The NYT goes behind-the-scenes on SNL's digital short “I Ran”:
“By yesterday afternoon, just four days after its network premiere, the various versions of the video posted on YouTube had been viewed nearly 300,000 times, according to tallies posted on the site. For Mr. Samberg and his main collaborators — Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone — ‘I Ran' is something of a sequel. Last year, NBC posted an uncensored version of a boy-band video the group made — the cleaned-up title was ‘Special Treat in a Box' — in which Justin Timberlake and Mr. Samberg each appeared to be making a gift of their male anatomy. Thus far, that film has been seen more than 29 million times on YouTube, and last month it won an Emmy…While the cast's main goal was to have fun, Mr. Samberg said, the film has a political undertone. ‘No one around here,' he said, ‘is super fired-up about a guy who is denying the Holocaust and saying there are no homosexuals in his country.'”