Ticket 2 Ride

Well, the title is not entirely true. Herb Schlosser and Dick Ebersole might disagree. Largely responsible for the show we love to say stopped being funny back in the 1970s, Lorne Michaels built a show that defies near cancellation, constant criticism, talent departures, changing demographics, and what’s funny. And Michaels quietly built himself a media empire, making himself quite wealthy.

Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live isn’t so much a biography in the usual sense, it’s a dissection of the Lorne Michaels and SNL phenomenon. Michaels and SNL are so interwoven, that the story of one is also the story of the other. Author Susan Morrison organizes the book into sections corresponding to the days of the week; a day in the life of an SNL episode along with some significant slices of Michaels’ life. God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh; Michaels created on SNL episode in the same period, and allowed the cast and crew to sober up on the seventh.

SNL is a cultural phenomenon. Love it or hate it, SNL is a more than just a weekly television show, it’s a reflection of our times. At the wheel for 45 of the 50 seasons is a guy who looks like a bank executive, is extremely well-connected, friends with the wealthiest and most influential, and well-known by his first name, but still a mystery to many of those who’ve passed through studio 8H since 1975. There are numerous books and films on SNL, Morrison covers a lot of the same ground, but she digs deeper on Michaels, the producer and the especially the man.

Here are a few excerpts that Morrison makes sure we know:

“Michaels rules SNL with detached but absolute power. One talent agent routinely tells clients auditioning for Michaels to always remember that he is the real star of the show.”

“He (Lorne) was becoming skilled at managing creative egos. He was a big-picture guy. As (Dan) Aykroyd put it, ‘He saw skills and abilities in people.’”

“Every Father’s Day, Michaels gets messages from dozens of surrogate sons, ranging from (Pete) Davidson to Ted Sarandos to the pitcher David Wells.”

“The group included his top deputies and a few select cast members. The dinner is a coveted invitation, and not being included can cripple a person’s confidence for the week.”

“‘I shouldn’t need a father figure, because I have a dad,’ (Conan) O’Brien said. ‘But a lot of us, we all make Lorne the mentor that we want to impress. It’s like we’ve all been imprinted with a chip.’”

“Michaels didn’t like his private life gossiped about, but he had no difficulty tolerating more general ridicule. He enjoyed playing his Lorne character-what Carvey calls ‘the kinda Jack Benny Lorne thing, above-it-all and unflappable.’ He teased underlings who rode in ‘those yellow limousines’ or joked about riding ‘that train I’ve heard that runs under the ground.’”

“When Michaels is surrounded by a group of young acolytes, like Don Corleone in a back room or Jesus at the Last Supper, he likes to hold forth, dispensing stories as if from an internal jukebox.”

“‘Whenever I’m sitting around a table with anyone in the comedy world, there’s a gravitational pull to talk about Lorne,’ Conan O’Brien told me. The tone is a mixture of affection, reverence, fear, and sometimes a lick of derision. The people he’s hired are grateful for the opportunities he’s given them, but his encouragement can turn to aloofness overnight. He lives a mogul’s life, and the power he wields is intimidating.”

“Cast members have been refining their Lorne impressions for years; Fred Armisen does Japanese Lorne and German Lorne. Hader does an impersonation (it has what Alec Baldwin calls ‘all the Lornian beats’) of him dropping the names of serial killers.”

“Although Michaels was the executive producer, he didn’t get involved in the day-to-day. ‘A lot of people, myself included, think that Lorne has the Secret,’ O’Brien said. ‘And Lorne has made a career out of letting people think he has the Secret.’”

“‘The birth of my kids was the biggest thing that had ever happened to me and the only thing in my life that I wanted one hundred percent to get right,’ Michaels said. The shift from father figure to actual biological father was profound. ‘I had to reinvent my game,’ he said. Regarding his family, he said, ‘I’d decided: I’m going to be there. I’m not going to be there at school drop-off, but I will be there at pickup, and I will go to every game.’”

“‘Lorne will manifest the reality he wants—a lot,’ John Mulaney said. He’s mastered the art of slow, unpushy persuasion. ‘He uses it on all of us all the time,’ Fey said. ‘He gets you to want to be a part of it. You want to be a good family member.’”

“DURING THE HALF CENTURY THAT Michaels has been at NBC, the network has had more than a dozen entertainment-division presidents and three changes of ownership. He has prevailed by quietly going about his work. ‘Lorne is able to navigate those waters,’ Fey said, ‘because he knows that you never get the long run by being the guy who says, ‘I told them!’ He sees the show, which is an island inside NBC, as a microcosm of all of show business: if you learn how to stay afloat, and if you don’t expect that the show will always be great, if you know that it will go up and down, you’ll survive.”

“Andy Samberg and John Mulaney each bought a forty-dollar Hermès Terre deodorant stick, relying on intelligence from one of Michaels’s assistants, so that they could smell like him. It turned out to be the wrong scent.”

“Toward the end of the disastrous comeback year, Brandon Tartikoff had told (Bernie) Brillstein that he was pulling the plug. However, for the first time, NBC agreed only to a thirteen-week commitment.”

“‘I never got tempted by the idea of being a martyr,’ Michael said. ‘One of the things I taught myself is, you have to stay on the air. It’s not worth it to blow yourself up for principle in a community that will sell you out.’ He went on, ‘I realized, okay, you can take it to the brink, but if you give up your power, you’ve done nobody any good.’”

“In the seventies, the fooling around involved more partying. ‘People would drink, people would smoke a joint,’ he said. ‘But it was never as interesting as any of the books made it seem.’ These days, the cast hoards Ozempic.”

“Michaels refers to this ongoing process of tweaking day by day as ‘making rolling decisions.’ A high-energy cold open is important to him, and he often has the writers start from scratch on Friday or even Saturday. The idea is, if you begin the show with a home run, then momentum will carry through the next ninety minutes.”

“For the first two years, writers and cast got six tickets each per show, with orders not to give them to industry people; Michaels wanted real fans in the seats. By the third year, the allotment was two tickets.”

“Dragging out the decision paid off. For the fourth season, Brillstein negotiated a contract that gave him a minimum salary of $750,000 and a fund to develop other projects. SNL was the highest-rated late-night program in history, and its young demographic kept growing, generating annual revenues for NBC of $30 to $40 million. And so the network acceded to every demand. It upgraded and expanded the offices again: a multi-nozzled shower was added to Michaels’s private bathroom.”

“Normally, Michaels sticks around for part of writing night, conferring about pieces in progress. Cast and writers know it’s a good time to approach him—before the pressure of the week kicks in, and while he’s a little loose from the vodkas. A lot of his time in the office is spent tending to people, smoothing things over. ‘It’s not unlike being a doctor or a shrink,’ he said. You learn to put up boundaries. Chris Rock compares Michaels to a coach. ‘This guy’s been thousands of people’s boss, and he’s watched them go from nothing to something,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t make you quite a psychiatrist, but it gets you close to that level.’”

The riffing about Michael is quite revealing. He’s an enigma even to those he’s known for many years. He’s a smart guy in a cutthroat business. When SNL was about to be cancelled, Michael had to cede some control back to the network, and that meant firing some cast and crew, which he hated doing, but went along, in order to keep the show on, but was also playing the long game. Over the years, through mergers, new regimes and constant criticism, Michael’s prevailed and emerged stronger.

As a producer, everyone seems to have incredible stories about him. It’s obvious that he’s extremely loyal to people who have worked for him, he’s respected and revered, people want his ear. It’s easy to be an asshole in a job like his and for people to be viewed as a disposable commodity. I don’t believe that Morrison set out to write such a positive overall view of Lorne Michaels. Not everything said by others is positive; Michaels has made mistakes and missteps, and burned some bridges. He can be vain and has certainly take credit for SNL from the very beginning, when the idea was NBC executive Herb Schlosser’s, with great input and support from Dick Ebersole.

From a comedy writer to a media god, that’s a huge leap. From a longhaired, pot smoking dude, to the finest tailored suits, palatial real estate, to green-lighting films, to friendships with the cultural and industry elites. Morrison takes you on that ride, and it’s quite an amazing one, if you have the patience for the read. The book is really long, almost too long. More is not always more, but in this case, it’s enough.