How ‘SNL’ Alum’s Freak Accident Changed Him Forever
The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone recalls his life-changing fall on “Obsessed: The Podcast.”
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Saturday Night Live alum—and one third of The Lonely Island—Jorma Taccone will never be the same after he fell 20 feet and shattered his pelvis.
“It’s weird to say that the timing couldn’t have been better to have me have a near-death experience,” Taccone, 49, joked about his scary accident on Obsessed: The Podcast.
Taccone had just wrapped filming for his new movie, Over Your Dead Body (in theaters Apr. 24), when he fell from a 20-foot ladder at his farmhouse in Connecticut in September. He remembers “screaming for an ambulance immediately” while his legs were “intertwined in the rungs of the ladder.”
Jorma Taccone launched his career through The Lonely Island, directing digital shorts for SNL, including “Lazy Sunday,” “Dick in a Box,” and “I’m On a Boat.”
Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty Images
“I feel like a bag of bones, literally, like floating,” he remembered. “That was confirmed by all the surgeons later, ‘That’s what it was. Your pelvis wasn’t attached to your spine.’”
The former SNL director, who co-created “Lazy Sunday” and the Emmy-winning “D--k in a Box,” shattered his pelvis in the fall. The injury he suffered has a mortality rate of up to 45 percent due to the high possibility of internal bleeding. He distinctly remembers dreading the arrival of EMTs to untangle him from the ladder.
“I know this moment’s coming that the EMTs are going to be there and graciously remove me from the ladder,” he recalled, saying that he was already “maxed out” on pain.
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“In that first ambulance, I am on pain meds, and the guys are like, ‘How you feeling?’ I’m like, ‘Bad. This is really bad. Like even on these pain meds,’” he recalled. The EMTs then administered Ketamine, commonly used to anesthetize horses and other large animals.
Alongside The Lonely Island, Taccone earned acclaim for his hilarious and cutting-edge digital short films.
GUS RUELAS/REUTERS
“I’d already sort of had this perspective, weirdly, but that moment I was in a different plane. I was like, ‘You know, this is all part of the journey. And I’m gonna experience this, I’m gonna go through this, I’m gonna learn from this, this experience,’” the MacGruber director recalled. “But then the rest of the day was just comically painful.”
He spent two weeks in the hospital and another two weeks in a New York City rehab center, before moving into a wheelchair, crutches, and eventually walking again.
In "Over Your Dead Body," Jason Segel and Samara Weaving love to hate each other.
Courtesy 87North Productions
The accident even found its way into his new film, which stars Jason Segel and Samara Weaving as a couple who secretly plot to murder each other while on a romantic cabin getaway.
In Over Your Dead Body, which he edited after the accident, Taccone took great pleasure in putting the Forgetting Sarah Marshall actor up on a ladder.
“I actually put it in specifically because I was like, I’m so s--tty at this, and it’s funny to be on a ladder precariously,” he said. “It was definitely something that was consciously put in as something I thought was funny.”
“I got to say, I still think it’s funny,” he added.
The film, which Taccone directed in Finland, is an English-language adaptation of a 2021 Norwegian film, The Trip. The SNL alum said he only remade the movie after he got the stamp of approval from the original director, Tommy Wirkola.
“Over Your Dead Body” is an adaptation of a 2021 Norwegian film, “The Trip.”
Courtesy XYZ Films
“They were on the set of Violent Night, and Tommy kept quoting Popstar, MacGruber, Hot Rod," he said, immediately connecting with the director once he heard he was a fan. Taccone created all three alongside The Lonely Island partners Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer.
“And I feel really good about like, Tommy f---ing loves the film, which was like a big stamp of approval to me,” Taccone concluded.
Over Your Dead Body is currently screening in theaters.
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