He may be the man they call MacGruber and The Last Man On Earth, but before Will Forte was growing serious face bush while trying to survive the apocalypse, winning accolades for his more dramatic performance in Nebraska, and trying to defeat terrorist Val Kilmer, he was the guy who played some of the weirdest characters on Saturday Night Live in his era.
Believe it or not, it’s Forte’s 45th birthday, and in honor of that, it seemed like a good idea to go back and look at some of his best work on the legendary sketch comedy series.
Tim Calhoun, The Creepiest Politician In The World:
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There’s something about the way that he says, “I’ve got a lot of great ideas” just makes your skin crawl. When Calhoun gets into talking about his presidential platform, he suggests an America with “a little more California and a lot less Mexico,” before wondering “when’s there gonna be a China person on the Supreme Court?” Laugh now and cry later when one of the 231 candidates running for the White House adopts his platform.
When He Penned The Definitive Women’s History Anthem:
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This bit feels notable from a pop-culture standpoint because I’m pretty sure this was the moment where the phrase “see what I did there” became part of our lexicon. In this instance, Will Forte was so pleased with himself for changing “history” to “herstory” that he just wanted to make sure Weekend Update anchor Seth Meyers was aware of it. In the actual song, he praises women for their resilience while singing “you should’ve gotten paid more money than that!” Really, though, he just wants to get rich by selling the song to high schools.
MacGruber!
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Possibly Forte’s best known recurring character, MacGruber was a bit like MacGuyver, but much, much weirder. We see that here, when MacGruber has to stop a dam from blowing up, and inexplicably asks for “all the pubic hair you can find” to solve the problem. When no one is willing to volunteer, he plans to manually extract them from Jeremy Piven, but the dam blows up before he can get there.
Jon Bovi, The World’s First Opposite Band
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If you’re sick and tired of seeing the same generic cover bands at the club, you may want to check out Jon Bovi, who call themselves an “opposite band.” Basically, their songs sound nearly identical to Bon Jovi’s, except the lyrics are in reverse. This gives us new classics like “your hatred is like good medicine/good medicine is not what I need (cause I’m healthy).” The idea hasn’t quite taken off, but I’d pay good money to see Bickelnack, or Sonford & Mums.
His Woefully Underrated George W. Bush Impression:
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Admittedly, no one did a better job of playing Dubya than Will Ferrell, but Forte deserves some credit for bringing a ton of hilarity to the role as well. In this sketch, we see how Forte perfectly captured Bush’s brash, far-more-cocky-than-he-should-be-attitude.
The Falconer
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In Forte’s first recurring sketch, he plays an advertising executive who randomly decides to move into the wilderness with his falcon, Donald. Unfortunately, his falcon is pulling one over on him. While he’s supposed to be off gathering food, Donald the falcon is really frequenting a fancy French restaurant and hooking up with The Falconer’s ex-wife. That’s no falcon, that’s a winged monster.
