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-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 pornography.
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, bitch, 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 toSaturday 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 illegal?
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.
Jesus.
Yeah.
This is why I don't want this.
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. - TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET: Hey.
- How we doing? - How's it going?
- TIMOTHÉE: Good. How you doing? - Yeah. People being nice?
- TIMOTHÉE: Yeah. Yeah. - Yeah? Good.
Just let us know
the things that you treasure and have high hopes for.
TIMOTHÉE: I love the "Museum of Hip-Hop Panel."
Uh-huh.
TIMOTHÉE: 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...
- TIMOTHÉE: Yeah. - ...just a memory.
I quickly ascertained that he's fucking 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 fucking 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 dick."
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.
- 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
ofSaturday 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, Timothée is going into fittings,
if you want to do producers soon.
Yeah, yeah, I, uh... We're just killing 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 balls?
- Holy cow." -Shorts?
Shorts. Do I...
Uh, Lorne had great legs, always.
He has this sort of
"man behind the curtain,"
Wizard of Oztype 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 aboutSNL 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?
- Please, spare me. - 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 SNLcast?
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 Nightshow 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 fuck?
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 maître 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 don't know what to get.
As long as it's generally Italian...
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, fuck."
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 theSNL 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 killed?
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-Inin the '60s...
What's that?
Laugh-Inwas, 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 war 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 withHere'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 fuck 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 queer Trolls out there
doing their thing for the very first time.
Queer 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 kill 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 [bleep], LiMu?
I thought he was going for a gun.
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 landedSNL.
But at the beginning of the '80s,
what he needed was a job.
There's been a lot of articles
on howSaturday 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 Gracelandalbum 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 wasSNL 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 fucking nightmare.
I don't know how else to put it.
Fucking 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 doSNL.
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.
AfterThe New Show,
Steve kind of rescued me by talking about¡Three Amigos!
Great! You've killed 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?"
"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 ofSaturday 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 fuck?
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 Gun from Radco.
Don't put Mace in someone's face.
No need for messin' with a Smith & Wesson.
Why? Because Stun Gun 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, penis 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 killing 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 inWayne's World
where Garth is making a mechanical hand.
- Uh-huh. - The subtext was
the hand was going to kill 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 Worldis 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.
WithWayne'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 Sinéad 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 Dick."
You'd book Nixon?!
How are ya?
I'm concerned with the crowds that are mindlessly
cheering this violence.
The Nazi 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 Liveshow?
- 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 bullet 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 goddamn 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 shit.
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 kill.
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 atSNL.
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 Rocktime 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 Rocknow, 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 SNLseason 49 dress rehearsal.
You guys excited?
Everything you're about to see has never been seen before,
and some of that shit'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... ♪
The crowd was sound asleep.
Was it?
They have to awaken.
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.
Change the angle.
Andrew's over-acting, so help him.
It's a little over-produced.
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, "Fuck."
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.
If you're going to be clingy...
it has to be in beats.
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 kill him on Saturday.
Because that's show business.
I was... I was by the lake
taking a whore 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...
He's losing his voice.
Ryan shot Papyrus until five a.m.
See if we can get a doctor here?
Like a throat doctor, you know?
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.
Cut off the applause.
Uh, now, Professor, if AI is left unregulated...
Jesus!
Who's doing that? Oh those are extras.
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.
Does it seem like his voice is going out?
Yeah.
Cool. All right, thanks.
How does she feel about the gash?
What?
Maybe a little much with gash--
The whores, the whores bath
Give your gash a splash.
That might've been a little too ripe.
Yeah, I think so.
Thank you.
Whores bath, I would, I would keep.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What did they say?
They got a doctor?
I mean, they're...
They don't have someone on call, but they can find someone.
We always had a doctor.
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...
We found somebody.
Good.
So we'll have him on standby.
Yeah.
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
afterSNL 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. Shit.
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 protectsSNL.
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.