Live From New York Part 32

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.

JANE CURTIN, Cast Member: I think he picked the right profession, because he gets to lord over people who want to kneel at his feet and he doesn't acknowledge them - which makes them work harder.

ANA GASTEYER, Cast Member: I think a lot of us are comfortable with or afflicted by or taken with distant fathers. I'm sure there's a lot of alcoholism in a lot of families connected to the show, that's what I gather. People here are comfortable with chaos. People here are comfortable with distance, with what's not being said, and being able to read what's not being said. So I think that there's a comfort with Lorne's silence for a lot of us.

ADAM SANDLER, Cast Member: Lorne does have a great way of making you feel comfortable. He can also make you feel nervous if he chooses to. But when Lorne would tell a cast member that their skit was funny or you did a good job in a particular bit that you did on the show, it felt great and it really helped your confidence. You felt secure and you felt like, "This guy's seen a lot of different styles of comedy," and he made you feel part of a cool group.

JON LOVITZ, Cast Member: Lorne says I made him like my dad, which I didn't, but he was the boss, you know, and you want to please the boss. But he would say to me, "Come to me with any career problems or any problems you have." I was supposed to do a movie with him and it didn't happen. He blames the studio, and he told a friend of mine that it was my fault, and I got really angry. So then I said stuff about him and it all got back to him, so for four years we really didn't get along. But the last few shows we made up.

I think a lot of us have mixed feelings for Lorne. We're so grateful that he hired us and gave us this opportunity that we'd do anything for him. Then you want his approval. You want approval from your boss and the audience, and he's just not the kind of guy who could do it all the time. I confronted him once, because every Monday he'd be screaming at me. I said, "Lorne, my characters are hit characters, I'm here until seven in the morning, I write three sketches every week." Most of the other people weren't writing for themselves because they didn't know how. I said, "Do you like me? Do you have a problem with me?" Because I was determined not to be afraid of him. And then he goes, "Don't do that, it's too Jewish." I was like, "What? What's too Jewish?" And he says, "Saying you have a problem with me."

ALAN ZWEIBEL:.

Lorne's modus operandi when it came to motivation was, we were a bunch of kids, and if we were denied Daddy's - his - approval, we worked harder and harder to get it. Some thrived on that. Some didn't.

HARRY SHEARER, Cast Member: I found that if you try to approach Lorne on an adult basis, make an appointment, go into his office, wait the requisite two hours, and try to have an adult conversation, you would find a very interesting, polished, smooth discussion that basically led to no results and no change at all. But I found that, as I watched what went on in the show, and sort of heard the stories of the previous years, it became more and more apparent that that was not the way to approach Lorne - that you really had to, if you were a cast member, act out. And if you set fire to wastebaskets, you'd get Lorne's attention much more effectively than if you, you know, scheduled a meeting, waited, and talked like a grown-up with him.

I believed, and I think the evidence pretty much shows, that Lorne's approach to the cast was to try to infantilize them. He wanted them to be like children; he'd be the daddy. That was his preferred way of relating to people. And I didn't particularly want to relate that way.

NORA DUNN, Cast Member: Sometimes I would just get really, really mad and throw a fit to get attention. And then they'd think, "Uh-oh, something has to be done."

You can't help but make this sort of a.n.a.logy that the show was our mother and Lorne was our father and you wanted to please both of them. You certainly didn't want Lorne to be angry with you. The worst thing you could hear from Lorne was that you had "bad form." He really meant it when he said that, and you really felt badly if you were accused of having "bad form."

CANDICE BERGEN, Host: To me, one of the most, if not the most, interesting aspects is the relations.h.i.+p of Lorne to the cast. And all of the permutations that Lorne, as father figure, or as authority figure, goes through. There's a kind of ambivalence that the cast had for someone who had really found them and put them in this and created their careers. It's just unbelievable the number of talents that have come out of that show. And the resentment of Lorne is consistent with being a father figure and an authority figure - the desperate need for attention and for Lorne's approval. These people went through all of this transference with Lorne as the father figure, with all the attendant complexities of it. The relations.h.i.+p of the cast to Lorne was just very complicated. Even to trying to keep people clean, trying to keep people sober, to keep people straight. I always felt Lorne was never given anywhere near the fractional credit that he deserved for really having such an impact on our culture and on comedy and on television.

RICHARD DREYFUSS, Host: We certainly were children. Actors can always be children. But Lorne was certainly an adult.

Of course, n.o.body knew he would do it for thirty years. But he was exactly the same then as he is now. He's got good pace. He's got a great rhythm. He never gets too excited - he never gets too up, he never gets too low. I would personally believe that he's never been to a hockey game in his life.

JOHN GOODMAN, Host: You know, these are sensitive people Lorne has to deal with. A lot of them are people who are going to get hurt, because every once in a while they're going to get their feelings stepped on. That doesn't happen maybe as often as it used to, but it's bound to happen from time to time. And anytime you're dealing with people like that, there's going to be a little hand-holding involved. Obviously Lorne knows this.

DAVID SPADE, Cast Member: When I first read "Hollywood Minute" at read-through, Lorne laughed all the way through it. It was really like having your dad say he liked something, and that was exciting.

JULIA SWEENEY:.

I still have approval dreams about Lorne, which is very embarra.s.sing. Like I wake up and I say to myself, "Oh G.o.d, how many f.u.c.king years does it take before you don't have Lorne showing up in your dreams telling you that you did a good job on something?" I mean, like that's pretty deep into the psyche.

BERNIE BRILLSTEIN, Manager: If I had to make only one deal in my life with the devil or Satan, I'd send Lorne. Because after the conversation was over, they would give him what he wanted. He is the most articulate guy in the world. He doesn't always know if he's right or wrong, but he always makes it sound great.

CHRIS ROCK, Cast Member: How can anyone hate the guy? A lot of people have problems with Lorne. A lot of people I've met from the show come from these great backgrounds, and they're not used to working for people. And you know he hired you to work for him, there's no working with. You're only working with if you count the money at the end of the night. Otherwise you're working for. And when you're working for somebody, you're going to have to do s.h.i.+t you don't want to do. And sometimes they're not going to talk to you. And that's what working for people is.

BOB TISCHLER, Writer: I don't have a whole lot of respect for Lorne's opinion. To me, it was better if Bill Murray said he liked a sketch. I just don't think Lorne is creatively terrific. I don't know him that well, but whenever I had a meeting with him, I've walked out of the room going, "I don't even know what the f.u.c.k just went on." I don't hold him in the same regard that a lot of people do. I was just never very impressed with him. I thought he spent more time talking about theories of comedy, things that were very nonsubstantive in terms of what we had to do.

BRIAN DOYLE-MURRAY, Cast Member: I was down in Florida working on the movie Caddyshack with Harold Ramis and I came back a little late. As soon as I arrived, my brother Bill asked me, "Have you seen Lorne yet?" I said, "No, I haven't seen him." He says, "Don't you realize you're supposed to go kiss the Pope's ring?"

LILY TOMLIN, Host: I don't really want to say a lot about Lorne. I don't think he could accomplish what he has accomplished if he wasn't ambitious. Also he's much more astute politically than someone like me. He would know who to have lunch with. It would never occur to me to have lunch with somebody, or something like that. I've never understood about functioning in the system.

CRAIG KELLEM, a.s.sociate Producer: My theory about Lorne is that he is one of these guys whose mother told him every day of his life when he was a kid that he was the most wonderful person in the world and he could do no wrong. Because Lorne just believed in what he was doing, and n.o.body was going to get in his way. He was determined to get what he wanted, to accomplish what he wanted, and do it the way that he wanted it. If something worried him, he wasn't overt about it. He just figured out what he wanted to do and somehow his willpower outlasted everybody else's resistance.

JANEANE GAROFALO, Cast Member: My secret a.s.sumption about Lorne is that he may suffer from such a deep case of self-loathing that if you agree to be on his show and you are nice to him, he cannot respect you. So therefore you are left to wallow in your own despair. He was always very nice to me, but I just presumed that he had to have been aware that the environment was toxic. He had to know that there were so many unhappy people, yet as far as I know, he was never concerned. He rules on the theory of a house divided is a house that's more easily controlled.

ALEC BALDWIN, Host: Lorne is a good friend of mine. I have a lot of respect for him and I admire what he's done and continued to do, and not just because of the longevity. I still think the show from time to time is really funny. Lorne is the glue that holds it together - or doesn't hold it together, as the case may be, because he can be very laissez-faire about how he conducts the whole thing. He lets the whole show kind of sort itself out, the people's wants and desires and egos and everything. Because of my fondness for Lorne and my being around the show so much, I would sometimes look at the people and want to say to them: "There's a very good chance that it's never going to get any better for you than this."

CHRIS ELLIOTT, Cast Member: When people talk about Lorne, "pompous" and "self-centered" usually come up. A lot of people say he enjoys hearing himself talk, and I'm not necessarily saying that in a bad way, because to me that's who he is. It never bugged me. It was always kind of entertaining. I always enjoyed those Monday evening dinners with Lorne and the host. They were always fun. And if you got Lorne and Steve Martin together, the two of them would really go off.

TOM HANKS, Host: I think he's one of the most mesmerizing conversationalists you'll ever meet. He is a fabulous person to sit down and have a dinner conversation with, because it just never stops. Sometimes it's flashy like, "Oh, you know, Mick came over last night, and Mick and I..." You know, "Mick" came by. "I'm going to guess that's Mick Jagger, right?" "Oh, understood." But you know, he's also got kids, he's also got the same vision of the business I think that we all have, that we respond to excellence. You know how a lot of times you'll meet royalty and they're kind of boring? He's not. He's this kind of royalty that ends up being convivial and intelligent and, in some ways, inclusive, even though he has an inclination to tell the same story over and over again if you haven't seen him for a few years. But he's magnificent, well-read, hip company to keep.

BILL MURRAY, Cast Member: I had a different relations.h.i.+p with Lorne than the others, I think. I was adopted. You can love an adopted kid, but there's still something different.

Lorne's social life is different than mine. He travels in a more rarefied circle than mine. He travels the world. He sees it from a different point of view. Part of it's because he's an alien, you know - a Canadian. They have sort of like British echoes that they have to fulfill. They have to go to Wimbledon and they have to do stuff like that that we Americans don't really feel anything about.

When I hosted the show a couple years ago, I remember just turning to Lorne and saying, "G.o.d, you really learned how to do this." He was really good at it, much better than I knew or appreciated at the time. I think he's better now than he was in the old days. He used to seem sort of arbitrary sometimes, but he really did learn how to do it. I think given the firepower of that group in the first couple of years, there were a couple people besides him that could have done it.

But he fought the great fights; he really was good at that. He fought the fights against the network. He fought the fights for the best crew. He got the network off our backs, he put us on a different floor, he kept us away from everybody, he gave us the independence that we needed so we didn't feel like we were under a microscope. And it worked. He made great choices. And now just in terms of producing a TV show, he's really good at it.

CANDICE BERGEN:.

Well, he's an extraordinarily good friend. He's a wonderful storyteller and he loves to talk. You'd think he wouldn't have time to pay attention to you, but he pays real attention and he's incredibly generous as a friend. And very loyal. He's so smart and perceptive about people; he just gets people so quickly and he's so astute in what he picks up about them. He's amazingly measured and wonderfully witty. I love hearing Lorne's point of view on everything, basically, because I just think what he has to say is so worth hearing. Lorne is only a force for good.

I loved Lorne immediately, as soon as I met him, and he's just one of the people that really matters in my life, and in hundreds of people's lives. When my husband died and there was a tribute for him, without even asking, Lorne had it filmed and had videotapes made. And it was the kind of thing he would do and never even refer to it.

STEVE MARTIN, Host: I think I understand him. I never found him inscrutable. I hear it sometimes said about myself. When you're dealing with all different kinds of people all day, and everyone has a goal toward you, a lot of times you don't fulfill their goal, and then they think, "Oh, uncommunicative," when really it's just that there's no time to fill everyone's goal. Lorne hasn't changed that much. He's Lorne. He's always been a talker, always been kind of wise, always had an overview of how things work.

GWYNETH PALTROW, Host: When I first met him, I was very intimidated by him. I'd never met such a Waspy-seeming Jew in my life. And I was like, where's the "in," you know? I didn't get how to access him at all and I found him very intimidating. And then I sort of feel like I broke through and didn't feel intimidated, and now it's easy to be around him. I am very fond of him. I think he's very smart and a very nice guy, and such a fan of comedy and talent. He's really an amazing person.

The most interesting thing is to kind of be around people like Will Ferrell who talk about Lorne. He carries such weight for all these guys. And they sort of talk about him with love and fear, it's like he stays with them in an extraordinary way. They tell stories of him being very encouraging while also kind of not letting them get a big head about where they are, kind of being discouraging at times in his effort to maintain the hierarchy there. And they're always imitating him, constantly. Everyone imitates Lorne.

GARRETT MORRIS, Cast Member: There's this commercial with a guy sitting on top of a John Deere machine and the guy says, "How long does a John Deere last?" You know, they're like a Maytag, n.o.body ever goes to repair these mother-f.u.c.kers, right? That commercial has always reminded me of Lorne. n.o.body ever had to call the repairman on him.

I was lucky to work for a man like Lorne, who was a great guy and a genius. Two or three times I figured I should've been fired. It wasn't that he was soft, he just dealt with his people a certain way. He knew I was totally dysfunctional. He accepted the responsibility of hiring me, whatever I was. But if you did something wrong he would tell you about it. He would cut me to pieces. It wouldn't take him long to cut you down either - about a minute and a half and I was crawling back to the dressing room. Lorne dug me with all of my flaws, I dig him with all of his. I'm still a Lorne Michaels man.

TOM SCHILLER, Writer: I don't hold anything against Lorne at all. I think he's a shrewd businessman. He realized his dream. He has the power to galvanize people around him who can help him realize his dream, he can make you very excited about the possibilities of exploring your own creativity, and he can get you going. He's good at that.

I was friends with him for a while, but I haven't spoken to him in years. I don't think anyone can get really, totally close to him.

PAUL SHAFFER, Musician, Performer: I don't know if Lorne was standoffish. He was very good to me in that he let me partic.i.p.ate in anything I wanted to. I could be right in there with him and Paul Simon and his inner circle anytime I wanted, and I was just the piano player. I was very impressed with that. So though I can't say I was tight with him, he was really, really good to me by including me in the early days of the show.

CARRIE FISHER, Host: Lorne was on my honeymoon, so by all rights I should know Lorne very, very well. He was always like Big Daddy, giving his little comedy treatises and lectures and explaining things to you about comedy. I was really young and I thought I had quite a bit to catch up on. I actually don't know that I did, but that was the feeling I had, because most people were older than I was.

Lorne talks a lot. He's an expert. He liked to warm to his topic. It used to be me and Paul and Lorne and his wife Susan in St. Bart's. He was a little bit dignified, which was funny in combination with Paul's a lot of bit dignified. But they are very close friends. They've been the closest of friends for, my G.o.d, thirty years. I liked Lorne because Lorne was much more social than Paul might be. He wanted to stay up and talk, and he was extremely social and he would have people over, and I had grown up that way. It was the way I liked to live. Paul liked to dip into it but also liked to leave and go back and work. He had a more solitary profession.

CONAN O'BRIEN, Writer: Robert Smigel and I were working on this silly pilot for Lorne called "Lookwell," and one night he said, "Let's have dinner and talk it over." So we go to the restaurant and Lorne's there and he's eating a bread stick. And we sit down and he says, "Some friends are going to join us," and I said, "Fine." And we're sitting there for five minutes, and all of a sudden I hear over my shoulder, "What's goin' on?" And I turn around, and it's Paul McCartney and his wife, Linda! And they come over and sit down!

Now if you asked me who I would most want to meet in the world, it's like - well, John Lennon's dead, so I guess Paul McCartney, you know? And now he's sitting right there! So I'm trying to recover while they sit down, and Lorne is gesturing with this bread stick and he goes like, "We've been talking about a TV pilot. Conan, tell them what it's about." And my mind is just frozen. I've just suddenly been handed this ball and I'm completely frozen. Lorne's eating a bread stick and I'm thinking, "Why do I have to talk?"

That was a huge night for me. I'm a huge Beatles fan. And I had never met a Beatle. But for Lorne it was just another night, just another dinner.