Lorne
The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live
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4.7 • 43 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The definitive biography of Lorne Michaels, the man behind America’s most beloved comedy show
“The kind of biographical monument usually consecrated to founding fathers, canonical authors and world-historical scientific geniuses.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)
“Readers are treated to the Holy Grail for any journalist hoping to crack the show: a warts-and-all week in the life of SNL, where Morrison gets to see the real process of putting the thing together.”—Variety
Over the fifty years that Lorne Michaels has been at the helm of Saturday Night Live, he has become a revered and inimitable presence in the entertainment world. He’s a tastemaker, a mogul, a withholding father figure, a genius spotter of talent, a shrewd businessman, a name-dropper, a raconteur, the inspiration for Dr. Evil, the winner of more than a hundred Emmys—and, essentially, a mystery. Generations of writers and performers have spent their lives trying to figure him out, by turns demonizing and lionizing him. He’s “Obi-Wan Kenobi” (Tracy Morgan), the “great and powerful Oz” (Kate McKinnon), “some kind of very distant, strange comedy god” (Bob Odenkirk).
Lorne will introduce you to him, in full, for the first time. With unprecedented access to Michaels and the entire SNL apparatus, Susan Morrison takes readers behind the curtain for the lively, up-and-down, definitive story of how Michaels created and maintained the institution that changed comedy forever.
Drawn from hundreds of interviews—with Michaels, his friends, and SNL’s iconic stars and writers, from Will Ferrell to Tina Fey to John Mulaney to Chris Rock to Dan Aykroyd—Lorne is a deeply reported, wildly entertaining account of a man singularly obsessed with the show that would define his life and have a profound impact on American culture.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
When Saturday Night Live debuted in 1975, it felt like a comedy revolution, thanks in no small part to executive producer Lorne Michaels. As journalist Susan Morrison reveals in this captivating biography, the Toronto-born comedy writer grew up fascinated by old-school showbiz. The parts in his story where he’s trying to find his place in comedy—as a writer for pioneering ’60s series Laugh-In and, briefly, as a performer himself—are incredibly compelling. But it’s the half century of SNL, from its irreverent, punky beginnings through some awkward growing pains to the omnipresent comedy institution it’s become, that’s the meat of this impressively thorough bio. The book is filled with detailed breakdowns of legendary sketches and behind-the-scenes standoffs (like the time NBC executives went after “Weekend Update” anchor Norm Macdonald for being mean to their friends), and through it all, Lorne’s strategic comic brilliance shines.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New Yorker editor Morrison (editor of Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary) provides an entertaining account of Lorne Michaels's nearly half-century reign over Saturday Night Live. Chronicling Michaels's comedic education, Morrison recounts how as a teenager at summer camp, he organized "freewheeling revues" that were written and rehearsed over the course of a week and performed on Saturday nights. Michaels spent his 20s writing jokes for several sketch and variety shows, but he "had a more cerebral, ambitious notion of what television could be." In 1974, he pitched upstart NBC producer Dick Ebersol on Saturday Night ("Live" would come later), a sketch comedy series that would satirize the way TV "shrink-wrapped the culture." Morrison meticulously chronicles Michaels's leadership of the program, detailing how he maintained a "businesslike calm" while dealing with clashing egos and studio interference ahead of the premiere and how he outmaneuvered the network's attempts to wrest control of the program away from him in the mid-1990s. Though Morrison focuses more on SNL's first 25 years than its second, she offers intriguing tidbits about how Michaels steered the show through the aftermath of 9/11 and the first Trump administration (several writers and cast members accuse Michaels of going "criminally soft" on Trump). It's an engrossing look at the man behind the curtain.
Customer Reviews
Amazing
This was well worth the read. I walked away really feeling like I understood Lorne Michaels and his absolutely unbelievable impact on US television comedy. There were tons of stories I did not know. Highly recommend
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