{"id":17478,"date":"2021-10-03T01:18:48","date_gmt":"2021-10-02T17:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/billionaire-belly-laughs-snls-space-skit-pokes-fun-at-jeff-bezos-richard-branson-and-elon-musk\/"},"modified":"2021-10-03T01:18:48","modified_gmt":"2021-10-02T17:18:48","slug":"billionaire-belly-laughs-snls-space-skit-pokes-fun-at-jeff-bezos-richard-branson-and-elon-musk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/billionaire-belly-laughs-snls-space-skit-pokes-fun-at-jeff-bezos-richard-branson-and-elon-musk\/","title":{"rendered":"Billionaire belly laughs: SNL\u2019s space skit pokes fun at Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Elon Musk"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_646407\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-646407\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-646407\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/211002-bezos-wilson-630x273.jpg\" alt=\"Jeff Bezos and Owen Wilson\" width=\"630\" height=\"273\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/211002-bezos-wilson-630x273.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/211002-bezos-wilson.jpg 657w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-646407\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jeff Bezos (left) gets the \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d treatment from Owen Wilson. (Blue Origin \/ NBC Photos)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>You know that the billionaire space race has entered the nation\u2019s mainstream when it\u2019s skewered by NBC\u2019s \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On tonight\u2019s season premiere, guest host Owen Wilson played the starring role in \u201cStar Trek: Ego Quest\u201d as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who in July took a suborbital space ride on the New Shepard rocket built by his own Blue Origin space venture.<\/p>\n<p>SNL\u2019s writers even went so far as to write Wilson\u2019s brother, fellow actor Luke Wilson, into the script as Mark Bezos (credited in the opening titles as \u201cFirst Mate Jeff Bezos\u2019 Brother, Whose Name Escapes Me\u201d). Other prime-time players portrayed the Bezos brothers\u2019 companions in what it called a \u201ccrew of random weirdos,\u201d including Dutch student Oliver Daemen (\u201cScience Officer Rich Kid From the Netherlands\u201d) and 82-year-old aviation pioneer Wally Funk.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTheir mission: to just sort of fly around space, goofing off, in a ship that looks like a penis,\u201d the narrator intones.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, Bezos and his crew get into a drag race with Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson, who in real life went on his own suborbital space journey on SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity just nine days before Bezos\u2019 flight. The narrator calls it \u201cA Midlife Crisis of Cosmic Proportions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Billionaire Star Trek - SNL\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XD66suMp3J4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But the race ends up going to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk (played by Mikey Day), who blasts Bezos\u2019 craft with photon torpedoes. \u201cSpace is only big enough for one weird white billionaire,\u201d Musk says. \u201cSo you could say beating you is my \u2026 Prime objective.\u201d (Or should that be \u201cPrime Directive\u201d?)<\/p>\n<p>In the final scene, Bezos beams up an Amazon delivery guy (Kenan Thompson), grabs his package and immediately gets ready to beam him back down. \u201cHey, can I use the bathroom real quick?\u201d Thompson asks \u2014 and Bezos responds by throwing him an empty bottle. \u201cI\u2019m not peeing in this!\u2019 Thompson shouts as he and the bottle dissolve into the sparkly transporter beam.<\/p>\n<p>The spot doesn\u2019t address the past week\u2019s controversy over Blue Origin\u2019s policies on flight safety and sexual harassment \u2014 but in a couple of less serious respects, it\u2019s a case of art imitating life. Bezos really did play a part in a Star Trek show, as an alien Starfleet officer in the movie \u201cStar Trek Beyond.\u201d And just a few months ago, the real-life Musk shone as a guest host on SNL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeff Bezos (left) gets the \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d treatment from Owen Wilson. (Blue Origin \/ NBC Photos) You know that the billionaire space race has entered the nation\u2019s mainstream when it\u2019s skewered by NBC\u2019s \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d On tonight\u2019s season premiere, guest host Owen Wilson played the starring role in \u201cStar Trek: Ego Quest\u201d as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[509,1045,1046,1250,1693,4650,21,4402,4551],"class_list":["post-17478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-blue-origin","tag-elon-musk","tag-jeff-bezos","tag-new-shepard","tag-richard-branson","tag-saturday-night-live","tag-space","tag-suborbital-spaceflight","tag-television"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17478"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}