Description
In the sketch, Carvey and Nealon play 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 includes several life-sized cutouts of Schwarzenegger during his competition years and the sketch's introduction music featured mock Austrian "yodeling".
"Pumping Up" primarily consists of Hans and Franz denigrating others for not being strong and as physically "fit" as they were, and then striking bodybuilder poses to show off their "muscled" bodies, complete with strained facial expressions. The two finally receive their just deserts when Arnold Schwarzenegger himself makes a guest appearance on the sketch (to much applause) and ridicules "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. In late 2010, on the Conan program, Conan O'Brien and Nealon discussed how they were holed up in a Santa Monica hotel room for a month or so in the early nineties with Carvey and Robert Smigel, working on a script for the movie (which was to be a musical).
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. 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.
Read more about this topic: Hans And Franz
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