'SNL' has skewered every president since Ford, and all of them reacted the same way — until now

Gerald Ford had been in office just more than a year when the words "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" were first broadcast across the land. And almost immediately, Ford became the first president to face a question every president - including the current occupant of the Oval Office - has had to answer since: how to respond to "Saturday Night Live's" parody at the real president's expense.

The show's Ford was Chevy Chase, a lanky slapstick comedian who portrayed the commander in chief as President Pratfall, a genial spaz stumbling across the world stage with a complacent grin.

That was not how the president - an avid tennis player who had been a college football star - saw himself.

"He was probably our most athletic president," said Ford's press secretary Ron Nessen, now 84 and living in suburban Maryland. "It really bothered him to be portrayed as a klutz."

But in public, Ford's reaction to the "Saturday Night" send-ups was very different: He laughed. The president invited the entertainer who skewered him to the White House. When Chase was the featured comedian at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 1976, Ford embraced the shtick, scattering papers and silverware across the dais, mostly on Chase's lap.

It was a strategy that most media-age image consultants would hail as a no-brainer: hide your pique, show you can take a joke, don't let your bruised feelings become the next story. And it was more or less the way every subsequent president has handled his NBC doppelganger. Until now. President Donald Trump doesn't laugh.

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Alec Baldwin portrays President Donald Trump on Feb. 4, 2017, in the opening sketch of "Saturday Night Live," in New York. (Will Heath/NBC via AP, File)

On Saturday night, he was again the target of Alec Baldwin in a skit about his unusual meeting last week with rapper Kanye West.

As West, played by Chris Redd, rambles about the 13th Amendment and other topics, the president, played by Emmy-winning Baldwin, comes to conclusion that Kanye is completely nuts and is a black version of Trump himself.

Trump has reacted furiously to Baldwin repeatedly in the past, tweeting that it is "agony for those forced to watch" and that "the Baldwin impersonation just can't get any worse."

Alec Baldwin, whose dying mediocre career was saved by his terrible impersonation of me on SNL, now says playing me was agony. Alec, it was agony for those who were forced to watch. Bring back Darrell Hammond, funnier and a far greater talent!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 2, 2018

"It's crazy," said Democratic consultant Paul Begala of Trump's hit-back response to Baldwin's baiting. The tit-for-tat has, inevitably, taken on a life of its own and magnified the reach of the brief skits.

"It only makes the critique more powerful," Begala said. Ford got it right the first time: "You just smile and move on."

But that wasn't the obvious answer in the mid-1970s when the near-weekly satirizing of the president on national television was a new thing. Presidential pride could have easily demanded some scolding harrumphs.

But Ford thought better.

"It was a strange time," Nessen recalled. "It was just after Watergate, the Vietnam War was still going on, inflation was a problem. There was a general feeling in the White House that we didn't want to spend a lot of time on this."

Ford himself would later write that the post-Watergate mood of the country demanded a little humility from the president. It was only months before that he had pardoned President Richard Nixon, a chief executive who placed great stock in dignified pomp.

"At the time, the media and general public still resented any hint of 'imperial' trappings in connection with the presidency or the White House," Ford wrote.

And so Ford dumped some cutlery on Chevy Chase in a hotel ballroom and brought howls from the crowd when he started his remarks by saying "I'm Gerald Ford, and you're not," a play on Chase's signature opening his "Weekend Update" bits.

"I think he enjoyed getting it back a little bit," Nessen said.

Chase's portrayal sprang largely from a single, caught-on-film moment in which Ford slipped walking down rainy stairs from Air Force One in Austria. As aghast diplomats rushed to help, the president skidded a half-dozen steps and ended up hands-and-knees the red carpet, not unlike Chevy Chase's patented somersaults over tables, Christmas trees and ladders on late-night TV.

"Ford had a great personality, but the thing about his being clumsy did get under his skin," Nessen said.

By 1977, Ford had lost to Jimmy Carter and "SNL's" second president took office in the mustachioed form of Dan Ackroyd. The Carter White House was largely silent about the Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time version of himself. Like Chase's Ford, Ackroyd's Carter was based more on personality than policy.

At first, that meant sending up Carter's reputation as micromanaging expert in all things from nuclear physics (Or "nucular," as both the real and parody Carter pronounced it) to Middle East diplomacy. And that was fine with the White House.

Carter speechwriter Hedrick Hertzberg particularly remembers a segment in which Carter and Walter Cronkite (played by Bill Murray) take calls for the president from around the country.

In one call, a postal worker in Kansas asks how to clear a jammed sorting machine. "Vice President Mondale and I were talking about the Marvex 3000 just this morning," Ackroyd said. In another, the president talks down an acid-tripping Florida teen, recommending vitamin B12 and listening to some Allman Brothers Band.

"It wasn't just that the segment was so admiring of his competence and the depth and breadth of his knowledge," Hertzberg said. "It was also that the segment made Carter out to be knowledgeable about and tolerant of and maybe even experienced with psychedelic drugs."

Episodes in the later Carter years were less flattering. In one, a beleaguered Carter asks Americans to burn eight percent of their cash as way of shrinking the money supply and stemming inflation. In a televised address from the Oval Office, he has his daughter Amy give him a dollar from her peanut bank and sets it afire. The real White House made no comment.

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Sen. George Stanley McGovern, left, host of this week's “Saturday Night Live”, receives an affectionate hug from Joe Piscopo, right, dressed as Ronald Reagan, during rehearsal in New York, April 12, 1984. (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler)

Marty Lederhandler

Reagan, an actor himself, didn't engage much with the version of his visage coming down each weekend from New York. He was played by both Joe Piscopo and later by Phil Hartman, who memorably portrayed the Gipper as an affable doofus when in public but an order-barking, Arabic-speaking mastermind when the cameras were gone.

Probably no president embraced the mockery more than George H.W. Bush, who appeared so often with Dana Carvey on television and at charity events - "Not gonna do it, wouldn't be prudent" - that it become difficult to tell who was imitating whom, Bush doing Carvey doing Bush.

The two became and remained friends well after Bush was defeated in 1992. The Bushes invited Carvey and his wife to the White House soon after his defeat, Carvey said recently on the "Conan O'Brien Show."

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Comic Dana Carvey, left, shows U.S. President George H. Bush how to imitate himself, Monday, Dec. 8, 1992 at the White House in Washington. Bush put Carvey, of "Saturday Night Live" fame, up Sunday night in the Lincoln Bedroom before summoning the surprised White House staff of the East Room for a 10-minute reprise of Carvey's famous Bush imitation. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)

Dennis Cook

'We really hung out with them, we really got to know them," Carvey said.

Clinton, too, seemed at ease with the versions of himself that appeared during "SNL" seasons 18 through 26. Hartman was show's first Clinton. In one skit, his Clinton, sworn to stay on his diet, dragged his detail into a McDonald's during a jog and proceeded to scarf fries and McRibs from voters' trays as he explained his economic plan and Balkan security.

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President Clinton, left, laughs with look-alike Darrell Hammond of "Saturday Night Live" at the 53rd annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association, Thursday, April 10, 1997 in Washington. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

As the 90s wore on, Darrell Hammond took over the part and a darker, more lecherous, Clinton emerged. None of it seemed to bother the real president.

"He had the thickest skin of anybody I ever knew," said Begala. The team even played some of the earlier takes on the campaign plane. "We loved it, he loved it. I don't remember any talk at all about pushing back on it."

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** FILE ** This Monday, July 31, 2006 file photo shows actor Will Ferrell onstage during a pre-taping of MTV's "Total Request Live" at the MTV Times Square Studios in New York. Appearing as President Bush on the primetime edition of "Saturday Night Live," Will Ferrell offered his political "strategery" to Tina Fey's Sarah Palin. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow, file)

JASON DECROW

George W. Bush said repeatedly that he didn't mind the jabs he took from Will Ferrell's long-running "SNL" imitation of the president as a chuckling, word-mangling war monger. He even appeared at a White House Correspondents Dinner with a Bush imitator, but it wasn't Ferrell - it was comedian Steve Bridges.

Like Bush, Barack Obama had two terms' worth of "SNL" shadow Obamas to contend with, starting with Fred Armisen and then an ever graying Jay Pharoah. The real Obama may have never felt much need to push back on the comparatively calm, drama-free renditions, which the show's actors and writers said was a lamentable (from the comedy point of view) function of a notably calm, drama-free presidency. (The show injected more emotion into that era's Oval Office by having Dwayne Johnson play a Barack Obama transformed by anger into a Hulk-like "The Rock" Obama.)

Obama, too, let himself be upstaged by an imitator of sorts when he played straight man to Keegan-Michael Key's Luther, the president's "anger translator," at the 2015 White House Correspondents Dinner.

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President Barack Obama, left, brings out actor Keegan-Michael Key from Key & Peele to play the part of "Luther, President Obama’s anger translator" during his remarks at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner at the Washington Hilton on Saturday, April 25, 2015, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Evan Vucci

Like his predecessors, the 44th president had learned the power of defensive self-effacement.

"I love humor," Bush said on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" in 2017, the first year of both Trump's real-world presidency and Baldwin's "SNL" presidency. "And the best humor is when you make fun of yourself."

"Well, tell that to the president!" Kimmel pleaded.

 on “Saturday Night Live” was a perfect example of anti-comedy, something that’s funny because it’s both absurd and inherently unfunny.

NBC thought it could stretch that joke into an animated Halloween special in 2017. 

“SNL” has a long history of turning its most popular skits into longer programs, usually movies. And they often bomb. A funny joke is not always a funny, full-length show.

So is David S. Pumpkins doomed?

In the sketch, a young couple boards a haunted elevator on Halloween to see 100 floors of frights, such as ghost brides and chainsaw-wielding zombies. Confusingly, among the horrors is a grinning Tom Hanks sporting a black suit covered in orange pumpkins.

“My name is David S. Pumpkins,” he says in a goofy voice. “And I’m going to scare the hell out of you.” Then he dances with two skeletons.

The puzzled couple wonders: Who is David S. Pumpkins? Where did he learn to dance? Why are we supposed to be scared of him?

None of the questions are answered.

Critics called it 4½ minutes of wonderful absurdity. It was a hit, but is it enough for a half-hour show? Hanks will reprise his role, voicing the character of David S. Pumpkins, who shows two children “the true meaning of Halloween, answering none of their questions along the way,” the network says.

Here are some of the show’s biggest breakout bombs.

, characters tried to discern whether Pat was (biologically) a man or a woman, but no one ever solved the mystery. In the movie, that joke fueled a 77-minute plot that introduced another androgynous character named Chris.

For now, let’s set aside the transphobic overtones of the premise — which . The movie was a spectacular disaster. On the website Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates reviews, the movie had a zero percent “fresh” rating, meaning not one positive review was written about the film. “I can’t even dignify this film with a review,” wrote one reviewer.

Those who think critics don’t matter should look to the box office: The movie cost about $8 million to make, according to Rolling Stone, and its total lifetime gross revenue was barely more than $60,000, according to Box Office Mojo.

At the time of its filming, Sweeney told Rolling Stone one of her biggest priorities was “to keep it low budget so that we could make it as offbeat as we wanted to without having to appeal to a mainstream audience.”

She certainly succeeded.

2. ‘Stuart Saves His Family’ (1995)

Al Franken in "Stuart Saves His Family" (1995). Handout

Before he was a Democratic senator from Minnesota, Al Franken was an “SNL” writer and cast member. His most popular character was arguably Stuart Smalley, a self-help guru who hosted the fictional television show “Daily Affirmations With Stuart Smalley.” He opened each episode by looking in the mirror and repeating his famous catchphrase: “I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And doggonit, people like me!”

The movie dove into Smalley’s backstory, adding a dysfunctional family filled with depressed alcoholics. It was a dark turn for what was generally a light sketch that did a little better with critics, netting a 30 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and reviews such as “Not as bad as you’d expect.”

But the crowds didn’t think it was good enough or smart enough. And doggonit, people didn’t like it. Its box office return was a mere $912,082.

3. ‘A Night at the Roxbury’ (1998)

Chris Kattan (left) and Will Ferrell in "A Night at the Roxbury" (1998). Handout

In the recurring “SNL” sketch, Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan played two dimwitted brothers who loved donning silk suits and bobbing their heads to Haddaway’s “What Is Love” at the clubs about town. The jokes are mostly derived from their misunderstanding of social situations, usually when it came to hitting on women.

It was a thin premise to stretch into an 84-minute movie. While it fared better at the box office than other “SNL” spinoffs, making a middling $30 million, critics shredded the film. On Rotten Tomatoes, it scored a dismal 11 percent fresh rating. Roger Ebert called it a “one-joke” movie in which “the characters are the joke.”

The movie “probably never had a shot at being funny anyway, but I don’t think it planned to be pathetic,” Ebert continued. “It’s the first comedy I’ve attended where you feel that to laugh would be cruel to the characters.”Ferrell once said in an interview that he and Kattan “didn’t necessarily have this in our heads as movie material.”

It showed.

4. ‘The Ladies Man’ (2000)

Tim Meadows in "The Ladies Man" (2000). Handout

Tim Meadows’ most popular “SNL” character was Leon Phelps, a late-night host who in his trademark lisp offered advice — and personal anecdotes — on how to seduce women.

The movie version of the sketch finds him fired and rethinking his priorities. A Washington Post review called it “another cheesy, overdrawn and witless ‘Saturday Night Live’ takeoff.” It just wasn’t funny.

“Leon, like the androgynous Pat and the perky Mary Katherine, is funny for about five minutes (this, of course, is no reason to stop the presses),” the review said. “Alas, the movie runs for another 82 minutes, most of them devoid of laughs because Meadows, also the writer, doesn’t know what he’s doing when it comes to creating a full-length script rather than a comic vignette.”

The audiences seemed to agree. The movie was a $10 million disappointment, making a little under $14 million, even though it had a production budget of $24 million.

5. ‘MacGruber’ (2010)

Will Forte and Kristen Wiig in "MacGruber" (2010). Handout

The last attempt from “SNL” to transform a sketch into something meatier was a failure so great that the New York Times’ A.O. Scott posed the question, “Why does this exist?”

The movie was derived from sketches in which Will Forte played “MacGruber,” a knockoff of TV’s “MacGyver,” a secret agent. Sporting a blonde mullet, a beige vest and a plaid shirt, Forte’s bumbling character would have to rely on luck when attempting to save those in danger — when he wasn’t distracted by his weight gain, hair loss and general aging.

One reviewer called it “an absolute waste of time and easily the worst movie of 2010.” The film, which cost $10 million to produce, lost money, earning only $9.3 million worldwide.

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