On 18 March 2020, Israeli actress Gal Gadot posted a video on Instagram of herself and two dozen celebrity friends singing a rendition of the song "Imagine" by John Lennon, which intended to raise morale in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. [1]
Gadot organized the video with help from Kristen Wiig. "Kristen is like the mayor of Hollywood," Gadot told Vanity Fair , "Everyone loves her, and she brought a bunch of people to the game. But yeah, I started it, and I can only say that I meant to do something good and pure". [2] She told Instyle: "The pandemic was in Europe and Israel before it came here (to the United States) in the same way. I was seeing where everything was headed." So she told Wiig, "Listen, I want to do this thing." [3]
"Hey guys, Day 6 in self-quarantine, and I gotta say the past few days got me feeling a bit philosophical," Gadot explains in the video's introduction. "You know this virus has affected the entire world, everyone. Doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, we’re all in this together." [4]
Gadot said she was inspired to make the video after seeing a man from Italy play "Imagine" on his saxophone from his balcony. [4] "I ran into this video of this Italian guy playing the trumpet in his balcony [ sic ] to all the other people who were locked inside their homes. and he was playing 'Imagine', and there was something so powerful and pure about this video..." [4]
(In order of appearance)
The video was nearly universally panned, with critics dismissing it as an ineffective, out-of-touch, "cringey" response to the pandemic; Jon Caramanica of the New York Times called it "an empty and profoundly awkward gesture". [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Gadot later acknowledged the video did not garner the positive reaction that had been intended but was unapologetic in explaining the thinking behind it. [2] Gadot acknowledged the video ended up being in "poor taste" but maintained that it was made with "pure intentions". [3]
The video was parodied by comedian Zack Fox, whose version was based on the song "Slob on My Nob" by Tear Da Club Up Thugs. Fox's version featured appearances from Eric André, Thundercat, 6lack, Quinta Brunson, Langston Kerman, and Chuck Inglish, among others. [10] [11]
British comedian Joe Lycett (then named Hugo Boss) parodied the video which also featured Greg James, Rob Beckett, Nish Kumar, Katherine Ryan, Noel Fielding, Suzi Ruffell, Alex Horne, Paul Chuckle, Rosie Jones, Josh Widdicombe, Harry Hill and Joel Dommett, in which a lyric in each cut was replaced with the word "bastard". [12] [13]
Experimental musician Lingua Ignota also remixed the audio of Gadot's version into a harsh noise wall song titled "Above Us Only Sky". [14]
American singer-songwriter John Mayer also parodied the video in an episode of Current Mood. Mayer inserted clips of himself singing "Imagine" by Ariana Grande into Gadot's original video. [15] [16]
American jazz musician and YouTuber Charles Cornell analyzed the video from a musical standpoint, critiquing the lack of coordination in maintaining a consistent musical key and rhythm. He then created and performed a new version with his own backing music; using the celebrities' vocals put to a consistent meter and with relevant key changes to transition between singers. [17] [18]
The video was also parodied on the series The Boys , in the opening scene of the episode "Herogasm", in which the character the Deep, himself a parody of Aquaman (rather than Queen Maeve, the show's parody of Wonder Woman, the character portrayed by Gadot) mirrors Gadot's comments about feeling philosophical before starting to sing "Imagine" followed by celebrities such as Patton Oswalt, Josh Gad, Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Elizabeth Banks, Kumail Nanjiani, Aisha Tyler, and Rose Byrne, individually singing a line of the song each. [19]
The video was also parodied by Bob Odenkirk and David Cross during a virtual reunion of Mr. Show, where the participants sung Eat It by "Weird Al" Yankovic. [20] The cover featured an array of Mr. Show cast members, as well as actors and actresses from both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, including Rhea Seehorn, Michael Mando, Michael McKean, and Bryan Cranston. Sarah Silverman, who appeared in the original, also joined, along with Rachel Bloom and Yankovic himself.
"Eat It" is a 1984 song by American comedy music artist "Weird Al" Yankovic. It is a parody of Michael Jackson's 1983 single "Beat It", with the contents changed to be about an exasperated parent attempting to get their picky child to eat anything at all, much less to eat properly. The track was both a commercial and critical success, earning Yankovic a Grammy Award. It peaked at number twelve in the United States, making it his first top 40 hit in that country, and reached number one in Australia.
The following is a list of recurring Saturday Night Live sketches, organized alphabetically by title. The referenced date is the date when the sketch first appeared.
Celebrity Jeopardy! is a series of sketches that aired regularly on the television comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live between 1996 and 2002, the years when Will Ferrell was a cast member. It parodies the same-named special event on the television quiz show Jeopardy! that features competition between notable individuals with all winnings going towards charitable organizations, and significant reductions to the game's level of difficulty. Fifteen sketches aired between December 1996 and February 2015: two sketches per season from 1996 to 2002, and one each in 2005 and 2009, when Ferrell returned to the show as host. The sketch was revived for the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special on February 15, 2015.
Saturday Night Live has long mocked the television medium with many fake commercials and parodies of TV shows themselves. Another of the show's frequently used styles of recurring sketches has been the talk show format. However, anything from cop shows to children's shows has been fair game for the ever-changing cast.
Kristen Carroll Wiig is an American actress, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. First breaking through as a performer with the Los Angeles comedy troupe The Groundlings, Wiig achieved stardom during her seven-season tenure on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 2005 to 2012.
Gal Gadot Varsano is an Israeli actress and model. She portrayed Gisele Yashar in Fast & Furious (2009), a part she reprised in five sequels. Gadot achieved global stardom for her portrayal of Wonder Woman in the DC Extended Universe films (2016–2023), including Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Wonder Woman, Justice League, and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020). She has since starred in the Netflix action-comedy film Red Notice (2021) and the mystery film Death on the Nile (2022). Gadot was included on the list of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time in 2018, and has placed twice in annual rankings of the world's highest-paid actresses.
The Barry Gibb Talk Show is a recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live about a talk show starring Bee Gees lead singer Barry Gibb and his brother, Robin Gibb. The sketch was created by writers Ken Scarborough and Steve Higgins based on an idea from Fallon.
Funny or Die, Inc. is a comedy video website and production company owned by Henry R. Muñoz III that was founded by Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, Mark Kvamme, and Chris Henchy in 2007. The website contained exclusive material from a regular staff of in-house writers, producers and directors, and occasionally from a number of famous contributors including Judd Apatow, James Franco and Norm Macdonald. The associated production company continues to make TV shows including truTV's Billy on the Street, Comedy Central's @midnight and Zach Galifianakis' web series Between Two Ferns.
MacGruber was a recurring sketch on the NBC television series Saturday Night Live, first appearing on the show in January 2007. The sketch is a parody of the 1985–1992 adventure series MacGyver. The sketch stars Will Forte as special operations agent MacGruber, who is tasked in each episode with deactivating a ticking bomb but becomes distracted by personal issues, resulting in the bomb's detonation and (presumably) the deaths of his companions and himself.
"Imagine" is a song by the English rock musician John Lennon from his 1971 album of the same name. The best-selling single of his solo career, the lyrics encourage listeners to imagine a world of peace, without materialism, without borders separating nations and without religion. Shortly before his death, Lennon said that much of the song's lyrics and content came from his wife, Yoko Ono, and in 2017, she received a co-writing credit.
Funny or Die Presents is a half-hour sketch comedy show that spawned from the comedy website Funny or Die, created by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. It premiered on HBO on February 19, 2010.
Saturday Night Live in the 2000s: Time and Again is a two-hour documentary television special that showcases the years of Saturday Night Live from 2000 to 2009. It features interviews with the cast and crew from those years, and aired on NBC on April 15, 2010. It was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Special.
The Spoils of Babylon is an American comedy miniseries written by Matt Piedmont and Harper Steele, directed by Piedmont, and starring Tobey Maguire, Kristen Wiig, Tim Robbins, Jessica Alba, Val Kilmer, Haley Joel Osment, Michael Sheen, and Will Ferrell. It is a spoof of the epic-scale "TV event" miniseries adapted from bestselling novels prevalent on American network television in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Spoils Before Dying is an American comedy miniseries written by Matt Piedmont and Harper Steele, and directed by Piedmont. It stars Will Ferrell, Michael Kenneth Williams and Kristen Wiig. The miniseries premiered on July 8, 2015, on the American cable channel IFC. A follow-up to the miniseries The Spoils of Babylon, The Spoils Before Dying follows a 1950s jazz pianist-turned-private eye who becomes embroiled in a murder investigation.
A Deadly Adoption is a 2015 American satirical made-for-television thriller-drama film directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg and written by Harper Steele. It debuted on the Lifetime Network on June 20, 2015.
Wonder Woman 1984 is a 2020 American superhero film based on the DC character Wonder Woman. Produced by Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Films, Atlas Entertainment, and The Stone Quarry, and distributed by Warner Bros., it is a standalone sequel to the 2017 film Wonder Woman and the ninth film in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU). The film was directed by Patty Jenkins from a screenplay she co-wrote with Geoff Johns and Dave Callaham, based on a story by Jenkins and Johns. It stars Gal Gadot as Diana Prince / Wonder Woman, alongside Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, Robin Wright, and Connie Nielsen. Set in 1984 during the Cold War, the film follows Diana and her past love Steve Trevor as they face off against Maxwell Lord and Cheetah.
The Disney Family Singalong is a series of American music television specials that were broadcast by ABC in 2020. First aired on April 16, 2020, and all hosted by Ryan Seacrest, the specials featured performances of songs from Disney films by musicians and other celebrity guests from their respective homes. The performances featured on-screen karaoke lyrics, encouraging viewers to sing along.
DC FanDome is a virtual event platform created by DC Comics and Warner Bros. Entertainment. Created initially as a virtual entertainment and comic book convention, the name is used for other online events centered on DC properties. The events feature announcements about DC-based content, including the DC Extended Universe film franchise, the Arrowverse television franchise, other films and television shows, comic books, as well as video games.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)