In an occurrence of “30 Rock”—a sitcom astir a play unrecorded sketch amusement akin to “Saturday Night Live,” created by the erstwhile “S.N.L” caput writer Tina Fey—the diva quality Jenna Maroney offers proposal for a photograph shoot: “Don’t usage the props. They ever effort to get you to instrumentality 1 comic photo, and that’s ever the 1 they usage and you look similar an idiot.” Her counsel: “Just unfastened your rima a small and effort to look similar Lindsay Lohan.”
Mary Ellen Matthews, who since 2000 has changeable “S.N.L.” ’s “bumper” photographs—those brightly colored portraits of the week’s big and philharmonic impermanent that flash onscreen earlier commercialized breaks—doesn’t caput a rubber chicken, a gargantuan Martini glass, oregon a pony. On a caller Thursday night, however, aft shooting the comedian Shane Gillis (prop: ample scissors), Matthews mused, implicit the phone, “Recently, I’ve gone disconnected the rubber chicken.” She went on, “I deliberation the shining infinitesimal of the rubber chickenhearted was erstwhile I told Brian Williams, ‘I’m going to propulsion you something. Just beryllium acceptable to drawback it.’ ” She tossed the bird. “And the photograph is, like, this infinitesimal conscionable earlier helium catches it, erstwhile helium realizes what it is. He’s conscionable truthful amazed and bemused—so galore things astatine once. He’s conscionable astir to drawback the neck.”
That representation didn’t marque the chopped for Matthews’s caller book, “The Art of the S.N.L. Portrait,” for which she had to cull the bulk of astir 4 1000 portraits that person graced TV screens successful the past twenty-five years. (She’s joked that the publication could beryllium called “All This for Three Seconds.”)
When “S.N.L.” archetypal aired, successful 1975, it replaced reruns of Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.” “Tonight” ever included bumpers to alert affiliates that the amusement was cutting distant to section ads. To marque the bumpers hip, Lorne Michaels, “S.N.L.” ’s creator, hired the lensman Edie Baskin, who colored her portraits by hand, lending them a Warhol-esque, painterly aesthetic. Matthews started retired arsenic Baskin’s adjunct earlier stepping up and putting her ain stamp connected the format—independently hilarious, often referential and conceptual setups for her subjects.
In Matthews’s book, she provides immoderate of the backstories to these conceits. When she photographed Seth Meyers with a Times Square “Elmo” (and friends), she utilized costumed interns. For a changeable of Louis C.K. getting “hit” by a cab, she snapped the representation from the passenger’s spot of a existent taxi, portion C.K. hurled himself onto the hood. Dave Chappelle, successful 1 of the book’s much demure portraits, is shown smoking—Matthews notes that he’s the lone idiosyncratic she knows of who is allowed to fume existent cigarettes successful Studio 8H.
“I did Tina Fey erstwhile arsenic a Robert Palmer girl,” Matthews said. “She was conscionable wearing a tiny achromatic dress, and I was, like, ‘Oh, my God, she looks close retired of ‘Addicted to Love.’ Then I was, like, ‘Does anybody person a Flying V?’ ” The prop section provided the guitar; Fey’s hairsbreadth was slicked back, her rima slapped with lipstick.
Matthews’s rescue dog, Daphne, became an “S.N.L.” prima during the pandemic, erstwhile each the bumpers had to beryllium changeable astir her apartment—micro mise-en-scènes of beingness nether lockdown. In this series, “Daphne got a bath, and she got dressed up similar John Lennon,” Matthews recalled. (She often dresses celebrated radical up arsenic different celebrated people, to staggering effect—who knew John Mulaney could beryllium Patti Smith’s stunt double?)
In Matthews’s pictures, her subjects look glamorous, and similar they’re having a blast. She often sets the temper by blasting the Rolling Stones, though erstwhile she changeable Mick Jagger, she opted alternatively to cue up Humble Pie. After they bash the show, each big is fixed a leather-bound book, which includes their portraits, on with different on-set photographs and ephemera. In general, Matthews says, her attack is to archer her subjects to debar overthinking what they’re doing. “I privation to marque it accelerated and fun,” she said. “It’s a portion of the amusement that is similar a spot fall.”
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