Part 2 (1/2)

CHEVY CHASE:.

John was wonderful. He was trouble later on for me. Jesus, oh G.o.d, was he trouble.

GARRETT MORRIS, Cast Member: I'd been a licensed schoolteacher, taught two years at PS 71 in New York plus five years at the projects with drug-addicted kids. And you know what, I hadn't worked in like a f.u.c.king year and a half. I'd done Cooley High and that was it. I left the school system to go back into a thing called Hallelujah Baby. My license had even expired.

I didn't have a job. I was starving. So Lorne offered me a job. I won't tell you how much it was, but it was good money.

LARAINE NEWMAN, Cast Member: I worked for Lorne the first time on a Lily Tomlin special. He had come to see me when we had just formed the Groundlings and we had our theater over on Oxford and Santa Monica. It was just the armpit of Hollywood, and he came to see the show. I was doing my characters and my monologues. They really were looking for men for the Lily Tomlin special, they didn't need any more women. But they ended up hiring me. And that was just thrilling. I was twenty-two.

The following year, Lorne told me he had been approached to do a weekend replacement show for The Tonight Show and said it would be a cross between Monty Python and 60 Minutes. And I thought, ”I'd watch that,” you know. It was a big break and I thought, ”This'll be great.”

JANE CURTIN, Cast Member: John and I were the last two people hired, and John was hired about a week after me, so I didn't have any idea of what was going on there. But I knew John, because John and I were also auditioning for the Howard Cosell show. So I was working with John in those auditions too. He was much sweeter back then, I think, because he couldn't afford the drugs. He was more in control. He was accessible. I actually liked him when we were working on the Cosell show auditions. I thought he was a lot of fun, and I thought he was very talented. And then when he got hired by Sat.u.r.day Night, I thought it was a very good idea.

LORNE MICHAELS:.

Gilda and John and Danny had known each other from before. Danny and I had known each other because when I came down, I brought him down from Canada. Gilda and I went back forever. And so you had Laraine, who I brought from L.A., Jane Curtin, who we kind of heard about, and the girl we were going to choose, this girl named Mimi Kennedy. But Gilda was worried that they were too similar.

GARRETT MORRIS:.

The way I got on the show as an actor is that a couple people on the writing staff were trying to get rid of me as a writer. Mind you, I had two plays that had been produced in New York City. In fact, New York commissioned a play from your boy, okay, and then I wrote another play, which was produced in New York and in L.A. I'm a playwright, so I was having trouble getting my stuff down to a minute or a minute and a half, to fit into some sketch.

The first three months or so, a guy there stole an idea and then added a little something to it, and he didn't even give me credit for cowriting. This guy stole from me and then told Lorne I couldn't write. Lorne's response was even-tempered. He wasn't necessarily stroking me like I was a pet, but he was fair. When the challenge came to get rid of me as a writer, Lorne let me audition for the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. He did not fire me. And to this day, I am thankful for that. So I got with the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, and the look on that guy's face for the next four years was the only thing that saved me from jumping on him.

BERNIE BRILLSTEIN:.

Lorne really stuck to his guns at the very beginning. He told the network, ”I must have seventeen shows. Give the show time to grow.” They thought we were insane. And maybe we were. But it wasn't until the tenth show that they really hit their stride. Lorne was this great young writer who had this vision of this type of show. He was also a good producer, but everybody forgets what a great writer he was, and certainly a great editor. He was like a conduit for all the comedy brains at the time. He was just ”The Guy.”

JOHN LANDIS, Film Director: This is all hindsight, okay? I don't want to take anything away from Lorne, but he was in the right place at the right time. There were comedy movements going on everywhere. In England you had the Pythons, in San Francisco you had the Committee, in Chicago you had Second City, and then in New York - starting in Boston but then moving to New York - you had the National Lampoon Show. If you look at Sat.u.r.day Night Live's cast for the first three or four years, you'll see they were all either Lampoon or Second City. He cherry-picked people of great skill and talent that had been trained and gotten their chops.

BARBARA GALLAGHER, a.s.sociate Producer: Lorne was very shy, very funny, kind of quiet. We were exactly the same age. He called me and said that d.i.c.k Ebersol and he were going to do a show. It sounded like a ”Look, we've got a barn, we're going to put on a show” kind of thing. And because I'd had live TV experience by working on the Ed Sullivan Show, Lorne wanted me to come and write and be part of the team. I didn't want to go back to New York, and I didn't want to be a writer, so Lorne said, ”How about 'creative a.s.sociate producer'? I just like the fact you've been on a live show.” So I said okay. I went back to New York in June of 1975.

I didn't have a clue what the show was going to be. It just sounded fun and kind of groundbreaking.

EUGENE LEE, Set Designer: I can remember Lorne - he would not remember - saying to me, ”G.o.d, this is going to be so great! We all get to just hang out in New York together.” I was living on a sailboat in Rhode Island, working with what was then called the Trinity Square Repertory Company - where I still work - and someone called my boat about this Canadian producer doing a comedy-variety show. They wanted to know if we - my wife, Franne, a costume designer, and I - would be interested in talking. He was at the Plaza, we could call and make an appointment. Well, why not?

Franne and I both came in to see Lorne. We brought along, as designers do, a few things to show him what we did. He didn't seem that interested. I don't think he ever looked at any of them.

ALAN ZWEIBEL, Writer: In 1975 I'm this Jewish guy slicing G.o.d-knows-what at a deli in Queens and selling jokes to these Catskill comics for seven dollars a joke. At night I would go on at Catch a Rising Star. I had taken all the jokes that the Borscht Belt comedians wouldn't buy from me because they said the stuff was too risque for their crowd and made them into a stand-up act for myself, hoping that somebody would come in, like the material, and give me a job in television.

Everybody hung out at Catch a Rising Star and the Improv in those days. And I'd just met Billy Crystal, who was starting out the same way. He lived on Long Island, three towns over from where I was living with my parents; he was married and had a kid already. We would carpool into the city every night. One night about four months into this horror show, it's about one in the morning and I'm having trouble making these six drunks from Des Moines laugh, and I get off the stage sweating like a pig and I go over to the bar, and I'm waiting for Billy to tell his jokes so he can drive me home to Long Island. And this guy sits down next to me and just stares at me. Stares at me. And I look over - ”What?” And he just looks at me and he goes, ”You know, you're the worst comedian I've ever seen in my life.” And I went, ”Yeah, I know.”

I said that I wanted to have a wife and kids someday but they'd starve if something else didn't happen soon. He said, ”Your material's not bad. Did you write it?” I said, ”Yeah.” He said, ”Can I see more?” And I said, ”You bet.” I didn't even ask who he was; I mean, I would have shown it to a gardener at this point.

But it was Lorne, and he was combing the clubs looking for writers and actors for this new show. So I went back to Long Island and I stayed up for two days straight and I typed up what I thought were eleven hundred of my best jokes, jokes that I wrote for the Borscht Belt comics, jokes that I practiced writing for other comics, jokes I heard in third grade - I mean, I just went nuts. And so I took my phone book full of jokes and went into the city for my interview with Lorne.

Oh, but first I called Billy Crystal, because he had been talking to Lorne about him being a part of the show from the beginning, either as a cast member or some sort of rotating player. So I said, ”Look, I'm supposed to meet with this guy Lorne, can you tell me anything about him?” So Billy told me he used to submit jokes to Woody Allen, he's produced a Monty Python special, and the new show is going to have these little films by Albert Brooks. Oh, and he hates mimes. Lorne hates mimes. So I said fine, I went over to the Plaza Hotel and met with Lorne.

He takes the phone book of jokes, opens it, reads the first joke, and goes, ”Uh huh.” And closes it. And he says, ”How much money do you need to live?” I said, ”Well, I'm making $2.75 an hour at the deli - match it.” So he said to tell him more about myself. He figured before he'd commit to that kind of money, he wanted to know what he was buying. I said, well, Woody Allen's my idol, I love Monty Python, and maybe my career will go like Albert Brooks's - you know, short films and then bigger ones. ”But,” I said, ”if there's one f.u.c.king mime on the show, I'm outta there.” And he gives me the job.

The joke that I had as the number one joke in this compilation of jokes was, just to show you how long ago this was - because of the reference in it - was that the post office was about to issue a stamp commemorating prost.i.tution in the United States. It's a ten-cent stamp, but if you want to lick it, it's a quarter.

We even did it on the show. I remember we were short on jokes. Chevy might have done it. Yeah, I think he did. I think that was my one contribution to the first show, the one that George Carlin hosted.

ROSIE SHUSTER:.

I read Alan Zweibel's book of one-liners that came to the Marmont and discussed it with Lorne. I remember talking a lot about Chevy as a writer. Marilyn Miller we knew from Lily Tomlin. Anne Beatts and Michael O'Donoghue were celebrities, especially O'Donoghue, who was, you know, the darling of the Lampoon, so they came presold. O'Donoghue had a lot of charisma and he was very dark. He was an exciting character in his subversiveness. Al Franken and Tom Davis were a two-for-one kind of bargain bas.e.m.e.nt. They were just starting and anxious to get into the business - you know, let's give them a tryout. I was definitely in the conversations about all that stuff.

ANNE BEATTS:.

I truly think you can say that without Michael O'Donoghue, there wouldn't have been a Sat.u.r.day Night Live, and I think it's important to remember that. I think Lorne would probably be generous enough to acknowledge that. Because I always said Michael was Cardinal Richelieu. He wasn't very good at being the king. He was much better at being either the person plotting revolution or the power behind the throne, telling the king what to do and think. I'm not saying he was manipulating Lorne. It doesn't always have to be about manipulation. It could be about actual helpful guidance.

AL FRANKEN, Writer: Tom Davis and I had known each other since high school in Minnesota. In 1974 we were a comedy team out in L.A. We were the only writers hired by Lorne who he didn't meet. We always thought that if he had met us, we wouldn't have gotten the job. We weren't making money at the time, and the only variety shows around were Johnny Carson's - and we're not joke writers, so we couldn't do that - and Carol Burnett's, which was a good show but not our territory. Oh, and I think Sonny and Cher was on, which was a piece of s.h.i.+t.

Actually, we wrote a perfect submission for Sat.u.r.day Night Live, a package of things we'd like to see on TV - a news parody, commercial parody, and a couple sketches. Basically from that, we were hired. We heard that d.i.c.k Ebersol wanted to hire a team from New York instead of us so he could save on the airfare, but Lorne insisted on us.

Michaels was aghast at the condition of NBC's historic Studio 8H, which despite its n.o.ble traditions was technically primitive and had been allowed to deteriorate. He didn't think it had hosted a weekly live TV show since Your Hit Parade succ.u.mbed to rock and roll and left NBC in 1958.

Meanwhile, NBC bra.s.s were consumed with nervousness about the content of the show - about giving ninety minutes of network time a week to Lorne Michaels and his left-wing loonies. On the first show, with sometimes-racy comic George Carlin hosting, the network planned to use a six-second delay so that anything unexpected and obscene could be edited out by an observer from the Department of Standards and Practices (the censor), who would theoretically flip a switch in the control room and bleep the offending material before it went out naked onto the American airwaves. Over the coming months and years, various hosts or musical acts would make NBC executives more nervous than usual, and the notion of making the show not quite precisely literally live kept coming up.

JANE CURTIN:.

NBC sent me out on a limited publicity tour weeks before we went on the air. I didn't really know what the show was going to be like, but I was the only one in the cast that they weren't afraid of. They knew I wouldn't throw my food.

BERNIE BRILLSTEIN:.

In the first six months, Lorne threatened not to come in to work a lot. He had no way of dealing with these network people. Because Lorne had a vision, and they didn't understand his vision. This was a new show at that time. He made them rebuild the G.o.dd.a.m.n studio, and they didn't understand that. And he made them get great sound in the studio because they were going to have rock acts, and they didn't understand that.

HOWARD Sh.o.r.e:.

What we were going to be doing was really quite technically complicated, but the studio hadn't been kept up to the standards of broadcasting. It was stuck in the late fifties. They hadn't refitted the technology of it over the years. I remember going for that first tour of the studio, and they had game show sets in there and they were doing very low-tech productions in there because it didn't have any of the technology that was really needed to do a live broadcast.

I remember feeling like you were still in Toscanini's studio. It's incredible to think that in the 1950s NBC, this great American broadcast network, hired an Italian conductor and gave him his own orchestra, the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and his own studio and his own elevator for the maestro to get up to the eighth floor. When I asked for a music stand to put my scores on, an old stagehand went back into props and brought out Toscanini's music stand - this huge, black, ornate, five-foot-high carved wooden monstrosity. It came up to about my chin. And they said, ”You can put your scores on that.” That was the only thing of Toscanini's I'd actually seen. It was wonderful. You felt the history of the place.

BERNIE BRILLSTEIN:.

When Lorne told NBC they had to spend like three hundred grand to rebuild that studio, they nearly had a breakdown.

BARBARA GALLAGHER:.

d.i.c.k Ebersol was really the buffer. He'd worked very hard to get the show on the air. And the NBC guys all thought we were from Mars. The bureaucracy at NBC was terrible. They thought we were a joke at the beginning. Trying to get through the red tape really took a lot of time. We couldn't even get stationery with the show's name printed on it. They clearly thought we were the Lizard People walking around. They had no faith in us at all.

I know Herb Schlosser must have had some faith, though, because d.i.c.k really ran interference for him. Still, we couldn't get anything we needed. It was pulling teeth to get an ounce of money. You get nickel-and-dimed to death, and you build up such an animosity. The network really irked Lorne at the beginning, big-time.

CRAIG KELLEM, a.s.sociate Producer: He was in a constant battle with the network as it pertained to the economics, particularly about the set. Lorne wanted the set to be like almost this architectural prototype. The argument was, ”Hey, you can't even see that on camera,” and Lorne's att.i.tude was, ”Yes, but I want it. I want it anyway.”

EUGENE LEE:.

They hired Dave Wilson to be the director. He'd done a lot of TV. Dave was a nice man, but he had very strong opinions about things and said them. And there was a lot of incredible feuding about the layout of the studio. All I remember is, we worked on it and worked on it. Dave and I fought tooth and nail about how it would be laid out. I laid it out my way - longways. There was a lot of muttering about how there wouldn't be enough s.p.a.ce. I said, ”The cameras are on wheels, let the cameras roll to the scenery and not the other way.”

One day just out of the blue, Lorne comes by and says, ”Hey, we've got to go upstairs.” And I went with him, and we took the model of the set up to whoever - I think it was Herb Schlosser. We laid it on the coffee table. And Lorne hadn't said much about any of this. But he explained it perfectly to Schlosser. He was like brilliant! I mean really, no kidding. I was knocked out. He said, ”This thing goes here, and the camera moves here, and it all stretches around this great big environment.” And after that, money didn't seem to be a problem.