Live From New York by Tom Shales; James Andrew Miller

Author:Tom Shales; James Andrew Miller
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: PER010030
ISBN: 9780316045827
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2008-11-15T15:00:00+00:00

4

Behemiel Rising: 1985–1990

Lorne Michaels had wanted to take six months off at the end of the 1979–80 season of Saturday Night Live so he could rethink and recast the show. Instead, as things turned out, Lorne’s half-year hiatus turned into a five-year exile. Unfortunately, the creator’s return was not an immediate raise-the-roof triumph. He had an act to follow for a change — the Billy Crystal–Martin Short Saturday Night Live, which had been a populist hit. Instead of scouring comedy clubs and improv groups for fresh young talent as he and his cohorts had done the first time, Michaels, as if borrowing a page from the Ebersol playbook, stocked the show with the known and near-known: veteran actor Randy Quaid, teenage star Anthony Michael Hall (who had played Chevy Chase’s son in National Lampoon’s Vacation), young actors Robert Downey Jr. and Joan Cusack, newcomers Terry Sweeney and Danitra Vance.

It was a more peculiar than colorful group, one that writers found it difficult to write sketches for. Among the saving graces, though, were eccentric newcomer Jon Lovitz, a male diva who popularized original characters like his Pathological Liar and Master Thespian; performer Nora Dunn, whose SNL stint would end in public acrimony; and snide Dennis Miller, who turned “Weekend Update” into his own fitfully amusing soapbox, replete with cranky ranting, girlish giggling, and a hailstorm of obscure references — one of his favorite and more accessible being the character Boo played silently by Robert Duvall in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Michaels was not completely bedecked in glory. His much-ballyhooed foray into prime-time TV, a tastefully inert variety hour called The New Show, was apparently not new enough; it lasted fewer than thirteen weeks in the 1984–85 TV season. Not only were the ratings puny, but Michaels experienced his first true trouncing from the critics. He also lost, by his estimate, more than $1 million of his own money. In addition, what had been envisioned as a prestigious and productive movie career — first, abortively, at Warner Brothers and then at Paramount — fell short of expectations and momentarily threatened his reputation as king of the comedy impresarios.

Now Michaels had to build a new mountain and didn’t have much raw material to do it with. He was in somewhat the predicament that Jean Doumanian had been, except he had all those connections and a keen eye for talent. All that was on the line were his personal and professional reputation, his livelihood, and the fate of his life’s most important creation.

TOM HANKS, Host:

I did the show for the first time in 1985, the year Lorne came back after being away for five years, and I asked him, “So, why did you come back?” And he just said, “I missed it.”

BERNIE BRILLSTEIN, Manager:

Lorne Michaels loves a lot of things. He’s not in love with anything but Saturday Night Live. That’s it. It’s that simple. That’s why he came back.

HERB SARGENT, Writer:

The season before Lorne’s return, Brandon called me. And he said he was on the fence between Dick and Lorne — between Dick staying and Lorne coming back.

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