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"Lazy Sunday", the second SNL Digital Short, aired on the December 17, 2005 episode of Saturday Night Live. It features cast members Chris Parnell, an eight-year veteran of SNL, and Andy Samberg a first-year featured player with little previous screen time. In this music video, Parnell and Samberg perform a nerdcore hip hop song about seeing the film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and eating cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery. The song was released on the album Incredibad, along with other digital shorts by The Lonely Island.

Online availability

After the film aired, it was available for free download on iTunes. Additionally, it was posted to several web sites and shared via e-mail. The film was viewed more than five million times at YouTube before NBC Universal asked the site to remove it, along with several other copyrighted NBC video clips, in February 2006.^[1] NBC later placed the short on its SNL site and Hulu.

Film production

Samberg's fellow members of The Lonely Island were involved in the making of the film. Akiva Schaffer directed the clip and Jorma Taccone the musical beat. All three plus Parnell wrote the script on December 12, 2005, and the music was recorded the following day on a Macbook in Samberg's office. On December 15, a crew filmed the short in about five hours using the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in the Chelsea district of Manhattan as a stand-in for a movie theater. Taccone's sister-in-law, Emily Heller, appears as a convenience store clerk.

Samberg, Taccone, Schaffer and Parnell auctioned an original copy of the Lazy Sunday lyrics, with two deleted verses, on eBay. The sale raised $430 for a charity for animal shelters.

The song was parodied in Epic Movie as "Lazy Pirate Day", referring to Pirates of the Caribbean. It was also parodied in the NBC hit The Office.

Samberg, Parnell, and The Roots performed the song live on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on March 8, 2010.

Reception

Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "The hallowed genre of "white dudes rapping about mundane stuff" reached new heights of hilarity with Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell's 2005 ode to an afternoon viewing of The Chronic—what!—cles of Narnia."^[2]

See also

• SNL Digital Shorts

References

• The Lonely Island
• Slate.com, December 27, 2005, "The Narnia Rap, Deconstructed"
• The Village Voice, Dec. 20, 2005: "SNL Narnia-Rap Skit: Better Than Actual Rap?"
• Slate.com, Dec. 23, 2005: "The Chronicles of Narnia Rap: It Won't Save Saturday Night Live, But It Could Save Hip Hop"
• New York Daily News, Dec. 24, 2005: "Video shoots 'SNL' rookie into the show's spotlight"
• New York Times, Dec. 27, 2005: "Nerds in the Hood, Stars on the Web"
• The Hollywood Reporter, Feb. 18, 2006: "NBC Uni to sites: Clip the clips"
• New York Times, Feb. 20, 2006: "A Video Clip Goes Viral, and a TV Network Wants to Control It"

External links

• "Lazy Sunday" on NBC
• "Lazy Sunday" at SNL Transcripts
• Slate Article: The Chronicles of Narnia Rap