Many of us spend our days dreading that we might accidentally email the wrong person about something. But every once in a while a mixup like that can lead to a delightful interaction, as the Lonely Island recently recounted on their podcast.
On the latest episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast, the comedy trio of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone reminisced about the digital shorts they produced for Saturday Night Live in 2008 that starred Kristen Wiig as Virgania Horsen, a quirky entrepreneur selling viewers on her hot air balloon rides and a makeshift Pony Express service. In order to produce the crude digital effects needed to sell the infomercial tone of the shorts, the Lonely Island crew asked the SNL props department for a list of various quirky items. Or at least, they thought that’s who they were emailing.
NBC
“I think about this often because it’s a constant reminder to me of having a really good job in life and feeling really lucky that i get to do really dumb, dumb s—,” Taccone said in a voice note aired on the podcast. “Akiva sent an email to the SNL props department when we were making ‘Virgania Horsen’s.’ I remember it was super-late at night and it was for the next morning… The email was titled ‘Things I Need.’ That was the subject line. And then it was a list of bizarre things like ‘hot air balloon basket (no balloon),’ ‘horse’s head’… some that we did used and some that we didn’t… And then he got an email back like 20 minutes later that the response was, ‘I don’t know what your job is, but whatever it is, is great. Keep doing it. You have the wrong email address.'”
Taccone continued, “I think about that so often and I’ve told it to many people, especially when I’m having a bad day. I just think about, ‘You know what, it’s a pretty good job making really, really dumb s— for people to hopefully laugh at. That’s my ‘Virgania Horsen’s’ story.”
The “Virgania Horsen’s” shorts now stand not just as a time capsule of sketchy 2000s digital effects, but also of post-9/11 social concerns. In both sketches, Wiig’s Horsen cites “long lines” and “the threat of terrorism” as reasons that viewers should utilize her services instead of the post office or airports. Seth Meyers, for his part, described “Virgania Horsen’s Hot Air Balloon Rides” as “a white-hot perfect minute of Wiig being Wiig.”
Listen to the full podcast episode above for more.
Source link