Lorne Michaels

and what it takes to create the storied program. Did you think at the beginning that you were going to change television history and the history of comedy when you were starting that show in n I don't think I thought of it in those terms. But I thought that if we actually got on the air and UH did the show, that the people who were doing the show would stay home to watch. I thought there were enough people like us because we'd all pretty much come from

the audience. I was probably the person who had the most experienced in television, but most people it was the first time that'd been on television, so most experienced. But you were only thirty years old. Thirty, so the others were in their twenties or yeah, I think uh, I think Dan Nakroy was twenty two. I think John Blues. She was twenty four. I think Gilda was twenty four. Chetty was a little older than me. Why would a

thirty year old be picked to produce this show? What was your background that enabled somebody to think you would have experience to do this? I think, first and foremost, there was very low stakes, you know, like late night doesn't average in the prime time bradies, So it was no one's real responsibility. And Carson was on five nights

a week, and that was doing really well. So when I'd done television, and I've done television in Los Angeles, both in the late sixties and then when I moved back in nineteen seventy two, and the more ambitious things that I would suggest or go in and meet about, they'd always say wouldn't work in primetime because in those days you needed a forty share of the audience to to stay on the air. Forty share means was just watching you, And so they'd say it won't work, or

we'll just work on the coast. And I was from Canada and I kind of knew what was in between the coast, and I thought there were plenty of people like me out there, and uh, it was a different generation, and if we could, we were at the beginning of the baby boom. I'd worked on shows like Laughing as a writer, and I've done uh well shows with Lily Tomlin and Richard Pryor and uh which were always specials and uh uh. And I've done enough that I sort

of knew how you do it. And it was a question of putting together a show which was on some level. UH knew why old models, you know. So I took elements of various variety shows, and I knew that we'd be different because we'd be doing it. So you grew up in Toronto, and did you grow up and say I want to be a lawyer or a doctor like all nice young Jewish boys in those days. I think it was my grandparents owned a movie theater, and uh.

I think from an early age. I think if asked in like the third grade what I wanted to do, I probably would have said lawyer because I think that's what you said, or something like that. But I would have wanted to be in the movies. And did you at one point say I really want to make my career in Canada or at the big time is really

in the United States? I thought at the time it was seven, was the hundredth birthday of Canada Centennial, and there was a new spirit in the country and I thought I'd be perfectly happy to be here the rest of my life. And uh, and then UH got an opportunity to do a show in California called the Beautiful Phillis Dealer Show variety show. And we'd written I was working with a partner then Hard Pomerants, and we write and perform and we wrote some stand up for various

for Woody Allen, Joan Rivers and people like that. Not that we influenced their careers, but uh, we've had enough experience and we performed. So you picked the number of the famous people who later went on to great fame and fortune. And then the first show goes on. Right when it's over, are you convinced you have a great hit forever or you're not sure? When we were beginning, I've said this often, but I had all the ingredients, I just didn't have the recipe. So between the first

show and the second show, we changed. Second show was Paul Simon, third show is Rob Bryner with Penny Marshall. By the fourth show, we'd sort of found the show with Candy bergon. We found the show that um resembles the show. So the original idea was to have a cast of characters and not ready for prime time players as they were caught, and a host, a different host every week. Who was your host the first week the

first show? George Carlin? And was he so funny in those days you knew it would be a hit or was he talking with the different monologues that would work? And I thought he was funny. The biggest controversy in that first show was the network wanted him to wear a suit, jacket and tie, and uh, he didn't want to. He wanted to wear a T shirt. I was it was not the biggest thing in my life. I would

let him wear what he wants. But uh, the compromise, which took up a lot of time on show day, was he wore a suit with a T shirt, which the perfect solution. So did you have to have a sensor for words that might not be appropriated? A lot about a lot of discussions about what we could do and what we couldn't and um and what you could do at eleven thirty and what you could do at midnight. I think that we sort of. You know, all those phrases from the seventies, like cutting edge and pushing the

envelope and all that. I think we were just trying to reflect life as we were living it. And also, is the end of the Vietnam War nine? You know what the president resigned? Uh, New York City was bankrupt. It was a little window that opened where it wasn't business as usual, all right, seventy five, the late seventies or early eighties, How has humor changed or the people laugh at the same kind of things? Are certain things you can make fun of now you couldn't, or vice versa.

There's almost nothing we did in the seventies that I could do now. Gilda Radner would not be able to play Rose Amazona, Dana. John Belushi would not be able to play Japanese. Uh, Garrett Morris doing news for the Heart of Hearing would have been making fun of a handicap. So it's it's just all values change. And then I always say that between the movie Arthur and the movie Arthur to alcoholism became a disease and no one wanted to laugh at drunks anymore, whereas for two years they

left drunk. So let's take people through how the show is actually produced. On a Monday, do you recover from the previous week and do you actually go to work on Monday? And you know, we we everybody has to show up Monday. I have a meeting which I've had from the beginning of five o'clock on Mondays, which has all the writing staff, all the cast, that the host, people for the music department, people for the field department, and um, we all gather in my office. Uh they gather.

I'm behind the desk, and uh, I go around the room and ask everybody what their what their idea is. And in your forty five years of doing this, almost forty five years, have you ever had a private equity person as a guest host? Not? Not, It's been just we haven't done well. Maybe there's an opportunity at some point. So Tuesday Wednesday you're kind of writing it. You have a dinner with people. Then Thursday and Friday you do dress rehearsals or we choose the show. On Wednesday, we

read forty pieces looking for thirteen and fourteen. Once that's chosen, then the designers begin designing the sets. Then those plans go out to the shop late that night and they start, Um, we the film unit goes off to figure out how they're going to shoot the two or three pieces we're shooting. We are always assessing who has not as much to

do as we'd like. Uh, And so we've left the opening of the show and generally one or two spots open for anything that happens between night then and and have you ever gotten worried that you picked a guesthouse who really isn't up to the task? Yeah? And do you how do you coach them? And maybe you could do a better job or be ready get almost anyone

through it. It's an odd hybrid because you're on stage, so there are lots of people who are very good at that, but then there's also cameras, and also the script is constantly changing up to the last minute, so it takes a level of focus, and there's a point which the host really just gives up and goes you just have to trust it at this point that will that it will all come together. So I anticipation of

my getting a chance to do it with you. You invited me to come to one of the shows recently, and I was surprised how small the studio actually is now. This is a studio that Toro Toscanini conducted the NBC Orchestra at one point. Yeah, it was built on springs. Literally he was the NBC Sympathy Orchestra and Tuscanini was that important, and rock Feller said he had been built. So they put this in between floors so that the

subway noise wouldn't affect it. A lot of that was changed when television came in, because they thought sound would matter. Turns outday I noticed when I was there that you were walking around the set a bit, and I noticed sometimes when I watch on TV that you're staring at what's going on, and um, you don't smile that much when you're doing this, And and do you ever think, oh, this isn't going as well as I thought, so you'd tell the people fix it or do something different in

the middle of the show. No, I mean there's some of that, but mostly it's about time. So the cast are good enough that if you are running a minute or too long, you can just go but they you understand and they can just pick it up and go faster, or else we take a page over or something. And there are cases where you think you had a really funny sketch script and all of a sudden people aren't laughing in the studio, or the reverses where you're not

sure it's that funny, all of a sudden becomes very funny. Yes, you choose the pieces on wedd so you rehearse them Thursday and Friday and again Saturday afternoon and costume and makeup, and then you uh, you do address rehearsal, which is the first time four people come in and see it and whatever you thought, if they disagree, they're right. So we adjust from that. Things that you thought were sure fire don't play, and things that a harder piece, if

you play it early, it probably won't work. And so it's it's where you play things running order and also topicality, so you don't get people calling you from the network that owns you, let's say it's nbc Z owned by Comcasting, saying jeez, you're being too tough on a political figure.

They just leave you along. They leave us alone. And the Comcast people have been brilliant because one, I don't think they want to be doing the show themselves, So there's that, and also it's just been Steve Burke bron Roberts, just unwavering support. Okay, so when you're not doing Saturday Night Live, you're also producing some other television shows, so you're producing late night you know, I did the Tonight Show and Seth Mars, you know, a late night show.

But in all of those, thirty Rock is a perfect example. Tina Fey was a brilliant head writer on SNL and then cast member and an update she wanted to do a series. We did Mean Girls together as a movie. She wanted to do a television series. It ended up being Dirty Rock. And what I will do is I'll be all over it um at the beginning to make sure that it's both on track and that's the best

version of what it could be. And then once it's sort of uh going or going well enough, I will tiptoe out of the room and go back to my other job, which is SNL. So most of my focus is SNL because it's compelling and because you don't know what's happening minute to minute. And then with the Tonight Show, WI Chimmy Fallon who also and Seth Mars. These are people I've worked with and we have a shorthand, and I have faith in them. Uh, and so you can

sort of see that process. So sometimes humor is so funny on your show that you know you just can't stop laughing, and um, they do eventually eventually. But I mean, is there anything that makes you laugh so uproariously that you can't control your own It's always something in the show that I'm really proud of. And also comedy is a it's a disruptive thing. You know, people don't plan to laugh. They're taught when to applaud, but they're not

taught when to laugh. So there's something that's always surprising. And when you see the pairing of really good writing and a brilliant performance, Uh, you want when they're locked in. When people are made famous but by your show, and then they go into a great fame and fortune beyond your show, they ever call you up and say thank you very much for everything you did for me and I could have done it without you, or they forget to do that. I think there's very strong feelings on

both sides of it. We did when we did the fortieth anniversary UM a couple of years ago. I think everyone, all the people were invited who had worked on the show, plus people who hosted the show, and I think when people looked around the room and saw all the different generations of people who have done it, it was people

realized that what we've done was important. And recently a couple of weeks ago, Adam Sandler I was hosting the show and he did a song about Chris Farley and I did a lot of work with Chris Farley, and UM and Adam and he were very close, obviously, but what happened was he was doing this tribute and he looked around the studio and crew were the same crew, The people in design were the same people, and you sort of set up people cheering up and you realized, Um,

it's just an important thing. And in that on that stage, in that room, UH where everyone has been working forever, UH just had real power. Are there things you would like to do with the show that you haven't done yet? I think the show just continues to moreph I mean the last since the last election, it's been much more

political because the audience can follow it. There are times, you know, there were times in the mid nineties were if you'd ask one of the cast members who the Senate majority leader is, they wouldn't know So one year, Lapel, you're wearing a pin which is I guess the Order of Canada, and that signifies that the highest honor you can get as a Canadian citizen or something like that, you could be elected Prime minister. I suppose. I think

people would rather have that. So now you've received that as a in you're a Canadian and American citizen, yes, right, but you've also received the highest civilian honor that our country can give, which is the Presidential Medal Freedom. So what was it like, President you got it from President Obama? What was that like? Thrilled when I got the call

telling me that I was to receive it. Um, I was in the middle of working out and it wasn't okay, And then I sort of took it in and then I went, oh, belly, Gerard had called me, said, and

we'd appreciate you're not talking about it. So there was a month where I knew I was getting it before it was going to be announced, and I took it very seriously about not talking to people about it when you are as prominent as you are, and eve been doing it for as long as you have been Cany young people in their twenties who might be writers say this is very funny, and you say no, and they argue with you, or they when you say no, I think. You know, it's three o'clock in the morning. You see

two writers in the hall. I mean, uh, sure, And in the seventies it would have been seamless, but now it's they just stopped talking as I get closer. But I think if suggest an idea and I'm thinking, well, uh, we've done that eight or ten times. I wrote it three times. It's never worked. But if you ever said it won't work, they think, well, he just doesn't get it, which is infuriating, and but they have to be able to write it and hope springs eternal that maybe this

time it will work. So there's no idea that somebody brilliant isn't able to figure out and pull off. So we're always just hopeful on that front. So today, as you look at next season and so forth, are there things you would like to do with the show that you haven't done yet? I think the show just continues to moreph I mean the last since the last election, it's been much more political because the audience can follow it.

There are times, you know, there were times and the mid nineties where if you'd ask one of the cast members who the Senate Majority leader is, they wouldn't know. So politics becomes obviously post Watergate, politics is very important into the Baby Boom generation remained important, uh, and then in in good times it sort of recedes. So we're always just doing what the topical it might be politics right now. It is. So if somebody said, I really want to be like Lauren Michaels, I want to be

a successful producer master of television. What are the qualities that this person should have hard work, smart, good sense of humor, and able to how to get along with people, motivate people. What are the qualities you think really are the most important ones. I think that what I wouldn't advise anybody on it, but I think that leadership in this particular field, uh is the ability to change your mind and quite often change your mind. So if a better idea comes in, uh from a first year writer,

we'll go with that. And it's a culture that thrives on that, So it isn't status or hierarchy to determine it. People, people that the audience is dying to see in the cast can end up in one piece because the pieces got chosen, and they were chosen. Everyone's heard them play it read through, and so uh, there isn't a week where someone's not seriously unhappy. And it's not fun walking past people just have you've cut their piece because we're

running along and that's the piece that got cut. But there's always next week, and I think you just keep moving forward and you just try and create a culture where everyone feels they're heard. Thank you for letting us talk to you, and thank you for never making fun of private equity and all the shows and you've never made fun of private equity, which is a good thing, right, yes, yes, it is a good thing. Thank you very much more than welcome. Thank you for having me