{"id":587099,"date":"2026-04-16T04:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T04:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/587099\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T04:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T04:42:11","slug":"morgan-nevilles-puckish-lorne-michaels-doc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/587099\/","title":{"rendered":"Morgan Neville’s Puckish Lorne Michaels Doc"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLike countless fans of \u201cSaturday Night Live<\/a>,\u201d I felt like I spent the show\u2019s 50th anniversary year immersed in a tutorial of \u201cSNL\u201d history and its place in show business \u2014 I\u2019m talking about all the \u201cSNL50\u201d specials and the anniversary show and Questlove\u2019s music doc and Jason Reitman\u2019s \u201cSaturday Night,\u201d<\/a> a backstage drama in which almost none of the actors quite nailed the cast members they were playing, yet there was still a vision to the movie, a sense of how \u201cSNL\u201d was the first network comedy show to grab the danger and insanity of the world off camera and pull it on camera.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve been watching \u201cSNL\u201d since its inception. I now watch it with my teenage daughters, who are religious fans of the show. I\u2019m an \u201cSNL\u201d believer (although I wrote my first \u201cIs \u2018Saturday Night\u2019 Dead?\u201d article for my college newspaper in 1978), and I gorged on all the anniversary hoopla. But when it was over, I don\u2019t think I was alone in feeling that I never needed to take another trip down \u201cSNL\u201d memory lane again.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo when I heard that there was now going to be another \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d movie \u2014 a documentary about Lorne Michaels<\/a> \u2014\u00a0opening in theaters, I thought: Really? Do I need this? Does anyone?<\/p>\n

\n\tBut if you\u2019re a \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d fan, you\u2019re not going to want to miss \u201cLorne,\u201d since it\u2019s a puckishly delightful and revealing movie \u2014 and because, as directed by the showbiz-history ace Morgan Neville<\/a> (\u201cPiece by Piece,\u201d \u201cWon\u2019t You Be My Neighbor\u201d), it\u2019s canny enough to snake its way around a lot of the information that came out during the show\u2019s anniversary year. Yes, \u201cLorne\u201d shows us once again how \u201cSNL\u201d is put together (the Monday powwow where the cast members and writers meet the guest host; Lorne\u2019s ritual Tuesday dinner at Lattanzi on W. 46th St.; the endless shuffling and weeding out of sketches, each represented by a card on Lorne\u2019s magic bulletin board \u2014 he plays with those cards like God rearranging human chess pieces). But it\u2019s a totally different thing to see all this from Lorne Michaels\u2019 point-of-view. We\u2019re now looking at the man behind the curtain.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLorne\u201d lures us in with the mischievous playfulness of its tone. The premise of the movie is that Lorne Michaels is one of those rare showbiz figures known, almost mythologically, by one name (like Cher or Madonna), that he\u2019s been studied from every angle by the media and by everyone who ever worked for him\u2026but after all that, nobody knows him. He\u2019s a mystery, a sphinx, the unsmiling Mona Lisa of lordly TV producers.<\/p>\n

\n\tYet everything about him is iconic. In 1997, when the first \u201cAustin Powers\u201d movie came out, it was a whispered semi-scandal that Mike Myers had based the voice and personality of Dr. Evil on Lorne. Now, that\u2019s simply part of Lorne\u2019s lore. Everybody impersonates him \u2014 the documentary is full of former and current \u201cSNL\u201d cast members each doing their Lorne, and it\u2019s spanked along by a series of Robert Smigel cartoons, because the Lorne Michaels send-off of Smigel\u2019s \u201cTV Funhouse\u201d segments (\u201cGive me back my shah-owww!\u201d) was one of the earliest mythifications of Lorne. Even his office trademarks are now the stuff of legend: the nibbling of popcorn, the throwing of ice chips (when a sketch isn\u2019t working), the goldfish tank in his office, the fact that it\u2019s the same office (and maybe the same desk) that he had in 1975.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe running joke, which is also not a joke, is that the present-day cast members, like Michael Che and Sarah Sherman, have no idea about anything Lorne does when he\u2019s away from the show. He\u2019s got a tight circle of chums (Paul Simon, who he\u2019s been close to for 50 years, is interviewed in the film and is impishly cagey about him), and there are rumors about what happens on Michaels\u2019 blueberry farm in Maine, which Fred Armisen, also interviewed, has actually been to. Mike Myers does a deadpan bit about how he would not be surprised if Lorne was hunting humans up there, \u00e0 la \u201cThe Most Dangerous Game.\u201d But Michaels gave Morgan Neville access to some of his private happy places (we eavesdrop on Lorne and Steve Martin out to dinner), and when we get to the farm, there\u2019s nothing enigmatic about it. It\u2019s transcendently peaceful and beautiful \u2014 his wilderness utopia of decompression. It\u2019s where the Canadian in Lorne comes out.<\/p>\n

\n\tStoic and buttoned down, with his white thatch of power hair and his Don Corleone-as-TV-suit aura, the Lorne Michaels we see today is almost a different person from the one who was raised in Canada, became part of a comedy duo that had its own variety show (\u201cThe Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour\u201d), and went to Los Angeles in 1969 to write for \u201cLaugh-In,\u201d and then to write and produce Lily Tomlin\u2019s TV specials. (They won Emmys and allowed him to pivot to \u201cSNL.\u201d) Back then, Lorne was handsome in a jovial and open way, with dark clear eyes and a laughing manner; he had drive and ambition, but he was a straight-up dude (which is how Gabriel LaBelle played him in \u201cSaturday Night\u201d). He evolved, gradually, into the crusty imperious Lorne of today, with that stylized voice and that look that makes it seem like he\u2019s wearing a mask.<\/p>\n

\n\tToday, Lorne bust chops when he has to, wearing his power like a regal cape, but the secret that explains him \u2014 his Rosebud, as he puts it \u2014 is the highly ironic fact that what he\u2019s hiding is his normalcy. And doing it in such a calculated way that it makes him intimidating. The cast members are scared of him, but you can see that they also love him, because he loves them the same way he loves the show: as his all-consuming mission. But one thing that the \u201cSNL50\u201d specials mostly left out (because it would have taken away from his Lorneness), and that Neville\u2019s film puts front and center, is what a tormented journey Michaels had with \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d during its first two decades.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe early years were, of course, magical \u2014 but even then, when Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, and John Belushi all left the show in those first five years, it tore Lorne apart. It\u2019s not that he was angry; he was heartbroken. And after five seasons, he had burned himself out. So he left. We tend to think of this history in an abbreviated way: Lorne invented \u201cSNL,\u201d then left the show, which foundered under Dick Ebersol, and then he returned in triumph to rescue it. But it wasn\u2019t that simple. Lorne felt like the floor was cut out from under him when he realized how little power he had next to the NBC executives, who didn\u2019t care about \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d And during the five years he spent away from the show, he didn\u2019t know what to do with himself. In 1984, he created another sketch-comedy show, this one taped and shown on Friday nights, called \u201cThe New Show,\u201d and it was dead in the water. But after \u201cSNL\u201d was gradually run into the ground (not that it was all bad \u2014 these were the Eddie Murphy years), Lorne wasn\u2019t just asked to come back and save it. The show also saved him.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt didn\u2019t start off as a beautiful reunion. When he returned in 1985 to produce the show\u2019s 11th season, it was actually a bust. Had Lorne lost his touch? In Hollywood, where Michaels co-wrote and produced \u201cThree Amigos,\u201d it took Steve Martin to explain to him on the set that they were making \u201ca big, dumb movie.\u201d But 1986 was when it all turned around. That was the year when Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, and Victoria Jackson joined the \u201cSNL\u201d cast, and they were the prototype for the what the show would become: a nimbly energized satire. It was Carvey, with his awesome impersonations (George H.W. Bush) and recurring characters (the Church Lady), who defined the new era. By the time Mike Myers joined the cast in 1989, the new \u201cSNL\u201d had become as powerful as the original \u201cSNL.\u201d Under Michaels\u2019 leadership, it had become eternal. That said, in 1995, Michaels was still going through the agony of fighting myopic NBC executives, in this case Don Ohlmeyer, who ordered him to fire Adam Sandler and Chris Farley. Great call! \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat Michaels still runs \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d exactly as he always has \u2014 same meticulous schedule, same dinner at Lattanzi (the ma\u00eetre d\u2019 won\u2019t reveal what Lorne orders, but we pick up on fact that it might be rigatoni Bolognese)\u00a0\u2014 is all part of the show\u2019s artisanal mystique. Everything in America always changes, but \u201cSaturday Night Live,\u201d by staying the same, remains a totem of entertainment (and, of course, the show\u2019s comedy is as up-to-the-minute as it wants to be). Lorne is a creature of habit to the nth degree, and there is something nearly Kubrickian about the obsessive and ritualized way he orchestrates every detail of \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d But I have a bone to pick with one aspect of that.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe dress rehearsal runs half an hour longer than the actual show, because it contains a handful of sketches that are going to be cut. I think this is the one aspect of Michaels\u2019 rule that\u2019s a bit sadistic: taking sketches all the way to fruition, just hours before 11:30 p.m. on Saturday night, only to tell the people who wrote and acted in them, \u201cSorry, your sketch is now on the cutting-room floor!\u201d Yet if it were creatively justified, the ruthlessness would be its own reward.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat happens during the \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d dress rehearsal, though, is that Lorne listens to the audience as if he were a studio executive studying questionnaires after a test screening. Essentially, the audience decides. (If they don\u2019t laugh much, the sketch is out.) And my feeling is that there have been brilliant and daring sketches that didn\u2019t make the cut that should have. Think about it: How many mediocre \u201cSNL\u201d sketches have you ever seen? (Answer: too many to count.) If Lorne Michals took more chances, the rehearsal studio audience be damned, he might produce a bolder and wilder show. His ritualized nature contains an element of conservatism.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut who\u2019s complaining? It\u2019s a miracle that \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d still exists and is as good as it is. Lorne has made himself as fundamental to the show as the Studio 8H floorboards; his hands-on quality is embedded in every moment. Is there another Lorne waiting in the wings? Many say Tina Fey. But Lorne Michaels, at 81, doesn\u2019t act like he\u2019s going anywhere, and why should he, given that he\u2019s television\u2019s grand master of creating a late-night comedy show that, every week it\u2019s on, figures out a way to be the same but different.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like countless fans of \u201cSaturday Night Live,\u201d I felt like I spent the show\u2019s 50th anniversary year immersed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,68284,76904,206,12015],"class_list":{"0":"post-587099","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-lorne-michaels","10":"tag-morgan-neville","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-saturday-night-live"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}