Hans and Franz
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Hans and Franz were characters in a recurring sketch called "Pumping Up with Hans & Franz" on the television sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. Hans and Franz themselves were played by Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon, respectively.
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[edit] Description
In the sketch, Carvey and Nealon played a pair of muscle-bound Austrian jocks who mimicked/spoofed Arnold Schwarzenegger by using padding for fake muscles, drab gray sweatsuits, weight belts, and Austrian accents. The background of the set included several life-sized cutouts of Schwarzenegger during his competition years, and the sketch's introduction music featured mock Austrian "yodeling".
"Pumping Up" primarily consisted of Hans and Franz denigrating others for not being strong, and then striking bodybuilder poses to show off their "muscled" bodies, complete with strained facial expressions. The two finally received their just deserts when Arnold Schwarzenegger himself made a guest appearance on the sketch (to much applause) and ridiculed "his cousins" for being girlie and weak.
A movie was in the works for a short time, entitled "Hans and Franz go to Hollywood," but was scrapped once producers saw poor box office performances from such SNL sketch-inspired movies as Stuart Saves His Family and It's Pat. Nevertheless, a short sketch spoofing VH1's Behind the Music specials was filmed for the show's 1999 primetime 25th Anniversary Special, but time constraints prevented it from airing and it went on to appear in a later episode that season. In the sketch, Hans and Franz tell the story of how they were reunited in Hollywood when Franz unsuspectingly has his buttocks "read" by Hans.
[edit] Cultural references
This sketch was one of the most popular on SNL, and the characters and their catchphrases entered American pop culture. When Schwarzenegger entered politics, he referred to the sketches himself, using the phrases "girlie men" and "pump you up." He even used the "girlie men" term during the 1988 Presidential election. Accompanying then Vice President George H.W. Bush, he attacked Bush's Democrat opponents by saying to the crowd: “They all look like a bunch of girlie men, right?" He used the phrase again to attack California state legislators in speeches during his election campaign for governor of California.
The two Crawler-Transporter vehicles used by NASA are nicknamed "Hans" and "Franz" after the SNL characters.
Two Designers from Germany, Konstantin Landuris and Horst Wittmann, work under the name of "hansandfranz", inspired by the "SNL" namegiving.
Hans and Franz also appeared in the Cranium Command attraction in the Wonders of Life pavilion at Walt Disney World Resort's Epcot theme park.
[edit] Origins
The first sketch in which the characters Hans and Franz appear occurred during the January 23, 1988 SNL broadcast on the heels of a national scandal over racially insensitive remarks made by Jimmy the Greek. He had stated that African-American athletes were physically superior to white athletes.
A week after he made these statements, Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon performed a skit as Hans and Franz where they berate him over the fact that they, as whites, were in fact physically superior. They demonstrated this fact by flexing repeatedly.
The skit enjoyed immediate popularity and the characters appeared regularly on SNL throughout the next several seasons.
[edit] Catchphrases
- "I am Hans." "Und I am Franz."
- "Ve are goinck to pump... (clap) ...YOU UP!"
- "Hear me now und believe me later..."
- "Girlie men"
- "Look at ze girlie man, goinck into his girlie house!"
