The Bob Dylan sketch ‘Saturday Night Live’ had to cut due to legal issues
Timothée Chalamet has been in the news for months now thanks to his portrayal of Bob Dylan in the recent biopic A Complete Unknown. While opinions on how engaging and exciting the movie is vary, there is no escaping the fact that the acting performances were exceptional, as Chalamet seamlessly steps into the role of Bob Dylan.
“The worst thing a film can do is take no risks,” wrote Far Out in their review of the picture, “And Mangold has played it ridiculously safe by using brilliant actors to lift up an otherwise pointless and average story about an artist who cared about nothing but his craft.”
Chalamet’s portrayal of Bob Dylan was so convincing that he has been enlisted by Saturday Night Live not only to appear as the host but also to perform as the musical guest. “I’ve never done this before. I’m having to be SNL’s Host and Musical Guest in the same week,” he said in a promo for the episode, “It’s a lot of work, and I want to focus on the songs. So I brought in some help to cover with all the hosting duties,” said Chalamet before welcoming in his viral lookalikes.
While this might represent the first time someone has performed as the musical guest doing what will likely be an impersonation of Bob Dylan, it’s not the first time people have done impressions of Dylan on the show before. With such a unique way of speaking and mysterious aura, Dylan is an easy man to make fun of, and SNL writers have had fun picking apart his strange allure strand for strand over the decades.
Unfortunately, one Dylan sketch never made it onto screens, though, and this was because of budgetary and legal issues. While SNL has a decent budget attached to it, some songs simply cost too much to show, and the program cannot justify spending the money. It begs the question, how much does a joke cost? There is no definitive answer, but the price got too high when James Austin Johnson pitched an idea.
“One of my most famous ‘almost on the show’ pieces was Andrew Dismukes and I did Bob and Bruce Springsteen standing side by side in the choir on the chorus of ‘We Are the World’. And we’re chit-chatting about our sandwich orders,” said Johnson, discussing the sketch, “I’m really proud of it. It’s one of the hardest we’ve ever laughed writing something, and then it murdered at the table. Bob is like, ‘I got the herbed chicken breast. That sounds good, right? You ever have that herbed chicken breast?’ Then Bruce is like, ‘I got a meatball sub. I’m still waiting on it’.”
The sketch would have seen appearances from several fictionalised versions who perform on ‘We Are The World’ but the legal rights to the song cost too much for the show to justify.
“Then he goes, ‘Bob, don’t look now. Looks like Cyndi Lauper just got her muffaletta’. And then it cuts to Sarah Sherman as Cyndi Lauper getting ready to munch on a muffaletta,” recalled Johnson, “Then we have to sing the chorus. Then Bob and Bruce notice that Hall & Oates got their sandwich. ‘Shit!’ Then we have to sing the chorus again.”
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