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An original writer for Saturday Night Live, a best-selling satire author and a former senator will accept the next Ernie Kovacs Award at the Dallas VideoFest. What do they all have in common? Everything. They’re one person.
Writer, commentator, host of The Al Franken Podcast and former Minnesota Sen. Al Franken will receive the Kovacs Award for pioneering achievements and innovation in television in a special presentation and live Q&A session on Thursday, Sept. 22, at the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff.
The event will include a screening of the 2006 documentary Al Franken: God Spoke. The film chronicles his turn from comedy to political activism and commentary with his show on Air America Radio and best-selling books Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot and Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right leading up to his 2008 campaign and victory for Minnesota senator against incumbent Norm Coleman.
Franken resigned from his Senate seat in 2018 following accusations of sexual harassment starting with radio host Leeann Tweeden, who claimed the year before that Franken groped her in 2006 during a USO tour while she was sleeping, which led to the release of a photograph of the incident. She also said that he forcibly kissed her during a rehearsal. Seven more women came forward with accusations against him.
Franken issued an apology in 2017 and resigned the following year. Franken later said in a New Yorker interview profile and examination of the allegations against him published in 2019 that he regretted his decision to resign and that he would’ve called for a Senate Ethics Committee hearing to discuss the allegations at length.
The award he’s set to receive in Dallas is named after Ernie Kovacs, the pioneering television comedian who presented many sketch comedies and other TV shows throughout the 1950s and early 1960s and used the medium of television as a paintbrush for his zany works. Franken said in the announcement released by Dallas VideoFest that he cites Kovacs as a massive inspiration for his comedy writing and loves his “wholehearted and brilliant embrace of absurdity.”
“Many comedians today talk about the tremendous influence of David Letterman and Conan O’Brien – and deservedly so,” Franken said. “Both have inspired today’s generation of comedians in the same way that Kovacs inspired me and so many others. I am humbled that the Dallas VideoFest is honoring me with The Ernie Kovacs Award. I’m not sure I deserve it.”
Kovacs died in 1962 in a car accident at the age of 42, but his work inspired some of the greatest television visionaries and pioneers. Mystery Science Theater 3000’s Joel Hodgson, comedy writer and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog creator Robert Smigel and writer and star of Strangers With Candy and At Home With Amy Sedaris … um, Amy Sedaris … all cite Kovacs as an influence. All three are also past recipients of the Kovacs Award.
“One can draw a very clear line between Ernie Kovacs’ characters like Percy Dovetonsils and Al Franken’s Stuart Smalley,” says Dallas VideoFest founder, filmmaker and UT Arlington associate professor of film Bart Weiss. “Both understood how to harness the power of TV comedy to help us see the world differently.”
Franken started working as a television writer in the late 1970s as a member of the first writing team of the long-running sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live. He also made appearances on screen in small parts of sketches alongside cast members like Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner.
Show creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels gave Franken and his late writing partner Tom Davis their own segment, Franken & Davis Show, a show within a show that edgy humor to push the joke – such as when Franken contracted a debilitating brain tumor but insisted on doing stand-up with Davis’ help or Franken joining the Hare Krishnas and professed his faith during a baseball sketch. The segment usually appeared on the show “‘as a show within a show,’ and we were usually on when the show was short,” Franken said on an episode of Conan O’Brien’s podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.
Franken went on to contribute many sketches for SNL. He’s credited as a writer on 285 episodes from 1976-2008, according to IMDB. He’s also written some of the show’s most memorable and beloved sketches and fake commercials, such as Aykroyd’s impersonation of The French Chef host Julia Child who accidentally cuts open a vein and bleeds to death on camera while preparing a holiday feast, and the “Colon Blow” commercial featuring cast member Phil Hartman promoting an extremely high-fiber cereal.
During comedian Dennis Miller’s term as the host of SNL’s Weekend Update segment, Franken started to appear as himself, or some version of himself, such as a field reporter and one-man camera crew thanks to a huge NBC antenna on his head to broadcast his segments.
He also provided commentary and segments about the week’s news, the state of SNL through some of its rockier moments and his annual announcement every 10 years declaring the start of a new decade to be the “Al Franken decade,” an honor he passed to his son Joe for the 1990s.
His first credited acting role on SNL outside of his Franken & Davis segment landed in 1979 when he impersonated former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. He went on to impersonate political figures such as Sen. Paul Simon (and his bowtie), Screw Magazine founder Al Goldstein and 700 Club host and presidential hopeful Pat Robertson. His most famous character is Stuart Smalley, the host of the fictional show Daily Affirmations With Stuart Smalley in which the upbeat, blond-haired, non-licensed therapist would encourage his audience with words like “only you can help you” and “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and doggone-it, people like me.” Franken went on to write and star in a 1995 movie based on the character called Stuart Saves His Family directed by Harold Ramis.
Franken later found success as a best-selling author of political satire with four No. 1 New York Times bestsellers. His rise in political circles pushed him to run for Coleman’s Senate seat as a Democrat in his home state of Minnesota, which he won by just 312 votes.
He won a second term by a much larger margin against Republican Mike McFadden in 2014 during which he wrote one of his best-selling books Al Franken: Giant of the Senate. Franken served on several committees during his time in Congress including Judiciary, Energy and HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) and became a formidable supporter of veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder and health care. He was also an adversary to President Donald Trump’s cabinet members such as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the latter of whom recused himself from investigations into Trump’s ties with Russia following heavy questioning from Franken.
