So Al Franken is finally going to be a senator. This will give his critics another chance to scoff at the idea of a comedian being elected to public office, but comedy fans know all too well that Franken traded in his humor belt for the suspenders of political activism years ago. Still, this momentous occasion does give us a chance to reflect on his career in comedy.
Did you know that Al Franken used to be funny? It's true. Back in the '70s, '80s and even some of the '90s. Franken and comedy partner Tom Davis got their big break as "apprentice writers" on the first season of "Saturday Night Live," and appeared on the show often in the years that followed. Franken left in 1980 amid a controversy surrounding a sketch he did lambasting NBC's then-president, came back in '85 and then left again a decade later, this time in protest, when he was passed over for the Weekend Update anchor chair -- Norm McDonald got the job instead.
At that time, Franken was best known for playing pastel sweater-clad self-help guru Stuart Smalley, a sketch character whose 1995 feature "Stuart Saves His Family" almost dethroned Julia Sweeney's "It's Pat" as the least successful SNL film adaptation in history. From there he became increasingly focused on political satire (always his specialty as a sketch writer), and gained new fame and acclaim for taking on Bill O'Reilly and Fox News with a series of bestselling books.
But my favorite memory of comedian Al Franken comes from the cameo he and Davis did in the 1983 Eddie Murphy-Dan Aykroyd film "Trading Places." The two play dim-witted baggage handlers on a Philadelphia-bound train tasked with overseeing the transfer of a gorilla. In a movie full of classic performances, it says something that these goofballs stood out in their brief time on-screen.
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Originally Posted by isoS
