James Thomas Fallon, rollicking son of a Vietnam veteran, went from scraping gum off the floor, to bedroom impersonations and skits, to being in almost every American household five nights a week.
Fallon has been gracing the big screen since 1998, when he started his television career at Saturday Night Live. Since then, it’s been non-stop, literally every year since 1998 there are highlights of his career. It seems like we saw him on SNL, blinked, then saw him on the Late Night scene, but Jimmy has never been a dormant public figure. The phrase “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” might come to mind. Well, not saying his behind the scenes hours haven’t been work, but a lot of his on-screen- work can be considered play, so I think he’ll be alright. Just catch one episode of “The Tonight Show” and I think you’ll agree with me.
It all began when his parents gave him a tape. They had recorded the kid friendly skits of SNL so their kids could have some laughs. Jimmy and his sister acted out the ones they liked and the passion hasn’t waned since. When he graduated high school he received a troll doll as a gift. He entered an impression contest his mother told him about and impersonated famous people trying to sell the troll doll to the consumer. It seems Fallon’s most dormant time period as far as comedy goes is his college years, where we can imagine he was focusing on his degree in Computer Science, later switching to Communications, but never finished college.
After college was Jimmy’s standup days where he continued the troll doll skit, and credits that doll (and his mom) as his big break.
Fallon worked on SNL from 1998 to 2004 (he also played parts in movies during this time, Including “Almost Famous”). That’s a lot of skits to be in, once a week for 6 years. The best place I found to check out Fallon’s work on SNL happens to be Yahoo, Youtube comes up short on this one. This link has tons of footage to scroll through. He was sort of known for breaking character because of not containing his laughter, but usually it makes the skit even funnier.
Jimmy Fallon on SNL
Jimmy and ustin Timberlake” rel=”homepage” target=”_blank”>Justin Timberlake love to get together and do great things for the comedy world. This video “Wrappinville” generated quite the viral buzz when it came out in a Christmas Episode of SNL, you don’t want to miss this if you haven’t seen it:
https://www.hulu.com/watch/575529
The Tonight Show host has done work on 13 movies, hosted MTV Awards shows 3 times, and even created a comedy series. He has now become one of our favorite guys to watch as a late night host doing “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” from 2009-2014 and now “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” beginning this year. He can only be compared to Conan O’ Brien as far as being wild and unpredictable and doing lot’s of extras like games or skits. One of my favorites on his show is the very funny re-occuring segment entitled “Hashtags”. Here’s a sample:
It doesn’t look like Jimmy Fallon is going anywhere anytime soon, hopefully we’re going to have to wait a long time to find out the next host of “The Tonight Show”. There seems to be a lot of folks on the net that have problems with Fallon for this reason or that, I guess they will just have to get used to him.
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-KJWilly
Post Script
For the Die hard fans, Fallon’s SNL Audition.
