Long before The Tonight Show, Late Night, and Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Fallon made his TV debut on a little-known local sketch show—alongside a future collaborator who would follow him into late night.
The show was Metroland’s Loose Camera, a 30-minute pilot produced in 1994 for Albany, New York’s local Fox affiliate. Named after the region’s alt-weekly Metroland, the program featured pre-taped sketches and a musical guest. Fallon, then a 19-year-old student at the College of St. Rose, was one of thirteen local comics cast in the show.
Among his fellow cast members: Dion Flynn, a frequent performer on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where he now works as a staff writer.
In fact, Fallon and Flynn shared a scene in Metroland’s Loose Camera’s very first sketch: Flynn as a “Cultural Border Patrol” agent trying to stop hip trends from entering Albany, and Fallon as the Squiggy half of a Lenny & Squiggy impersonator duo. Fallon’s portion was cut from the broadcast version, but the moment survives online.
Fallon’s breakout moment came in a sketch called “Donkey Boy,” a parody promo for a made-up TV movie about a donkey-human hybrid struggling to fit in. In its review of the pilot, The Albany Times-Union called “Donkey Boy” one of the episode’s highlights.
Another standout: “Bomber John,” a high-octane morning DJ hilariously misplaced on an easy listening station. Fallon also appears in two other sketches—first as a student in dueling “Male Ego 101” and “Female Ego 101” classes, and later as a reporter at a press conference for sock puppets.
And yet, Fallon almost didn’t make it into the show. “Believe it or not, the director didn’t pick him,” Metroland’s Loose Camera executive producer Don Metzner recalled to WNYT in 2013. Fallon submitted a tape of his stand-up for a second chance and was brought on as a writer. “He ended up writing everything, starred in everything. He was the whole show,” Metzner said.
The show premiered live at Albany’s The Egg, where audiences gave feedback before the final cut. Metzner introduced the young Fallon during the event—another moment that lives on via YouTube.
On September 21, 1994, Albany viewers tuned in at 10 PM—right after 90210 and Models Inc.—to see Fallon’s TV debut. Few could have predicted the college kid from Albany would go on to host The Tonight Show. But just four years later, after leaving school and heading to Los Angeles, Fallon joined the cast of SNL, launching the late-night career we now know.
The full pilot of Metroland’s Loose Camera can be viewed at the top of this post.
Just what I expect from Fuckface Fallon. Lame and stupid!
Who would have guessed that Fallon has always been unlikable and unfunny.