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Dick in a Box

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File:Junkinabox.jpg
Dick in a Box from Saturday Night Live.

Dick in a Box (also known as A Special Box and A Special Christmas Box) is a Saturday Night Live digital short featuring Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg that aired on December 16 2006. The song featured was written and produced by Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone of The Lonely Island. Timberlake also contributed to the lyrics.[1]

Plot

The film is about two men (Timberlake and Samberg) singing about giving their lovers (played by Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph) a Christmas gift of a box attached to his waist with his penis inside, going so far as to offer step-by-step instructions on how to create the gift. At the end of the film, they're both arrested by the police, presumably for parading around the city with their "presents".

The style of the video and the musical performance is reminiscent of early 1990s R&B sex ballads made popular by acts like Boyz II Men, Bell Biv DeVoe, Color Me Badd, Jon B. and R. Kelly.

Response

Five days after the video was posted to NBC's YouTube page, it had received more than 4.5 million views, placing it among the top 20 all-time most viewed videos on YouTube. As of January 14, 2007, it had received over ten million views and was ranked as the 7th most viewed video of all-time[2]. An uncensored version entitled Dick in a Box was made available on the SNL website after the show was aired. It features the same audience response track, as the short was aired uncensored to the in-studio audience. On YouTube, the original uncensored version posted by NBC has received over 10.5 million hits (another version places it over 11 million hits).

On December 22, 2006, the Parents Television Council called on NBC to "rethink its decision to post an uncensored version of a Saturday Night Live skit on both its own website and YouTube, in which the word 'dick' is used multiple times". When the skit aired on SNL, NBC bleeped out the word "dick" a total of 16 times[3].

Some radio stations used the edited version as an unofficial single by Timberlake. The version used was recorded from the SNL broadcast. The edited version was titled "Junk In The Box".

Parodies and homages

  • The band Umphrey's McGee covered this song, complete with box props, as their first encore of their New Year's Eve show in Chicago, with percussionist Andy Farag contributing rare vocals in the Andy Samberg role, and Brendan Bayliss singing Justin Timberlake's part. The multi-camera video is available on YouTube.[4] The band repeated their performance near the end of their closing set on Jam Cruise 5.
  • Ben Kenney and Brandon Boyd of Incubus covered part of the song on stage at the beginning of the encore in their Seattle, WA show on January 6th, 2007. Ben sang Justin Timberlake's part, and Brandon sang Andy Samberg's part.
  • A female equivalent, entitled "[My Box In A Box]" was posted on YouTube on Dec. 31, 2006, roughly two weeks after the original video was aired. "My Box in a Box" is very similar to "Dick in a Box", including a step by step procedure for making the "gift." News anchor/commentator Keith Olbermann did a piece commenting on "My Box in a Box" and the original SNL short for Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. It was disclosed on the January 12 edition of Countdown that the singer, "Bunny" were two women: Melissa Lamb, a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania was lipsynching and Leah Kauffman, a junior at Temple University was the actual singer. The box that was used as a central prop was sold on eBay for $1,525 (US), of which $1,000 went to Philabundance, a charity in Philadelphia, and the rest went to VH1's "Save The Music" campaign. Melissa Lamb gave an interview to the dl004d blog, saying she thought her version was better than the Justin Timberlake version on Saturday Night Live.
  • Another female equivalent, entitled "Tits in a Box" was posted on YouTube on January 5, 2007.
  • On the Ellen Degeneres Show, Ellen was mailed a water juice-box and asked to market it and she made a jingle to the tune of "dick in box" mostly consisting of the step by step instructions (ie: "step 1: punch a hole in the box")

See also

References

  1. ^ Jacques Steinberg (December 21, 2006). "Censored 'SNL' Sketch Jumps Bleepless Onto the Internet". The New York Times. Retrieved 2006-12-30.
  2. ^ [1]
  3. ^ Comcast News
  4. ^ [2]
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