The ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch Bill Hader wants to delete from history: “One of those awful feelings”
Sketch comedy has always been hit or miss, especially in a live setting, which means that Saturday Night Live has presented its fair share of awful skits during its 50-year stint on the small screen. Bill Hader had a strong track record, all things considered, but even he was capable of the odd egregious misfire.
The actor and comedian earned four Primetime Emmy nominations for writing and performing throughout his eight-year tenure, which numbered upwards of 150 episodes, and several of his creations and recurring skits have gone down in SNL history as some of its most beloved and iconic moments.
Whether it was his impeccable impressions of well-known figures from across the worlds of entertainment and politics, the scene-stealing Stefon, bumbling news reporter Herb Welch, forecasting his own future as the Cat in the Hat, or generally failing to keep it together as one of the cast members most prone to cracking up during a sketch, Hader was a tour-de-force.
When there are so many scenes being written and performed on a weekly basis, the law of averages makes it inevitable that not all of them are going to be winners. Hader discovered that first-hand when he couldn’t do anything to stop the infamous ‘Fart Face’ dying in front of his eyes, which only made it to air because SNL supremo Lorne Michaels was a fan of the execrable shouting match between Hader, Will Forte, and Josh Brolin.
For those fortunate enough to have never seen it, ‘Fart Face’ does exactly what it says on the tin. The trio spent the whole time lobbing the titular insult at each other, and Hader knew it was doomed during rehearsals, which wasn’t enough to prevent the dismal skit from making it to the airwaves.
“We did it at dress. It played to absolute silence,” he recalled to Ted Danson. “I could hear my footfalls. It was one of those awful feelings. You could hear yourself breathing on the stage because it’s just bombing so bad. Lorne Michaels, I don’t know why, took a real shine to it.”
To add insult to injury, ‘Fart Face’ was scheduled right after a rapturously-received ‘Weekend Update’ with Amy Poehler, and Hader knew he was about to ruin everything. “The audience was so hot,” he said. “They were going out of their minds. The whole show up to this point has been just fireworks. And we know we’re gonna blow it.”
In fact, he was so trepidatious, he even compared the feeling in the pit of his stomach to one of the bloodiest, and body count-heavy endings in cinema history: “It was like the end of The Wild Bunch. Like: We’re going to die.” While Brolin did offer some words of encouragement, insisting it was time for he, Hader, and Forte to “shut these fuckers up,” ‘Fart Face’ was a disaster.
Hader would never have done it live if it were up to him. Unfortunately, Michaels called the shots, and he decreed that it was worthy of SNL when it clearly wasn’t.
