Lorne Michaels<\/a>, Paul McCartney, Steve Martin \u2014 you seem to gravitate toward profiling larger-than-life folks.
I mean, watching Man on the Run and Lorne back to back \u2014 two very different films, two very different people, and yet both huge cultural figures. Part of what has gotten easier in my career is I\u2019ve done enough of these; people tend to pick me for a reason. But I\u2019ve also sniffed around on a project enough to know when I\u2019m willing to make the leap or not. There are projects that I\u2019ve met on, I\u2019ve talked to people, and then jumped out because they don\u2019t really want to go through the process of someone making a film about them.<\/p>\nRight, and you\u2019d assume Lorne Michaels would be one of those people.
I would! Lorne is a weird one. Like, McCartney was very clear. I met with him, told him what I thought the scope of the film should be. And he said great. And then we never had another talk about the film. I didn\u2019t change a frame of it. Lorne hasn\u2019t watched this film. He\u2019s supposed to be at the premiere tonight. He\u2019s been elusive as to whether or not he\u2019s going to have his picture taken. Beyond that, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
\n\tYou know, I never directly pitched Lorne on me making a film on him. And he never directly said, \u201cI want you to go ahead and make a film about me.\u201d Which is very strange.<\/p>\n
\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n
\n\tBut very on-brand, right? You always hear stories about SNL auditions, where he asks someone how they feel about wigs or if they wouldn\u2019t mind living in New York City, and they leave going, \u201cWait, am I hired? Did I officially get the job?\u201d
I totally had that experience as well.<\/p>\n
You were originally pitching ideas for docs around the show\u2019s 50th anniversary, right?
Right. This was around three years ago. I got a call out of the blue to meet Lorne at the Polo Bar, and they are thinking about doing some documentary project. I\u2019ve been a lifelong SNL obsessive. My dad had a Betamax, the first Betamax in the neighborhood. He recorded SNL\u2019s first season. I saw the Blues Brothers live. I had the Rolling Stone paperback that collected all of the articles you guys ran on the show the first few years. So I\u2019d been following it since the beginning.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen we met, I essentially said, \u201cIt\u2019s 50 years \u2014 you should make five different documentaries about SNL. Take more of a 30 for 30 approach and make stand-alone stories.\u201c And he\u2019s like, \u201cWell, that\u2019s interesting. Why don\u2019t you come meet me next week? It\u2019s a show week. Let\u2019s meet, and you can tell me your ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tSo I go to meet Lorne at nine o\u2019clock on a Friday night, thinking my meeting is just with the two of us. I walk in the room, and it\u2019s like 16 people, most of the SNL senior writers, the producers. And Lorne said, \u201cSo what are your ideas?\u201d I had a dozen ideas, like: You could do a documentary about the cowbell sketch. You could do a documentary about auditioning. You could do a documentary about politics and SNL.<\/p>\n
\n\tAnd these became the four documentaries that ran on Peacock, right?
Right, I was the executive producer on those. It was supposed to be five docs. I finished with, \u201cAnd you could make a documentary about you, Lorne. That\u2019d be really interesting.\u201d I sit down. Lorne doesn\u2019t say anything. Finally, I said, \u201cSo what do you think?\u201d And he turns to one of his producers and says, \u201cCaroline, what do you think?\u201d She said, \u201cWell, I thought there were some good ideas there.\u2026\u201d She\u2019s trying to be positive in a noncommittal way. Then she tosses the hot potato to Steve Higgins or whomever. The meeting breaks up inconclusively. I walk outside, and I\u2019m with Katie Hockmeyer, the head of NBC late-night. I say, \u201cWhat just happened in there?\u201d She goes, \u201cOh, he likes you. It\u2019s happening.\u201d But then I didn\u2019t know which ones we were gonna make. I just pitched a bunch of ideas.<\/p>\n
\n\tEventually, after we\u2019d started figuring out what we were going to do, word came back that Lorne would be interested in participating if there was one about him. And I said, \u201cOK, well, if we\u2019re going to do that, it shouldn\u2019t be an SNL thing. More importantly, Lorne can\u2019t be a producer on this. It has to be separate.\u201c That\u2019s why there are only four documentaries for the 50th anniversary. This needed to be broken off.<\/p>\n
\n\tYou thought, \u201cLet\u2019s give him the feature-length profile treatment.\u201c
Something like that. There were a number of folks who saw those four docs and said, \u201cThey\u2019re great, but \u2026 Lorne\u2019s not really in them much. Or at all.\u201d But we couldn\u2019t tell anybody that we were working on a stand-alone doc on him, so we just went, \u201cUh-huh.\u201d We ended up setting it up at Focus Features. The SNL [celebration] ended up getting so crowded that we thought we might put it out the following October, which is the actual date of the 50th, but the studio decided to wait for the spring.<\/p>\n
\n\tHow are you threading the needle between making something that isn\u2019t an expos\u00e9 yet doesn\u2019t end up becoming a hagiography? Not to mention dealing with someone like Lorne or Steve Martin, who is also someone with a lot of boundaries around his privacy.
Paul [McCartney] is the same way, actually. I felt good about the way I was able to get him to talk about things in a way he normally doesn\u2019t talk about things. But part of it is that my attitude going in is, \u201dI\u2019m not here to praise someone or to bury someone. I\u2019m just here to understand. Help me understand why you would do this, or what happened at this point here,\u201d and push them when I had to push them.<\/p>\n
\n\tWith Steve, it almost became like a para-therapeutic relationship. Because you\u2019re going back again and again for hours and hours and talking about deeply important things in their life. But with everybody, I sit down in the beginning with a tape recorder before we film and just start talking. With McCartney, it stayed that way, with just the tape recorder. I never filmed anything.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tLinda and Paul McCartney, in Man on the Run<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Linda McCartney\/Amazon MGM studios<\/p>\n
\n\tDid you do that with Lorne as well?
With Lorne, I went to his office with a tape recorder and we talked for 90 minutes. I came out of that thinking, \u201dOK, Lorne is not going to narrate his story.\u201d [Laughs.] Lorne is not an unreliable narrator. He\u2019s not a narrator, period. It\u2019s not like McCartney or Steve, where they really walk you through what they were feeling and seeing. With Lorne \u2026 that was just not going to happen. And when I showed up with the camera \u2014 well, you see what happens in the beginning of the film.<\/p>\n
\n\tHe sort of ghosts you.
Lorne kind of vanishes, yeah. I think he\u2019s doing a bit. Like, it\u2019s so pronounced that I thought, he knows we\u2019re here and filming, and he\u2019s running away from us. And then I realized it was not a bit, and the whole process was slowly trying to acclimatize him to the fact we\u2019re there. It was a little like doing a nature documentary.<\/p>\n
\n\tA nature documentary on a sphinx.
\u201cIt\u2019s OK. I can get a little closer, a little closer \u2026 feed you a little food.\u201d [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
\n\tYou can\u2019t separate Lorne Michaels from Saturday Night Live, of course. But it\u2019d be very easy to make something that focuses on the show in lieu of making something about Lorne himself. He comes in, says something, fills in a blank regarding SNL history \u2014 \u201cand this was the year that changed everything\u201d \u2014 and then you cue clips and he kind of recedes into the background. Whereas, you know, he\u2019s lived a life outside of the show \u2026
He has lived a life, and it\u2019s interesting. I mean, we interviewed a lot of people outside of SNL, including like Hart Pomerantz, his former comedy partner from Toronto and the other half of The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour \u2014 we had a lot more about that. When we first put the film together, however, I felt like: There\u2019s an audience who want every little bit, and then there\u2019s an audience who\u2019s like, \u201cI don\u2019t care about any of that.\u201d So you\u2019re trying to make something that\u2019s for both the obsessives and the people who know very little, as well as making it as personal. Or as personal as you can get.<\/p>\n
\n\tIs there an art to talking to famous people who are famously stoic about their personal life and famously put up boundaries everywhere? Or, when you\u2019re talking with artists like McCartney or Steve Martin, who tend to fall back on go-to anecdotes, how do you get them to open up and get past that? Is it just wearing them down?
With McCartney \u2026 he\u2019s probably been interviewed more than almost any human alive. We\u2019ve heard all of his stories about all those records. I\u2019ve heard the story about how Henry McCullough came up with the solo for \u201cMy Love\u201d at least 10 times. My strategy for McCartney was that I would go very big and very small. So I remember coming into one of our interview sessions and talking about painting. He knew Willem de Kooning because they were neighbors, and Linda [McCartney]\u2019s dad was de Kooning\u2019s lawyer. I found out that de Kooning had given him painting supplies, and it inspired Paul to start painting. So we talked about that, and parenting, and things other than music. You\u2019re just trying to talk in ways where he\u2019s actually having a new conversation. So by the time you get around to talking about that period in his life \u2026 you can start really talking about music and what was going on. If you watch Get Back \u2014 I mean, Man on the Run is kind of a sequel to Get Back, in a way.<\/p>\n
How so?
When you see him in that moment and he\u2019s trying to hold it together, songs are pouring out of him. But what happens the next day? What happens when that ends and he has to put that energy somewhere. And he\u2019s heartbroken, too. The fans, the critics \u2014 everybody\u2019s heartbroken. That\u2019s where he\u2019s at after Get Back. I wanted to know what happened next. Where do you go? How do you deal with it? What do you write now?<\/p>\n
\n\tThe other thing I would do is get really specific. Like, \u201dWhat do you like about the tone of the Rickenbacker, rather than the H\u00f6fner? Why do you start playing that on tour?\u201d or whatever. And he\u2019d be like, \u201cWell, it comes down to this \u2026\u201d Just really geek out on the micro stuff, too. Like, you know, \u201dWhat did Geoff Emerick bring when he was engineering?\u201d You\u2019re getting them to talk about things they don\u2019t always get the chance to go long on.<\/p>\n
\n\tWas it the same thing when you were profiling Steve Martin? How are you getting somebody like him to open up?
The thing that made me really realize Steve would be willing to go there was that I read all of his novels. He\u2019s a really good writer, really good at nuanced, emotionally complex characters. It\u2019s not just the funny stuff. I said to him right up top, \u201cYou\u2019re a storyteller and you understand complexity. I\u2019m a storyteller, and I need to kind of go there as a storyteller.\u201d You talk in a way that\u2019s more of like artist to artist. He understood my mission and was like, \u201cOK, I understand that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFrom having watched every interview he gave, just about he had two modes \u2014 98 percent of the time it was, like, junket mode. And then occasionally he would do Fresh Air or Charlie Rose, and he\u2019d bring a different game to those interviews. I\u2019d tell him, \u201dI want to go to that second mode.\u201d And he got it.<\/p>\n
\n\tDon\u2019t just be the funny guy doing bits.
He was giving an art talk a few years back at the 92nd Street Y or something, because he had done a catalog book of paintings for an exhibition, I think. Somebody had asked him to come give a lecture on it, and so he was giving, like, a very serious talk. And people were just angry that he wasn\u2019t being funny. All these years later, it was still, \u201dWhere\u2019s the guy with the arrow through his head?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tLet\u2019s go back to Lorne for a second. It seems like you had an interesting mix where you were given all this access and yet had very little actual access.
Yes. Lorne\u2019s feelings about the documentary were \u2026 you know, Lorne is a maestro of mixed signals. As one of his friends told me, \u201dThere\u2019s nobody I know who more wants a documentary made about him and really doesn\u2019t want a documentary made about him.\u201d And I felt that the whole time. There were certain times where it was like, \u201dWe\u2019re just going and filming.\u201d Other times he would just vanish. So a lot of it was just trying to get crumbs.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt would be like a show week, like on a Thursday or Friday night, or even on a Saturday night, where he has 20 minutes between dress rehearsal and air time, and we\u2019d just sit and he starts talking. A lot of interview time was just found time. Like, \u201dI\u2019m just gonna keep going till somebody knocks on that door and pulls him out.\u201d There was a lot of that. We only did a few where we had him for a longer chunk of time.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s one thing to read about the stuff that happens on show night in Susan Morrison\u2019s book [Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live]. It\u2019s another thing to actually see him tearing apart the lineup between dress and air, or being under those bleachers and sighing over a sketch that\u2019s not working.
It\u2019s seeing Lorne in his natural habitat. You don\u2019t normally get that. You\u2019re seeing how people react to him and he reacts to people. You\u2019re seeing Lorne be funny, which, you know \u2014 he has a very dry sense of humor. You see him play a version of himself on TV or whatever, but you don\u2019t see how genuinely funny he is in the moment. I was glad we were able to get that, at least.<\/p>\n
\n\tI just find it interesting that you\u2019ve been able to do this with folks and have them actually open up without it feeling like some Faustian bargains being made.
That\u2019s the whole goal. It helps that I\u2019ve made films about people I think are valuable contributors to our culture. There are people who make films about people they don\u2019t like, and some of those are great films \u2014 look at Errol Morris\u2019 The Fog of War. But I don\u2019t know how I would do a film about somebody who I didn\u2019t really respect. I\u2019ve been offered lots of things that I\u2019ve said no to. I don\u2019t want to give my life to a subject that doesn\u2019t mean something to me.<\/p>\n
\n\tEven if it involves using Legos to tell that subject\u2019s story<\/a>.
[Laughs.] Doing Piece by Piece \u2014 that was a huge creative challenge to make a different kind of film and make up our own rules about how to make a film. The form fit that story. What I\u2019m doing is, I\u2019m trying to essentialize somebody instead of a Wikipedia type of storytelling. I see a lot that is very, you know, eye-level \u2014 \u201cThis happened, then that happened, then this other thing happened.\u201d And I\u2019m much more into the ideas and the moments. Even with Steve Martin, I spend as much time on his failures as I do on his successes, and there are big things that I don\u2019t really talk about. Because it\u2019s not about everything they did. It\u2019s about, what shaped them and the ideas they carry?<\/p>\n\n\tIf they\u2019re not tidy stories, it\u2019s hard to make tidy films about them and feel like you captured something. It made sense to break Steve! into two distinct parts.
The first half of it is a really straight, linear story. It\u2019s one man on a solo mission to intellectually solve comedy. He solves it, he becomes big, and then he quietly walks away. The second part is more of, like, a hang. It\u2019s the story, but it\u2019s also much more of his character. He\u2019s got a wife and a kid, he\u2019s got Marty [Short] and a band, and he\u2019s got Harry Bliss, the cartoonist he works with all the time. He\u2019s surrounded by people now, and it becomes much more vibey in that way. I always thought of the first half as being the head and the second half being the heart.<\/p>\n
\n\tHe had to reinvent himself in the same way McCartney did, in a way.
It comes down to expectations. After he did Pennies From Heaven, which is a movie he said was the kind he wanted to see and that\u2019s why he made it, I don\u2019t think he understood the expectations people still had of him. I think McCartney didn\u2019t understand the kind of expectations that people had on him. Again, it becomes this question of: How do you deal with your own legacy, and what people put on you? These are questions I think about all the time. People think you\u2019re the dancing monkey, and they don\u2019t know why the monkey doesn\u2019t just want to dance, you know? It\u2019s weird.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cYou became famous for something, so why would you want to do something besides what you became famous for?\u201d
It\u2019s the discrepancy between where your creative instinct has taken you, which has gotten you so far, and when you want to do something else with it. All you\u2019ve ever listened to is your creative instinct. But suddenly there\u2019s all this weight on you, all these other things that really drive you and end up putting you in a box. Then you\u2019re trying to get out of that box.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tLorne Michaels and Steve Martin in director Morgan Neville\u2019s documentary Lorne<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Focus Features. All<\/p>\n
\n\tAnd then you have Lorne, who realizes he\u2019s a great producer and after a while, he just embraces the box. He doesn\u2019t reinvent himself, he reinvents the thing he\u2019s nurtured. You look at the shifts in comedy, and it\u2019s funny how Lorne\u2019s been able to ride those shifts, if not dictate them.
Part of why Lorne is an elusive cultural figure is that he\u2019s not an author in that way. He\u2019s a filter for things. He says in the film, \u201cIf I do my job correctly, I leave no fingerprints.\u201d He\u2019s attuned to things that he understands if they\u2019re funny, even if he doesn\u2019t understand why. You look at sketches on SNL now, and they\u2019re doing something about this week\u2019s TikTok meme. Lorne doesn\u2019t know what that is, but he understands that other people understand it\u2019s funny and why. There\u2019s no old fogey-ness to Lorne. He\u2019s so malleable that he can be like, \u201cTina [Fey], if you want to do 30 Rock and this kind of neo-screwball TV show, great. And if we want to do something that\u2019s sophomoric and broad, that\u2019s great, too. So long as it\u2019s funny.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tSometimes you get a variety of different comedy styles all happening in a single SNL show.
\u201cIt\u2019s called a variety show for a reason.\u201d I\u2019ve heard him say that so many times to people. He instinctively understands that there\u2019s something for everybody, but not everything is for everybody.<\/p>\n
\n\tHaving gone through the experience of making Lorne, do you feel differently about him, what he does and how he\u2019s kept this thing going?
I saw him the way I think the world sees Lorne, as the Wizard of Oz \u2014 the all-knowing, all-powerful guy pulling the levers of fame and media and comedy behind the camera. But now I think Lorne is feeling like he\u2019s in the trenches just trying to make it through next week in certain ways. Whenever you talk to him, it\u2019s about what\u2019s happening right this moment, how he needs to get a music guest for next week, why he\u2019s feeling like this cast member isn\u2019t happy they\u2019re not getting enough air time. My guess is part of why Lorne made this film is that people somehow think his job is easy, sitting on a throne and, you know, ruling by diktat. I think he feels like he\u2019s still working hard to just hold it all together in a way that isn\u2019t about grand design, but more about fixing the problem that\u2019s in front of you.<\/p>\n
\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n
\n\tI asked everybody I interviewed, \u201cWhen do you think SNL became perennial? Like, at what point do you think it became a show that was not going to go away?\u201d Some people said, \u201cOh, it was really when it reinvented itself for the third time.\u201c Some people said when Will Ferrell and that cast came in during the late 1990s, or after maybe right after 9\/11, and it gave us what felt like a moment when the country came together. People had different answers like that. Lorne\u2019s answer was, \u201cMaybe this year?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t[Laughs.]
He\u2019s not complacent. He\u2019s a creature of habit, certainly \u2014 I think he has the same mindset that Albert Einstein had around having a closet full of the same suits, so he could concentrate on other things. But he\u2019s changed. Kids certainly changed him. And again, one of the big themes of the film is everything changes. Don\u2019t fear it. Embrace change, and that is why SNL has been on TV for 51 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How do you profile someone who wants to remain a mystery? Oscar-winning documentarian Morgan Neville has made a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1549,146,85,46,17879,397,17403,37400,190388,7901],"class_list":{"0":"post-402192","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-documentary","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-lorne-michaels","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-paul-mccartney","15":"tag-snl","16":"tag-snl-50","17":"tag-steve-martin"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}