Mary Ellen Matthews, who since 2000 has shot “S.N.L.” ’s “bumper” images—the ones brightly coloured portraits of the week’s host and musical visitor that flash onscreen earlier than industrial breaks—doesn’t thoughts a rubber rooster, a gargantuan Martini glass, or a pony. On a up to date Thursday evening, then again, after taking pictures the comic Shane Gillis (prop: huge scissors), Matthews mused, over the telephone, “Not too long ago, I’ve long past off the rubber rooster.” She went on, “I feel the shining second of the rubber rooster was once once I informed Brian Williams, ‘I’m going to throw you one thing. Simply be able to catch it.’ ” She tossed the fowl. “And the picture is, like, this second simply earlier than he catches it, when he realizes what it’s. He’s simply so shocked and bemused—such a lot of issues without delay. He’s as regards to to clutch the neck.”
That symbol didn’t make the reduce for Matthews’s new guide, “The Artwork of the S.N.L. Portrait,” for which she needed to cull nearly all of just about 4 thousand portraits that experience graced TV monitors up to now twenty-five years. (She’s joked that the guide might be referred to as “All This for 3 Seconds.”)
