I'm Going to Watch all 1000 Episodes of Saturday Night Live So I Can Write Between Two to Seven Books About The Show For its 50th Birthday

That seems a little extreme, doesn't it? Maybe I should re-consider this idea. It's a little ambitous

As my readers are well aware, the long-running live sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live is one of my many obsessions. 

For as long as I have been alive Saturday Night Live has been on the air. We’re damn near the same age; Lorne Michaels’ venerable comic institution debuted on October 11th, 1975.

I was born on April 24th, when the Not Ready For Prime Time players welcomed host Raquel Welch and musical guests Phoebe Snow and John Sebastian. 

I grew up in the shadow of the original cast, those endlessly mythologized comic geniuses who changed comedy and pop culture forever while high off their ass on weed and cocaine and still in their rebellious twenties. 

I was fortunate to come of age comedically in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Saturday Night Live had one of its best casts, if not its best cast. Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Tim Meadows, Kevin Nealon, Chris Rock, Jon Lovitz, Victoria Jackson and Dennis Miller were among the ringers in front of the camera, while the writing staffs included Bob Odenkirk, Conan O’Brien, Jack Handey, Robert Smigel, King of the Hill co-creator Greg Daniels, Franken & Davis, Jim Downey and George Meyer. 

I’ve written extensively about Saturday Night Live here and elsewhere, and in my most recent book, The Joy of Trash, which climaxes with my trip to Old Joliet Prison for the first, and possibly only, Blues Brothers Convention. 

I’ve written up three seasons of Saturday Night Live for My World of Flops, which debuted, incidentally, with a mortified look back at Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

I most recently wrote up some of the most notorious hosts and episodes for My World of Flops, including notorious fiascos involving Louise Lasser, Milton Berle, Frank Zappa, Steven Seagal and Martin Lawrence. 

I had a lot of fun writing those pieces and they got a good response from readers so I thought that it would be a good idea to write an entire book about those wonderful, horrible times when everything goes Pete Tong and the smooth running comedy machine that is Saturday Night Live begins to sputter and malfunction, currently titled We Have a Terrible Show For You Tonight: The 50 Worst and Weirdest Episodes From Fifty Years of Saturday Night Live. 

I thought that I should watch every episode to determine, definitively, which are the worst. That’s something like ONE THOUSAND EPISODES, or it will be by the time I’m done.

That’s a lot, particularly considering that Saturday Night Live isn’t just the longest show on American television, as well as one of the longest running: Saturday Night Live is THREE TIMES as long as pretty much every other comedy on TV. 

That is an ENORMOUS time investment. I am an autistic, financially strapped husband and father with ADHD who operates several small businesses more less by myself so I need to make the most of my time. 

So I decided that if I’m going to watch EVERY EPISODE OF SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE I might as well write a companion book about the 50 best episodes entitled We’ve Got a Great Show For You Tonight: The 50 Best Episodes From 50 Years of Saturday Night Live. 

But that, somehow, was still not big enough. If I’m going to watch 1000 or so 90 minute long episodes of a sketch comedy show I might as well get something out of each episode. 

So I am going to write blurbs between 300 to 700 words on each episode of Saturday Night Live. By the end of my journey I won’t just have enough for AN additional book; I’ll have enough for FIVE additional books chronicling each decade: from 1975 to 1985, from 1985 to 1995, from 1995 to 2005, from 2005 to 2015 and finally from 2015 to 2025. 

If we hit certain targets I’ll publish one of these decade-encapsulating books. If we make it to 25,000, we’ll do Every Episode Ever: Saturday Night Live 1975 to 1985. 35,000 will lead to Every Episode Ever: Saturday Night Live: 1985 to 1995, 45,000 will result in Every Episode Ever: Saturday Night Live: 1995 to 2005, 55,000 will bring Every Episode Ever: Saturday Night Live from 2005 to 2015 and finally 65,000 will unleash Every Episode Ever: Saturday Night Live: 2015 to 2025 upon an unsuspecting world. Here’s what it looks like in graphic form:

You can read these blurbs by pre-ordering the book through Indiegogo or by subscribing to my new Every Episode Ever account at Buttondown. They’re like Substack but they don’t support Nazis and they’re still a plucky underdog affair. 

Only about 75 percent of my audience is American. About 10 percent of my readership is Canadian and 10 percent is from Great Britain. The remaining five percent is from other countries. 

I can’t send books internationally because it is prohibitively expensive and I don’t want to lose money selling books or charge readers excessive prices. 

That’s why I’m encouraging international readers to pre-order the PDF or sign up for the Every Episode Ever newsletter. 

I’m charging more for the PDFs than before but eighteen dollars isn’t too much for literally ONE THOUSAND EXCLUSIVE PIECES delivered straight to your inbox every morning. 

Here’s a link to the Indiegogo campaign: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/celebrate-saturday-night-live-s-best-worst/x/14797497#/

Saturday Night Live has been on the air for so long that I can run daily pieces on it and not run out of new pieces for THREE LONG YEARS. 

This is an insane amount of work but the timing is perfect. SNL turns 50 on October 11th of next year. That gives me about twenty months to whip these babies into shape so that they can be released on the show’s fiftieth birthday. 

Publishing on October 11th would be the ideal time to launch a book for the holiday season. It’s not too early or too late. I hope to make enough money from the Indiegogo campaign to hire a publicist who can effectively pitch me to the media as an expert on comedy and the perfect person to interview about Saturday Night Live’s big birthday. 

That’s where you come in. In order to make this crazy scheme a reality I am going to need a lot of money and a lot of help of the emotional variety. I want this project to make sense financially and not put me in a deep, dark, seemingly bottomless hole the way other books have. 

I had a fairly successful crowd-funding campaign for The Fractured Mirror, for example, but after Kickstarter and Felipe got their cut and all the expenses are factored in I had about a four thousand dollar profit to last me the two long years that The Fractured Mirror represented about a third or my overall work. 

That’s why I need to raise twice as much money for this project. It certainly can’t hurt that this isn’t for just one book but rather anywhere between two and seven. 

I also want you to go on this journey with me. Read the blurbs every day. Be an active commenter on my Buttondown newsletter or the Indiegogo campaign for the books. 

Watch along with me! When I figure out how, I’ll do watch-alongs for this project. I have to take this ride from the start to the end but YOU have the freedom to hop on and off whenever you’d like. 

The great thing about this project is that it’s perfect for people who love Saturday Night Live, people who hate it and people who have complicated feelings about it. Hate Saturday Night Live? I’m literally writing a hilarious book about its worst episodes. Love it? Great, I’m also writing about its best moments as well. Have complicated feelings about Saturday Night Live? Great, so do I! Let’s work through those feelings online together over the course of the next few years.

I see this as analogous to The Weird Accordion to Al, my massive guide to “Weird Al” Yankovic’s life’s work. I will be using an exhaustive exploration of an American comic institution as a way of exploring five decades of American comedy, television, movies, politics, music and technology through the parodies and pastiches of Saturday Night Live. 

Even more than with Yankovic, Saturday Night Live touches just about everything in pop culture. Forget six degrees of separation. There’s about one degree of separation from Saturday Night Live and just about everything else in entertainment. 

It’s no exaggeration to say that twenty percent of big comedy stars of the past half century have a very direct connection to the show. 

This is going to be crazy! And fun! But I need your help to make this crazy dream an insane reality. 

Check out the Indiegogo campaign for the above books here

Subscribe to the EveryEpisodeEver newsletter here

Check out my Substack here 

Did you enjoy this article? Then consider becoming a patron here 

AND you can buy my books, signed, from me, at the site’s shop here