Part 32 (1/2)

Most of the time when I was not in rehearsals, I was sitting around the suite in the hotel with my family. And the process that I had expected to take place over the Christmas break spontaneously occurred that week because we were all together. I hadn't realized it would happen that way. I knew that once I reached a conclusion one way or the other, I was going to announce it pretty quickly, because I just didn't want to be out there saying disingenuously, ”I don't know if I'm going to run,” when I really knew that I was or wasn't. So when the family process just emerged, it catalyzed the endgame in my thinking sooner than I expected.

And so midway through that week, I began to lean toward not running. And I tried that idea on for size. And by Sat.u.r.day I had pretty much decided yeah, I'm not going to do it. But by then the impending performance was a welcome distraction, because you just give yourself over to the vortex of the live performance, and I just put it all on hold until the following day. It actually turned out to be a pretty healthy way to do it, although I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. It just happened.

Absolutely I would have done the sketches I did if I had decided to run for president. I didn't see anything wrong with them. And yes, Tipper and I were really kissing during the opening. Absolutely. I think it was even longer than at the convention.

For me, doing the show was similar to the reason why I love downhill skiing. I am not very good at it, so it takes every ounce of concentration I have in order to avoid killing myself on the way down the mountain, and when I get to the bottom, I feel refreshed because I have not thought about anything other than surviving. And that's pretty much the way that Sat.u.r.day was.

Oh, it was great fun hosting. I had a blast and so did Tipper. We really enjoyed it a lot. And all of our kids had fun. Our second oldest daughter, Kristin, is a comedy writer working in Hollywood, and she has a number of friends who are on the writing staff at SNL that she knew from the Harvard Lampoon days, so they invited her to come and partic.i.p.ate during that week. So we had a little inside track in getting into the minds of what was coming up. That made it even more fun, because we got to hear about a lot of skits that didn't get as far as us.

I'm embarra.s.sed to tell you that before I was there on Monday of that week, I really didn't even know that they did the whole thing twice on Sat.u.r.day night. That's such an elementary thing not to know, but I did not know it. I'd never stood in line for tickets or anything like that. I just always watch it on TV. I don't think they had any sense that they were breaking it to me as a news flash when they told me, and I tried not to let them know that I didn't know it.

I remember actually when I first began to try and master the voice and mannerisms of Trent Lott. I watched a bunch of videotapes and I figured, ”You know, I just really don't know how to do this.” But I kept at it and ended up faking it pretty well. It was what it was.

I had to say no to a few things. If you don't, you're not doing your job as a host. They depend on that. But I didn't say no to very much. I thought they had a tremendous number of good ideas. Now there were some that I thought were funny as h.e.l.l that I nevertheless wasn't comfortable doing, because I wasn't comfortable saying the words. But I'm sure that's par for the course.

I thought the reaction was really heartening. I still have people come up to me to this day saying, ”Hey, really liked you and Tipper on Sat.u.r.day Night Live.” That's just a lot of fun. We had great fun doing it. The show is such a wonderful part of American culture.

JAMES DOWNEY:.

If the show were ever canceled, you could never get something like it on again. The idea that the best way to improve it is to cancel it and start over is bulls.h.i.+t. They should definitely keep it on. I don't think a little ratings pressure is the worst thing in the world, but it's probably better not to go crazy over that and give things time. If the show is bad, everyone knows instantly that it's bad. But if it starts to get good again, it seems to take like four years for the word to get around.

I think if Lorne were to step down, the show would very quickly be canceled. I'm absolutely convinced of that - especially at this point. The moment he's replaced, then there's no argument against replacing ”that guy.” And once that starts to happen, the network will pick that show to pieces. It will get worse and worse and worse, and they will never acknowledge that it was their meddling that made it worse. Besides, I can only imagine the kind of person he'd be replaced with. Believe me, they would not pick some bold young cutting-edge thinker who would startle everyone with his ideas. It would be someone who would make the show much more like the rest of the network.

JEFF ZUCKER, President, NBC Entertainment: I've been watching the show since I was a little kid. What I remember the most is probably Gilda and Roseanne Roseannadanna.

Having been a producer of the Today show for almost ten years, I had a lot of respect for what Lorne does as a producer. And I think the biggest thing an executive can do in those kinds of roles is just support the producers and let their vision speak. There was nothing broken at Sat.u.r.day Night Live. People are fond of saying certain years are better than other years, but at the end of the day, it's all pretty good and pretty special.

I actually think that one of the biggest things I wanted to do when I got my job was address the fact that Lorne and this cast have been totally underutilized by NBC. I can't speak to what happened in relations.h.i.+ps before me, but obviously I had a relations.h.i.+p with Lorne from being here in New York, at the Today show, and having grown up in New York. I think that that has helped. It's not an accident that we've had a pilot with Lorne each of the last two years, that Tracy Morgan is going to do a show for us, and that we have a development deal with Tina Fey. One of the things that I'm most proud of is that we're tapping into this.

ROBERT WRIGHT:.

The show has always been a magnet for criticism, but I would say honestly less so in the last number of years. I don't think it's because the show isn't daring; I think it's because there is so much material on television that offends groups one way or the other that they don't have enough time in a day to write letters to us and the other two hundred shows that they're unhappy about. Today it has to survive not on outrageousness but on extremely good performances and great writing, because in terms of the outrageous aspect - there's just too many places you can go for that.

KEN AYMONG:.

I love seeing new people start on this show. A couple years ago I started giving them tickets from their first show that they worked on. I always wish I had had that myself. It's more important, though, for a writer, because that is what this show is; it's a celebration of writing - enhanced by performers, obviously, and the director and Lorne and everybody else who works here. The biggest part of the show to me is the celebration of ideas. That's what I love most about it.

And when you see a new writer start here, they come in with physical comedy in mind - cliches and that sort of thing. But there's inherent talent there. And when I have the opportunity during the course of a season, I say, ”I envy you so much. Because from this point on, you're going to look at the world totally different. Now the world gets to service you. All you have to do is see it. And the whole world is going to look different to you now.”

I wish I had that gift - to observe. That's the greatest gift I think a writer can have, is to actually observe the human condition, to actually put it down on paper and give an emotion to it.

ROBERT WRIGHT:.

I have no idea if the show could survive without Lorne. That's a complete hypothetical. Now Mad TV has come and stayed and proven that other people can do similar kinds of programming, and Fox has been consistently supportive of that. I just think producing SNL is a harder task. You'd have to find people like Lorne to do that. Conan is that kind of a person. I don't know whether Conan wants to be a producer, he wants to be a talent, but he could be a talent, executive producer, or writer. Who's to say? It would be probably fifty-fifty.

LORNE MICHAELS:.

I feel old almost every day. I used to remember everything; now I don't. It's also getting harder in the morning to remember my grudges. I have a much harder time holding on to anger other than in the moment. I just lose interest in it. I don't chew over negative things anymore to such a large extent. I'm not great with anger.

It's an interesting period for me generationally. I feel like the Pacino character dealing with the young quarterback in Any Given Sunday.

There are an enormous number of things that went wrong in my life, a lot of things that were unfair. I'm always going to put a better face on it. That's just the way I was brought up and who I am. People want to believe that I'm someone who at this moment is drinking champagne from a slipper somewhere and on my way into a hot tub with seventy-two virgins or whatever. Fine. I'd much rather my life be perceived as glamorous or stylish than as one of an enormous amount of work that is unceasing. It's a choice: Either you try to make it look easy or you emphasize how hard it is.

My dad never complained - and I admired that.

Nearly three decades of, literally, blood, toil, tears, and sweat have made Sat.u.r.day Night Live a television program whose audience, even though ever-changing, remains peculiarly protective and possessive of it. Its crises and triumphs are chronicled in newspapers and magazines as if the show itself were a celebrity, a public personality, a star. Virtually everyone who has pa.s.sed through the show and is still alive to talk about it has an opinion about how it's doing and what should be done to it, and those in the audience have their opinions too. In the nineties it became a h.o.a.ry cliche to complain about the show never having been worse and no longer being funny - and then saying, contradictorily enough, that you just never watched it anymore.

At a memorial service for the great film critic Pauline Kael in 2001, her daughter recalled Kael's enthusiasm for Sat.u.r.day Night Live. She would invite friends over to watch it, and if they complained about the quality of the show, Kael would say to them dismissively, ”Oh well, they're just having a bad night.” Everybody has a bad night now and then. It's having had so many good ones that's important, and astonis.h.i.+ng.

People will continue to argue, bicker, debate, and fulminate over whether the show is fully faithful to its mission and its history and its heritage - one of the few entertainment shows in the more than fifty-year span of commercial network television to be considered worthy of such worries. Sat.u.r.day Night Live lives - a part of us, a reflection of us, a microcosm of us. National roundtable, national sounding board, national jester, and inarguably after all these years, national treasure.

Even now, Sat.u.r.day Night Live performers of the future may be limbering up - at a junior high school in the Midwest or an inner city kindergarten or a college humor magazine - watching the show each week, tras.h.i.+ng it with their friends the next morning, irked and lonely on the occasional Sat.u.r.day night when it fails to show up. This is a country that demands perpetual amus.e.m.e.nt and relishes spoofs of itself. When Sat.u.r.day Night Live is at its best, it not only amuses us, it reflects well on us. One nation, under G.o.d, with liberty and laughter for all. Live. From New York.

7.

Lorne.

TOM DAVIS, Writer:.

I think Lorne's happy as a pig in s.h.i.+t. He's doing exactly what he wants to do, and he makes tremendous amounts of money doing it. Lorne has a circle of friends that includes Jack Nicholson and Paul McCartney. Sting lives in the same building as he does. I don't think he's had to ride a taxi or a subway, ever. He certainly eats like a prince, at the finest restaurants in New York. He always has a limousine ready to go, and he gets a limousine ride out to his house in the Hamptons. And I say, good for him. He's got a great gig. n.o.body does it better than he does.

Now if this is a ”can money buy me love” question - no, it can't. But then we all have that problem. I don't have quite that much money, so I have to improvise.

ALAN ZWEIBEL, Writer: I remember Gilda used to say that she would search through Lorne's desk hoping that she'd find a note in there that said, ”I really like Gilda.”

JULIA SWEENEY, Cast Member: I came into the office one day at the end of my first year and said to Christine Zander, ”Oh my G.o.d, I had a dream about having s.e.x with Lorne last night.” And she stopped everything and her body froze and she turned to me, like suddenly it was so like in a cult, and she said, ”Julia, we all have those dreams. And I just want you to know it doesn't have anything to do with s.e.x. It has everything to do with power. Maybe that will help you.”

ANNE BEATTS, Writer: I've probably had more conversations about Lorne than anybody in my life other than my parents. He was a mentor and a very powerful figure in all of our lives. I do think that he tended to criticize more than to praise, in terms of a management style. But since that also reflected my father, I guess I felt fairly comfortable with that. Maybe he picked people who were dysfunctional in such a way that they did feel comfortable with that.

FRED WOLF, Writer: I had a turbulent family life and my dad wasn't around that much, and I just think Lorne is the greatest. I'd be furious at him and I'd be like really happy sometimes and other times I'd be sullen, but he's just the greatest guy that I've come in contact with, certainly in my career. Some people can get away with everything with him, and some people he just would never give a break to, and you can never really figure out why.

VICTORIA JACKSON, Cast Member: When we would sit in his office, we'd be on the floor and he'd be on the desk, like we were little preschool kids. From that sense, it's kind of fatherly. He would never say, ”You did a great show last week.” He would say, ”Well, the show was okay. Do we have one this week?” So he didn't play favorites and he didn't compliment us too much. But I was used to that 'cause my dad doesn't compliment me either. My dad was my gymnastics coach and he only said criticisms.

I never gained weight because I was on my toes all the time. Sometimes I walked down the hall and he would say, ”Hi, Victoria.” And then the next time he would walk down the hall, I would say, ”Hi, Lorne,” and he'd completely ignore me. I was one inch away from him, and he'd keep walking. It was a kind of scary, weird thing.

TINA FEY, Writer: He's not terribly effusive. He does not give it out so easily, and that just makes you want to get praise and approval from him more. I think that people who most adamantly deny that they would want that approval are probably the ones who want it the most.

MARILYN SUZANNE MILLER, Writer: I read a thing in the Times about Tina Fey and she said something like, ”Well, you really want to please Daddy,” with regard to Lorne. But Jesus, we thought he was Daddy when I was twenty-five and he was thirty. He was that strict father even when we were kids. You would always look to Lorne for approval. You wanted this father figure to say that was good. But I don't feel by not saying that stuff he was hurting people. He wasn't going, ”I'm not speaking to you because your sketch didn't go well.” He was that strict father who'd only tell you you did good when you did incredibly good.

I remember once he came up to me and said, ”You did good,” and that was like him giving me a giant house in the Hamptons and a garage full of cars.

PAUL SIMON, Host: That's not true that he was a father figure. No, he wasn't. He was like one of the guys. He wasn't a father figure to me. Not to Michael O'Donoghue. Not to Gilda. But Lorne became the father figure as the cast and writers became younger in comparison to his age. And I think that was one of his big transitional points, when he realized that he wasn't one of their contemporaries; when he wasn't one of the boys and he wasn't looked upon as one of the gang. I think that's when he started to act separate from everybody. He used to wear jeans and a blazer. Then he became a suit and tie guy.

LARAINE NEWMAN, Cast Member: Lorne was so close to our age, and because he was the person he was, he was uncomfortable being ”the boss.” I don't think he liked the barrier that that put between him and having true friends.h.i.+ps with the people he worked with. I think the worst you can say is that he mismanaged or underestimated the impact he had on people who depended on him, and when he couldn't make it good for them, how betrayed they felt. It's tough, but I think that's why a lot of people felt that the rug was pulled out from under them. I did too. I just felt like he was my guardian, you know, he had brought me from Los Angeles to do this show, yet all these people were getting more airtime than I was. I thought, why wasn't he protecting me? Why wasn't he making sure that I had as much time as anybody else? And it's because I was one of many. It's not as if he said to me, ”Tough s.h.i.+t,” you know, or ”That's the way it is,” or ”Love it or leave it.” He really tried to work with me. He really tried.

CHRISTINE ZANDER, Writer: We worked with him before he had children, and I think we were probably all his children before he had children. Lorne somehow manages to be a paternal figure, and I think that's because he enjoys being a father. If he didn't make eye contact with me for a day, I thought, okay, for sure I'm fired. And there would be nothing to support that paranoia.