Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Monkey (Boys) Business
Local men create prop for McCarthy’s SNL sketch
GLENSIDE >> Melissa McCarthy’s portrayal of White House press secretary Sean Spicer, ranting at and physically going after reporters with a podium, is putting a Glenside company that built the attack podium on the map.
McCarthy’s Feb. 4 imitation of Spicer on “Saturday Night Live” has had more than 1 million views on YouTube, and the much talked-about sketch was reprised by McCarthy on SNL Feb. 11, when she began riding the podium around the room as reporters tried to get out of the way.
The prop — actually three to date — that seems to take on a life of its own, was built by Monkey Boys Productions in a former steel warehouse on Glenside Avenue, where co-owners Marc Petrosino and Michael Latini, puppeteers, designers and fabricators, create puppets, props, creatures, costumes, practical effects and entertainment for film, TV and stage.
Monkey Boys got the call for a light-weight copy of the podium used for press conferences at the White House late Wednesday night for delivery that Friday at noon, Petrosino said. “Thursday they asked if we could build another, in case it got beat up.”
The podiums, made of dense foam, only weigh about 15 pounds, and had to be scaled for McCarthy, so “when we got there we had to chop off some height and fix it on the fly,” he said.
The following Friday they delivered a third podium, this one motorized on wheels.
The SNL podium “is the highest profile and quickest turnaround” job the company has done so far, Latini said, though it wasn’t the first.
The two were introduced to SNL when they were asked to bring “Little Shop of Horrors” puppets for a sketch written by Bobby Moynihan, which didn’t air, but they got on the show’s radar and their first project that did air on SNL was a stack of file folders like the one Donald Trump as president-elect had at a press conference. Next came a pizza guitar and then the podiums.
SNL starts with about 30 sketches at the beginning of the week and by midweek that’s down to half and “maybe eight sketches go to air,” Petrosino said.
Being on the set to oversee their props, “we got to see how much effort goes into it,” Latini said.
“SNL has some of the best in the business,” Petrosino said. “It’s an amazing machine to watch. We stayed for the opening with our podium — it was amazing to witness that firsthand.”
Latini, who grew up in Warminster, graduated from Archbishop Wood and Tyler School of Art, met Petrosino, a graduate of Ithaca College, with a degree in puppetry he fashioned himself, at the O’Neill Puppetry Conference, and Monkey Boys got started in a small apartment in Brooklyn they shared.
In 2006 they started the company in Pennsylvania, spending six years in Bristol and now two in Glenside, the latter chosen for its high ceilings and open space, as well as proximity to Latini’s home in Elkins Park. Petrosino, who lives in Allentown, is planning to move to the area soon, he said.
Both still perform as puppeteers and have performed “Little Shop of Horrors” over a thousand times each — the huge puppets sit in the shop waiting to go — Petrosino said.
Both were in theater in high school, acting and stage crew and worked in costume shops, taught to sew by their mothers.
Latini, who also builds furniture, learned carpentry from his father who did home remodeling. Petrosino’s parents did community theater, where he “did some wardrobe,” and in college he made his own puppets.
They have only two “true employees” who work on a temporary basis, but are hoping to grow to have four or five full-time, Petrosino
“SNL has some of the best in the business. It’s an amazing machine to watch. We stayed for the opening with our podium — it was amazing to witness that firsthand.” — Marc Petrosino
said.
The two have “pretty much a wide array of experience in different mediums” as Latini put it. “We’re always expanding our horizons,” Petrosino added.
A 70-pound, 15-foot long, full-scale juvenile T-Rex puppet they designed and built with blinking eyes and moving mouth that can roar is at Field Station: Dinosaurs in New Jersey. And Monkey Boys won a Best Comedy award for “Ben and the Desert,” a web series for which they created Star Wars puppets.
“We still plan to be a full production company; we still produce our own work that could get distributed on a larger scale,” Latini said.
“Right now we working on the [Broadway musical] Amelie project,” he said. The ultimate dream would be “to create a creature for a ‘Star Wars’ universe.”
Normally, it takes about a month to create a good quality prop, but the Monkey Boys aren’t bothered at all by the quick turnaround required by SNL. After getting the call four weeks in a row, they’re hoping the phone keeps ringing Wednesday nights.
“We love the process,” they said. “We really love our job.”