Lorne Michaels – SNL
The September issue of Rolling Stone Magazine has an entertaining and revealing article about Lorne Michaels, the creator and producer of Saturday Night Live. The article describes how he pitched the show, recruited the original cast, and kept things together for most of the past thirty-five years.
He tells how one network exec didn’t think that young people would stay home on a Saturday night to watch and 11:30pm show. I remember debating that on many a weekend in the mid-70s. Do I leave the party and go home? Do we move the party to someone’s basement where there is a TV? It was frequently a part of the discussion. The skits were what we talked about on Monday at school. It was so sharply different from the rest of television. Raw, irreverent.
You Tube has made live TV a reality for all of us. Live was never really live for people who didn’t live on the East Cost. But it was close enough.
A few years ago I bought a DVD collection of the first season. What seemed unbelievably off the hook at the time seems tame now. And reality TV and Internet-based content has diluted the wonder of “live” TV. But the cast was amazing. Belushi. Akroyd. Chevy Chase. Bill Murray. Gilda Radner, Lorraine Newman. Garret Morris. The names roll of the tongue like the starting line-up of the ‘69 Cubs.
The show has definitely been a roller coaster of quality. Some years were mostly forgettable. But even during bad seasons there would be a few personalities and sketches that would make for water cooler talk for months.
