Live From New York Part 33

ELLIOT WALD, Writer: Lorne's had an enormous amount of success and he lives very well. Someone once said if he had his way, the show would be "Live from St. Bart's."

HOWARD Sh.o.r.e, Music Director: Lorne and I were much more equal when the show began; we started to become less equal as the show progressed. He became much more the producer and I became just the music director. But it didn't start out that way.

TOM DAVIS:.

Lorne a sn.o.b? Sure he's a sn.o.b. He's a starf.u.c.ker of the highest order. And all of his close friends know it too. But you just have to get past it. He has a very sweet side. He also, in my opinion, does reward the squeaky wheels - which I sort of resented personally, because I always stuck up for him when he wasn't around. I'm very loyal. Meanwhile, the people who created problems, criticized him in the press, and stuff like that seemed to be rewarded for it, whereas someone like me, who was more protective of him, didn't seem to get the reward. That's the way I interpreted my own personal experience.

I always wanted to be Lorne's friend - in the way that Dan Aykroyd is my pal and Bill Murray is my friend. It just never quite worked out. I think part of it might have been smoking dope in the office. He did then; he doesn't now that he has kids.

I was closest to Lorne in the fourth and fifth year. It was the peak of my influence in the show. And I have great affection for Lorne. I sometimes wish that we were closer. But you know, it's business. He's one of my business a.s.sociates. And some people become close pals, and with other people it's just a business thing.

ROBIN WILLIAMS, Host: Lorne has that Hotel Algonquin thing going on, filled with all the people he knows and has made and has been around. Kind of like the grand guru of comedy. "Look at what has occurred under my reign" - Emperor Lorne. Careful now - I'll be f.u.c.ked for life. Be not afraid of him, he knows not where you live now, you're free, boy! He made Kids in the Hall, what else can you say? Came from Canada, a frostback, not knowing why, a boy with a vision, a vision in comedy, and then ending up at Brillstein-Grey, and the rest is history.

He likes to schmooze. You come into a meeting with Lorne and he'll tell you how many times he's seen Jack Nicholson that week. It was like, "I was just out with Jack." "Oh, you mean Ona.s.sis?" "No! That's Jack-ee, boy."

PENNY MARSHALL, Guest Performer: My mother always said she wanted her ashes spread over Broadway, because she was a tap dancing teacher in the bas.e.m.e.nt of her building in the Bronx. I remember she wanted us to make sure her eyelashes were on. My brother thought there should be a party with tap dancing, which they did do but I didn't go to.

So I was in New York. My mother was donated to science, so you have to understand she just disappeared for a year after she died. They took her. Then all of a sudden her ashes arrived, and so my brother sends me a Ziploc baggie and a candy tin, to New York, part of my mother, because she wanted to be spread over Broadway. So I called Lorne, because he had an office in the Brill Building, and I said, "Lorne, can I use your office? I gotta throw my mother over Broadway." He says, "Excuse me?" So I explained it all to him and he said, "Sure, no problem." Lorne's favorite expression is "No problem."

So I went there with my daughter and a plastic spoon and a Ziploc bag, and we were singing this song from dancing school that my mother ended every show with when she put on shows. And out the window she went. Joe Mantegna, who was in Glengarry Glen Ross then, said, "You should have told me, I would have put her onstage. I could have carried her ashes onstage in my pockets." I said, "She wouldn't have liked the play." He said, "It's a Pulitzer Prize play." I said, "She wouldn't have liked it. There was cursing. Lorne's office is fine."

Cut to Paris years later, and my father, who had a stroke in '91, I think, whenever Awakening was happening, wouldn't go get therapy or anything. They live for a long time, my family; they don't do well, but they're there. Their hearts won't stop. So I'm in Paris, and my brother called to say my father wasn't looking well. And I asked him, "What should I do? Should I call Lorne?" He calls him Lor-en. "Is Lor-en around? Will Lor-en be in New York?" And ultimately he didn't die that trip, but a couple of years ago I had to call Lorne, because we get cremated in my family. I went to New York with my father in a baggie and I said, "Lorne, I need your office again." He said, "No problem." So I brought my father to the window in a baggie with a spoon, and out the window he went. And I'm trying to brush it off so it doesn't blow back on Lorne's desk, because Lorne never even met my father. And then my grandmother, who was cremated way before, in the seventies, was in a wall that looked like Hollywood Squares, out in the Valley, and for some reason my brother recently said, "Why is Nanny there all by herself?" So I don't know if I've got to bring her to New York and call Lorne. I'm not sure yet. But my family goes out Lorne's window.

I love Lorne and I'd do anything for him and at any given time. Not only his talent but his friends.h.i.+p has meant the world to me. Sometimes we're parted for a long time, but you know there's someone there who still understands what you're talking about. Besides, you never know, I may need his window.

ROBERT KLEIN, Host: "Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch." I know Rudyard Kipling was a racist, but that's still a wonderful poem. Lorne just doesn't have that touch. His arrogance can make me smile. He's just very taken with himself and what he's accomplished. He's certainly done a wonderful job - though I wish he could have done more for Belus.h.i.+.

BRIAN DOYLE-MURRAY:.

Lorne's very hard to get close to. He was kind of isolated, you know. I remember being shocked when we had the Monday night meeting where you meet the host and pitch ideas. That meeting would always start with Lorne being delivered food at his desk, usually sus.h.i.+. And I always thought that was really weird that he would eat while everyone else was crouching and kneeling before him without any food for themselves. I thought it was a little rude, and I thought it was some kind of a power trip.

GRANT A. TINKER, Former NBC Chairman: I've been in the Grill in Beverly Hills a couple of times, and Lorne will come in, and he will just walk right by me. Which is not the end of my world, but it has always made me wonder, why does he do that?

I have no idea what it comes from. What could it have been? If he says I showed "no interest in Sat.u.r.day Night Live," well, that's true. I mean, not the show as it appeared on television. It was just never appointment viewing for me. And I had no interest in trying to fix a problem that was way down the list of problems that NBC had.

ALBERT BROOKS, Filmmaker: If you interviewed somebody from a movie I made and they said it was the worst set they'd ever worked on, I'd have to take that hit. Here we are thirty years later, and I can remember it all. Lorne was in charge, and he didn't behave very well toward me.

JANEANE GAROFALO:.

I waited in his office for hours. And then I decided I would refuse to be embarra.s.sed like that again. You'll wait a lot of hours - that's a power thing. Then, when he realizes you'll do it, he can't respect you. How could he? You've shown him your weakness. You've shown him that you will wait four or five hours and that you'll take it. There's your first mistake.

PAUL SIMON:.

For a lot of these people who come out and say nasty things, I think hey, he's not perfect. For the most part, I don't think Lorne ever screwed over anybody. Maybe they didn't like something about Lorne's personality, or maybe they didn't like his judgment or something like that. But he never hurt anybody's career. People from Sat.u.r.day Night Live went on to huge careers, and Lorne didn't have any piece of them. He didn't own them or take them or control them.

He's a decent guy and he's a very powerful guy, and it's unusual to find somebody who's really, really powerful who is that decent. He doesn't push people and throw his weight around. And he never did. He was nasty when he was young, but he mellowed. I think that's why he's a h.e.l.luva boss to work for, really. You're lucky if Lorne is in your life. For the most part, for most people, their life is improved. I know that's the case with me.

DAMON WAYANS, Cast Member: I have gained an enormous respect for Lorne Michaels and his ability to see beyond his ego. He never said anything but great things about me - even though he fired me. I remember there was a kid on the show who had a drug problem, and Lorne would put him in rehab and take care of him and pay him while he was there and then bring him back to the show. He was like a father to the kid, with the kind of patience that a father would have.

ANDY BRECKMAN, Writer: If there's one thing you can't fault Lorne for, it's the format of the show and how the show comes together, because more than any other show in the history of television, it's withstood the test of time. I mean, that format is f.u.c.kin' indestructible, isn't it? If that's all Lorne came up with in his life, I think he'd have earned a place in the television hall of fame.

JON STEWART, Host: Lorne doesn't have much of a track record, so that's why it was really hard to trust him that everything was going to be okay, but I thought, "Well, I'll give this kid a shot and see what he can do for me."

I think the thing that probably strikes me most is, here's a guy who clearly doesn't have to work this hard but still does. And you can only attribute that to either he's insane or he's still excited about the show, he still enjoys it, he still has pa.s.sion for it, and he still wants it to be good.

LILY TARTIKOFF:.

Lorne is Sat.u.r.day Night Live. I mean, d.i.c.k is too. d.i.c.k did a fantastic job, and I don't really know how to define who did what - no one's ever going to know, actually. But, you know, there are things that d.i.c.k can do. I mean, you would not have Lorne Michaels run NBC Sports. But you would only have Lorne run Sat.u.r.day Night Live and make these movies with those guys. That defines who he is. And that's why he probably has done it for so long, because he probably can't stop.

DANA CARVEY, Cast Member: Lorne had your career and your fate in his hands. He definitely was the centerpiece, because he owned the baseball field. Ultimately, he decided how much you got on-air, how much access you had to your audience. He was like the princ.i.p.al of the school. There was a lot of weighty energy around Lorne. And basically I was just terrified of him the first three or four years - afraid of his power. He could cut you to the quick if he wanted to. He had an acerbic wit. He also could make you feel like a million dollars. He's of the school of very minimal compliment, so that they're weighty when you get them. And they wouldn't be handed out when Church Lady killed, it would be like if I played a cowboy in a scene and I had some funny exit: "I thought your exit as Cowboy Bill was breathtaking." It would be the most obscure detail. And you'd feel like a million dollars.

He's just a great character. There's a great rhythm about him. He's so fun to listen to. He'll go on and on. He'll come up with the weirdest way of looking at things, but we were like his children in a way. He would look down and say, "Kevin's going to do that third-year thing where he asks, 'Who am I in the cast?' Danny went through the same thing. You're going through like that Chevy first-year shall-I-stay? kind of thing." It was great.

FRED WOLF:.

Farley looked at Lorne as the ruling patriarch. He goofed off to get his attention and then, when he got his attention and was chastised for it, he would be quiet for days, then furious at him. Chris got away with a lot because he was a really likable guy. But Lorne treated him differently than he treated, say, Dennis Miller or Dana Carvey or Mike Myers.

BOB ODENKIRK, Writer: Chris Farley came up to me once and he was almost crying. He was in his second month at the show and he said, "I don't get what's going on. Every time I do a bad job, Lorne comes up to me and tells me I just did great, and every time I kill, he comes up to me and says, 'You could work a little harder, you could've done that better.'" Chris's head was spinning.

But if you want to know the greatest thing I ever saw Lorne do, it was the way he wound up treating Chris. I think Lorne was determined not to have what happened to Belus.h.i.+ happen to Chris on his watch. And it seemed to me that Lorne very seriously put it to Chris - every time Chris messed up, he had to go get cleaned up before he could come back on the show. And Lorne seemed to do that even to the detriment of the show, which is to say, he would take Chris off the show even on the Thursday before a show. Lorne really made Chris think about what he was doing, 'cause the most important thing to Chris in the world was performing on that show. That was the goal of his life. And Lorne knew it. And Lorne took it away from him multiple times and forced him to go to rehab. I don't think he ever let Chris slide. And I think that was a great, great thing. An amazing thing, and something I haven't seen anyone else do.

MARCI KLEIN, Coproducer: Sometimes, right before they say "Live," like right before the show starts, when the music is playing, but before the host comes out, I get - it's so pathetic - I start getting misty-eyed and all emotional, because I just can't believe I'm doing this job. I can't believe how much I like this show.

And Lorne gets the same way. That's the moment when I see him get the most excited. I'll look over at him, and his eyes will be popped open, and he'll get on his toes to look out, and he'll be mouthing the intros, and he's just so excited.

MOLLY SHANNON, Cast Member: I did a Mary Katherine Gallagher sketch with Mike Myers and Steven Tyler from Aerosmith, and there was like a brick wall, really balsa wood painted to look like brick, and the stunt people cut the wood so you could break through it fairly easily. But they didn't have enough time to stack the balsa-wood fake bricks and the sketch was starting and I went like, "Oh no, that's the wall I'm supposed to break through, and it's not ready, what am I going to do?" And it was like, "Nine, eight, seven, six... ." Oh G.o.d, oh s.h.i.+t, the whole sketch - and then Lorne just appeared behind the other side and looked at me like, "Don't let this goof you up. Just do it. Go ahead." And I was just like, "Wow," it helped me a lot that he was there. Stuff like that sort of fuels your performance. And that little private moment between Lorne and me, that's just something that he did do that helped me.

CAROL LEIFER, Writer: I always felt like if Lorne was stony toward you it was pretty impenetrable. I saw him not too long ago and went over to say h.e.l.lo. And it was like the quintessential Lorne moment - "Oh h.e.l.lo, Carol, how are you, what's going on," talking, bulls.h.i.+tting, then a band started playing, with blaring horns. It was real loud music. And Lorne just turned to me and said, "Conversation over." And now that's become a catchphrase among my friends and me - "Conversation over." That's quintessential Lorne.

d.i.c.k EBERSOL, NBC Executive: Maybe it's because of his marriage to Alice or having a family, but the Lorne of today has done I think a very, very good job of learning at this stage of his life to delegate. He has, for the first time in the history of the show, the semblance of a real life. And that was never true for Lorne - or me - over the first two decades of the show. I can see it now, though. He doesn't have to live at the show all the time anymore.

ANDY BRECKMAN:.

Lorne has to be on his game just twice a week: after read-through and between dress and air. And that's it. That's when the show is formed. And every other moment of the week he can be Lorne - he can be, you know, the celebrity Lorne Michaels.

CHRIS PARNELL, Cast Member: I don't see Lorne running things except like in a removed way. The only time I really see him in action telling people what to do is when we have the meeting in his office between dress and air and he's giving notes. Other than that, there's not much interaction with him. We see him on Monday for the pitch meeting, Wednesday for the table read and then usually not again until Sat.u.r.day. He's around, but there's not that need to interact with him.

I've always really liked Lorne and respected him. I wasn't liking him too much when he was firing me. But he has a sort of fatherly nature about him, and I certainly respect what he's done. Lorne has lived in a different world than most of us on the show, so that creates a certain difference or separation.

DARRELL HAMMOND, Cast Member: I don't understand anything about what happens between dress and show. It's weird. I don't know how Lorne does it. In the beginning I thought I did get it. But as time went on, I kept seeing Lorne make these decisions. He would make all sorts of changes and I wouldn't understand why he did what he did. I mean, anyone can second-guess anyone else. But then we would go out there for the live show and the changes would work. He can't always be right, no one can, but I realized at that time that he invented this and it's not a sketch show and it's not a comedy show and it's not a variety show or a musical show. It's Sat.u.r.day Night Live. It's his and he knows how to do it and I don't.

AL FRANKEN, Writer: Lorne called the shots. But Lorne is also taking into account a lot of things. He used to try to make sure that everyone was in the show. That was easier to do when the cast was smaller. Sometimes he would put something in just because someone needed something in, psychologically. Sometimes two pieces may b.u.mp in a certain kind of way, that other people don't see, the same style of a piece, and they shouldn't run back-to-back. There are just so many factors - you can't get from this set to the other set, there is no configuration in the show where this thing can go in, this sketch can go in but then we have to lose that sketch.

Almost every week, that was the case. Somebody felt bad, and some people take it like, "I am insulted," or "I am just going to take it." Those were people who usually got a lot of stuff, and other people were angry and hurt and depressed, actually. A person could actually get so disheartened and depressed that it affected their ability to create. Certain people actually spiraled out of control or spiraled down to a point where they were having a difficult time emotionally during the year, and it very much hurt their productivity. And it just was a vicious cycle.

GARRY SHANDLING, Host: Lorne's presence was mostly felt on tape day, what I call tape day, which is the day it's done live. On Sat.u.r.day he would come and he would do the dress rehearsal, the first show in front of an audience, and that's when I went up into his office and just watched him very intuitively reorder the sketches on a big board and cut very intuitively without any doubts. He was really one with that show and the process of selection of what finally aired. He was like a surgeon - very quick, very smart. I certainly don't remember anyone arguing with him.

ANNE BEATTS:.

I always felt a little concerned that Lorne never so much as made a pa.s.s at me. I thought he was really cute. I remember thinking that he was really cute and interesting.

ROSIE SHUSTER, Writer: The first summer we were separated - I was fourteen, and that was the last separation we had for many, many, many years - he announced that when I came back from Los Angeles he wanted to "pet." So I spent the entire summer straining, pulling, doing my best to grow a set of t.i.ts.

ELLEN DEGENERES, Host: To be honest, I thought that Lorne would be a tyrant. He seems to have a reputation of being this really mean kind of scary presence. And he was so nice. Just the reception you get - the first day, when you're brought into his office and he welcomes you and the cast comes in and sits in his office. It's such a warm way to welcome the host and makes you feel good about being there. I don't know what it's like to work with him on a daily basis, but the experience I had with him was great, and he seemed respectful of me. I could feel that he liked me; he made that clear. I really liked him. I really thought I'd be scared of him, and he was so nice and warm. He was great.

And I think he's good-looking. He's a looker. He's a handsome man and he's a good dresser. I like the way he dresses. You know - he's a cutie. I think he knows that. He can't not know that he's cute. There's that picture in his office of him younger, and he was really cute then, but I love the way he looks now.

ELLIOTT GOULD, Host: Gilda once said to me at a party after I had hosted, "Look what you've done for Lorne." Perhaps she meant my accomplishments prior to Lorne's success - my coming on the show and working with some degree of consistency on the show and exercising my humility and my sensibility and giving the show everything that I had. Lorne has always been decent to me. And therefore I'm centered with Lorne.

TRACY MORGAN, Cast Member: It's like Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi. Whenever Luke was in trouble, Obi-Wan would come out of nowhere. That's who Lorne Michaels is, he's Obi-Wan. That's what I call him. Everybody has their little nicknames for him. Chris Farley used to call him the Chief. Some people just call him boss. And some people call him Daddy. I call him Obi-Wan.

BOB ODENKIRK:.

I mean, the whole thing was weird to me. The whole thing. To me, what was fun about comedy and should have been exciting about Sat.u.r.day Night Live was the whole generational thing, you know, a crazy bunch of people sittin' around making each other laugh with casual chaos and a kind of democracy of chaos. And to go into a place where this one distant and cold guy is in charge and trying to run it the way he ran it decades ago is just weird to me.

WILL FERRELL, Cast Member: Lorne can never tell you that flat-out you're hired, with a hip hip hooray. The way he told me was, "So, we'll bring you out to New York," and I thought, "Oh, another audition." Then he said, "Have you ever lived in New York?" And that's when it hit me: Oh, I got the job. Then I felt self-conscious because I was so relaxed and I wasn't jumping up and down, and so I was like, "Oh, okay." And then I said to Lorne, "Well, I'm going to shake your hand." And he was like, "Do whatever you need to do." And then I walked out.

MARGARET OBERMAN, Writer: I think Lorne Michaels is a very lucky man, that's what I think. He was at the right place at the right time and he recognized some very talented people, and it was the right moment and all those things that maybe come once in a lifetime. I'm not going to say he's not that talented. But he's a producer, and the true talent is what is on the stage.

DANNY DEVITO, Host: What makes Lorne so good as a producer? I think it may be the popcorn. There's a lot of popcorn in his office. He always has big, big bowls of fresh popcorn, and I think that helps. It's really what sets him apart from other producers. And another thing is, he doesn't really care if it drops on the floor. It's like total focus on the board. You could just eat like a slob in that office and he really doesn't give a s.h.i.+t. With him it's really all about the show.

ROBERT WRIGHT, NBC Chairman and CEO: He's never been a sitcom producer, so he doesn't have that. He's never been a variety-show producer either; he's not a George Schlatter. He's not one of the early sitcom producers, like Sheldon Leonard, where he did nineteen in a row. So he doesn't have that kind of a history. He's really unique. The length of the show and the fact that he stays with it; he's the Sumner Redstone of live comedy programming, with one show. He has to work very hard to do that. I know he does. And he's fortunate that he has young children, because he's forced to pay attention to lots of different worlds.

My sense is he would rather not do as much of the politics, but he knows it works, and he knows that the people do a great, great job with it. I think he's political, but I don't think he feels he's a political satirist as much as he is funny. I think his great strength is, he's looking for funny. And if politics is a way to do that, fine. If it's some piece of legislation or some event, a war or whatever, he's there. He's a marvelous a.s.set.

STEVE MARTIN:.

He puts people together well. He will suggest something that performers are either too shy or too afraid to suggest. He will encourage partners.h.i.+ps, he'll make the phone call to the person that everybody else'd be afraid to call. And he also has this kind of soft wit and patience. Patience with things and people. He loves the youth that flies around those offices. He gets a lot from it. It keeps him hip, I guess. It keeps him puzzled and it keeps him challenged, because the new thing is sometimes very hard for older people to tolerate and accept, even though we were all once a part of it. He'll let something go that he might not fully understand.

SARAH JESSICA PARKER, Host: Lorne is not necessarily a demonstrative person, but you know you're in good hands. You know it's not a lack of interest on his part; he's overseeing something and doesn't need to be there hands-on all the time. I think he trusts the host that he hires. Look, he's hired you, he must feel fairly confident in your ability to fulfill your obligations, and he feels he doesn't need to baby-sit.

RUDOLPH GIULIANI, Host: Lorne's a good friend. He's somebody I really respect and admire because of the consistency and the way in which he's carried this out through now maybe two different generations of people and four or five generations of artists. So at this point you have to say, despite the fact that he's had some tremendously talented people, this whole thing is really him.

Honestly, you'd have to be very fortunate to find somebody like him. The show could only survive without him if they could find somebody like him - if he could find somebody like him and train him, the way a great coach can find somebody to replace him. But usually you can't do that.

GWYNETH PALTROW:.

Lorne can be stingy with praise, but I think you have to be in that environment. They're writing so much each week and the turnover is so fast, you don't want people resting on their laurels and thinking, "Oh, I'm funny, Lorne thinks I'm funny," and then, "Anything I write is funny and good." I think it's very important in terms of keeping the show fresh and edgy and funny and young that n.o.body relaxes. So I think it's Lorne's job to keep them on their toes.

Some people are able to make it and go on to other things, some people can't, and some people end up killing themselves.

ROBERT SMIGEL, Writer: After my first season I thought I was going to be fired, because Franken said, "Well, I know it's not looking good. I mean, you did great, but it's going to be hard." So I went back to Chicago that summer to work on a stage show. I was really expecting to be fired, and then Lorne brought me in days before the new season and just interviewed me. He asked, "What was your favorite thing you did last season?" It was a very odd kind of short interview. "All right, well, we're just figuring things out." I'd flown from Chicago to talk to him and then all he said was, "I'll let you know." I flew back to Chicago and got another call from him, and he said, "I don't know, you didn't write for the women much." I said, "Well, you know, I just did the best I could, I thought I wrote a lot of good things." "Well, you wrote good s...o...b..z things, but you gave some of the actors a hard time." So he was saying these things and then said, "Okay, get on a plane, come tomorrow." It was so weird.

People get all paranoid about him unless they know him, and as I got to know him over the years, he's a pretty real person and he really is in a very difficult situation. Whether he likes the situation and likes the grief that comes with it, I don't know. It's a very difficult setup here. Everybody's pitted against each other. People have egos and people are insecure and it's a formula for paranoia. When I was producing the Dana Carvey show, I actually got to see some things from the perspective of being in charge, and I called Lorne and said, "I apologize for ever not understanding what your job is."

RACHEL DRATCH, Cast Member: I never get feedback from Lorne. You always get your notes from some middleman, like, "Lorne wants you to pick up the pace here," or whatever. Sometimes after the show if you did a scene that went really well he'll say something, but he never gets specific like, "Oh my G.o.d, when you said that line it cracked me up!" You just have to be able to do without stuff like that.

CHERI OTERI, Cast Member: I don't think you ever really know where you stand with Lorne, and I think that's frustrating, because it's almost like a family, even with its dysfunction, because you want to please him. I always say, "Did Lorne laugh under the bleachers?" I don't have much dialogue with him at all. You live for him to say just once, "Good job." That's the hardest thing, is not having the dialogue that I feel like you should have with your boss.

If you want to see him, he'll see you eventually. But sometimes I think you wish that he would offer things to you. You want a little guidance. But he's not that way. And in a way it's good, because he lets you go and you're very free to do whatever is instinctually there. And the other cool thing is, sometimes they'll say, "He doesn't want you to do that," and I'll go in and I'll say, "I've got to do that, that's important," and he'll say, "Okay." He really trusts our instincts, the performers. I think he's very respectful of what our instincts are.

One time I came back from the summer and he said, "I'd embrace you, but I think I might be coming down with a cold." And I was like, "It's okay, hug me anyway." But I'll go up and I will hug him sometimes and I will kiss him whether he likes it or not, because I feel it. But it's hard when you don't get it back. I understand people who aren't comfortable with stuff like that. They can just give so much. And I guess he's one of those people. He can just give so much, but when you're working for him you really go like, "Anything??? Oh, nothing, huh?" Like, "Say 'good show' once. Just say it once." You know? Nothing. And it's like you feel starved sometimes. But then you get used to it, I guess. It's f.u.c.kin' crazy, it really is.

CAROL LEIFER:.

Lorne and I had such a strange relations.h.i.+p. I don't know what possessed me, but near the end of the season I saw him walking down the hall to go to the elevator, and I hid around the corner, and when he came around the corner I just went, "Boo!" And it kind of really startled him. And I remember in the elevator going down going, "I'm sorry if I threw you off with 'boo' there," and he goes, "Whatever." He really wasn't happy that I did it.

CHRISTINE ZANDER:.

One week I asked to talk to him after the table read. And I think when you asked to talk to him, I think he was always worried you had a problem and you were going to quit or you were going to confront him. I don't think he really likes confrontation. So after the table read, I went into the office and it was sort of tense, but then I sat down and I just said, "Well, I'm gonna miss next week's table read because I have to have an amniocentesis." And he said, "Oooh, I remember my first amnio," and it was his sister's. But he made it his own. And he was really wonderful about it. We talked for about twenty minutes about how everything would be fine.

It's difficult when you're away from it for a long time to try to remember what made you so crazy or what made you so frustrated, and I think you realize, or at least I did, that a lot of it was in your own head and you can't completely blame him. It's more the combination of people and talent - incredible talent, I think, when I was there, and live television.

ELLIOT WALD, Writer: The only time I met him is when I did a piece on him for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1977. He was very charming. I don't really claim to understand Lorne, but if you talk to enough people, you get a sense of Lorne and you realize that in his own way, Lorne was just as hard to work for as Ebersol - and in some ways harder. Lorne is more the smart, neurotic Jewish guy who knows exactly where the b.u.t.tons on your keyboard are - because he has a similar keyboard himself. Ebersol, on the other hand, is more like a boss. If you cross him, he'll just get mad. Lorne, from all indications, is much more like the diabolical version of yourself. He's manipulative, and he knows exactly how to make people crazy. Someone once called him a psychological terrorist.

CONAN O'BRIEN: Lorne is very aloof. He's off in his own world. He has a standard joke if you're a rookie writer and he doesn't know you that well. He pa.s.sed me in the hall once, and he said, "Still with the show?" Then he acted mildly surprised, as if to say, "I thought we got rid of you." And that's his little joke: "Still with the show?"

But I knew I was doing all right, because a few months later - it was late on a Tuesday night - Lorne came into my office. I was sitting at my desk, and he sat on the edge of it and started telling me about this great weekend he had just had in his home on Long Island. "I built a fire and I made some s'mores, and it was really nice, because it was very winterlike." And I was sitting there and thinking, "I can't believe this is happening. Is there someone else in the room? Is there some consequential person in the room? Because I'm certainly not."

ANDY BRECKMAN:.

You hear people on the White House staff talking about face time with the president, and that's what goes on here. When Lorne would come into the office and sit for a few minutes, that was almost, you know, a pat on the back, even though there was, literally, no pat on the back. Just getting a few minutes of face time with him meant you were of some value to him.

JIMMY FALLON, Cast Member: I talk to Lorne regularly about everything. He's the master. He's been through it all, man. He knows everything. I have to make appointments to see him, because I'll talk to him for an hour if I can. I mean, it's like, "All right, my next issue is this: I'm getting an apartment." And he'll say, "Well, I think you should." Whatever it is, he'll give me advice on it. He's just really great. That's the guy I go to for an answer. He doesn't beat around the bush. He gives you an answer and he takes away all the stress.

JAMES SIGNORELLI, Director of Commercial Parodies: I swear to G.o.d - and I've been around this guy for almost thirty years - Lorne has no interest in what you want to talk about. None. What Lorne thinks is, if you need him to help you solve it, it's not worth solving. And you ultimately are going to solve it yourself, even if he told you a better solution. As Gertrude Stein used to say, "You can't tell n.o.body what they don't know - not even that they don't know it." And he embodies that. I'll come into his office and say, "Listen, this is what I want to do," and Lorne will say something completely at right angles to it. And I'll go, "Well, I don't think that's really relevant." And he'll just go, "Okay." Meaning - "I'm not listening to what you're saying. This is what I'm saying. And I know that if you do it, you're going to do it, so what are you here for? Let's go do something else. Let's go to dinner."

It's not his job to help me with logistical problems. His job is to look at something and if he thinks it's funny, to laugh with all his heart and soul. When he laughs, America laughs.

CHRIS ELLIOTT:.

If you see the movie Man on the Moon, you'll see Lorne and Dave Letterman in it, both playing themselves, and it's interesting how they each approached their appearance. Lorne actually tried to make himself look like he looked back when Andy Kaufman was on Sat.u.r.day Night Live - he's barefoot and he's eating with chopsticks in his lounge chair. And then, when they re-created the scene when Andy was with Letterman, Dave has his regular gla.s.ses on, which he didn't wear back then. He's wearing his regular suit. He made no attempt whatsoever to act in this movie other than to go through the motions. And in a way it's a lot easier for me to deal with a guy like Dave than it is with Lorne, who's kind of an actor. He's a guy who wants everybody to love him; Dave doesn't give a s.h.i.+t about that. So I seem to be able to read Dave better. The bottom line is, you know, Dave; he's nuts. There's no doubt about it. But he also is what he is. He's never acting, as far as I can tell. He is genuine, and when he's p.i.s.sed off, he's p.i.s.sed off, and when he's in a good mood, he's in a good mood. I could never tell any of that with Lorne.

COLIN QUINN, Cast Member: I always thought I could tell how Lorne really felt about things. Even though he doesn't say it most of the time, he does laugh. Like at read-through. He reads all the stage directions, which is a hard thing to do. I've read stage directions before, and it's f.u.c.kin' hard. It's a pain in the a.s.s. And he does it every show. You can tell if he likes something or doesn't like it by the way he reads those stage directions. He can be one of the bigger laughers at read-through, but when he doesn't like it, he has no problem just sitting there quietly.

DAN AYKROYD, Cast Member: Lorne is not much of a mystery. This is a very decent guy who was brought up with really good values, with that Canadian work ethic, with a home that had a parental warmth, and he was able to explore his gift relatively early in life. He's brilliant, he's a genius, and to me there's not much of a mystery there.

CHEVY CHASE, Cast Member: There's no mystery about who Lorne is to me because we came in on the same level basically. It's just that as time goes on, people become, they're made into a legend by those who are hired and, you know, Sat.u.r.day Night Live, oh, n.o.body's going to live up to the original cast, n.o.body can live up to this or that. But there's one thing that stays steady all the way through - Lorne Michaels. n.o.body can live up to that, because he put the whole thing together.

He's very nonconfrontational - probably both his strongest and his weakest suit. Lorne is both involved and uninvolved in some ways. His lack of confrontational abilities doesn't serve him well on occasion, because he can't fire anyone. He finds it difficult to fire people. That's a lovely thing too in many ways. But when the chips are down and it comes to artistic integrity versus the network's fear of what a sponsor might or might not say if such and such a sketch is put on, he's there. He'll confront.

Lorne may be frightening to the last five or six casts, to the younger set, as it were. It may be daunting to be around Lorne. I think he may seem intimidating because he seems to know so much. But he's been there all along. He's a real survivor. Anybody who really gets close to him would know that he is a kind and thoughtful guy who doesn't look to hurt others.

ROSIE SHUSTER:.

I'm Canadian, and apologies are like mother's milk to us. They just roll off the tongue. "I'm sorry I caught my hand in your car trunk," that kind of thing. I don't think Lorne ever apologized to people for keeping them waiting for a long, long time. Instead, he would drop some names, which was a big soother, and you'd have a tidbit to run back and tell your friends afterwards.

You can't explain Lorne by Canada, that's for sure. There's an adopted British thing happening there. But there are some other elements that got internalized along the way and inside his psyche beside that.