Adam Driver was the guest host of Saturday Night Live this week, and he really gave 110%.
The show’s funniest sketches always tend to be the ones that aren’t pegged to a specific current event, and so was the case with new skit “Career Day”.
It centres on a “bring your father to work” day at an American high school, where teenager Mortdecai (Pete Davidson) reluctantly agrees to let his elderly oil baron father, Abraham H. Parnassus (Adam Driver), give a talk.
Hobbling in on a cane, Parnassus proceeds to deliver a blistering account of his domination of the oil industry, a megalomaniac likely inspired in part by Daniel Day-Lewis’ There Will Be Blood character Daniel Plainview.
“I was born seven months too early,” Parnassus tells the students. “Incubation technology was still in its infancy, so they placed me in a cast iron pot inside a pizza oven until I was ripe enough to walk. My bones never hardened but my spirit did. Be strong and crush your enemies!”
Davidson, along with fellow SNL cast member Aidy Bryant who plays the schoolteacher, struggle to keep straight faces and are largely unable to look Driver in the eye.
The Star Wars actor is in full force however, growing increasingly belligerent as he recalls his personal war with oil baron rival HR Pickins. “I married your granddaughter!” he spits. “Filled her belly with my festering seed and soiled your boy, he is my final revenge HR!”
In under five minutes, Parnassus became as enthralling an Adam Driver character as Kylo Ren did in two feature films.
Curse you, HR!
