we will... What's that? Nobody cares? Moving on. Let's check in with Baby Prudence. Her 14th day home, and she's still safe and sound. and the internet, in regard to the success of our show IS the success of our show. For example, I was stopped one day on the street by a girl and she said to me, 'I've been with you guys since the beginning when you guys were making videos.' She had no idea that we had a television show. Could be worse. Not that bad. Their show was mostly online, their show was mostly YouTube clips. I watched one of their sketches on YouTube. And then at the end Jordan and Keegan come on, and they're basically like, 'Look, we appreciate you watching. 'Would you please watch the broadcast show?' They are, like, begging. That's the way networks make money. That's where the profit is, it's on the network, it's broadcasting. Jay-quellin. VOICEOVER: We didn't know this was going to happen. If you told me that Substitute Teacher was going to have 98 million hits online, I'm like, 'What?' Uh, do you mean Jacqueline? OK. So, that's how it's gonna be. Y'all wanna play. OK, then. I've got my eye on you, Jay-quellin. VOICEOVER: Or that in the aggregate we're approaching a billion hits. This is Key and Peele. A billion? HE IMITATES EXPLOSION Like, what? BRITISH ACCENT: Pack your fucking knives, get out, you're off the show. Sorry, Chef. Because... ..you should be working in the finest restaurant in the world. Thank you, Chef. Just not any world that I live in. One of the things that humour and comedy does is it gets your attention. If it comes in the form of a joke, if it comes in the form of satire, if it has an entertainment value, you know, people will listen to it. Working off of something that's in pop culture is very satisfying, because it gives everyone a sense that we're all in on it. And in a fractured age where people feel very alone, I think a lot of mankind's desire... is to feel like we're together. I know y'all do these parodies on your show. Oh, thank you. Well, no, thank you. No, no. Don't do one of Empire. IMITATES LUCIOUS LYON: I wouldn't...do that. OK. OK. Well, (BLEEP) off. You're (BLEEP) with me, man. What if, we may be there already, but what if, as a nation or as a world... too many of us are spending too much time... parodying and satiring culture? No-one's going to be growing crops. No-one's going to be trucking them into cities. No-one's going to be canning goods. We're all just going to be, 'Look what I just made, I just made this funny thing.' And future aliens will come to this Earth and find our skeletons holding our devices. HE LAUGHS They'll realise that the Romans collapsed because there was lead in the water.