Lazy Sunday

"Lazy Sunday" is a song and short video by American comedy troupe The Lonely Island, released on December 17, 2005, broadcast on Saturday Night Live as the second Digital Short. Primarily performed by Andy Samberg and fellow cast member Chris Parnell, the song and accompanying music video follow the two comedians as they eat cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery, buy snacks at a convenience store, and smuggle the food into a Sunday afternoon matinee of The Chronicles of Narnia.

The song was written by Samberg and Parnell, as well as Lonely Island members Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, in one night. They recorded the following night in the comedy troupe's office and shot the music video around Manhattan two days later using a borrowed camera. After being quickly mixed and edited by Schaffer, the short was approved for broadcast on the next evening's telecast of Saturday Night Live by producer Lorne Michaels.

Although the writers initially worried the studio audience would respond to the short negatively, the video received a positive reception and enjoyed Internet stardom overnight, with multiple bootleg copies surfacing on video-sharing website YouTube, catapulting the awareness of the then-fledgling website.^[1] The song and video brought forth positive critical reception, with many hailing it as a revival for the stagnant series. In retrospect, commentators have named "Lazy Sunday" as one of the best Saturday Night Live moments of the 2000s.

Background

The track "Lazy Sunday" and its accompanying music video follow the two cast members (Parnell and Samberg), who adopt the brash personas of hardcore rappers. The song follows their quest to achieve their "ultimate goal" of attending a matinee of the fantasy film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The lyrics involve subjects that are "anything but hardcore," such as eating cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery, searching for travel directions on MapQuest and buying tickets with $10 bills. Samberg described the lyrics as "two guys rapping about very lame, sensitive stuff."^[2]

Schaffer and Taccone had been on the writing staff for nearly three months, yet to this point they had only two live sketches that survived the dress rehearsal process and actually made it on air.^[2]

Recording and production

The song was recorded in one night on Taccone's laptop in the offices of Saturday Night Live in the GE Building.

Parnell, Samberg, Schaffer, and Taccone wrote "Lazy Sunday" on the evening of December 12, 2005. They recorded the following night in the office The Lonely Island occupied together using a laptop Taccone bought on Craigslist.^[2] While colleagues were rehearsing and rewriting that Saturday's show, the group spent the morning of December 15 shooting their video with a borrowed camera. The video used the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Chelsea to stand in for a multiplex cinema and Taccone's girlfriend's sister to play a convenience-store clerk.^[2] Schaffer spent the entire next night (into the morning) editing the video and working with technicians to bring it up to broadcast standards. In the moments preceding the show's live performance and broadcast, the team learned from Michaels that "Lazy Sunday" would be shown on that night's show.^[2] The three comedians were very worried about how the video would be received by the studio audience.^[3]

Release

The short had its premiere on the December 17, 2005 episode of Saturday Night Live and received a positive response. "It played really well, and we were just super happy about that," said Samberg.^[3] The video aired during the actor's first season on the show,^{[ 1]} when he and the comedy troupe were little known to even Saturday Night Live's most devout fans;^[4] Samberg reported that the video greatly increased his recognizability "overnight". "It captures a certain scrappiness about the show. There's an unpolished realness to it that I think people can instantly relate to," said Saturday Night Live veteran Amy Poehler.^[3] By the following morning, the video was a national cultural sensation. Schaffer and Taccone also were contacted by friends who heard the track played on radio stations and in bars. "Lazy Sunday" inspired a line of T-shirts, released during the initial boom of popularity in the weeks after its release.^[2]

The short was initially available after its broadcast through the iTunes Store (then known as the iTunes Music Store), made free for subscribers.^[5] Additionally, it was posted to several web sites and shared via e-mail. The video was viewed more than five million times on YouTube before NBC Universal asked the site to remove it, along with several other copyrighted NBC video clips, in February 2006.^[6] NBC later placed the short on its SNL site and Hulu.

Reception

Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell in the "Lazy Sunday" Digital Short

Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "the hallowed genre of 'white dudes rapping about mundane stuff' reached new heights of hilarity with Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell's 2005 ode to an afternoon viewing of The Chronic—what!—cles of Narnia."^[7]

Sequel

On May 19, 2012, Samberg and Parnell collaborated on "Lazy Sunday 2", which starts off similarly to the first one, with more modern references such as Siri, and seeing Sister Act on Broadway instead of Narnia. In the break between verses, the song is dubstep instead of the regular instrumental like in the original. However, in the middle of a song, Samberg and Parnell transform the song into a darker dubstep mafioso rap song.

Cultural impact

Thanks to "Lazy Sunday"'s initial iTunes success, Apple announced they had licensed several archived Saturday Night Live sketches to offer for download in January 2006.^[5] The success of "Lazy Sunday" encouraged Michaels to trust the troupe more and push their material onto the show.^[2] The viral success of the video is widely credited as having been the tipping-point for YouTube's success,^[8] as it spawned dozens of response videos.^[9] These included a West Coast response by actor Mark Feuerstein, an English response by comedian Sam Baron, an Australian response about lawn bowls, as well as Lazy Muncie (which defended the honor of the Midwest) and Lazy Ramadi by two US Army SSGs based in Ramadi, Iraq.

In "The Merger", an episode of the television series The Office, Michael Scott makes an orientation film called "Lazy Scranton" for the Stamford employees who were transferred to Scranton. Starring Michael and Dwight, the video uses the same music, rap style, and camera effects used in the "Lazy Sunday" video.

In the feature film Epic Movie, the character Captain Jack Swallows (a reference to Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise) breaks out in a rap called "Lazy Pirate Day"; the song is reminiscent of "Lazy Sunday" both visually and musically. Swallows is played by Darrell Hammond, a long-time performer on Saturday Night Live.

See also

• SNL Digital Shorts

References

• The Lonely Island
• "The Narnia Rap, Deconstructed", Slate.com, 27 December 2005
• "SNL Narnia-Rap Skit: Better Than Actual Rap?", Village Voice, 20 December 2005
• "The Chronicles of Narnia Rap: It Won't Save Saturday Night Live, But It Could Save Hip Hop", Slate.com, 23 December 2005
• "Video shoots 'SNL' rookie into the show's spotlight", New York Daily News, 24 December 2005
• "Nerds in the Hood, Stars on the Web", The New York Times, 27 December 2005
• "NBC Uni to sites: Clip the clips", Hollywood Reporter, 18 February 2006
• "A Video Clip Goes Viral, and a TV Network Wants to Control It", The New York Times, 20 February 2006

External links

• "Lazy Sunday" video on The Lonely Island official site
• "Lazy Sunday" on NBC
• "Lazy Sunday" at SNL Transcripts
• Full lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics