Al Franken…
by on Aug.27, 2009, under Ex Celeb
Al Franken is an American satirist, comedian, bestselling author, and radio host with a predominantly liberal point of view. Franken was half of the comedy duo “Franken & Davis” which wrote for and performed for NBC’s Saturday Night Live. Along with The Daily Show host Jon Stewart, he is considered to be one of the most popular liberal commentators.
Franken was born in New York City May 21, 1951 and grew up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. He graduated from The Blake School in 1969, and Harvard University in 1973. He and his wife, Franni Franken have a son, Joe, and daughter, Thomasin. They currently reside in New York City but are in the process of moving to Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Franken’s writing and performing career began at Dudley Riggs’ Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis where he worked with Tom Davis (the comedian, not the politician).
He and Davis were two of the original writers on Saturday Night Live. Franken was awarded three Emmy Awards and seven Emmy nominations for his television writing and production. He created characters such as self-help guru Stuart Smalley and schticks such as proclaiming the 1980s to be the “Al Franken Decade”1. Franken was associated with SNL for more than 15 years and in 2002 interviewed former Vice President Al Gore while in character as Smalley. Al Franken and Tom Davis wrote the script to the 1986 comedy film One More Saturday Night and they both starred in the film as rock singers in a band called Bad Mouth.
Franken’s most notorious SNL sketch may have been “A Limo for the Lamo,” a commentary delivered by Franken near the end of the 1979–80 season. Franken mocked the controversial president of NBC, Fred Silverman, describing him as “a total unequivocal failure” and displayed a chart showing the poor ratings of NBC programs. According to some associates of the show, Silverman’s anger over the sketch prompted him to abandon negotiations with the show’s creator Lorne Michaels and seek a different producer for the sixth season of SNL.
Besides having written numerous books (including Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations), Franken co-wrote (with his former partner Tom Davis) the screenplay for The Coneheads TV show. He also wrote the original screenplay and starred in the theatrical flop, Stuart Saves His Family and the hit film When A Man Loves A Woman. He co-created and co-starred in the NBC sitcom LateLine, but low ratings led to its cancellation halfway through the second season, with only twelve of the nineteen episodes airing.
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