Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 8, 1993 TAG: 9305080197
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: C7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAY BOYAR KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
They possess huge cones that rise high above their foreheads.
They "consume mass quantities" of "shredded swine flesh" and "fried chicken embryos."
They are, of course, the Coneheads, the extraterrestrial clan featured on one of the most popular series of sketches ever aired on "Saturday Night Live."
But where, you ask, are the Coneheads really from?
Their story begins in the mid-1970s, when Dan Aykroyd and "SNL"-writer Tom Davis visited Easter Island on vacation and became obsessed with the island's enormous stone heads.
Aykroyd and Davis' thoughts about those heads blended with their memories of "This Island Earth," a 1954 sci-fi film about space aliens with raised foreheads, report authors Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad in their book "Saturday Night."
"The Coneheads" - which premiered on "SNL" in 1977 - was the most visible result of these fevered musings. And right from the start, the series was a hit.
"The first time Danny [Aykroyd] walked onstage as Beldar and took off the stocking cap he was wearing over his [latex] cone, the audience let out a collective gasp," Davis has noted, according to Hill and Weingrad.
Beldar, his wife Prymaat (Jane Curtin) and their teen-age daughter Connie (Laraine Newman) neither looked nor sounded like earthlings, yet they somehow passed as a typical suburban family. To explain their quirks, they always claimed to be "from France," and this explanation was generally accepted.
When Aykroyd left "Saturday Night Live," most of us lost track of the Coneheads.
Had they returned to Remulak?
Were they vacationing on Easter Island?
Or were they still . . . among us?
These questions and others will be answered July 23 when "The Coneheads" - a feature film based on the popular sketch - is scheduled to open nationwide.
"It's exactly contemporary," explains Eileen Peterson, director of production publicity for Paramount Pictures. "It's as if nothing had changed except the year."
The movie is directed by Steve Barron ("Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles") and written by Aykroyd, Davis and Bonnie and Terry Turner (both of last year's "Wayne's World" movie).
"As with `Wayne's World,' I never thought it [the Coneheads concept] was fulfilled on TV," says "SNL"-executive-producer Lorne Michaels, who produced both the "Wayne's World" and "Coneheads" films.
Aykroyd and Curtin will reprise their TV roles on the big screen. Joining them will be Michelle Burke, a young actress from Defiance, Ohio, who has been cast as Connie. Newman - who had played Connie on TV - has been recast as Connie's aunt.
Other cast members include "SNL's" Chris Farley as Connie's boyfriend, Jason Alexander ("Seinfeld") as the Coneheads' next-door neighbor and the comedian Sinbad ("A Different World") as the owner of an appliance-repair shop where Beldar works in Paramus, N.J.
"Paramus is like where we're all from: Some small town near some big town," Peterson reflects. "The movie is a close look at growing up in suburban contemporary America."
by CNB