The Lonely Island
The Lonely Island is an American comedy trio formed by Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer in Berkeley, California in 2001. They have written for and starred in the American TV program Saturday Night Live.
The three first met in junior high. After graduating from college, they regrouped and moved to Los Angeles, where they struggled to find work and began making short films, combining absurdist comedy and occasionally music. Among the first performers to post their material on the Internet, they involved themselves with Channel 101, a non-profit monthly short film festival. Their popularity at the screenings led to unsuccessful pilot deals with Fox and Comedy Central and a writing job for the 2005 MTV Movie Awards. Subsequently, that show's host, Jimmy Fallon, recommended them to Lorne Michaels, the creator of Saturday Night Live.
The group was hired for SNL in 2005, with all three as writers and Samberg as a featured player. Bypassing the traditional process of pitching, they recorded their own material independently and submitted it to the program. Their second sketch to air, "Lazy Sunday", became an internet sensation, the first of many viral videos they produced while at SNL. They led their own division at the program — SNL Digital Shorts — which led to numerous viral videos, including "Jizz in My Pants", "Dick in a Box", "I'm on a Boat", "Like a Boss", "Motherlover", "I Just Had Sex", "Jack Sparrow", and "YOLO". Their musical comedic work has comprised four full studio albums: Incredibad, Turtleneck & Chain, The Wack Album, and The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience, along with a soundtrack album for their 2016 film Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. The three retired from SNL in the early 2010s, but occasionally make guest appearances.
The troupe has written, directed and starred in two feature-length films, Hot Rod, released in 2007, and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, co-produced by Judd Apatow and released in 2016. The group also produced the 2020 film Palm Springs, starring Samberg and Cristin Milioti.
History
Formation and early years (1990–2004)
The Lonely Island first formed at Willard Junior High School in Berkeley, California, in the early 1990s. Schaffer and Taccone first met in seventh grade Spanish class, and the group later expanded to include Samberg, a year behind the two. The trio belonged to a large group of friends interested in skateboarding. Each had plans to pursue the arts following their graduation from Berkeley High School, but they split apart, attending different colleges. Taccone attended the University of California, Los Angeles to study theatre, while Schaffer and Samberg both attended the University of California, Santa Cruz as film students. Samberg later transferred to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in his sophomore year, with the three communicating over the phone during this period. Following college, the trio regrouped in Berkeley to decide their future. Their two options — either stay in Berkeley and begin making short films or move to Los Angeles, "get real jobs," and eventually begin making films —ended in a compromise.In September 2000, they moved to Los Angeles and created their website, which would host short films. They named themselves The Lonely Island, after the "modest, low-rent" L.A. apartment that they shared with roommates Chester Tam and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin. The latter was a musician, and their late nights together often led to the trio making comedic rap songs, which they began to upload online. Their videos were produced via borrowed equipment and edited on a single PowerMac, and they were first uploaded to websites such as iFilm and Heavy.com. Their first "fake rap" song, "Ka-Blamo!", was uploaded in September 2001. They released their work under Creative Commons licenses, which allowed anyone to distribute their content, perhaps leading to wider audiences. In December 2001, they produced a pilot for a television series titled The Lonely Island; the first episode involved the three becoming addicted to teeth whitening products. The video gained the trio agents, and it was notable for a scene in which they mug an elderly woman. During the shoot, actor Kiefer Sutherland, not realizing it was a video, stopped and tried to intervene. Their agents requested they convert their shorts to VHS tape because they did not have high-speed internet at the time.
Unable to secure full-time positions, the trio took temporary jobs; one season, they worked at Fox Television over the holidays, tying ribbons around metal snowflakes the studio gifted to their employees. Eventually, Schaffer worked as an assistant at a movie poster company, while Taccone and Samberg became production assistants on Spin City. In 2003, they produced a second pilot for a The Lonely Island series. The film premiered at the Comedy Central Stage in Los Angeles, the cable network's proving ground for new talent. The network purchased the series, but further scripts did not move forward. They became involved with Super Midnight Movie Club, a club hosted by screenwriters Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab, which evolved into Channel 101, a non-profit hosting monthly short film festivals. Their first submission, Ignition TV Buzz Countdown, was voted back after its premiere, but ended after two episodes. Their second Channel 101 series, The 'Bu, is a parody of Fox's The O.C. and was enormously successful at the screenings, running for eight episodes. It was pivotal in their early successes, demonstrating to television executives their popularity among tastemakers and a younger audience. Samberg's former producer at Spin City passed along the trio's demo reel to the United Talent Agency, which would lead them to their first major television deal.
Mainstream success at ''Saturday Night Live'' (2005–08)
Early sketches and "Lazy Sunday"
Following their success with The 'Bu, The Lonely Island secured a pitch meeting with Fox's then-president Gail Berman. There, the trio showed executives the video for "Just 2 Guyz", which received a positive reception. Following their deal with Fox, they produced a pilot titled Awesometown, over which the network passed. MTV and Comedy Central also passed on the series. Consequently, they began to question whether their material was humorous enough for a wide audience. They subsequently released two versions of the pilot on their website, the Fox-edited version and a "director's cut". Their increasing profile within Los Angeles comedy circles led to a writing job at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards, hosted by then-current Saturday Night Live cast-member Jimmy Fallon. Fallon's praise, in addition to word of mouth spreading to others at SNL, among them Tina Fey and creator Lorne Michaels, led the trio to audition for the series in mid-2005. For his audition, Samberg impersonated a 1980s jogger, commenting on the recession. SNL hired the trio in late August, with Taccone and Schaffer as writers and Samberg as a featured player. Samberg was the second new cast addition that season, alongside The Second City alumnus Bill Hader. Their debut episode premiered on October 1, 2005.Schaffer and Taccone had been on the writing staff for nearly three months, yet to this point, they had only two live sketches that survived the dress rehearsal process and aired. By Thanksgiving, the duo felt antsy, and decided to produce a parody of "The Whisper Song" by the Ying Yang Twins as "The Bing Bong Brothers". The video became a viral sensation and was picked up by G4's Attack of the Show. Encouraged by the response, the trio would incorporate that method into their next work for SNL. Their next sketch on SNL, "Lettuce Heads", consists of Samberg and Will Forte holding a serious discussion while intermittently eating whole heads of lettuce bite-by-bite. In creating the short, they decided to bypass the pitching process, as they were so new to the show that it would have been dismissed as too expensive. Their second video was turned down as it was deemed too similar.
In December, 2005, the trio, alongside Chris Parnell, wrote and recorded "Lazy Sunday", a short rap song. Samberg and Parnell adopt the brash personas of hardcore rappers, while the song follows their quest to achieve their "ultimate goal" of attending a matinee of the fantasy film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It was recorded on a laptop in their offices at SNL, while it was shot throughout Manhattan the next day. In the moments preceding the show's live performance and broadcast, the team learned from Michaels that "Lazy Sunday" would be shown on that night's show. The three comedians were very worried about how the video would be received by the studio audience.
"Lazy Sunday" aired on December 17, 2005, when the comedy troupe were little known to even Saturday Night Lives most devout fans. By the following morning, it had spread online nationwide. Schaffer and Taccone also were contacted by friends who heard the track played on radio stations and in bars. "Lazy Sunday" inspired a line of T-shirts, released during the initial boom of popularity in the weeks after its release. The film was one of the first viral YouTube videos, and it increased the trio's recognizability, particularly Samberg's, nearly overnight. Their success, according to New York, "forced NBC into the iPod age"; the short was initially available after its broadcast through the iTunes Music Store, made free for subscribers. The original upload was removed by NBC for copyright violation in February 2006, and the short wasn't reuploaded to YouTube until August 2013.
Following his stardom on SNL, Samberg became a celebrity, being covered in tabloid publications. A profile of Island in The New York Times led to a record deal and their own division at SNL: SNL Digital Shorts, which the group controlled with complete autonomy. In March 2006, the trio produced their second viral hit, "Natalie's Rap". In the sketch, actress Natalie Portman acts as a gangsta rap star, juxtaposing her clean-cut, Harvard-educated image with profane and shocking lyrics. Portman was the host of the program that week and came to the three having seen "Lazy Sunday".
Their rise to fame was highlighted by a combination of "new" and "old" media, with Schaffer later remarking: