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The show was made on the fly.
Buck Henry, Lorne Michaels, Jean Pagliuso, Gilda Radner, François de Menil, and Susan Forristal in 1978, three years afterSaturday Night Livepremiered.
Michaels started with the writers; he was himself a survivor of the Hollywood joke-writing machine.
Is it really a workplace drama disguised as a comedy show?
Because its live, every single thing is important.
Michaels in theSNLgreenroom with the Rolling Stones (and writer Alan Zweibel) in 1978.
Why did Shawn saypseudo-egalitarian?
Because by Saturday, Lorne is making all the final decisions: cutting sketches, cutting work.
Cut four seconds from that.
With Ray Charles in 1977.
Cut eight minutes from that.
This is going up first, and this is changing.
How steeped in comedy history was Lorne Michaels at the birth ofSNL?
He wrote forRowan & Martins Laugh-In.
For the good of the team?
Tina Fey, in her bookBossypants, quotes Lorne saying that producing is about discouraging creativity.
Thats the balancing act.
Michaels in theSNLgreenroom with the Rolling Stones (and writer Alan Zweibel) in 1978.
How deep is that fear that the show might not go on?
It is amazing that nothing has ever gone that radically wrong.
Anne Beatts is an early writer, along with Rosie Shuster, the two of themoften writing together.
I think there are misconceptions about women and the show.
First of all, the work that Lorne had done beforeSNLwas a lot of working for women comics.
Its exploring race and class not as much for jokes as for a kind of working-class solidarity.
Theres a seriousness thats in contrast to sketches today, even.
Yes, and Lorne wanted the comedy onSNLto be real like that.
It was the 1970s.
They were watching Watergate on TV.
He wanted the comedy to reflect the participants real lives.
There are lots and lots of these sketches in the early years.
Lorne called that the show itself speaking.
But there was resistance on the cast, at least to the idea of women writing?
And part of that was just his, I think, macho bluster.
You hadNora Dunnwalking off the show when Andrew Dice Clay was booked.
And I think Lorne tried to be responsive and listen to those kinds of issues.
And there was Christine Zander, who he hired on the writing staff just to writepieces for women.
There were a lot of really strong womenPaula Pell, Emily Spivey, Amy Poehler.
Did Michaels carry McLuhans ideas with him?
Then he became a gray-haired man, and hes on the radio, and then television came along.
Itsthe McLuhan thing: Then all these guys dyed their hair black to be on television.
They kind of kept reinventing themselves for the next medium.
So [Michaels] was always aware of the generations shifting.
In contrast to others… You really have to be on it.
And keeping in fashion?
The show is about fashion, you know?
And that means being in touch with what it is that the audience wants, what young people want.
Right around the end of the 1990s, the political satire on the show was great.
Its when Will Ferrell was doing George Bush with Jim Downey, the greatest satirist.
Downey coined the Bush word stratergy?
That was a real conundrum.
Whats the state of contemporary political humor?
And these are all people in the national conversation.
Its not that you want to attack them politically, but they just are part of it.
And you really want to do everybody justice.
A conflation of politics and personality?
Of course, the people want to dump on Trump, but Trump is no good for comedy anymore.
Hes almost comedy-proof, I think.
Itll be interesting to see what theyre going to do going forward.
In comedy, being non-partisanor maybe a-partisanis not as easy as it sounds?
Some television political comedy loses power by being too identifiably liberal.
You lose some surprise, and then you get into clapter.
The idea of people responding, not because its funny, but because they agree with it.
And yet the fake newscast is still at the center of the show.
He originally planned to deliver the news himself!
Is Canada the straight man of North America?
[Michaels] referred to feeling that everything going on in America was kind of bigger and bolder.
With Ray Charles in 1977.
And now the sketches play on TikTok.
Has the culture changed or the show?
So they never really changed the format.
The format that it came up with in 1975 actually lends itself to streaming.
You were part of the live audience atSNLearly on?
That would have been my outfit to wear to the city.
They would have been wearing those striped rugby shirts.
And where are they now?
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live
BOOKSHOP
Lorneis out from Random House on February 18.
