Lorne Michaels Biography: Best Stories about “SNL” creator

There is an opportunity that I heard that this is the fiftieth anniversary of “Saturday Night Live”. On Sunday, the special anniversary (and the guests are abundant) on NBC. She reached the aftermath of the documentary “Ladies & Gentlemen … 50 years of music SNL” and feature film 2024 “Saturday Night”-a 90-minute re-creation that preceded the first episode. Throwing the absolute load of pieces, intellectual estimates and other navel warnings and the question will be forgiven: Do we also need a book on Lauren Michaels?

Somehow, despite all of the above, Susan Morrison “Lauren: The man who invented Saturday Night Live” – ​​outside Tuesday – appears as indispensable, especially for “SNL”. Morrison, The New Yorker Editor, brings a mixture of this magazine from access, reporting and fluid analysis to a topic, despite its high clarity, often played near the jacket.

The book contains a lot of good Michaels stories, but we have chosen five of the most important stories that may help you understand the man behind the show better.

Live from New York

Michaels made his first trip to New York from Toronto in the winter of 1961 when he was 17 years old. He was immediately fond. She crashed with a friend in the apartment of an older friend in Greenwich village, stare in Gog in the vicinity The writer “The Tonight Show” and Michaels, who is already an emerging network, arranged for tickets to go to watch Jack Paar at the work. That night: Betty White.

Go home, make!

It was one of the first to use Michaels in the first show that was called “Saturday night”, comedian Tom Schiller, who often collided on the Michaels sofa in Usborne, New York. Except sometimes it took some time to Hunker at night. The new friend of Michaels Paul Simon often ends, smoking a joint with his host and swinging up to the small hours of the morning. Another repeated sofa Denizin is Make Jagger. “I kept praying to leave Make Jagger so that I could sleep on this sofa,” Schiller recalls.

He soon rented his cousin, Nile Levy. Morrison also writes, “Now his role came at night, waiting for Mick Jagger to stop talking, smoking and returning home; the singer remembers sticking to architecture. He remembers his question about himself,“ How can a person like Lauren, with good credits, but not famous – – No one – How to pick up with Mick Jagger and suddenly become friends? “The answer was, as I think, is a mixture of charisma and the ability to consolidate what a person wanted to talk about. He said,” He always had innate intelligence about people’s reading and the correct guess. “

The biography of Susan Morrison on Lauren Michaels is indispensable, especially for the completion of “Satardai Knight Live”.

(Rosalind O’connor / NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

Four faces of Lauren

Although “SNL” Pak stopped with Michaels, he has what Morrison calls “four great deputies, each embodies a different aspect of his personality. One of them is Eric Kinard, Harvard Lambon “with a precise cut beard. He has worked in the exhibition since 2001 and absorbed the unintended stability, with a tin of long suffering. Then there is the person who knows the audience: Colin Ghost, the co -host of “Weekend Update” (with Michael Che). Moreson also writes, Just was also the “Harvard Lambon” editor, and “He, like Michaels, is well scheduled and AUCrant about politics. He is married to Scarlett Johansson, who gives him a Hollywood flash appreciated by Michaels. “

Rubbish approximation is Erin Doyle and Steve HighGins. Doyle started as a trainee and became one of Michaels. “She has a clear warmth,” Morrison writes, “and like Michaels, she has a talent to deal with very famous celebrities.” Higgins, also a Jimmy Fallon broadcaster in “The Tonight Show”, is a reinforced excitement, a quality that Michaels considers essential to show, and he is a reliable important man when Michaels, known to avoid confrontation, is bad news, to communicate. “

Absolute

However, there is no mistake in the official here. Michaels SNL with separate but absolute power, Morrison writes. “No illusions are placed that his Canadian tendency towards self -denunciation is taken seriously by anyone. One of the talent agents routinely tells customers who test Michaels to remember this he It is the true star of the show. He is alpha in most of his employees ’life. For these people, and to the broader comedy world, it is, not by mistake, a mythical figure, a mysterious being of obsession. “Mike Maires, a former member of the actors’ team (and his Canadian colleague), says,” He realizes Loren. “

… but this does not mean that he wins every battle

In the mid -1990s, with the decline in the shows and the critics went out regularly, Michaels faced a revolution from the executive wings. Don Ohlmeyer, who was then head of the West Coast division at NBC, wanted a complete repair “SNL”, and wanted Michaels to launch two of the largest stars, Chris Farley and Adam Sandler. Michaels resisted quietly and went to his joint strategic position, waiting for his opponents until he won. But the heat will not stop, and the possibility of canceling the width seemed very real. In the end, it seems that Farley and Sandler were not completely separated, but their exit was not completely friendly. It is strange to believe that a show has a history of seeing his great talents leaving to make movies actually pushed two of its largest stars outside the door.