By Mike Sragow (The Baltimore Sun, 1/31/2011)
John Waters owned the best part of “Saturday Night Live.” All the Sunday headlines went to the flat “surprise” appearance of Mark Zuckerberg next to guest host Jesse Eisenberg, who plays Zuckerberg in “The Social Network,” and Andy Samberg, who sort of plays him, too. The night’s one knockout, though, was a wild Lonely Island digital short: a crazy-funny video for a new dance called “The Creep.”
Who did the Lonely Islanders tap to introduce it?
“Hi, I’m John Waters,” said the smiling face from a video monitor, mugging, hilariously, like an old horror-show host. “And this is the Creep.”
The Lonely Island trio — Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone — went on to feed Watersmania. They paid homage to Waters by sporting natty slim suits and pencil mustaches. They put over an engaging spasmodic rap — with lines like: “When the judge is a hottie/And you can’t control your body/Do the Creep!” — and had fun creeping out everybody with moves like strung-out marionettes.
When Nicki Minaj joined them for verses like “get your knees flexing and your arms T-Rexing,” the number topped itself. Then the camera drifted back to Waters’ video monitor, where he was saying “Don’t forget to smile.” Who could forget? This song-and-dance killed.
Waters kindly answered questions about “The Creep” the next day.
What led to your appearance in “The Creep?”
I always get a lot of weird offers and sometimes I take them, especially if it’s a chance to cross over to a big audience and a young audience. I was in San Francisco when I got the offer. They sent the song, and I loved it, and they said they were fans. They told me who they were, and sent links to their work – I’d already seen a lot of it and liked it.
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