Lorne Michaels

Then there's a huge fish tank in the corner. It's the same office he's had since nineteen seventy five, when he started Saturday Night Live and proceeded to launch the careers of some of the biggest names in comedy Belushi, Ackroyd, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Will Farrell, Tina Fey. The list goes on and on and on. He's a rare producer and that he's truly involved in all aspects of production. Yet he says when

he does his job right, he leaves no fingerprints. Lord Michael's life in comedy began in the late nineteen sixties when he worked at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto alongside his writing and performing partner Hart Pomerantz. But it wasn't television. Lord Michael started out in radio. It was a show called five nights a week at this time,

and we did political satire every week. We thought we were potentially bringing down the government, and the fact that no one was listening didn't occur to us for at least the first year. But we loved doing it. It was just a chance to write and perform every week. Radio had a larger budget at that point than television because people had more radios than the television. It's just it's a government system and they allocated based on fairness, which is very Canadian thing to do, not necessarily on

the edge of technological change. But there was a radio show produced like the Tonight Show, full orchestra, done every day in Toronto, which was called The Rust Thompson Show. And we were hard as the writers on that and we performed once or twice a week. Now where did that begin though? For you? Did you go to school for that or did you? No, no, no, no, I went when I graduated from University of Toronto. I had taken nothing that was of any pro drama theater. I'd

worked in theater there, but it was more. There was a review that University College UC Follies, which was a satirical review music and comedy, and I co wrote that and directed it. So so from the beginning, I mean, even before you go into CBC radio and before Hard Palmer ants there, even in college what you characterize a satiric review, comedy review, that was your bailiy Wick from the beginning. I think it was what was in the air at the time. It was just the beginning of

the questioning of authority. Which was the year I did it was we were no longer talking about World War Two. The first part of my childhood, that's all anyone talked about. Every teacher I had at school had been in the war. It was pretty much the gloom of that hung over most of the fifties s. Yeah, and then we television came into our lives and and everything changed, and so the CBC. How long are the radio years? The radio years?

Think three years. The funny part about the show, the Russ Thompson Show, was at a certain point, five or six months into it, the producer of the show came in and met with us and he said, the show's not working. We don't know whether it's you guys or Russ. So we thought we'd start with you guys. So we were the first, Yeah, and then we began writing for comedians Woody Allen and John Rivers and a little bit Dick Cabin. How do you get into that door? Heart?

Heart did that. He was very good at approaching people. We would come down to New York to write for people and what he was incredibly generous and encouraging, and we had no impact at all on his career, but he was very helpful. Then we got hired on a television show in as writers called The Beautiful Phillis Dealers Show and which was a variety show at NBC in Burbank.

And then from there, when that was canceled, we were hired on Lapin, which was in its first season for George for George laughter, Yeah, what was the dynamic when you go to Los Angeles in the late sixties and you're writing for network television? Did you feel like that was It wasn't at all the romantic idea of what I thought being in show business would be well. On lap In, the writers would write and then it would be edited by a head writer, and then we did

not go to the read through. We were at at a motel in Burbank, uh and we would all have lunch together and that was fun. I didn't even have to have offices. No, we had offices, but they were in a motel, which was you know, it was the boom period of Burbank. So um, it's not let NBC. No,

we've used offices that our motels before exactly. Yeah. And what was interesting about it was that it was the number one show and on one level it was like the greatest credit you could have, and it certainly did wonders for you know, like self image and career, but it wasn't fun. You'd write, you know, monologues for Dan and Dick, who were really nice to us. Did you get to go to the tapings of the show. We'd go to the studio if they were doing the monologues,

and they would read it from the cards. They would see it for the first they were some of the most famous card readers, but they also just they would just see it for the first time on the car. They did not want their work in any way interfere with their life. And we worked there for a year and then I got a call from the head of the CBC asking what it would take to bring us back to do shows. You were still hard on television yeah,

and that's where I learned how to do television. Why do you say that, because I spent a huge chunk of my twenties, you know, in an editing room. We would shoot in the studio, we'd be in front of an audience and then what were you doing? It was called The Heart and Louren Terrific Hour, and we were the stars. Yeah, and there was you know, one ensemble and a musical guest James Taylor was on one. Cat Stevens Birth. The idea for the other show that you

eventually wound up doing. I don't know whether you know. There was a real form then called Variety, and it was comedy Variety and it had you know, music and comedy, and we would perform in front of an audience, but mostly it was built in the editing room. And the way that laughed in was I remember that we came out of the first show with like sixteen hours worth of tape and I met with the editor. I had no experience of it at all, and he said, well, we just why don't we just watch it? So we

watched the first four hours. We were discussing a catch. He said, I think in that piece we could pull out that part and I was still thinking script. I wasn't in any way thinking visually. And he said, no, your arm there is is by your temple and then you put it down. And he was looking for continuity. He was an editor, he actually saw it. I said, how did you do that? And he said, I can

teach your eye to see, and he did. I learned how things are put together, and how what to look for in composition, and how to make something work, and the role that sound played because it's all radio with pictures. Nobody cared about sound then. When we first did SNL the first five years, it was a boom. When you see Elvis Son ed Sullivan him in the Jordan eires, it's just a boom. They got what they got. We have better sound on this interview than I had in

the first twenty years of my career. And what I realized then about myself is that I'm much more interested in the production that I am in performing. What changed for you? I saw it in the editing room one night. I looked at myself before a take. I see my eyes checking the lighting, seeing where the cameras are in terms of their angles, and you're seeing a guy who all his instincts are technical and director just kind of look, yeah, I'm seeing a guy who's preoccupied, and then the slate happens,

and then there's this smiling artificial Yeah. Snap, too artificial. I'm sure I was sincere Yeah, yeah, allow in my opinion, speaking for myself, as a little artificial, yes, exactly, we reached. I had the same experience when I was on stage when I was at University of Toronto in the theater there and we were doing a play written by Shelley the Poet and it was called en Chi I think,

definitely dull. But that's not the point of the point of it is I was in the middle of a scene with an actor and it was exciting to be on stage and all that. But I looked in his eyes and I realized, Oh, he's actually that guy. You know. I knew he turned lines with some charm, but he actually had turned more character. Yeah, which I thought, Oh, I see that's what actors are. They actually can do that,

you know. Whereas yes, for me, it was like it was fun to be in shows and I've done them at summer camp and I've done them in high school and and uh, but you had a pure instinct at that time where you just said, there's this other thing I'd rather be doing that I was more and you walked away, So so you So you ended that situation there. Ye, Well, in Canada there was still a kind of national self loading,

best expressed by the then head of the CBC. We were slow in getting our start dates for production for the next season, and I had been offered by Sandy Warnick and Burdy Brulstein, who I had met when I was working in California, agent and manager respectively. They said, you want to come back and work on a Burnston Shriver summer show for like Yeah they were and they

were funny and it was like smart shows. In ten weeks, I went to the the head of the department at the CBC and I said, I have this other offer, but I will stay here. At the time, I was caught up in the idea that I would be of the first generation of Canadian artists who would be able to stay in Canada. And why is that? Why did you feel that because everyone had always left and the moment that you left in Canada, people started to treat

you differently, and I thought, well, that's idiotic. We should be were involved enough, we should be able to stay here and work here. They had the CBC that I was working for, said, I said, I had this offer and it's just for you know, ten weeks. He said, well, if you're that good, why are you here? And I thought, I want to be here that you know. And then I realized against Yeah, And also I realized is Van

Gogh a Dutch painter. He really painted in France. And I thought, oh, I see, so nationalism isn't the best way to you know, you go where the work is. So I went out and I did that, and then I came back. Even as we're talking about Canada, your accent just came back, you just said, I went out. Yeah, I realized I'd come to the end of that period, and I moved back to California ninety two, and I lived at the Chateau Marmont un till I moved here,

which is seventy five. I had my thirtieth birthday in the lobby of the Chateau Marmont, which hadn't had a party then, I believe since lived there. Yeah, so certainly one of the happiest parents of myne. You we're gonna get to that in a minute. But you have a real fondness from Los Angeles. Yeah, I love you have a Yeah, you have a very very warm spot for Los Angeles and you who are New Yorker. Yes, the nice part about being Canadian is you don't have to

make that decision. You know, you're in California and it's there's grass in February and the sun is shining. You know, this is fantastic. But if you're from New York, then l A becomes like, well, no, you know, it becomes that it's a lot of people get an entire career. Well I think different. That's true, and I've been very

guilty of that myself. The thing about Los Angeles is if you do it in your twenties, you can find and understand sepulvida, which is if you grew up in a city with a grid, you're going, well, so what do you mean this crosses will Shire? And then then if you're on that s you get off at Robertson

and you think you're up here. Yes, exactly. But when you're in your twenties, you're going to a lot of parties where you're just following some to or somebody gives you directions and this is at a time it's hard to recall, but it's pre gps. No, no one wants to learn where they're going. But anyway, I had a very happy time there and I worked for Lily Tomlin and I wrote on her show, which was like ten or twelve weeks, and at the end of it it was time to go back to Canada, and I realized

I wasn't visa wise, I wasn't going back. No, it wasn't that. It was that the CBC wanted me to do something, but they want to be back six months in advance of that nagging I'm gonna be the normal leader of Canada or no, not even normally. I think it was just that you would be able to work there. But here's what I realized, without Malcolm Gladibo, who's also a Canadian, articulating it, because we didn't have the benefit of that, then it's the ten thousand hours in doing

twelve shows in ten weeks. Working at that pace, you get better. In Canada, working on a show every four months or five months, you overthink every thing. There's so much at stake, and there was something about working at that pace and working in a system that was really clear cut, like if the numbers were there and you had ratings, then you were hit, and they weren't there, then you were a flop, Whereas in Canada you could be sustained by quote unquote critical approval or the fact

that what you were doing was quote unquote worthwhile. And at that point in my life I kind of needed clarity of which is one of the reasons I'm drawn to comedy, because you're trying really hard to make people laugh. If they don't laugh, it's really so I do. Lily Thomas Show gets nominated for an Emmy. It was a pilot special four series and I am co producing with Jane Wagner. We spent forever on it and then at

the end it didn't get picked up. But Dick Eversoul, who was the new newly appointed head of late Night, had come from ABC Sports and had meant Herbschlosser on a plane and by the time they landed he was the director of late night Television and he had this idea of doing many pilots in late night, using late night to be a testing ground for prime time. It was actually kind of prophetic because now when you look at prime time, all the networks, almost all the creative

talent came from late night. I agreed to do one for Dick. And I was, as I said, living at the Barmont, and I came home one night two o'clock in the morning, which was not unusual for me, and uh, there was a message from Dick. Could you be at the poll Lounge at seven o'clock in the morning for breakfast? No better for me then than it is now. And I went, um, okay, what's it about it? And he said they decided to do one show as opposed to twenty pilots, and yours is one of the ones that there,

and they all want to meet you. So I came and it was Dick and the head of programming, the head of research, and the head of talent. I could kind of tell that they were like tribal elders in a way. They were just sort of looking at me like is he all right? You know? It was just basically an approval process. But I seem normal enough, and

was I, you know, trouble I had lost. That's interesting because because that's was ever thus in the business where I mean, talent is not the only coin of the realm. I totally want to realize, can we hand you a lot of money? And it does he seem like a plaque or whatever? And I and I was just turned thirty, but I did have credits and I hadn't been nominated for stuff. And Dick called me and he said it went well, and then they wanted me to fly to New York and how do you feel about that? I

was excited by it. But Herb Schlausser, who had a very romantic notion of production in New York, I thought it should be live. Well, I'd never done live except for radio. And I said, what was everybody else in the processing? Was he the lone voice? He was the

lone voice. He decided that it should be an eight age because eight h was the big NBC studio and it was lying vacant, and all of the production moved to l A. All variety was in l all of that crap music hall, all of those variety series which were done in New York. In this building was all in everything with the Angeles. Yeah, exactly for me, live meant this no pilot, having done three pilots that everybody

thought were great. But then somewhere in the process of making a pilot, all your most conservative instincts come out and you find yourself doing the thing that you think is going to be It's like a college essay. Is what you really think or feel, it's what you think will get you in or get you on the air.

So the idea that I could do a show in which the audience would see it at the same time as the network was truly and also I was at a point in my career where I really thought I had nothing to lose, so I was gonna take one more shot at television. I was gonna see if I could do it the way I wanted to do it, and I pretty much did. The very first broadcast of the show live was when in September. October oct is the first broadcast of the show, and was the structure

virtually the same it is now. Yeah, the yeah, that part was all the same, although I think for the first show we did address rehearsal with the audience on Friday night just so that we'd have an extra one because we've never actually done anything. And the crew was very funny. The crew was like an original Old New York crew. They were all mildly overweight, they had donuts. We had crew to tay because we were from California,

Jets jackets on. Yeah, and until we saw the move the cameras around in the way that they could because they knew that that world. I once did a show at CBS in their big studio and they have no tradition of this over at CBS, and I realized when I had taken the tour that all the cameras had stools beside them. It was only later when I realized the show was a complete mess. Right, They haven't moved cameras there. They just sort of aimed it at Cronkite

for the last forty years. It was that they set up their camera and then they sit on their stool. The eight ah crew that crane flew around the studio. They learned that we knew what we were doing in terms of the content, and this is gonna be interesting for them as well. Wasn't a desk and what was coming back to New York. There's a wonderful story when Eugene Lee, who's the designer I hired, who had just

done Candy It on Broadway. We did the very first set, you know, and it was like a two dollar set. I couldn't get approval, like they wouldn't authorize the budget for it. I went up to Herb Schlauster's office. I just assumed, being Canadian, that I was just supposed to do the right thing and make a show that he

would be proud of since he had authorized it. So we took it to his office, you know, very high up in the building, and it was a little modeled, and I don't think you've ever seen a model, And suddenly we're moving little cameras around and all that, and he said, well, what's the problem. I said, well, they you know, it's it's expensive, and they, oh fine, And we got the approval and it was very paternal in the best sense of it. But Eugene had a very

clear sense of what he wanted. We were showing New York City as it then was, which was kind of in decay and crumblings. So forward to New York drop dead exactly. Yes. So when Herb came down to the studio the first time to see it and looked at the cracked paint, you know, the thing which was where all the money was. Of course, in terms of getting that exactly right, he said, I can't I don't know why, you know, I don't know what I was thinking that.

I just thought the shop did this, you know, because he just said it was a really bad and yeah, no, it was just that nobody knew whether production could gear up again in New York, and of course it did and still does. So when you do the show October eleven, the first show is broadcast live at Years, and when it's over, describe how you feel after the very first show. I was the same way then that I am now.

I only see the mistakes, and I tend to wear that up until about the second drink at the party. Even last week's show. It takes me really through midway through Sunday. You just take me a couple of days. I can get over it now in a day. Because you're always hoping that everything's gonna work the way you were hoping it was gonna work. You know, what you

see of something? Yeah, and you see somebody you know on the left foot instead of the right foot, or the camera cut is late, or that Q gets screwed up, or that or somebody stuck guy right before the slate was looking at things. Yeah. Never, he's still here. He's not going anywhere. Yeah, more from my conversation with Lauren Michael's is coming up in a minute. You're listening to.

Here's the thing. We're in your office here at NBC, Yes, which has been your office from day one, from day one, from day one, and most of the furniture is exactly most of the first exactly the same. The joke is we hope that the people who run the network never really find out that where your this office is, and how could you have it here? You know this desk. We didn't have budget for that, so we there was a maintenance guy here who said, well, there's a lot

of furniture you know that's in storage. So we said, can we see it? So it was all the stuff in the thirties and forties, and this box at the tons to the then head of programming, and in the desk was a couple of copies of like the Racing Form and Jelly Sill and Maylox, and I thought, what am I getting myself into? It was so it was the reverse of kind of holistic view of California which I'd come here with you. Now you look at the board.

For those people who don't know the arc of the whole season is on this infamous but corkboard on the wall, and they are the dates of each broadcast, the names of the confirmed hosts, some prospective hosts and their music, old guests and so forth, and the names of the people are still not all of them, but many of them. The biggest names in the business, The biggest names in the business are coming here thirty something years later to

host the show. I mean, you have Ben Stiller and Melissa McCarthy won the uh the Emmy Award, and Katie Perry's coming, and Jimmy Fallon who's obviously double dipping on your pay room, Jonah Hill, and I don't want to ruin any other names. Bieber is confirmed and he's the music and that thing. I mean, the people that are the biggest names in the business are still coming here to host the show. Why do you think that that stayed that way? What? Well? I think, first of all,

the best part is host. You get the best parts in most scenes, and we work really really hard tonight because it's Tuesday. I will leave here probably around three. I used to do what the younger ones do, which was pretty much go through the night, but I don't anymore. You know, and and I see it with smiggle till three in the morning exactly with those guys and you and I go work okay, and I look at my go are you good. They're like yeah, I'm like I'm good,

and I'll go home. And that's the commitment to it being the best it possibly can be. But I think also to inject my own perspective, having done it many times, many many times, many many times too many times the past year, there is that's out there people. People do feel that well, but it was just tweeting. This replaces a live component that is missing in most people's careers.

They don't do theater out of them. This is a chance for them to have a kind of a it's it's much more loose and kind of deconstructed, and it can get a little sloppy if they're not like spot On and it doesn't have the it doesn't have the kind of the gleaming perfection of movie making. And also Seth Meyers Norm McDonald was at the show on Saturday, and so we were sitting at the party and and Seth pointed out that Norman would given an interview somewhere recently.

We're he's talking about the show, and he said, in what I thought was a nice way, it's now the only place left where you can be bad. You know, there's no lap track. When something doesn't work, it's such a clear silence. And whereas you walk out of the situation comedy in front of a live audience, they're already cheering. You know, even the theater. The theater people stand the audience thinks they're supposed to do with standing incovation, you know. Yeah,

for a stand up comic talent like Norm. I think one thing he might be reacting to is it gives people, the hosts, whether they are comic performance or not, it gives them the recreation of like a club being at a club, and it's stripped down so that it's only at the end talent writing into the lens. There's no spectacle. We don't have, you know, much of a wide shot.

You're watching pure performance and for people to be able to soar like that, and when you see it happen, it is always amazing, you know, amazing to be standing there being me having seen it as many times I have, and the fact that every week we don't know how it's going to turn out, and the fact that I am still as scared as I am every dress rehearsal, And honestly, I don't mean like we'll be drummed out of the business. I just mean that it is part of the process that people have to be bad before

they can be good. When we have a great dress rehearsal, when the audience is way too hot, invariably something gets lost on air when you come and do the show. Um, I've never felt more raped and more violated. Yeah, I mean I've come on here, you know, seemingly weeks after I got divorced, and Bill Clinton a k a. Darryl Hammond is walking out telling me to put my oars in the water and set sailf for the island of

Poonani with him. Yes, and yeah. So I'm just wondering, I mean, do you do you find that that's a big part of their creative successes there is You're complete? Yeah, I think there's something they expect us to be honest, they expected us to say what what's actually happening? There's very little protection. Have you always been this year reverence your whole life? Yeah? That this was really just meant to be. What's the first movie you made post I

guess Wayne's World, you know, wasn't the first. Sorry, three am goes. I wrote with Randy Newman and Steve Martin. I have a copy of your IMDb if you'd like to consult at the Yeah, yeah, no, no, but I uh that you wrote. Yes. We'd go to Steve's house every day, Randy and we'd meet for lunch, talk it down, and then we'd spend the afternoon writing and it was a very happy time for me. And what about after that was the next time a man. Then I came

back to the show. I had left sl in and then Brandon was threatening to cancel it and he called me, how many years were you gone? Five years? You were gone for five years, eight five. I left with the original group, designers, the musicians, the cast, the writers listen. In the first five years, I didn't fire one person. So when I came back, I was sort of more psychologically built for that, but that it wasn't family in that sense, that the what William Shawn once called my

pseudo egalitarianism was not healthy. I had to accept that some people were not going to make it and that I had better deal with that. When it happened as opposed to just pretending yes, And so I learned how to be a boss, which I I think I'd learned how to how to lead on some level, but I never learned how to be a boss. And I think when I came back, um where you know, less of a peer and more of a boss. Yes, And at some point are you tempted to stop again and just

go make films? It is what I do. It's the thing that but it also became and I don't mean to be, you know, glibber about it, but it also became like the aircraft carrier that you launched many planes off. This is a power base for you as an entertainment produce question. Wayne's World was the first of those. With Wayne's World, I think what I wanted to prove was that I could do a movie in the same way that sort of the Marks Brothers used to do their movies.

They tour them first so they knew where all the laughs were, and then they could go film them quickly to test. Yeah. No one believes that we do what we do here in six days because there's not much of an approval process. It just heads to eleven thirty, whereas in l that was my experience when I first did the show. Yeah, yeah, there's so much money and habitat for humanity building a house exactly, but the movie business because it's way better run as his prime time television.

Every paragraph is scrutinized and reviewed. And I said, every week, we don't go on because we're ready, We go on because it's even And that's just it's somehow focuses people, and I trust that process. And so with Wayne's World, I think we had I can't remember how many days when it was like twenty seven or something like that. But towards the end there was a plot with a father son which Robl was to be the son, and I was hoping for Dennis Hopper to be the father.

And as we got close to shooting, which we were like three weeks away, we went, oh, so we just made it one person. We just made it Rob. You could make that kind of decision quickly. The pace of SNL was like, think of it, do it, and then think of something else. Tina's is the same thing about thirty rock television conditions, those muscles where you have to make fast decisions, and that puts the creative people in charge.

I did a movie with Mick Jagger, based on a book we both liked called Enigma, which is about code breaking in World War Two, and Michael Lapped had directed it and it was an independent film. It took us six years to get it made, which was longer than World War Two, and I and I realized worked on pretty hard. But when I finally saw it, because there was German money in it and there was I think Japanese.

I'm looking at the start of the movie with the premiere, and all of a sudden, there's like, all these names are there as producers, you know, and I go, well, hey, excuse me. I was like, And then I realized, in movies, the person who does what I do isn't at the center. Here I am, and that's fulfilling. In movies. What I like doing is the script, which I get obsessive about, yeah, and then casting, and then editing, and then how to present it to the public in the sense of marketing.

Now you have this great success in you have the great success in late night television, and then you have excess in prime time television. You produce TV shows particularly now that have done how and you have great success in film, but you never worked in cable and with your career, I mean you never worked well with I did with Kids in the Hall and I did with now with Fred in PORTLANDA which is on I f C. Do you feel that you haven't been as aggressive and

cable as you might have been. I think that at the end of the day, you know they're more comfortable with network because I've grown to prefer I have network, because you've got to walk that tight up and you can't just go blue. To me, there's no creativity without boundaries. If you're going to write a sonnet, it's fourteen lines, so it's solving the problem within the container. And I think for me, commercial television and those boundaries, I like it.

I like that you can't use a certain language. I like that you have to be bright enough to figure out how to get your ideas across in that amount of time, with intelligence being the thing that you're you hope is showing, not officially, but you wanted to be Oh, that was kind of bright. We have really good writers here. I think I can safely say that a lot of people in comedy did their best work here, even though there might be more successful in the things they did.

Apple more commercially successful. And also I really believe that if you're going to stay chap, you have to take fights. And that means there's always young people. There's always people who are hungrier and more ambitious coming in. And you're working with people at the point of their career when nothing matters but the work, how they live, how they perceived. Most of the people arrive here, their office is nicer than their apartment, you know, and that's sort of what

it's always been. And people just completely devote themselves to the show. And I think you can't do that past a certain age. You know, you have become someone who when you genuine when they talk to people about what a producer does in a constructive sense and you're not trying to be a pejorative about, you know, meddlesome and kind of attention seeking and credit seeking producers. You have become, you know, like one of the most important producers in

the history of television. And a lot of that comes from history in all other universes and all other galaxies. Yeah,

wherever wherever product is consumed around the cameracy. But you have become, uh, you just ruined my whole I was trying to be so heartfelt here, but you know it's okay, you're not um well, but you have become someone who embodies to me what a great producer really really is, and that is someone who you know everyone's job and you know when what they're doing, even in the smallest detail,

when it's working and when it's not working. I think that what I liked, and maybe it's growing up in Canada, but the actor manager, you know, I know with Shakespeare not to put myself in the same category, and that's really for others to do. But the I know that he had to have a guy like Farley and Blushi that the audience loved, and Falstaff ends up in a

play that really did doesn't. But you know, he was brought back by popular demand, and I think that when you're dealing with actors and writing and costume people and an audience and how you're going to get people into the globe theater, it's not much different. And the fact that there's the greatest poetry probably ever written in the English language is also in there. That wasn't what he was advertising. Producing for me anyway, is like an invisible art.

If you're any good at it, you leave no fingerprints. The writer wrote it. You always say that was so and so script, the director directed it. The star had the idea in high school, and that's kind of what it is. And the only way you prove your worth is you leave a body of work and people go, oh, that accident happened there again that oh, I see. So you know, you try and get the best out of people.

If you look around the room and you're the smartest person in the room, then you're in the wrong room. You know, you want to get the most talented people you can find and then m bring out the best of them. But you also have, if I may say so, a kind of Darwinnian approach to this. In the years I've been here, where you're not someone who's sitting down. I mean, you've had close personal relationships and you've developed lifelong or career long friendships with some of the most

important people you've worked with. But as a rule, I don't see you sitting down like a father figure to the people here. You tend to let them slug it out and let the cream rise to the top. Correct. Competitive is in trouble there? Yeah, But I'm talking about in the creative process. I think that you kind of guide it, you don't make it. Yeah, the only way

you can manage creative people's a very loose reigns. I think if you're all over everything between dress and air, you know what that meeting is like, and it's just there's no more appeal. Then this is what we're doing, this is how we're doing it, and and everyone falls into place. But up to that point, it's kind of fractious, and everybody's got an opinion and nobody likes anybody else's work.

The idea that it's a variety show. By that, I mean that there's a variety of styles and tastes, that there's the lowest comedy and and the brightest comedy, and that they all coexist. Or that this group doesn't like that musical act and that group thinks that the joke's on updated they don't agree with the politics of it. That's kind of the community of it, and that's Lord Michaels. He says he picked up his value system at Summer Camp. I wanted to make fair. What is never a fair

thing show business? We were a community was just set up. What was a value system? Do you know what I mean? It was not driven by economics. It was driven by if it's successful, they'll be more than enough money. Uh. Are you saying you're disappointed in how you've done No, I'm saying I would do it exactly the same way. Now, yeah, I would do it exactly the same I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Oddly enough, the title of my show comes from a phrase that Laurence

says about thirty times a day. Here's the Thing.