Coneheads
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- For the 1993 movie, see Coneheads (film). For the insect named "conehead", see Conehead (bush-cricket).
The Coneheads was originally a sketch on Saturday Night Live which starred Dan Aykroyd as father Beldar, Jane Curtin as mother Prymaat and Kristen Kilpatrick as daughter ("Connie").
The Coneheads were an alien family, natives of the planet Remulak, who found themselves stranded on Earth. When questioned by Earth neighbors as to their strange behavior, they inevitably replied that they were "from France". Their unearthly appearance, however, was never strongly questioned -- a point from which much of the humor was derived.
Aside from their obvious physical differences, the Coneheads also had a very fast, nasal, monotone speech, and seemed to have much larger appetites than average humans. They would eat massive amounts of food during meals, (which they referred to as "consuming mass quantities"), drink entire six packs of beer at once, and smoke whole packs of cigarettes at a time. Despite their distinctions, they were never suspected as being aliens (even when accidentally referring to their neighbors as "Earthlings") by anyone who encountered them.
Much humor derived from the Coneheads' use of over-technical dialogue, such as referring to food as "consumables", and saying "I summon you" to ask to speak to another person. The somewhat popular term "parental unit" also came from the sketches. They engaged in strange behaviors, such as rubbing their cones together as a sign of affection, at which point a bizarre, theremin-like noise is emitted, presumably from the cones themselves. There is also a game they play involving tossing rings over each others' cones, which is somehow sexual in nature, and is considered taboo for the underaged Connie to play.
Dan Aykroyd said he developed the idea for the Coneheads based on the Moai, the mysterious and ancient stone statues of Easter Island, which had similarly conical heads.
The concept was turned into a movie, Coneheads, in 1993, with Aykroyd and Curtin reprising their roles. Michelle Burke played Connie this time out.
