ONE OF MY FAVORITE John Mulaney anecdotes comes from his buddy and former SNL coworker Bill Hader. When Mulaney was new to SNL‘s writing staff, Hader and Seth Meyers brought him in to work on a new Vincent Price sketch, Hader explained on Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show. Mulaney didn’t say much at first—until Hader and Meyers, trying to nail down a zinger Vincent Price could say to onscreen cohort Liberace, heard a voice from the back of the room: “He should say, ‘Save your sassy asides for your windowless bars.'”
That’s the perfect encapsulation of what made Mulaney such an asset to SNL—and what turned him into one of the best stand-up voices around. His work in both arenas is so effortlessly smart, blindsiding you with odd pop culture references, weird turns of phrase, and groaningly funny puns.
Just watch any of the wildly popular clips of Stefon, Weekend Update’s city correspondent, whom he created with Hader, and know that when he wasn’t trying to make Hader break character, Mulaney was the man responsible for DJ Baby Bok Choy, club promoter Baloney Danza, and the human fanny pack (“It’s that thing when a midget hangs around your waist and holds your passport in his mouth”). Or flip to the last track on his first stand-up album, The Top Part, and delight in his story of torturing the denizens of the Salt and Pepper Diner by playing the song “What’s New, Pussycat?” on the jukebox over and over and over again.