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But nothing tested the show like Sinead O’Connor’s musical appearance on Oct. 3, 1992, when she stunned viewers — and the producers — by tearing up a photograph of Pope John Paul II, declaring, “Fight the real enemy.” Two years earlier, O’Connor had drawn wide criticism for joining the cast member Nora Dunn in pulling […] More
Roughly midway through the first “Saturday Night Live” broadcast, in October 1975, Chevy Chase, dressed in a suit and seated behind a simple desk with a telephone, read a joke about the new Detroit headquarters for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.The union’s president, Chase said, had remarked that Jimmy Hoffa would “always be a cornerstone in the organization.”Thus was born Weekend Update, the satirical news segment and institution-within-an-institution at “S.N.L.,” a fundamental part of the series for virtually all of its 50 years.While hardly the first TV news parody, Weekend Update is the most enduring franchise of its kind, giving “S.N.L.” its most direct platform to make fun of politics, presidents, global crises and daily oddities.Like “S.N.L.” itself, Weekend Update has been a launchpad for comedy careers. It has also been a crucible of controversy, particularly when its iconoclastic performers have come into conflict with NBC executives who weren’t laughing at their pointed routines.Weekend Update was designed to a satisfy a young audience that was craving topical commentary. “We were following Watergate, the end of the Vietnam War,” said Lorne Michaels, the “S.N.L.” creator and longtime executive producer. “There was a lot going on.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Is it possible that Lorne Michaels is Lorne-ed out?Even for a man who enjoys being famous, all the hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live,” all the extra attention it has brought him, has been a bit much.“I say this not with any sense of modesty — I was famous enough,” Michaels said recently at Orso, one of his favorite New York haunts. Someone who knew him once sardonically suggested Michaels would like to have “LEGENDARY” stitched into his underwear. And he is, after all, known in some circles by one name, like Beyoncé, Cher, Ichiro. But Michaels demurs.“Everybody who had to know me, knew me,” he said. “I wasn’t in the public eye. But now, walking over here, a young comedian came up and said, ‘How would I audition?’”I said I would have loved to have seen that encounter.“You would not love that,” he said in his bone-dry voice and signature cadence.Since the 50th season premiered last fall, the anniversary of “S.N.L.,” one of a fragmented America’s few remaining communal cultural events, has inspired a steady stream of tributes to the show and its creator. There was a Jason Reitman origin-story movie called “Saturday Night,” as well as hundreds of feature stories and listicles in the press. Last month there was a four-part docuseries on the show and another documentary on just the music. Friday night brings an “S.N.L” concert at Radio City Music Hall, livestreaming on Peacock. A 600-plus page biography of Michaels titled “Lorne,” by Susan Morrison, an editor at The New Yorker, comes out next week.It all culminates on Sunday with a live three-hour prime-time special looking back on “S.N.L.” and its singular legacy. Like a Veterans Day parade with troops from different wars marching by, “S.N.L.” stars from different decades, among many other celebrities young and old — guests include Paul McCartney, Robert De Niro, Steve Martin, Sabrina Carpenter, Tom Hanks, Kim Kardashian and Dave Chappelle — are swirling around New York, ready to help Michaels celebrate the golden anniversary.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Lattanzi doesn’t exactly scream “celebrity magnet.”Its brick-walled, burgundy-carpeted dining room, lined with black-and-white photos of Rome, feels more antique than affluent. The menu leans on old Italian standbys like veal scaloppine and chicken piccata. There’s no bouncer, no photos of famous regulars, no gatekeeping host. The location isn’t some trendy downtown neighborhood, but Restaurant Row, a stretch of West 46th Street that’s been a theater-district fixture for nearly a century.Yet every Tuesday evening before a new episode of “Saturday Night Live,” Lattanzi is where you’ll find Lorne Michaels, the show’s creator and kingpin, and that week’s celebrity host, along with a rotating cadre of eight or so carefully chosen “S.N.L.” producers, writers and cast members.After decades at the helm — the show will celebrate its 50th anniversary this weekend — Mr. Michaels is well-known for his rituals: the basket of popcorn kept replenished at his desk, the so-called “Lornewalks” he takes to clear his head, and the Monday meetings in his office with the cast and host, said Susan Morrison, an articles editor at The New Yorker who wrote the forthcoming biography “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live.”Lattanzi, which specializes in Roman food, has been around since 1984. Mr. Michaels has been bringing celebrities and staff members there for decades.Nico Schinco for The New York TimesBut the Tuesday dinners are especially sacred, she said — one of the few predictable events in the weekly lead-up to a show that traffics in unpredictability.“In a week where everything is going 100 miles an hour and everything is hurtling toward Saturday night at 11:30, it was a moment of civilized calm,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
With so many players involved in Jason Reitman’s new movie about “S.N.L.,” here’s a guide to the real-life personalities.It’s easy to get lost watching “Saturday Night”: Jason Reitman’s new film drops us backstage at a moment of maximum confusion — 90 minutes before the 1975 debut of a new NBC show called “Saturday Night.” At the center of all the hubbub is creator-producer Lorne Michaels (played by Gabriel LaBelle), who’s been the one constant at “S.N.L.” over most of the show’s 50 seasons. But what about all the other characters rushing about, wringing their hands over whether this show will actually make it to air? Here’s a guide:The Original CastCHEVY CHASE AND GARRETT MORRIS These members of the original cast, known as the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, were hired as writers, not actors. Chase (played by Cory Michael Smith) had written for Alan King and the Smothers Brothers. As the anchor for “Weekend Update,” Chase, a master of mugging and pratfalls, became the show’s first breakout star and left in 1976 to embark on a film career. (He would return to guest host in 1978, when he reportedly got into fisticuffs with Bill Murray, the cast member who replaced him.)Morris (Lamorne Morris, no relation) was a Broadway performer and a playwright with no improv or sketch comedy background. He was underused but became known for his impersonations of Sammy Davis Jr. and Tina Turner, as well as for yelling on “Weekend Update” (as the News for the Hard of Hearing interpreter). After the show, he stuck with TV comedy, appearing on sitcoms like “Martin,” “The Jamie Foxx Show” and “2 Broke Girls.”Garrett Morris (played by Lamorne Morris, no relation, right) didn’t have a sketch comedy background when he started on “Saturday Night Live.”GILDA RADNER, JANE CURTAIN AND LARAINE NEWMAN The movie doesn’t try very hard to differentiate among the show’s female cast members — Gilda Radner, who died in 1989, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman. But the three women had very distinct styles. Radner (Ella Hunt), a former member of Second City in Toronto, was the first performer Michaels signed and soon became a star beloved for her fragile, goofy style and characters like Roseanne Roseannadanna. It was her advocacy for fellow Second City veteran and ex-boyfriend Dan Aykroyd that persuaded Michaels to hire him.Newman (Emily Fairn), a founding member of the Los Angeles improv troupe the Groundlings, knew Michaels from working together on a Lily Tomlin special. Her character Sherry the Valley Girl helped kick off a national fad mocking Southern California mall-speak. Newman’s expertise with accents and dialects paved the way for a post-“S.N.L.” career as a voice artist.Curtin (Kim Matula), a member of the Boston improv group the Proposition, was one of the last cast members hired. She was often presented as the foil to more outrageous characters and helped ground many a sketch. As the first female anchor of “Weekend Update,” she was called upon to weather Aykroyd’s contemptuous catchphrase, “Jane, you ignorant slut.” After “S.N.L.,” Curtin became a sitcom star (“Kate & Allie,” “3rd Rock From the Sun”).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
A new film about the show doesn’t mention her. But in many ways her hit sketch series helped define the early vision of Lorne Michaels.What makes Lorne Michaels laugh?That’s no small question. Half a century of aspiring stars have thought hard on it. The answer has launched and stymied many careers while going a long way to defining modern comedy. The hagiographic new movie “Saturday Night” focuses on Michaels as he puts together the 1975 premiere episode of “Saturday Night Live,” but the comedic vision of the man who has gone on to oversee the show for decades remains maddeningly, pointedly remote.Played with a determined calm by Gabriel Labelle, the young Lorne Michaels comes off as a blandly generic maverick, struggling repeatedly to explain his idea for the show. In an early scene, he compares himself to Thomas Edison, and while one can detect some mocking of the hubris of that statement, there’s not enough. To the extent that his sensibility is illuminated in the screenplay by Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan, it’s through opposition. In scene after scene, Michaels is the counterculture hero confronted by a procession of squares, suits and old-school naysayers. They’re not just skeptical executives or scolding censors, either. Actors playing Jim Henson, Johnny Carson and Milton Berle make appearances, in roles designed, thematically at least, to show us everything this hip new show is not.What stands out about this parade of aesthetic antagonists is that perhaps the most important one to the formation of the identity of “Saturday Night Live” goes unmentioned: Carol Burnett.Despite the sense you get from this cinematic love letter, “Saturday Night Live” did not invent must-see television sketch comedy. It wasn’t even the first important live one on Saturday nights on NBC. (That would be “Your Show of Shows” in the 1950s, with a writers room that included Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Neil Simon.) The dominant sketch comedy when “S.N.L.” got started was “The Carol Burnett Show,” a CBS staple since the late 1960s that also featured topical satire, flamboyant performances and star cameos.Lorne Michaels in 1976. What he finds funny remains an enigma even as his influence has grown.NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty ImagesIn books about the creation of “Saturday Night Live,” the ones the new film’s screenwriters certainly leaned on, Burnett represented a lodestar of sorts for the artists on the show.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
As the historic 50th season of “Saturday Night Live” gets underway, its very first episode has become a piece of show-business mythology: the story of how a group of misfit writers and performers, led by a 30-year-old Canadian upstart named Lorne Michaels, put together a counterculture comedy-variety show in Manhattan amid interpersonal conflict, last-minute changes and substance abuse, and somehow established a television institution.It’s a legend so revered that it has inspired a new film, “Saturday Night,” directed by Jason Reitman, in which a cast of young actors portraying the Not Ready for Prime Time Players (as well as the show’s producers and crew members) act out a version of events as they might have unfolded on that fateful evening of Oct. 11, 1975.For the people actually involved in the debut broadcast of what was then called “Saturday Night” — the writers, cast members, comedians and musicians — that excitement and energy is only one part of the tale. They remember the creation of the NBC show — the long buildup to its premiere, the performance itself and the aftermath — as sometimes hectic, sometimes carefully organized. It was a period full of head-butting, but one that also fostered camaraderie and lifelong friendships. And it never would have happened without some crucial, 11th-hour discoveries, or the right people in place to make those realizations.But at no point did they wonder if they were about to make history. “I don’t think it concerned us one way or the other,” said Chevy Chase, a founding cast member and writer. “We were going to do what we do, and if you laugh, great, you laugh. You’ll tell somebody else about it, and they’ll laugh the next time.”Here, some of those participants share their memories of how “Saturday Night” came to life.Jane CurtinJane Curtin said that she realized the show was catching on when she left 30 Rock and on the street “you’d pass by people and they would shake.”NBCU Photo Bank/Getty ImagesCurtin had acted in theater, commercials and a Boston-area improv group, the Proposition, when she auditioned for “Saturday Night” in summer 1975. At her callback, Curtin expected a conversation with producers: “I walked in the door,” she recalled, “and they said, ‘OK, what have you prepared?’ The classic anxiety dream.” Fortunately, she had some old material in her purse. “It was a big purse,” Curtin said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
As the historic 50th season of “Saturday Night Live” gets underway, its very first episode has become a piece of show-business mythology: the story of how a group of misfit writers and performers, led by a 30-year-old Canadian upstart named Lorne Michaels, put together a counterculture comedy-variety show in Manhattan amid interpersonal conflict, last-minute changes and substance abuse, and somehow established a television institution.It’s a legend so revered that it has inspired a new film, “Saturday Night,” directed by Jason Reitman, in which a cast of young actors portraying the Not Ready for Prime Time Players (as well as the show’s producers and crew members) act out a version of events as they might have unfolded on that fateful evening of Oct. 11, 1975.For the people actually involved in the debut broadcast of what was then called “Saturday Night” — the writers, cast members, comedians and musicians — that excitement and energy is only one part of the tale. They remember the creation of the NBC show — the long buildup to its premiere, the performance itself and the aftermath — as sometimes hectic, sometimes carefully organized. It was a period full of head-butting, but one that also fostered camaraderie and lifelong friendships. And it never would have happened without some crucial, 11th-hour discoveries, or the right people in place to make those realizations.But at no point did they wonder if they were about to make history. “I don’t think it concerned us one way or the other,” said Chevy Chase, a founding cast member and writer. “We were going to do what we do, and if you laugh, great, you laugh. You’ll tell somebody else about it, and they’ll laugh the next time.”Here, some of those participants share their memories of how “Saturday Night” came to life.Jane CurtinJane Curtin said that she realized the show was catching on when she left 30 Rock and on the street “you’d pass by people and they would shake.”NBCU Photo Bank/Getty ImagesCurtin had acted in theater, commercials and a Boston-area improv group, the Proposition, when she auditioned for “Saturday Night” in summer 1975. At her callback, Curtin expected a conversation with producers: “I walked in the door,” she recalled, “and they said, ‘OK, what have you prepared?’ The classic anxiety dream.” Fortunately, she had some old material in her purse. “It was a big purse,” Curtin said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
“All In: Comedy About Love,” a new play by Simon Rich, includes a celebrity cast taking on the roles of pirates, dogs and other zany characters.John Mulaney is coming back to Broadway.The comedian will star in a new play, “All In: Comedy About Love,” staged as vignettes about relationships, marriage and heartbreak and written by the humorist Simon Rich, Mulaney’s former “Saturday Night Live” collaborator.The production, set to feature a rotating group of actors, will be directed by Alex Timbers, who helmed Mulaney’s most recent Netflix special, “Baby J,” as well as his Broadway debut, the 2016 comedy “Oh, Hello on Broadway.”“It’s a weird fantasy camp of things I always wanted to do with my very good friends,” Mulaney said in a video interview.The comedian, who has two Emmy Awards for his stand-up specials “Kid Gorgeous” and “Baby J,” will lead an ensemble cast of four actors portraying pirates, the Elephant Man, dogs looking for love and other characters: Initially, Mulaney will be joined by Richard Kind (“Spin City,” “Mad About You”), Renée Elise Goldsberry (“Hamilton,” “Girls5eva”) and the “S.N.L.” alum Fred Armisen.“We jump around between eras and countries and species, but they’re all love stories,” said Rich, a former “S.N.L.” writer who is making his Broadway debut with the play, which is adapted largely from tales that have previously been published in his 10 short story collections and in The New Yorker.The idea for the show, which will also feature songs from the indie band the Magnetic Fields, came about when Timbers approached Rich about adapting some of his short stories for the stage. And once Mulaney, who first met Rich when they were writing partners on “S.N.L.” from 2008-11, was on board, the built-in rapport between the two proved irresistible, Timbers said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
