Saturday Night Live Transcripts
Season 3: Episode 6
77f: Buck Henry / Leon Redbone
Schiller’s Reel
[As Pardo speaks, an academy leader counts down from 5 to 2, then the handwritten words “Schiller’s Reel” are seen.]
Don Pardo: Because of the subject matter, the following film by Tom Schiller will be presented in black and white.
[The following words scroll up the screen as a deep-voiced announcer speaks them. Funereal organ music plays.]
DEATH
The Great Enigma
What happens when we die?
What is on the other side?
Now mankind has startling new evidence from people declared clinically “dead” who have returned to tell of their experience. [Announcer says “experiences” despite caption]
Their descriptions are so similar… so vivid… that they may change mankind’s view of life, death and survival forever.
LIFE AFTER DEATH
a report from the other side
[A man of about 50 years old speaks to the unseen documentarian. Throughout the next three shots, ominous woodwind-sounding music builds.]
Man: I can remember… the nurses… saying something about “code pink,” and then clearly I remember… one of the doctors saying “he’s gone.” …I couldn’t understand how they could be so worried, when… I felt so happy to be outside of my body, and so peaceful. It was fabulous. Everything was bathed in a, an eerie white light… suddenly I found myself in a huge, white room… where I had to take a number and be seated.
[Another man, perhaps 60, speaks to the offscreen filmmaker.]
Man 2: I must have died, because I recognized my body was rising up, like an elevator. And I was passing through these rounds of light, and time, and space, and all of a sudden I came to this area which was filled blindingly with light and energy and space… and I had to take a number and sit down.
[A woman in her twenties speaks]
Woman: I was flying down this… corridor, with this… blue light, and… um, I ended up in this room where I had to reach up, and take a number, and then sit down.
[The camera tracks in slowly on a mechanical sign reading NOW SERVING 32. The studio audience begins applauding; the second digit turns over to 3.]
[ dissolve to audience wide shot, zoom in on woman with SUPER: “Boggles Own Mind” ]
[ fade ]
Submitted by: Tim Harrod
