CAT SKETCH MOVIE
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I wish I had been able to contribute more, but heвЂ™s a pretty great writer. I was still pretty new to the show and wasnвЂ™t particularly confident, so although I had the concept, he did 95 percent of it, probably, which IвЂ™m not proud of. Parnell: Truthfully, it was almost all Michael. I remember it not taking very long to write. Schur: It was just a very clear, simple, obvious, fun premise. Mike already knew what he was doing quite well, so he was quick to sign on. Had I had to write it by myself, I donвЂ™t think it would have ever made it on the air. We have the pitch meeting in Lorne MichaelsвЂ™s office, and IвЂ™m not sure exactly how I put it out there, but it was something everybody sort of got and thought was funny, hence Mike Schur volunteering to work on it with me. Like any actor, IвЂ™m sure anybodyвЂ™s happy to have a gig in a Broadway show, but I thought, after all these years, a funny take might be that it was really tiring people out, really wearing on them to keep doing it. ItвЂ™s a lot of political stuff, then cultural stuff, and I remember that Cats reaching 11,000 performances was one of those little details, and I guess Parnell had that idea.Д¬hris Parnell: I tried to imagine what it would be like for somebody who had been in the show for a particularly long time. At SNL, you get these packets at the beginning of the week of whatвЂ™s happening in the world. Mike Schur: The premise is so clear because that was a news story that week. As Schur says, вЂњOf all of the things I have been interviewed about, I never expected this to be one of them.вЂќ

CAT SKETCH MOVIE

With the movie adaptation imminent, we caught up with all three of them to hear the story of how the sketch - now only available in online-bootleg form - came to be.

CAT SKETCH FULL

The writers, meanwhile, were SNL newbies - Parnell just months into his first season as a featured player, Schur in his first full year as a writer - collaborating for the first time, with varying levels of enthusiasm about Cats. For Van Der Beek, then just 21 years old, the day of filming it eased him into the pressure that would come with hosting. In fact, the sketch holds a special place in the hearts of Van Der Beek and the sketchвЂ™s writers, Parnell and Mike Schur, now of Parks and Recreation and The Good Place renown. If you donвЂ™t remember the sketch, itвЂ™s not because it wasnвЂ™t any good - itвЂ™s that itвЂ™s been effectively scrubbed from the internet because it contained a copyrighted song, the hit вЂњMemory,вЂќ that SNL doesnвЂ™t have the rights to rebroadcast. (His enthusiasm is not infectious - when he invites some cast mates over for board games and a viewing of his new Legends of the Fall DVD, one of them attempts to strangle him.) The sketch, which was pretaped on location at the real Broadway home of Cats, the Winter Garden Theatre, included Darrell Hammond as Andrew Lloyd Webber, Ana Gasteyer screaming вЂњGo fuck yourself!вЂќ when asked to share any anecdotes about being the stage manager, and Will Ferrell as a weeping Macavity whoвЂ™s вЂњrotting from the inside.вЂќ DawsonвЂ™s Creek star James Van Der Beek, hosting the day after Varsity Blues hit theaters, played Freddy, an eager young actor who just joined the ensemble as Rum Tum Tugger. In it, Chris Parnell plays a jaded member of the cast giving the backstage tour, with all the joy in his life eroded by years of starring as Skimbleshanks. That was the premise of a 1999 Saturday Night Live sketch that took viewers behind the scenes of the record-setting 11,000th performance of Cats. How soul-sucking would your job be if you had to do the same thing 11,000 times in a row with no variation? How much worse would it be if that job involved singing and dancing in full cat makeup? James Van Der Beek and Chris Parnell in SNLвЂ™s Cats sketch.