- Are you good?
- Yes, yes.
Think so, yeah.
Should we... Are you guys good?
Camera rolling.
So you're
gonna fix my collar or...
- No, you look good.
- Thank you.
All right.
So, what-what is funny?
What is funny? Mm...
Well, I kind of have a rule
that anybody who talks
about comedy
for longer than, you know,
a minute and a half
and isn't funny probably
shouldn't be listened to,
so I think being serious
about comedy and explaining...
you-you know, it's one of
those things like p*rn*graphy.
You know it when you see it.
Breathe.
Honey, breathe. Breathe, honey.
Oh, my God.
What? What?
What is it? What...
Oh, man!
Oh... man.
It was hot in there.
See me in a onesie
I got a baby face
Hey, but I look real shy
Say I'm a bad kid, b*tch,
I'm a bad guy
I got a baby face
And your girl at my crib
Trust me, baby
I eat the booty with a bib
-I smoke
-I go to court
-I gamble
-I get divorced
-My face saying Gerber
-Dong saying horse
-I do my taxes on my own
-Nobody do it for me
But before we go to sleep
We need a bedtime story.
This is Studio 8H,
home to Saturday Night Live
for the past 50 years.
It's also home to one of the
most powerful men in television
and the most elusive.
This is Lorne.
And this is Lorne trying
to avoid the camera.
Because after 50 years
of avoiding it,
Lorne has inadvertently agreed
to have a documentary
made about him
and has allowed access
to his inner circle
for the first time.
What have I got myself into?
I know. It's...
I feel bad for you.
He's gonna give you no...
It's... He...
That's why he's never
done one of these.
I think he's kind of
a very undocumentable man.
Like an ill*gal?
He's undocumented.
Just 'cause he's from Canada,
he doesn't get
as much attention.
This will be
the most boring documentary
you've ever made.
Okay, let's shift gears here.
This is Lorne's office.
The same office he's had
since 1975,
when he started
Saturday Night Live.
Live from New York, it's...
These are Lorne's Tootsie Rolls.
And these are Lorne's fish.
This is Lorne having
an important conversation
we can't hear
because Lorne doesn't want
to wear a microphone.
I don't think I would
advise you to try
and capture Lorne.
He wouldn't be happy with that,
and then you'll capture
a guy who's not happy.
Like Cher and Madonna,
you just need to say, "Lorne."
At the same time,
he's an enigma to many.
He doesn't let many in.
It's hard to find someone
who's less in focus.
And I think it's deliberate.
You have to be with him for a
long time before he loosens up,
and it's just sitting
and getting him
to sit down like this
that's gonna
be the tough part.
I'm gonna turn my phone off.
Yeah.
All right.
You're a Kardashian now.
Is that the wide, Steve?
Is that as wide
as it's gonna get?
No, we can get a little wider.
Let's just start with the wide
as the establishing.
That's kind of
a nice collection of apples,
don't you think?
Yeah.
They're tastier than usual.
- Yeah.
- They're not...
- This is their time.
- Yeah.
- Hi.
- Hey.
-How we doing?
-How's it going?
- Good. How you doing?
- Yeah. People being nice?
- Yeah. Yeah.
- Yeah? Good.
Just let us know
the things that you treasure
and have high hopes for.
I love
the "Museum of Hip-Hop Panel."
Uh-huh.
And the "Golden Bachelorette"
feels like a good,
safe start for me.
Hmm.
If you have short amounts
of time with him, especially
early on, you're like,
"I can't believe this guy is
in charge of all the comedy."
Lorne in real life,
he really does say
funny stuff constantly.
He's-he's not...
He's not gonna go too long
without saying a joke.
I think,
if it works, we keep it,
and if it doesn't...
- Yeah.
- ...just a memory.
I quickly ascertained that
he's f*cking with you a lot.
Everything about this guy
is so weird and interesting.
The questions
you want to ask Lorne,
I would ask other people,
and then they'll give you
a bunch of different answers,
and then you can...
Cut them together
to funny music?
Exactly.
Do you know
anything about his childhood?
Su-Suburb of Toronto?
-Uh-huh.
-Right?
-That's Canada.
-He liked hockey.
Liked hockey.
A lot of, like,
outdoor hockey kind of stuff.
Fishing and, you know,
stuff like that.
If you told me he made maple
syrup, I would believe you.
I guess I don't know
what his dad did...
We should ask him.
We should, like, meet Lorne.
Just talk to him.
There is a folkloric quality
about who is Lorne,
and you hear stories
before you get here.
Or you hear Dana's impression.
Right.
Or Dr. Evil.
Right.
You're prepared for the myth.
I still
have no f*cking first act.
It's called scheduling.
Uh...
Can I get you
anything else, Chris?
Uh, grappa, wine,
cappuccino,
tickets to a Lakers game?
Land in Montana?
Is Mark doing...
Uh, who's Mark doing?
Good evening.
I'm Lorne Michaels.
I have played Lorne.
Thank you for reminding me.
I think you'll feel better
if you come in my office
and, mm, make out with me.
Seth and everyone
would do Lorne impressions.
Loudly.
"Oh, someone suck my d*ck."
And I'd be like,
"Guys,
he's right down the hall."
I'm of the Robert Smigel school.
Which is we don't like
an accurate impression.
We like a way stretched out,
ridiculous impression.
Saturday TV Funhouse
-TV Funhouse, TV Funhouse.
-Come back here with my show!
With the whole documentary
thing, I mean, Paul did one,
Steve did one, and it's like,
at the end of the day,
the work is the legacy.
I mean, unless you think
it's a good idea.
He's given us
all these amazing careers.
And how do we repay him?
By doing
a cartoonish impression.
No, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
People have this idea
that they know me.
But I don't know myself.
So, if it's my job
to make sense of it, to at least
- try and make it coherent...
- Yeah?
Well, good luck, you know.
In an attempt to dig deeper,
the filmmakers sat down
with Lorne for a series
of interviews
over the next year.
You're on your deathbed,
and you look up.
Who do you want to see?
If you do it right,
it'll be your kids.
And if you do it wrong,
in my case,
it'd be old cast members
but not necessarily
the ones you want to see.
I'd say it in a...
in an unpleasant way,
but I'd go, "All babies are ugly
unless it's your baby."
And, but three months later,
people say, "What a cute baby."
It was a childhood thing
of mine that I'd think
if I was ever a lumberjack,
I'd get in really good shape.
And I would be living outdoors.
It'd be really healthy
and, you know,
that might be a...
a thing I do, you know?
I also thought that
if I ever went to prison,
I'd get to read a lot.
But these are childhood things.
He said something to me, like,
"If you really want
to understand me,
understand the show."
Yeah, absolutely.
SNL is what makes
Lorne Michaels Lorne Michaels.
They are inextricably linked.
The show is a kind of X-ray
of Lorne.
So I would say,
go back to the beginning.
New York City, 1975.
Crime is at an all-time high.
A national malaise
is in full swing.
And a new generation
raised by movies and television
is ready for change.
Enter an ambitious
30-year-old Canadian producer
born Lorne Lipowitz.
Is that really necessary?
His task:
to fill a late-night
weekend time slot
previously occupied
by Johnny Carson reruns.
It would be a place
to try out new talent,
there would be different hosts,
and it would be done live.
The expectation,
like the budget, was low.
I'm thinking 60 Minutes
meets Monty Python.
It was a blank slate.
And Lorne wanted a voice
in the culture.
A counterculture voice.
So he put together
a team of nobodies.
He had three months to get them
not ready for prime time.
Saturday Night
premieres here on NBC
at 11:30 on the 11th of October.
Lorne Michaels is the producer.
We were in the studio
all day today and, uh,
- all day yesterday.
- What'd you do?
We're still trying
to figure out how they get
the people in the little box.
That's the only problem so far.
What should we look for
on your program?
- Anxiety. Uh, I...
- Fear.
Yeah, fear.
NBC's Saturday Night.
Ladies and gentlemen,
George Carlin!
On the very first show,
we did a thing
called "Bee Hospital,"
which was the maternity ward
in a bee hospital.
Mr. Bee?
-Yes?
-Congratulations.
-It's a drone.
-It's a drone!
Congratulations, man.
Oh, God.
It wasn't gonna ever work
on television,
but he wanted to do it because
he saw the absurdist potential.
Mr. Bee?
-Yes?
-Congratulations.
It's a worker.
It's a worker?
-Hey. It's a worker.
-It's a worker.
-It's a worker.
-Hey, a worker...
Whether it was funny or not,
the one note we got
from the network was:
"Nice effort,
but drop the bee thing
'cause that clearly
didn't work."
So, of course, I was
determined, then,
to bring that back.
Well, what is he gonna do?
I think
he's going to the control room.
I'll tell you this,
he's mad now.
Well, I mean, I-I hope...
Oh, did you see the fist?
So, on the second show,
we brought the bees on.
Oh, my goodness.
I'm really sorry,
the bees number is cut.
-What?
-Aw, shucks.
Then, on the third show,
we brought the bees back.
All right, nah, that's it,
that's it. Stop it.
Hold the music.
No, no, that's ridiculous.
Now, I... I-I really...
I mean, I'm not gonna go on
with this thing.
It's just absolutely ridiculous.
I...
I-I was told
when I came on the show
that I would not have to work
with the bees.
And it played.
You think we like this?
No.
But we don't have any choice.
Now the note we got
from the network was:
"More bees."
The only rule that I remember
we ever had--
this is at the beginning--
"Let's make each other laugh."
And he assured us that
there were people out there
who'll laugh also.
Wow, that's terrific bass.
There was an audience
for this material.
They had not been represented,
and now they were.
Roll over, Liberty.
Yeah, that's it, really.
Uh, it's time
to take television down.
Television.
Dynamic.
Delightful.
Dangerous.
Chain it to your car.
It's still a modern miracle.
I mean, it went from zero
to about 90 in one season.
Little in television history
has been explored as much
as that first magical year
of Saturday Night.
But what was the secret?
It clips really well.
-Wow. -And then, like,
smash-cut to Belushi.
Smash-cut, Andy Kaufman.
Smash-cut to...
Live from New York,
it's...
Uh, Timothe is
going into fittings,
if you want to do
producers soon.
Yeah, yeah, I, uh...
We're just k*lling time here.
None of this is gonna be used.
- Okay. All right.
- Yeah.
Once he leaves the building,
I have no idea where he's going.
- Often to a nice dinner.
- He goes...
I know he goes
to lots of dinners.
-Lots of dinners.
-With cool people.
We're all curious.
It's like, we...
want to know what he has
for breakfast.
For all I know, he's, like...
you know, he works for the CIA.
I don't know.
I don't, like, know Lorne the
way Alec Baldwin knows Lorne,
or, um, I've never been...
I've never stood in the ocean
with Lorne.
Yeah, I was in the yoga class
with Lorne.
Middle-aged white man yoga,
we called it.
Yoga boys.
When you get the call, like,
"Hey, Lorne wants to play tennis
with you," like,
"I'm gonna be alone with Lorne
hitting tennis ba*ls?
- Holy cow."
- Shorts?
Shorts. Do I...
Uh, Lorne had great legs,
always.
He has this sort of
"man behind the curtain,"
Wizard of Oz type mystique
about him.
Lorne doesn't like
to talk about his private life.
Like his wife of 30 years
or his three kids.
- He's very family-oriented.
- Yeah.
He really is, like, and he...
his kids are great.
No, that's, like,
an Olympic feat.
- Yeah.
- That's true.
How cool and normal they are.
Compared to, like, what?
So much of Lorne
is kept under wraps.
But not to everybody.
We were just riding home
the other night,
and I said, "You know,
it's almost 50 years
that we're friends."
He bought his apartment
that was right next
to my apartment,
so we were neighbors.
Literally, we can walk out
to the service elevator,
and I can walk
into Lorne's kitchen.
Has he changed in any ways
that are notable to you?
He's richer.
But that's, in a way,
the part of him
that I'm least interested in.
I wrote this piece
for, uh, Vanity Fair.
"Who is
the real Lorne Michaels?"
"The facade behind the facade?"
"Born on a kibbutz.
"Living in a house
the Palestinians
were leaving anyway."
"A skinny teenager,
he lifted weights
to build muscle
and self-esteem."
"People would be
surprised to find
a classically trained pianist
with a passion for..."
These are all
com-complete lies,
and I thought,
"People are gonna know
it's funny."
I knew that he was born...
on a kibbutz with his parents.
He wasn't?
Oh, my God!
You're gonna put this in,
aren't you?
I assumed it was a newer troll.
I feel like he could pull
the levers of power at Wikipedia
to get the change.
By the way,
if it came from Paul Simon,
Lorne secretly loves it.
It appears not even
the Internet can be trusted.
A funny story
when Steve Burke took over NBC.
He had a list. He was gonna
call the top 15 people at NBC
and introduce himself and say,
"I'd like to get together
for breakfast."
Then he calls Lorne.
Lorne is obviously
one of the 15.
Lorne's first thing is...
Well, it's not going to be
for breakfast.
Everything about SNL
is designed around him.
So, there isn't
a 9:00 a.m. conference call
or organizational meeting.
I do know
he goes to bed at, like, 4:00
and wakes up at noon.
Which is so funny,
'cause he's 79 years old.
The life of Lorne Michaels
is one of routine.
Much like the show,
his weekly schedule
has remained the same
for 50 years.
His day begins at Paul Simon's
apartment with a workout.
You.
The thing about
a recession is that
no one's going
to the movies anyway,
so you're going to have
that thing
where a few streamers
take the hit
and that's about all.
He's a creature of habit.
Yes. Yeah.
He eats
at the same three restaurants.
He sits at the same table
and orders the same food.
They come over, and he'll say,
"You know, we'll do the...
And then you, uh..."
It's that short.
When you make your life
a live television show
that you don't even know
what it's gonna look like
till Wednesday afternoon,
I think you want
a fair amount of structure
in the rest of your life.
I've been taking care
of Lorne's aquarium
for almost 40 years.
It never changes too much.
It always has to stay
very similar
to the way it is today,
the way it was 40 years ago.
Everything changes
but stays the same.
Sounds like a guy
that doesn't like change.
Yes! Yes!
It's 4:00 p.m., which means
it's time for Lorne to start
the workday.
The first meeting is set
for 4:30.
4:30, Lorne time.
MARK McKINNEY:
"Lorne wants to talk to you
about your sketch.
He'll see you in five minutes."
And then you sit
outside his office
with your piece of paper.
Hours and hours.
You never know exactly
when that door is gonna open.
He's busy, too.
He's not just sitting in a room
trying to be late
for mythology or something.
Unless he is.
That would be terrible.
Time was a suggestion.
A 2:00 p.m. thing
started at 4:00.
I think it's 'cause we have
such a drop-dead,
"It has to be ready
at 11:30 on Saturday,"
that everything else can slide.
You guys want to put
your hands together and pray?
I just think, for the cameras.
Do you have any idea
how many people
are coming into this room?
Every Monday,
the writers and cast members
cram into Lorne's office
to meet this week's host
and to make each other laugh.
Oh. Oh.
Anything you want to do,
as opposed to anything
you want to stay away from?
Maybe "Whiskers R We"
with Billie Eilish.
I don't know. Whatever you want.
It'd be great.
You have her, you have...
Maya and Kristen will be around.
-Yes.
-Yeah.
Wonderful.
Yes.
I'm not... Am I acting natural
for the camera?
You... Yeah. Yeah.
- Under... understated.
- I-I'm not good
at being natural for the camera.
I'm a little...
Do you want me
to invite them in?
-Yes. Let's, um...
-All right.
-Which chair is, uh...
-That one.
This is so weird.
Can I sit on the floor?
I-I think it's so weird.
For those of you
who are fans of the show,
this is Kate McKinnon.
A while ago, me, you and Street
wrote one where you were
one of those hot sushi girls.
Lies down,
has sushi all over you,
and you were wearing socks,
and you kept coughing.
Might be worth a revisit.
My sister-in-law once asked me
if I wanted to play
a quickie game of Monopoly.
My mom sometimes drinks
too much wine
and then asks, uh,
crazy questions.
"Marcello, what's the difference
between a butt dial
and a booty call?"
Everyone knows they have to...
say something.
It's much more about:
"The week has to start.
We can't keep talking
about last week's show."
Maybe you see a semitruck...
-Uh-huh.
-...and you go, "Semitruck?
Seems like plenty
of truck to me."
Well, it's the last show
of '23, so...
try and get it right.
And, uh, let's start.
Comedy writers
and show business people
are highly complex,
and their egos are fragile.
And he's constantly able
to put out fires.
And if two people are fighting,
he knows how to handle that.
It's a very strange,
difficult thing to navigate,
and I don't...
I wonder how long it took him
to figure that out.
I mean, 'cause if you think
about it,
when he came in, it was...
wh-when he started the show,
there were so many strong
comedic voices,
and they were peers.
For all of us, it was
not only our first success,
it was... it was something
that was, uh...
that we would never,
to this day,
as you can tell
how inarticulate I am
about the emotional part of it,
it was something where
we were all so...
not only living
on top of each other,
there was just this incredible
sense of elation,
wanting it so much to succeed.
It was all for one
and one for all,
and then suddenly it wasn't.
Because he can't do the show.
Listen, he was in dress rehe...
You're gonna have to ask Danny
to go out and do the opening.
-Belushi is just not re...
-Mr. Michaels?
Yeah.
One second, please, okay?
Send Danny out.
Can you imagine trying
to ride herd
on that original SNL cast?
Look, I-I can't put this man
on television.
He's... I mean,
he's-he's barely awake.
Lorne, if John Belushi
could speak,
he'd tell you he's got to go on.
It was a lot of stress
and a lot of pressure,
and we just
kept relentlessly
moving forward.
And the energy level of the show
was just...
We are two wild and crazy...
I didn't understand how...
it was going to work.
And sometimes it doesn't.
You had said something
that I thought was interesting.
-Only one thing that I've said?
-I have many things here.
-Yeah, okay, yeah.
-Uh, here's one of the things.
-Yeah.
-Um, you were
completely unprepared
for the first five years
-except professionally.
-Yeah.
The first period was thrilling,
but it was unsustainable.
If your responsibility is
to whatever the standard
you believe is important,
there's always gonna be
some distance.
Cracks begin to form.
Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd
and John Belushi
all leave before season five.
I don't recall him saying,
"Please don't,"
or anything like that.
Or else I probably
would have stayed.
You know, I should have
thought that one out.
Those guys leaving...
it broke his heart.
It broke his heart.
At the end of the fifth season,
my contract was up.
Everybody's contract was up,
pretty much.
It had to be reinvented,
and to be reinvented,
it had to be blown up.
And I didn't have the...
emotional bandwidth to do that.
This is
the last show of the year.
Some people, in fact,
think it might be
the last
Saturday Night show ever.
No.
What Lorne really hoped
would happen
was that he could take
a little bit of a break,
clean house, hire a lot
of new people and start fresh.
I think it somehow
didn't occur to him
that it wasn't really
his intellectual property.
Lorne was unhappy
and was summoned to the office
of NBC Entertainment President
Irwin Segelstein
to discuss the show's future.
He had to take
the trouble to explain to me
that not everything
you want to do, you get to do.
'Cause it might not
be good for them,
and they're...
they're basically in control.
Uh, and he said...
Let me take you through
what will happen when you leave.
When you leave,
the show will get worse.
But not all of a sudden.
Gradually.
And it will take the audience
a while to figure that out.
Maybe two, maybe three years.
And when it gets to be,
you know, awful
and the audience
has abandoned it,
then we will cancel it,
and the show will be gone.
But we will still be here,
because we are the network
and we are eternal.
If you read your contract,
it says it's to be
this length of time,
it's to cost
this amount of money,
and it's to be delivered
at this date.
Nowhere in that does it
ever say it has to be good.
Our job is to lie,
cheat and steal,
and your job is to do the show.
Gulp.
The last shot of the last show
of that season
was the "on air" sign going off.
No one slept that night.
Okay.
It was like, "What the f*ck?
What does that mean?"
There was nobody at NBC saying,
"You're really important."
I thought it was just easier
for me to leave.
The show would
continue without Lorne
for the next five years.
Each Tuesday,
Lorne and a select group
take the host out
to the same restaurant
for 40 years.
So we spoke with Ed,
the matre d',
to learn anything we could
about these dinners.
What does he eat?
This is a little bit
like Las Vegas.
What happens here stays here.
Um...
The paparazzi people
were, like, fight...
They were like,
"Hold on, hold on, hold on!
Wait, give her a second."
-It's snowing.
-Yeah.
- Oh, really?
- Yeah.
- It's snowing.
- Just now?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
It's like snow
that can't make up its mind.
Yes.
They put out flowers
for you, I feel like.
No.
I don't think
I've ever seen that.
They have microphones.
There's a camera crew here.
I think so many people
are intimidated by him
because of, like,
the historical baggage
that comes with him.
Like, "Oh, my God, I'm in, like,
the room with Lorne Michaels.
Like, f*ck."
But he is not intimidating.
I think his favorite band
is Nirvana.
Isn't that cool?
I think. I don't know.
How's it going?
Everybody's awful. They're mean.
-Believe me, I know.
-Sarah's a biter.
- She bites.
- I get this everywhere.
And then, yeah,
I feel like people have, like,
some good, fun ideas, and...
-Yeah.
-I'm excited to see tomorrow.
As am I.
It'll be a complete surprise.
- I-I think...
- Yeah.
I think it will be.
They caught this conversation
between...
While the cast gets
to enjoy rare personal time
with Lorne,
they also know
the clock is ticking.
To me, it's, like,
panic-eating branzino,
um, 'cause your stuff
isn't written yet.
It's gotten much better,
but when I first started,
it was, like,
full panic attack and, like,
having to eat a branzino.
And then looking around
and you're like,
"Oh, and everyone
ordered a salad.
"Oh, now they have espresso.
Oh, now there's dessert."
And then you have to, like, sit
and, like, watch somebody
eat a gelato that's, like,
in a piece of fruit,
and that isn't the fastest way
to eat a dessert.
Oh, my God.
Um, we have so much work to do.
-So much.
-Yeah. Got to go.
Writing night.
Another staple
of the SNL machine.
Scripts are due in the morning,
so many of these poor souls
will be here until sunrise.
Hey, can you guys keep it down?
- Sorry.
- Sure.
-I'm kidding.
-Are we screaming too much?
-Sorry.
-I'm kidding.
That's kind of, like,
our thing, though.
That's why
this sketch is gonna crush.
Might be great if we weren't
screaming the whole time.
Throughout the years,
people always said,
"Why do we do it this way?
"I mean, why don't we use
the down weeks
"to write more sketches?
"Or why don't we,
"you know, reuse sketches
that got k*lled?
And why does the writing
have to be at night?"
I mean, it's just, like, crazy.
I always say,
"Fatigue is your friend."
Through exhaustion and through
people just being so depleted,
the unconscious takes over,
and suddenly,
you take way bigger risks
and you start
to make yourself laugh.
Who are you? I love it.
What's this, an apple?
You're hired.
I learned that early on.
Lorne said when he was writing
on Laugh-In in the '60s...
What's that?
Laugh-In was, like...
No, what's the '60s?
Ah, the '60s.
Like any good documentary,
this is where we play clips
of Vietnam and hippies.
I was too driven to be a hippie,
but when John Lennon said
that he was growing his hair
to stop the w*r in Vietnam,
I thought that was
a really good idea.
Some folks are born
made to wave the flag...
Hot Lorne.
He was a real cutie.
In 1969, Lorne moved
from Canada to Los Angeles
with his writing partner
Hart Pomerantz.
They had just landed a job
on the hottest show on TV.
It was the number one show,
tied with Here's Lucy.
So, the country was divided.
He's right.
The country was very divided.
On Monday night television.
And Lorne was
on the front lines.
As always, I was interested
in how it was made.
But we were never at
a read-through with the cast,
and we were never in the studio.
They had the writers
in one building,
and not even on the lot,
and they would send in
the material.
They'd just crank out jokes,
give them to somebody else
to rewrite.
Don't even know until
when you watch the show on TV
if any of your words are there.
It was dispiriting,
'cause you're not
really connected,
you don't know the cast.
The fun of it, that spirit,
was missing.
It's amazing
how writer-forward this show is.
That's the most special thing
that he's added to the culture
I don't think people know about.
You can write whatever you want.
You're kind of expected to,
to bring something new
or weird or specific.
And then there are things
that are so wonderful
that get on
and stick with people forever.
Like the people that... who
happened to be home that night
and saw, you know,
"Bird Family."
-Here comes some corn.
-All right.
They're never gonna forget
"The Bird Family."
Wednesday begins around 4:30
with the table read.
By now, Lorne's producers
have narrowed down the sketches
from 60 to around 40,
which will be read
over the next four hours.
The way he reads
the stage directions...
Have you been in a read-through?
Yeah, yeah.
"Outside of a high school.
"We go to a rough
high school classroom.
"The cast and extras
are rowdy teens.
"Kenan enters as the principal.
"Jake enters dressed like Neo
from The Matrix.
"He's wet and panting.
Everybody's silent for a beat."
Um, are you our...
Not today.
So, when I see you
at a read-through, what are you
mainly thinking about?
How the f*ck I'm still doing
that part of the job.
The best at the table read,
when you're doing something
and it's not going well,
and you glance up at Lorne,
and he's looking at you...
- Oh, God.
- ...over his glasses like this.
Like...
I don't think
I ever got one of those,
but I definitely did one thing
at the table
where he actually put his head
in his hands.
Like...
How many sketches
has Lorne heard,
- like, via read-through?
- Oh, yeah.
It's got to be
tens of thousands.
-21 shows a season.
-Right.
- For 45 seasons.
- 45...
Whoa! That was...
- That's at least
28,350 sketches. -
That he's heard
and had to read.
Uh, "secretary of state
designates..."
"Maya as flamboyant
Latin talk show host..."
"Now please welcome the
Leonardo DiCaprio of hotel TV,
Mario Lopez."
When you can get a good laugh
out of Lorne,
you feel like, you're like,
"I don't even care
"if the sketch makes it.
Lorne just laughed.
I feel good."
I don't know exactly what it is,
but when you get it, it means...
-it means the world.
-Oh, it's so... so satisfying.
Sometimes, too, it may not be
funny to him,
but he can see, like,
other people really enjoying it,
and he knows,
"There's just gonna be stuff
I'm not gonna be aware of
that's gonna be huge to people."
He takes, like,
24-year-olds really seriously,
in a way that I think
a lot of people maybe wouldn't.
Very cool to see a film
full of q*eer Trolls out there
doing their thing
for the very first time.
q*eer Trolls on screen.
We did it.
When you're on page three
of a 14-page piece,
sometimes I really feel
that my life is
slipping away from me.
But you can never say,
"Okay, I think
we're done with this.
Let's move on
to the next piece."
'Cause in that kind
of community,
everybody deserves
to have their work heard.
Even if it's awful.
We were at a restaurant once,
and a woman came up
with a script with, like,
a fuzzy cover,
like the kind, like,
a little girl
-would have on a notebook.
-Mm-hmm.
And she was like,
"My husband wrote this script.
Will you read it?"
And he goes, "Yes, yes.
- I understand. I understand."
- Oh, wow.
"I understand." And he took it.
And I go,
"Well, you took the script?"
He goes, "Let me tell you why."
He goes, "Terry Melcher..."
Oh, this-this is so good.
Terry Melcher
told Charles Manson,
"I'm not gonna make your demo,"
and that's why Manson sent them
to Terry Melcher's house,
and Sharon Tate was there.
So he accepts everything...
- Oh, my God.
- Yeah, so a-a stranger
has, like, a work of art
- they've done...
- Yeah, yeah.
- "I understand. I understand."
- Yeah.
To be like,
"You and me... like, I get you.
- Don't k*ll me."
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- That's so good.
- But also,
they did a couple
Manson sketches in the '70s,
and Squeaky Fromme sent him
a letter from jail
that said, "I understand
you've been a bad boy.
Charlie is God.
Charlie is Jesus."
And then a smiley face.
- Oh!
- And he went,
"And it's the smiley face
that really scared me."
Oh, man. I would frame that.
- Come on.
- She called him a bad boy?
"I heard you're a bad boy."
After hearing dozens
of sketches at read-through,
Lorne and the host,
along with the producers
and head writers,
select ten to 12 to produce.
Oftentimes on Wednesday,
when you go into that meeting,
it feels like
you don't have anything.
I think just
the natural panic of that,
to me, would be...
would come quickly.
It's never that for him.
"Church on Vacation."
- We're there, right?
- Yes.
Yes.
"They're Listening"?
I really like
"They're Listening."
Uh, "LiMu Emu"?
I like it.
Liberty Mutual lets you
customize and save,
so you only pay
for what you need.
Whoa. Really?
What the , LiMu?
He barely moved!
If we were to do "LiMu Emu,"
"Trump" and "PDD,"
Shane stars in all of them.
There's not enough hours
in the day.
'Cause of those two, I think...
"Trump Sneakers" is...
I'd prefer to do that one.
So, what's the third one?
We could do "Sports Betting."
Uh-huh.
He's so good at always seeming
in control, calm,
bemused, unaffected.
Lorne's confidence...
it's not egomaniacal.
He's not making it about "I."
He's talking about "we."
But where the confidence
came from... I don't know.
It's The Hart
& Lorne Terrific Hour!
At the beginning of the '70s,
Lorne was back in Canada
starring in a short-lived
variety show on the CBC.
And now it's time once again
to talk to our old friend,
the Canadian Beaver.
Beav, how are you doing?
Oh, pretty chipper.
Pretty chipper.
In sports,
all the great coaches
were shitty players.
And Lorne had, you know,
middling success.
Well, that's all you need.
That's the greatest education
in the world.
When the show
was eventually canceled,
Lorne moved to Los Angeles to
reinvent himself as a producer.
Stop!
Most people
I've talked to met Lorne
when he started at SNL,
and he was kind of
more formed as a person.
- Uh-huh.
- But...
Yes?
But who was he when you met him?
Oh, I think,
for a fella that young,
he was pretty sophisticated.
Or we-we probably thought
he was sophisticated.
She was very much
a kindred spirit.
Was someone who's
on the same wavelength
and-and cared just as much
about it being good as I did.
That's one thing
Lorne and I liked especially,
was to find something
divinely silly.
Lily decided
to take a chance on Lorne,
so she hired him to write
and produce her TV specials.
He was ambitious.
He was vulnerable.
He was everything.
I really liked him.
And then I began to dislike him
because he was
kind of, uh, condescending.
At one point,
I said to Jane, my partner,
"I'm gonna fire him."
She, "Oh, no, no, you can't.
You can't fire Lorne.
"He's just... he's talented,
and he needs...
"he needs to have confidence,
more confidence.
You should really
compliment him more."
And I said, "Okay."
That was just his own cover-up.
He had so much to prove.
And he was proving it.
Lily was the first person
to go to a network and suggest
that I could produce,
and I thank her for that.
Confidence comes slowly.
And the nature of the show
is that it doesn't stop.
It just keeps moving.
Can I call you right back?
If not for Lily,
Lorne would have
never landed SNL.
But at the beginning
of the '80s,
what he needed was a job.
There's been a lot of articles
on how Saturday Night
fell apart.
You see, Lorne Michaels,
the producer of Saturday Night,
decided after last season
that it was time to go on
to different things.
So, going back to 1980...
You know, it was confusing.
It was lonely.
It's a breakup.
Please write a card
or letter to...
Let's put this show
out of its misery.
No one really believes me,
but I didn't watch the show
for those five years.
I spent a lot of time
on my garden.
Just decompressing.
Healing myself.
With any big rupture,
nature allowed me to reconnect
to something
that seemed more important.
And so I built a pond.
But not physically.
He wasn't...
he didn't dig the hole.
I'd like it to be big
but not that thing where
it's announcing itself,
like when Sonny & Cher
came back and it was like,
"Here we are,"
and nobody cared anymore.
I'm reminded of
a trip that he took.
You'd have to ask Paul about it.
Oh, yeah, down to Tennessee?
They went up Highway 61,
all the way to Graceland.
We got pulled over,
and a police officer
recognized me,
and then w...
and wanted my autograph.
I think this trip had
a profound effect
on both of them.
It made him have
an understanding
of a culture and a world
that he had never experienced.
Then also, the Graceland album
came out of this.
The Mississippi Delta
Was shining like
a National Guitar...
So much of Hollywood,
they perform
for the I-95 corridor,
and he does have
an understanding of
and sensitivity
to Middle America.
I'm going to Graceland
Memphis, Tennessee
I'm going to Graceland...
He's here, and he's not here.
'Cause I think
the more you're in it,
the more you think that,
for the phenomenon
of Saturday Night Live,
the world revolves around that.
You can believe
that your little universe
is the universe, but it isn't.
Lorne was ready to move on.
But as they say in Hollywood,
the phone stopped ringing.
Until...
Somebody from the network
called and said...
You want my help
filling a time slot?
No, no, it...
there were four time slots.
No, no, no. I know.
I said, "Well, I'm not
gonna do Saturday,
so maybe Friday."
Uh, and as long as it can be
different than the old show.
Three years ago,
Michaels quit TV.
Now he's back with The New Show.
To me, it made complete sense
that now it was SNL
ten years later,
the audience
that loved it at 11:30
were now a little older
and had kids.
And it had incredible
rotating casts of guests.
A lot of John Candy appearances.
Hello. Roy's Food Repair.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, eggs.
Yeah, we fix 'em.
I sort of like the idea that,
uh, "New" has been the sort of
one constant in television
since, uh... since
I first started watching it.
The New Show.
The thought is to move the title
to New Improved Show
by the... you know,
by March or April,
uh, if we feel we're...
we're getting better at it.
That show was
a f*cking nightmare.
I don't know how else to put it.
f*cking nightmare. Okay?
It looked like
Saturday Night Live,
but it didn't have
the live energy because
it was all on tape.
There was a lot of, "Okay, hold.
We're gonna redo that."
Cut. Those two extras,
they keep staring in the lens.
And then everyone would
stay up all night
trying to edit it
into something
that could air on Friday.
And, of course,
it was all chopped up.
And then laugh tracks
had to be added.
We're on exhibit!
We're in a zoo!
He was on the line personally
for overrunning budget,
so he was actually
losing his money.
I heard millions.
Probably.
I think maybe we were trying
to recapture something
that, um...
...that happened naturally...
...and we couldn't get it back.
We had a wonderful time, and
you've been a great audience,
so good night
and drive carefully.
-Good night.
-Good night.
I was in an editing room, like,
at 4:00 in the morning
with Buck Henry.
Uh, he said,
"But at least you still have
the money coming in from SNL."
And I said, "No, I don't."
And he said, "What?"
I said,
"No, I walked away clean.
"I didn't want to have...
If my name's not on it,
I don't really w-want
to be responsible."
This is Canadian.
And he said, "You know,
you're... you're an idiot."
I said, "What do you mean?"
He said, "You're an idiot.
It was your show,
and you should be
participating in that."
I was leaning too far backwards
to not do SNL.
The thing that kills most things
is overthinking.
The show begins
to take shape on Thursday.
Um, wait, wait, wait, wait.
This is... this is set 22.
I'm on 23.
These are my backup trays.
- Backup trays?
- Yeah.
Meanwhile, Lorne ventures out
to a standing
8:00 p.m. dinner reservation.
Lorne is a creature of habit,
but even he has his limits.
So, instead of returning
to Lattanzi,
he branches out
across Manhattan.
Welcome to the worst night
of your life.
Exactly.
What are you gonna order?
Oh, I would have the Bolognese.
The same thing you've ordered
for the last 50 years?
Yeah, that sort of thing.
Congratulations, by the way,
on all the show stuff.
-It's phenomenal.
-It's unbelievable.
How many more seasons
do you think you'll do?
You know, there's
a certain point where you're--
let's just say it--
hideously ugly.
The noble failure,
it's not appealing
after you've had one.
After The New Show,
Steve kind of rescued me
by talking about Three Amigos!
Great! You've k*lled
the invisible swordsman!
The way in which
it's funny is really joyous.
It was thrilling, and it was
what I needed at the time.
Just to go back to writing.
We were looking for directors,
and we met with one, and...
You know, he was going over
our script and saying,
you know, like,
"The big crop then was not corn.
The big crop was chicle
in that part of Mexico."
And, Steve, who was always much
clearer on things than I was,
said, "I don't think
you understand.
W-We're doing a big dumb movie."
And I thought,
it's exactly what we were doing,
but he could ha...
he had the confidence
to be able to articulate it,
um, because we all have
an aspiration
to be taken seriously,
to be celebrated
for our intelligence
or our perceptiveness,
and there it was-- no, it...
uh, nothing is better
than a big dumb movie.
Night, Lucky.
Night, Dusty.
-Good night, Ned.
-Good night, Ned.
Good night, Ned.
And then, in 1985,
SNL hit rock bottom.
NBC President Brandon Tartikoff
knew who to call.
Cancel the show?
Unless I come back?
Well, then it's that thing of:
"Is he coming back
because he failed?"
Or: "How can he top
what he did in the '70s?"
And then there's always
the people
who are going to say that he...
Right.
I wasn't gonna have
a lot of time.
I had to make a decision.
One friend said,
"You love living in New York.
It was your show.
You know how to do it."
"And it gives you a base again."
Oddly enough,
that's when I realized
how important it was to me.
Something about it was a mating
of my talent and my metabolism.
I was built for it.
- Live from...
- ...New York, it was
a press conference to introduce
the new cast members
of Saturday Night Live.
Back at the helm of the program
is Lorne Michaels,
the original producer
who left the show
five years ago
and told the press how he felt.
When I left, I wanted to die.
Season 11 was the show's worst.
Instead of hiring comedians
as he had in the past,
Lorne hired actors...
and Jon Lovitz.
Lorne's attempt at reinvention
had failed.
The problem is that
I'd never fired anybody
that whole fi...
first five years.
I think I'd learned how to lead
on some level,
but I'd never learned
how to be a boss.
I think one of
his big transitions was
when he started wearing
suit and tie.
Billy, what are you doing?
I'm setting the room on fire.
That's what I'm doing.
And he said,
"They sort of look at me
"as Mr. Michaels.
I accept it. I'm Mr. Michaels."
If you set the cast on fire,
they won't be able
to do the show next year.
"That's the role
I'm gonna play."
What are you doing?
I got to wave goodbye.
Don't ask any questions, Jon.
Just go downstairs
to my limousine
and wait for me there.
-Okay.
-Writers. Writers.
Yes, Mr. Michaels?
Uh, there's some candies
and chocolates
in the dressing room.
Go on in there, help yourself.
-Oh, thanks, Mr. Michaels.
-You did a great job this year.
You know, when you're in charge,
people say, "Well, he's
a really good friend of yours,"
and I go, "That's true,
uh, but I can cut his piece.
And what kind of friend
would do that?"
Michaels remains unapologetic.
He'll fire some of
the show's writers
and some of the cast.
I was back to being an underdog.
Which is a much more
comfortable position in comedy.
Now I had something
to prove again.
That it had more to do
with talent than anything else,
as I believe it was in the '70s.
Why don't you eat
a big bowl of f*ck?
Well, apparently, we're using
the f-word tonight, aren't we?
Well, that's very special.
It's the latest development
in the world of self-defense:
the Stun g*n from Radco.
Don't put Mace
in someone's face.
No need for messin'
with a Smith & Wesson.
Why? Because Stun g*n has three
audio dynamic laser frequencies
to meet every personal
protection need.
Frequency one is
the repellent mode.
I started to go back to:
"Well, I might as well do
a show that I'd like to see."
I spent all last summer
working with the deaf!
It was a little bit
like a sitcom to him.
"Dana can do that part,
and Kevin Nealon
will come in here."
You needed all these pieces,
and he made those choices.
But we were told,
"You guys got to hit
the ground running,
or they're gonna pull the plug
by Christmas."
Who dressed
you this morning, Sally?
It wasn't, by any chance...
Satan?
I remember watching
that first episode,
and I remember my dad going,
"I don't know
- any of these people."
- Mm-hmm.
Within two or three shows,
the whole dynamic of the show
had shifted.
I have here a copy
of the contract.
The writing began to click.
I see that it is written
in blood.
And it started to feel
and look competent.
If I find any more garbage
in my yard,
-I'm gonna...
-Oh, will you shut up?
Shut up! Shut up!
Then, by the end of the season,
was, like, fans of everybody.
I think that's
when people were, like,
"Oh, it's just gonna keep
reinventing itself."
Toonces, look out!
I get there in '88.
I remember having
the distinct impression
that I jumped on that train
at a good time.
It was on the ascent again.
-Hey.
-Hey, Bob.
Hey, p*nis looks great today.
And then, you know,
I would come out,
Farley would come out.
Let me move in with you, please.
When you come back home,
don't make me leave.
For the love of God,
let the boy move in with you!
Good Lord!
23-year-old Chris Rock was asked
if taking this job means
he'll be haunted
by the ghost of Eddie Murphy.
Uh, me?
The ghost of Eddie Murph...
I think Eddie's still alive,
ain't he?
You could call me
a diversity hire.
I think history has proven
I'm at least as funny
as Rob Schneider.
By the early '90s,
it was once again
at a ratings peak.
People were comfortable
with it again.
And that group was on fire.
I had him in an elevator
one time, and I was like,
"Why... why me and Adam?"
And Lorne said to me, "Well,
"you guys displayed
original thoughts,
"and whenever I see
original thought,
I-I... I gravitate to it."
You know, there's a story
that Lorne always talks about,
which is, um... he was in...
somewhere in Europe,
and he was...
driving through pumpkin fields.
And he came across, uh, a guy...
And you could get out
at any moment
and load your trunk
full of pumpkins,
and nobody would see you
'cause it was
all these little back roads.
But he came across somebody
selling pumpkins
in the middle of these
vast pumpkin fields.
And so Lorne was curious,
and so he got out
and he said to the guy,
"Why should I buy your pumpkins?
I could've stolen 7,000."
He goes, "What am I paying for?"
And the guy selling pumpkins
says, "You pay for my eye.
I pick the good pumpkins."
And that is, in essence,
what Lorne does.
He picks the good pumpkins.
I see a little silhouetto
of a man
Scaramouche, Scaramouche
Will you do the fandango?
Thunderbolt and lightning,
very, very frightening me
Galileo...
The movie studios are very good
at k*lling new comedy,
and, uh, Lorne was very good
about protecting
where it was fresh
and... and exciting.
I realized how casually
Lorne was intensely involved
all the time.
There's a plot in Wayne's World
where Garth is making
a mechanical hand.
-Uh-huh.
-The subtext was
the hand was going to k*ll
Rob Lowe.
So, it was really on the bubble,
"Do we cut that?"
You know? And I kind of got it.
It was so...
And Lorne said,
"Um, it's that kind of thing,
"like, you know, 20 years from
now, you see it on television,
and you're, like,
really glad it's there."
And he's not wrong.
Ex-squeeze me?
Baking powder?
Hi, Wayne.
Hi.
Hey, are you all right?
Wayne's World was a massive hit,
a big dumb movie for the ages.
And she's okay!
And one of only
two posters in Lorne's office.
Wayne's World is
the most important movie
to ever hit Hollywood.
Not. Schwing.
After the fact,
I thought to myself,
"Okay, what is the...
what's the secret
of Wayne's World Why..."
My comedies,
they generally are not coarse.
There is no film in this camera.
With Wayne's World,
I would compare it to
a Snickers.
You know, uh, because...
you don't want a Snickers
every day,
you know, but if your...
if your flight is delayed
and you go to the machine,
you could...
you could definitely...
if it's a four-hour wait,
you're definitely gonna get it.
Ah...
It's milk chocolate.
It's not dark chocolate.
It has peanuts.
It has caramel.
It has nougat.
Son of a...
And they call it a confection.
And so much of these kind
of things are confections.
It may be false nutrition,
but it's a very American thing.
You know, Americans...
in my opinion,
they invented fun.
Did you eat a lot of paint chips
when you were a kid?
Why?
As I said, people,
when they're trying to decide
what to go to, say,
"That looks like fun."
And I don't think
Germans say that.
Mel Brooks once defined comedy
as "polite hostility."
Once you lose that, once you
limit yourself to saying,
"Well, that's not funny,"
or, "That can't be funny,"
or, "You can't
do jokes on that,"
then you've limited yourself
to the point
where you're, uh,
ineffective as a comedian.
You must have great courage
of your convictions to be able
to go ahead with that line
of thinking and do that and not
-worry too much about it.
-Well, if it's, if it's funny,
that's all that really matters.
That's all we're really
concerned with.
Yeah, but how do you...
how do you decide it's funny?
Funny, maybe, to you,
but how do you know
it's funny to the audience?
Well, th-that's what
a live audience tells you.
All right, stand by.
Uh, we're set, Lorne.
We are. Stand by, Emma.
I had dinner a couple weeks ago,
and-and someone was talking
about their favorite sketches,
one of which was, uh,
"Stunt Baby."
Shut up! Shut up!
Cut, cut, cut! Good, good.
Okay, bring in
the stunt baby, okay?
It's just a stunt baby.
You could do that
because no one said we couldn't.
What's funny?
What's provocative?
And what is plain and simple
unacceptable?
Lorne loves controversy.
I don't know if I can say
some of the people
he floated hosting
that we were like...
"What?"
"What about Michael Vick?"
We go, "No."
He goes, "Yeah, Paula was mad.
"She came in here
and had articles
about what he did to the dogs."
It was fascinating to me
with the Sinad O'Connor thing.
Fight the real enemy.
Nobody remembers that
there was a sketch after it.
Sweet Jimmy
He's the nicest pimp
in the world
Sweet Jimmy.
The world condemned this girl
because what she was saying
about the Catholic Church...
...and she was right.
It's a time capsule.
Like, this is what's happening,
you know?
We have a great show.
Rage Against the Machine
is here.
That's what makes the show
exciting to me,
that sort of tension of:
"Who's gonna be on?"
I actually worked here.
I got fired from here...
a few years ago, and
if you don't know about that,
don't worry about it.
Please don't look that up,
for real.
The velocity of
what happened with Shane
is so staggering
because it was instant.
Network went into panic mode.
"We will be boycotted.
You have to denounce this."
It was just the peak
of whatever that...
-Yeah.
-...thing of zero tolerance...
And so, what made you decide
to bring him back as a host?
He's the number one comedian
in the country.
-Oh, really?
-Yeah.
He does always want to have
a fair and balanced show.
I remember getting
in an argument with him
about whether
he would book Nixon.
Jew boy!
He said, "Yeah, I'd book d*ck."
You'd book Nixon?!
How are ya?
I'm concerned with the crowds
that are mindlessly
cheering this violence.
The n*zi brownshirts
were all over Germany.
Well, wh-when did we just jump
to Hitler here, you know?
It's still the most important
comedy show on television.
And I only know that because
they get so mad at us
when we book Trump.
And I get it, and I get...
and I'm glad that it...
that it's important to people.
I'm glad that it makes people
feel a certain way.
When people care,
it-it means it's still relevant
and it's still important.
Sometimes, with distance,
you go, "Oh, geez, I wish
we hadn't done this or that."
Uh, but when it comes to things
like "Stunt Baby"...
...it was hard laughs,
and hard laughs generally mean
you're breaking some taboo.
I see you take a lot of ribbing
from the other Scouts.
Goes with
the territory, Mr. Armstrong.
Sticks and stones.
Attaboy.
It has been an up-and-down year
for the man who created
Saturday Night Live.
The troubles of
Saturday Night Live.
Whoops.
My shirt fell off.
It's been called "vulgar."
-You like the pepper?
-Yeah.
This year, "unfunny."
-"Unfunny."
-The press is in
a feeding frenzy
on this thing, right?
-Yes, it's true. Yeah.
-What's wrong with the show?
I think it's not working the
way, uh, it has in the past...
"Saturday Night Dead" is-is
a headline I've read since 1976.
Lay off me, I'm starving!
The '95 season,
the press were beating us up
because they were
primarily baby boomers,
and we were not like the show
that they grew up with.
Uh, you know that
Saturday Night Live show?
-Uh, it got way worse.
-Oh, yeah.
Comedy had changed.
It was a different sensibility.
Fresh-a pepper.
The idea that this cast
was playing to their kids
was a big shift.
Lorne, Jason's right.
The show's really gone downhill.
-I... I don't...
-Chris, get out.
Yes, sir.
It's one thing
when the press comes after you.
The tone I get
from some of the articles
and the interview
you-you've given recently
is that it hurt possibly more
that you had a perception
that the network brass didn't
come to your defense enough.
-You think... Let me just...
-Well, I, uh...
-You said...
-Yeah.
"A very conscious decision
was made
"to sidestep support for me.
To me, that's infuriating."
How many people tried to take
that crown away from him?
How many people tried
to topple SNL
and would've enjoy... loved it?
Executives.
Whatever went down in '95
had a big effect.
'95 is disruption.
And a new boss in Don Ohlmeyer.
Ohlmeyer was just
kind of a bully,
kind of thug, you know?
And Lorne is just not equipped
to deal with people like that.
The show's dead.
The ratings are going down.
If you really love the show,
we got to fix this.
Man, isn't this zoo
the best, man?
I know.
I can't believe it was...
how easy it was
to get into the zoo.
We just hopped the fence.
Dude,
look at this polar bear cage.
Hey, you think I can swim
the little moat both ways
before the bear eats me?
Don once bragged to me
that he had cut
Lorne's popcorn budget.
That's the death of any show,
is when they cut
the popcorn budget.
You also get into
this mess where
Don doesn't think
Adam Sandler's funny.
Whee!
I know he didn't like me.
I know he didn't like Farley.
Lorne was the captain always,
and then all of a sudden,
the captain was having to hear
somebody else's opinion
a little too much.
Ow! Oh, my God!
Sandler, fired.
Adios.
Farley...
...fired.
Most of the cast and writers
were fired.
Or politely asked to leave.
Those who remained were
walking on eggshells.
Except for one comedian
who refused to stop making fun
of Ohlmeyer's best friend.
In his book, O.J. Simpson says
that he would have
taken a b*llet or stood
in front of a train for Nicole.
Man, I'm gonna tell you,
that is some bad luck
when the one guy who would've
died for you kills you.
That's probably...
You got to love Norm and Lorne
just for continuing to do it.
I mean, you're...
you're literally asking for it.
It's the perfect plan.
I got a phone call
that Chris Farley had died.
My, uh... F-Farley...
Farley's funeral,
and Lorne was there.
He was crying. I think that's
what started us all crying.
I had been scheduled
to have dinner
with Don Ohlmeyer that night,
and that was the night
that he told me
that he wanted Norm gone.
Ohlmeyer got what he wanted.
Everybody was fired.
They... Every...
It was the biggest...
There's never been anything
like it before or since.
When I was hired,
Lorne, from that
very first meeting,
was saying...
"The show has fallen many times,
"many times it has risen,
and we're gonna see
if it can do that again."
We had nothing to lose.
Yeah, who wants...
anybody want a hot dog?
Oh, you don't eat pork, do you?
Yeah.
No, that's fine.
That's fine. It's...
Golf's a funny game, isn't it?
Yeah.
It's hard, it's expensive,
and yet we keep playing it, huh?
What's up with that?
It's kind of funny.
Get off the g*dd*mn shed!
Get off the shed!
Get off the damn shed!
It just kept getting
better and better.
And then we'd get new people,
and they were great.
That's the biggest dog
I've ever seen.
There were so many assassins.
Like, great, great, great.
Now are the actual royalty
of comedy.
Mom Jeans fit mom
just the way she likes it.
You're like, "Holy sh*t.
Like, how is he finding
these people?"
How many funny people are there
in America?
You know, 300?
I'll take "the rapists" for 200.
That's "therapists."
What I find with it is,
most people
that we bring in,
they-they speak our language.
-Somebody call Tom Ha... Ooh!
-Oh!
That's the whole thing
that makes
Saturday Night Live great.
If it was still doing sketches
with the same cast
from the '70s,
it wouldn't be around.
You have to evolve and change,
and you have to let the show
grow up.
Gilly...
did you stab three pencils
into Cindy's body?
Sorry.
By the time it's Kristen Wiig
and that whole crowd,
it's like...
it's beyond gleeful.
It began to feel like,
"Oh, this-this show's a fact.
It just is."
Devin? What are you doing here?
Lorne is the ultimate
show business survivor.
He's still here,
and 175 executives are not.
New people come in every year.
People leave.
That's funny.
But I'm the guy who stays.
So...
you gonna retire?
-Here's my guess.
-No.
-You're not. You're not.
-No. No.
My fear is,
it's so from another time...
-Yeah, exactly.
-And I... Yeah.
And I'm sort of
the protector of it,
and as long as I'm there,
they won't attack.
-Yeah.
-But the moment
-I'm not there, I think...
-Yeah.
It's done in such a wasteful
manner, which it's been
-since the beginning, you know?
-Yeah.
And here's what they do.
Hey.
That was mine. I ordered that.
The show is only in production
for a few weeks at a time.
During the breaks,
Lorne retreats
to his home in Maine
to recharge.
Well, I think Maine is all...
is-is no girls allowed.
I think it's all boys.
That's what Fred says.
I don't think he likes anyone
talking about Maine.
Fred's been there. Yes.
He has, like, a blueberry farm.
And that he just lives
in a geodesic dome
at the center of it,
and he's got little blueberry
paste around his mouth.
-He's got great blueberries.
-He's got great blueberries.
I know about the blueberry jam.
Sometimes on Christmas,
he'll give us, um, preserves.
You get three jars.
I-I have this fear
that if Lorne ever invited me,
that he would hunt me.
That we would have a meal
and then he would say,
"You know, Conan,
the most dangerous game is man,"
and he'd take a shotgun,
and he'd say,
"You have 45 minutes."
And then I would just be
running through the woods
and, um...
Lorne would not be on foot.
He'd be carried by interns,
uh, through the woods
with a shotgun.
"Get him!" And then I'd...
at one point,
I'd think I got away,
but I'd find the skeleton
of, uh...
of someone who I thought
was still alive.
You know, a cast member
who went missing.
"Oh, my God, it's...
it's a mummified Dennis Miller."
And he's shot. He's there.
Um...
yeah, I mean, it's possible.
It's possible that he hunts
people at the blueberry farm.
Why Maine?
It's restorative.
I think New York is the
stimulation capital of America.
Up here,
there's no ambient light
or no ambient sound, so...
Did you plant the daffodils?
Yeah.
These are gray birch.
This is arborvitae.
You make a tea out of it,
and it stops scurvy.
There's a lot of wildlife.
Beaver dams and moose. Yeah.
And bears.
Oh, see?
Babies.
This is a goat.
I wanted animals
but not ones
that I would have to k*ll.
It makes me very happy
when I'm here.
It sort of occurred to me
that as you get older,
you yearn for the landscape
of your childhood.
I think it was a happy childhood
disrupted by a tragic loss.
His dad, Lefty Lipowitz,
he was a player,
he was a gambler.
And he called Lorne and Mark
his little gangsters.
He and his father had a...
an argument about something.
And it wasn't a big argument,
'cause he liked his father.
And Lorne left, and his father
had a heart attack, and
they took him to the hospital,
and Lorne never got
to see him again.
With his brother Mark,
they went to the Beth Sholom
every day to say the...
you know, the mourner's prayer,
the kaddish.
He did that for a whole year.
It's like, in that grief vacuum,
a lot of steely kind
of discipline
and some... resolve or
something was cooking in there.
It must be hard to lose
your father at that age.
He was only...
How old was he, 13?
- 14.
- Yeah, very difficult.
We met at Camp Timberlane.
Which was on a lake.
And we were doing shows
on Saturday night.
Lorne would direct
and sometimes act in the show.
This camp had
a high diving board.
And Lorne would get up there
and lay down on the board
so you couldn't see him.
And everybody would be
looking for Lorne.
"Where's Lorne?"
And he was always
up on that diving board.
He would just observe
everything that was going on.
I think the older you get,
the more you think
about your childhood.
You see some things
a little clearer.
Probably 'cause of
my father's death,
I never really closed
any doors at SNL.
It's gonna be music,
and it's gonna be comedy,
and it's gonna be politics.
What seemed insane in 1975
turned out to be
a thing that stayed alive.
But the older you get, the more
you realize it's on its way.
That what's on its way?
-Change.
-Yeah.
-Yeah. Yeah.
-That it's always on its way.
Yeah.
Still, huh?
Couple years ago, it was the...
it was, like,
the most amazing thing.
I walked out of my building
on the Upper West Side,
and Lorne was there.
It was like
something out of a movie,
'cause he was like,
"Let's walk."
So, what's with
the outfit, Lemon?
Did the people from
that makeover show
finally respond to your letter?
And he was in this zone
where it was like
he had had this epiphany
of what the future
of everything was gonna be,
and he was laying it out to me,
and it was fascinating.
He was like...
"This one's gonna buy that one.
"A lot of the mid-level agents
will go away,
and there'll be the handful of
people who can really do it."
I'm s... quite sure he's right,
but I didn't really
understand it.
Why are you wearing a tux?
It's after 6:00.
What am I, a farmer?
He might be the last person
actually in show business.
'Cause you have a lot
of business school people
coming in, and they don't
understand that, like,
you have to find
a lunatic writer
and put up with them.
When we did Donaghy on 30 Rock
and I based some of it on Lorne,
what I based it on was
that I know things that
you don't think are important,
and when I'm not
in the writers' room,
you're all making fun of me,
but believe me,
the things I know
are gonna help you succeed.
Your spending has gotten
out of control.
Give me an example.
The first thing he told me was,
"Always tip at least 15%
in a restaurant,
or they'll write about you
in the New York Post."
"You can't make an entrance
if you never leave."
"Don't get caught
trying to be funny,
and no funny photos."
Now, Jenna, catch the chicken.
Nice try, pal.
If you ask people this,
we can all tell you this.
"Buy a bigger apartment
than you think you can afford."
"You should look at it
and think,
'Ooh, who lives here? It's me.'"
So much of that 30 Rock time
was really, I think,
when I would call him and say,
like, "What do I do about this?
How do I handle the network
in this?"
If I look at 30 Rock now,
I feel like
I'm talking to him every day
and I'm talking about him
through that show.
The Jack-Liz relationship
is, in many ways, like a huge
thank-you note
to Lorne probably.
The thing about producing
is that it's an invisible art.
If you're any good at it,
you leave no fingerprints.
Everyone is contributing
what they contribute.
The writer writes it.
The director directs it.
But you have to never ever
take your eye off the show.
So it seems somewhat thankless.
It just takes longer to prove
you were good at it.
I always call this place
White Motown,
because it's like...
it's the same kind
of principle, you know.
Like, it's just
sort of a culture.
Like, you want to be
a part of this group,
and it still discovers talent
through the years
and all of that,
and it's kind of...
Was Motown not white?
-No, Motown was not white.
-Oh. See?
But don't tell Stevie Wonder.
He-he doesn't know yet.
It's a surprise.
Welcome to SNL season 49
dress rehearsal.
You guys excited?
Everything you're about to see
has never been seen before,
and some of that sh*t'll
never be seen again.
Are you ready to start the show?
I said, "Are you ready
to start the show?"
The one and only
Kenan Thompson...
How's everyone doing tonight?
We got Jon "Taffers,"
the screaming guy
-from Bar Rescue.
-Yep.
Dress rehearsal takes place
three and a half hours
before broadcast.
Literally at
the last possible minute.
You better take it easy
This place is on fire
Been a hard day
and don't know what to do
Wait a minute, baby,
it can happen to you
Well, I'm so glad we made it
I'm so glad we made it
You got to gimme some lovin'
Gimme, gimme some lovin'
You got to gimme some lovin'
Every day
You!
Ow! Well, I feel so good...
Lorne watches dress rehearsal
from a small alcove
under the bleachers.
He can be... I don't want to say
"savage," but he can be
very clear about
what should be happening.
I don't think you're afraid
of getting fired.
You're-you're literally
afraid of, like,
"Am I done in comedy right now?"
And Lorne's like,
"I'm nice under the blea..."
And he was getting all, like,
"I'm pretty good..."
And I was like, "Lorne,
"being under the bleachers
is sponsored by Imodium
because everyone runs
and shits themselves."
A lot of times, you'll know
it's maybe not playing the way
Lorne thought it was gonna play
when he does this.
Yeah. It feels like
he's blowing your soul
out of your body.
One time,
he turned to me, and he said,
"Can they take Emmys back?"
I was like, "f*ck."
One time,
he asked wardrobe, like, uh,
"What's the problem with this?"
They go, "Well, that was
the writer's choice."
And he looks at me and he goes,
"Oh, there's writers on this?"
"Well, thanks, man.
That feels cool."
And then here's the good news.
He's gonna have notes that are
impossible to understand.
...I have
a little question for you.
If you'll come with me
-into the kitchen.
-No, don't go, don't go.
I think
I know what this is about.
Inevitably, people are
in love with you
and disappointed with you.
You're a hero. You're a villain.
You're a genius.
You're a schmuck.
He knows that the person
who's madly in love with him
on Tuesday
may want to k*ll him
on Saturday.
Because that's show business.
I was... I was by the lake
taking a wh*re bath.
That's when you squat
and you give your gash a splash.
I think you have to be scared.
I know I am every week.
And that's the stress.
Yeah, their language is like a
soothing, beautiful sound. I...
I don't know if I could
do it justice. Like...
The "Papyrus" digital short
was running especially long.
The first cut was
over eight minutes,
an eternity in Lorne time.
We'd spent
a lot of time and money on it,
th-they were doing
the best they could upstairs,
but they could not get it
to time.
And then just the door
started closing.
Uh, now, Professor,
if AI is left unregulated...
And everybody was breaking,
and everybody seemed to be
enjoying everybody breaking.
Here's something very Lorne.
Uh, "Don't break."
"Hey, dude, come here.
"You don't laugh
while you're in the sketch.
You can't laugh
while you're in the sketch."
She's talking to you.
Oh, I'm sorry. Me?
Yes, you.
Ma'am?
-Yes.
-Ma'am, me?
-Yes, you.
-I'm so sorry.
It never goes the way
you thought it was gonna go.
And I think,
if you've been onstage,
particularly if you've been
onstage doing comedy,
you know
it's all about adjusting.
--Well,
do you have a campaign manager?
I have the owl.
-The owl?
-Yeah. He eats mice.
- He eats mice?
- Yeah. In front of everybody.
- Really?
- Oh, God.
Wait.
Lorne breaks in sketches.
This is how I find out.
Unbelievable.
My whole... I got...
I got to send him
my therapy bill.
Of course he is.
That's so funny.
Hack.
Yeah.
Cool. All right, thanks.
What?
I mean, it really is chaos
kind of every week.
Okay, is there any way
you could make an exception,
or that's... hard and fast rule?
Sometimes when things
are just going well
and everything's written
and it's all finished,
it feels spooky.
Lorne is known
for keeping his cool,
though there are signs
when he's losing control.
He picks up ice,
and he throws it...
...into a cooler.
It's not, like, at someone.
Jesus.
He will get angry at a shot
that was missed
or this or that. He...
You know, that's how
his care is shown.
He always talks about, like,
how parents aren't
allowed to, like,
yell in front of their kids
because...
the scary part of, like, a kid
seeing your parent out of...
their parent out of control.
Seeing him, like, focused,
- but never, like...
- Yeah.
Maybe he has a little room
somewhere in this building
where he goes and, like,
has little panics.
My empire is crumbling!
He probably has worries,
but you don't see it.
All right, everyone back in.
You can't let anyone
see you limping.
You're Lorne Michaels.
Thank you guys so much.
Lorne and the best crew
in the world...
As I've said endlessly, uh,
we-we don't go on
because it's ready.
We go on because it's 11:30.
And that tends to be
very clarifying.
I mean,
that's definitely a thing
after SNL that was so helpful
was, like, how to fix things.
A sketch wasn't working
at dress, having the confidence
-to be like,
"We'll make this work." -Yep.
- You know, like...
- Right.
What's the thing that kind of
holds you back a lot
is being unsure of yourself
and failing.
You know, Lorne kind of
takes on that... that attitude.
You kind of learn
Lorne's attitude, which is
kind of like what we're talking
about, where it is, like,
"We're gonna make this work.
It's gonna be fine."
-ANDY and FRED: Yeah.
-"Don't bore me with,
like, what's essentially
your anxiety."
Dress rehearsal
runs long by design,
and sketches that don't play
get cut.
Lorne must trim 30 minutes
from the show
and decide on a final order.
It's, like, the meeting.
They go into their secret lair,
and then the show happens.
This group of producers
has now been at the show
for kind of a long time,
so there is a lot of, um,
nonverbal stuff.
The way that he might
put a card on the board
conveys a lot of meaning.
Cool.
Thank you all for being here.
We have work to do.
Um...
We work for Lorne Michaels.
Nobody feels like
they work for NBC. It's like...
we get notes from him.
That was a rough dress.
I don't know
how many of you noticed.
I was there, and I saw it.
Uh, that audience
had been sleeping on pavement.
That will not be the case
of this audience.
You're gonna have to do
something to wake them up.
Uh, "Church," it's really funny.
And it looked like a family.
It really did.
Yeah.
It is like a parent thing,
where I remember all the times
he said something nice.
You, like, live on it for weeks.
- Oh, my God, yeah.
- Like...
I had a good relationship
with my parents,
so I didn't really have that.
Oh, man. sh*t.
Wow.
For a powerful, powerful person,
he doesn't really
throw it around much.
Now, some people think he does,
but when you think about it,
where does Lorne Michaels
exert power?
He protects SNL.
We're in this building,
Rockefeller Plaza,
which is 65 floors of cubicles
and people on phones,
and we have this floor
in which we get paid--
sometimes a lot of money--
to be silly.
My role as producer
was to create
this context
in which people could play.
You know, people tell stories
about waiting,
and I go, "I know,"
and-and, honestly,
it's not about power
or rudeness.
It's just, I'm always on
whatever the biggest problem is.
If somebody's in here
breaking down, I don't go,
"Well, listen,
I got to get on with my day."
I try and spend as much time
with anybody who...
I sense is
going through something.
A lot of people go from
maybe being onstage
a couple times
to being incredibly famous.
And for me, he's someone
that I've talked to
about all these
different stages,
and he's very much
been there for me.
My only legitimacy
was that Lorne had chosen me.
Conan was a writer, man.
"Hey, that guy should
replace Letterman."
It's like, "Whoa. Okay."
And he was right.
You wouldn't be here
talking to me
if Lorne hadn't made that call
and stuck with me, so...
Glad that worked out.
He gave me...
he just helped me so much.
Just asked him
for all this advice.
Getting older, dating,
getting married and having kids.
Becoming a parent while
I was on the show, I think,
was also really meaningful
for him.
Like watching his kids grow up.
Like a part of the family.
The thing
I would tell any new writer
or cast member is that
Lorne is protecting you
in ways you have no idea about.
He is very loyal in that way.
I was twice in drug rehabs,
and the second time,
he called me, and, um,
he could tell that
I just was, like...
you know, sitting in my room
in rehab, and he went,
"By the way, I'll stay on
the phone as long as you want."
And I went, "Okay."
And he goes, "And we can
talk about whatever."
And I said,
"Let's just talk about
anything other than this."
And then he talked to me
about how,
um, Peacock had messed up
by not being on Samsung phones.
"Update."
Don't worry about it.
Marcello,
can you get in earlier?
- Yep.
- Okay.
Emma, your stuff is playing
really well in that.
- Thank you, Lorne.
- You're welcome.
You're welcome.
Um...
All right.
That's sort of our show
for tonight.
So, you-you know
what to do out there,
and, uh, if you could do it
tonight, that would be great
because...
we won't be seeing each other
for a month,
which, in many ways,
could be a good thing.
Uh...
so there'll be lots of time
to... to reflect on this show.
And people will bring it up.
There's no... no way they won't
'cause of all the things
that are in it.
So y-you really have to
sort of search...
really in terms
of why you're here.
You're the best at it.
I don't say that often,
because it's mostly not true.
But...
it will be tonight.
I'll see you out there.
I think one of
Lorne's superpowers is that...
...we all want
to make him happy.
If you plant daffodils...
...first of all,
you have to go through
the thousands
of daffodils there are...
...and find
what you want to watch.
And then you go, "I wonder
what 10,000 daffodils would do."
Watching people
come into their own,
turning into
what they're gonna be,
that moment is huge.
A garden is like a show
that doesn't talk back to you.
And shows up on time every year.
When you're in charge,
the thing about it is
to keep it alive
and keep it going.
Uh, if you still think
it's relevant.
But who has time
to think about that?
All right, everyone,
are we ready to go?
You can follow us on in.
Please keep to your left.
Who is Lorne Michaels?
The boy from Canada
who harnessed comedy?
The man
who conquered television?
The mogul who became the father?
There's lots of...
...people trying to find
Rosebud, I guess.
Rosebud.
I just think...
we're constantly surprised
by who we are.
Live from New York,
it's Saturday Night.
My number one thing is:
All of life is reinvention.
So, to be understood--
not gonna happen.
So, for the record,
what is your Rosebud?
I-I-I think probably the fish.
Do they have names?
No.
My dogs have names.
Oh, my God. You have dogs.
We were walking
in Beverly Hills one night.
It's dark now.
And streetlight is
shining down on him.
And he has his baseball cap,
and I'm like... and I thought,
"Wow, Lorne was
a little kid once.
That's crazy."
Like, what a life.
And I-I'd be embarrassed
to say this in front of him,
but I thought to myself,
"Oh, man,
Lorne's gonna die one day,
and I'm so sad."
I like hanging
with this guy so much.
I'm just staring at him.
And then he went,
"That's the bathroom where
George Michael got arrested."
Big boss man
Won't you hear me
when I call?
Big boss man, big boss man
Yeah, big boss man
Won't you hear me
when I call?
Big boss man, big boss man
Well, you ain't so big
You just tall and that's all
Big boss man, big boss man
Well, you got me workin',
boss man
Workin' around the farm
I want a little
drink of water
But you won't give me some
Big boss man
Won't you hear me
when I call?
Big boss man, big boss man
Well, you ain't so big
You just tall and that's all
Big boss man, big boss man
No, you ain't so big
You just tall and that's all
Big boss man.
- Are we done?
- We're done.
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Lorne (2026)
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