How Lorne Michaels’ Biographer Convinced ‘SNL’ Chief to Reveal Rare View of Life Off-Camera
Lorne Michaels' biographer, Susan Morrison, reveals how she convinced the "Saturday Night Live' chief to discuss his off-camera life and times
This is meant as high praise: Susan Morrison may have ruined “Saturday Night Live” for a legion of journalists assigned to cover the world of late-night TV.
Morrison spent years chatting up Lorne Michaels, the NBC impresario who has seen “SNL” transform itself from an upstart, avant-garde program into an American institution on par with Apple, Disney and McDonald’s. Michaels is famously tight-lipped about the program, and why not? He doesn’t need to say a word about the long-running weekend comedy-and-music showcase to get audiences to tune in or to spur the media to write about it. “SNL” speaks for itself in 20-odd episodes every TV season. Any utterance from Michaels’ lips would only serve to reveal his comedic secrets and erode the fascination people have with the program.
And yet, he spoke to Morrison. About everything that most people never get to discuss with him.
Popular on VarietyEven the author was a little surprised. About a decade ago, after “SNL” celebrated its 40th birthday, Morrison, the articles editor at The New Yorker, thought she would try her hand at a Michaels biography. She recognized the challenge. Michaels famously keeps to himself. Still, she knew enough people in his orbit — one of her earliest jobs was working as an assistant at “The New Show,” one of Michaels’ ill-fated efforts during his famous sojourn away from “SNL” after its fifth season — to give her confidence she could tackle the assignment.
She called on Michaels directly — no negotiations with NBC publicity — and told him of her plan. “I don’t need anything from you, because I have connections in your world, but if you want to talk to me, open up to me, it would be a better book, a richer book,” she recalls telling him. “Your legacy deserves that.”
Michaels “looked like he was going to faint,” Morrison recalls. After all, she adds, “He had made a lifetime habit of staying out of the frame. He’s a private person.”
Her 600-plus-page biography of Michaels, simply titled “Lorne,” tells all, after many of what Morrison says were Friday-evening conversations with the man who has created a program that has managed to stay relevant and interesting across multiple generations and despite the machinations of multiple sets of often-not-very-well-meaning TV executives.
You want to know why “SNL” often goes to the trouble of putting two women dressed as showgirls, a guy clad as Abe Lincoln and a llama named Pierre backstage on many nights? It’s here. The popcorn Michaels has been snacking on since he quit smoking? You can almost smell it. How about Michaels’ thoughts on organic blueberries and goat cheese (he operates a business in the U.S. northeast)? You might find yourself wanting a snack.
But those are just table stakes. Readers are treated to the Holy Grail for any journalist hoping to crack the show: a warts-and-all week in the life of “SNL,” where Morrison gets to see the real process of putting the thing together. On the page are worries about keeping former cast member Leslie Jones happy; getting various players to understand they aren’t just broadcasting to liberals (“We can’t be the official organ of the Democratic Party,” Michaels is overheard telling the cast; the thousands of dollars that get thrown around for sketches that inevitably have to be cut for time; and much to NBC’s chagrin, no doubt, raw Lorne. As the week drags on past dinners with hosts and worries about coming up with a great “cold open,” things often boil down to the 90 minutes between the end of dress rehearsal and the start of the real broadcast, when Michaels takes a bevy of notes he utters about staging, jokes and costumes, and makes the ultimate decision about what sketches get on air and which cast members appear on screen. He is caring and yet merciless, all at once.
This isn’t the Lorne Michaels many of us know, because many of us don’t really know Lorne Michaels.
We may think we do. He’s spotted frequently enough on “SNL” playing the role of the aloof proprietor of the show. Off camera, however, he can be an elusive figure (this reporter has spoken with him about ads on “SNL” and his roles behind the scenes working with Jimmy Fallon, Maya Rudolph and Martin Short, and Seth Meyers). When he does consent to chat, he often does so in 12-to-20-minute increments, usually after a series of changes in the original time of the appointment. If he’s engaged in the topic, he may blow well past those time limits (if he’s not, the interview won’t last very long).
A much more complex figure evolves in Morrison’s pages. Readers learn how the death of Michaels’ father has haunted him for decades, and how he’s tried to keep his family away from the glitzy blur of managing “SNL” cast members, various Hollywood projects, and the increasing feeling of proprietorship the viewing public has over the program. “I was always touched by how important his family is to him,” says Morrison, who believes the sudden absence of a father figure led Michaels to try to play that part for others. “Part of his contribution is creating this culture” among “SNL” members present and past, says Morrison, “It’s tribal. You’re in the family, in ‘The Godfather’ sense.”
He is a wizard of sorts who speaks in what Morrison describes as “koans,” such as “There are two kinds of people in the world: people who build the house, and people who buy the house.” He knows what’s funny, what’s best for “SNL” and its players, and whether they really ought to leave or not. He keeps giving advice to those who depart and even ends up working with them on multiple occasions.
The rise of “SNL” may seem like a convergence of the fates. Who would have thought Chevy Chase and John Belushi would have become pop-culture figures rather than fringe ones? In many ways, this is a program that, in its original form, should never have gotten on the air. Yet in Morrison’s book, the show is simply the result of what Michaels has been doing all along — trying to convene talent in hopes of gaining a fortuitous result. As a young man, Michaels produced a talent showcase at college and a musical revue at summer camp. In later years, goes on to orchestrate celebrity funerals and even play a role in keeping Keith Richards from being imprisoned in Canada. “His life is so much like a bildungsroman,” says Morrison. “Every single thing in his pre-SNL life was like a Station of the Cross.”
The Michaels we meet in “Lorne” is ambitious but flawed. He demands complete loyalty, putting up a young Dana Carvey at his home in the Hamptons and paying for Amy Poehler to get veneers, even as he holds back on frequent displays of warmth. And he curates a lavish lifestyle for himself — barbers and doctors often turn up at NBC’s 30 Rock headquarters to take care of him and he often tells hangers-on about his interactions with Paul McCartney, Paul Simon and Jack Nicholson. He once contemplated becoming the third editor of The New Yorker, perhaps one of the few production gigs comparable to the one he has now. The comfort he cultivates seems to be the price he extracts for being lashed to the management of a show that has over half a century become a cultural institution that generates millions of dollars while also spurring intense backlash, all in the same moment.
Michaels also struggles. He hops from Canada comedy to working for Lily Tomlin and “Laugh-In,” worrying along the way whether he will be able to keep moving in show business. Readers may be surprised by a scene in which a young Michaels, himself a comedian, pitches jokes to Woody Allen, to little avail. His time away from “SNL” — Michaels left the program for four years after trying to juggle its personalities and politics for its initial half decade — is not that fruitful, and the executive worries that he may have lost his place in line in the entertainment business. Those travails give him hard-won lessons to use when NBC execs like Don Ohlmeyer start micromanaging his creative decisions. Michaels lasts.
Morrison’s scoops don’t stop with llamas, goat cheese and ego management. Readers will discover that around the time of the show’s 40th anniversary, Steve Burke, then the CEO of NBCUniversal, “told Michaels that the company wanted to buy back his half of ‘SNL,’ and offered him several hundred million dollars. Michaels knew that the show’s value would likely be higher at the fiftieth anniversary, but he asked himself, ‘Do I want to have the money to spend, or do I want my kids to have the money to spend?’ He made the deal and used some of the money to buy a place in St. Barts, after decades of renting.” NBC has never made that transaction public.
The revelation may be cause for more discussion as Michaels, now 80, continues to pilot the program. Could a day come when the company wants to discuss succession? Will Michaels be able to play a role in that choice?
He will no doubt navigate his way through it — but not by talking to you or me. In Lorne Michaels’ world, a little loose chatter goes a long way. “I think that there’s a Lorne mystique that will endure,” says Morrison. Chances are people will keep trying to explain it.
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