Susan Morrison - Author of LORNE: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live

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Speaker 1 Dana, today we have Susan Morrison, a writer.

Speaker 1 We don't always have writers. We have SNL writers, but she's a writer because she's SNL.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yes.
Yes.

Speaker 1 She wrote a big fat book about Lorne.

Speaker 2 And it's the 50th anniversary of SNL. It's a good time to have it out.

Speaker 2 Lorne, the man who invented SNL.

Speaker 1 And she covers a lot. She's telling things to you, listeners, that even we don't know.

Speaker 2 You're going to hear something that's a little shocking, a little surprising. How's that for a tease?

Speaker 2 But if we do a deep dive, the man, the moment, Lauren Michaels, based on the book and what she learned by interviewing, I got interviewed.

Speaker 2 My quotes are probably silly.

Speaker 1 I got interviewed, yeah. I got interviewed.

Speaker 2 Everyone got interviewed.

Speaker 4 Everyone talked.

Speaker 2 And it's just sort of a comprehensive look at Lauren Michaels through his childhood all the way through his travails seasons that were rougher than others and on and on so it's very interesting down

Speaker 1 say shown oh yeah and they got you know tina fey and steve martin and john mulaney there's all these quotes up front and everywhere you turn you know they're talking about so

Speaker 1 very in-depth took years to put this together years to put it together and it was very interesting talk we went on and on so uh yeah here she is and you're gonna going to learn a lot about it.

Speaker 1 She's in Morrison.

Speaker 5 And I sort of forgot. I had forgotten until recently

Speaker 5 the wonderful accent thing that everybody says, the Eagles.

Speaker 3 Oh, the Eagles. That's right.

Speaker 1 So you claim to have a book.

Speaker 5 I do. I actually can even show it to you.

Speaker 3 It's coming out, okay?

Speaker 4 I don't know when this airs, but it's February 18th. It's called

Speaker 4 Lorne,

Speaker 4 the man who invented SNL.

Speaker 5 That's right. Invented Saturday Night Live.
We decided that Lauren has monomial status, you know, like Fidel

Speaker 5 or Madonna. Madonna, you know, one name does it, Lauren.

Speaker 1 You know, you can tell the rookies because Lauren is such a name that comes up millions of times on our podcast and in life. But the people that call him Lauren

Speaker 1 and they spell it Lauren, like the female name is pretty interesting because, you know, they're an outsider, and I don't listen to one thing they say.

Speaker 5 It's like the people who say skits instead of skits.

Speaker 3 That's an immediate disqualifier, right? See,

Speaker 4 oh boy, don't even mention. Oh, skits gets him going.
It's kind of interesting. I'm just thinking out loud to myself: is that because of his hallowed place and his Mount Rushmore

Speaker 4 thing that's been going on for the 50th,

Speaker 4 he had left for five years, did a lot of things, left SNL in 1980. None of them really landed, comes back in 85, has a rough season,

Speaker 4 and then I meet him. So probably in this whole 50 years, that was, would it be a nader? I went to state school, his nader or something?

Speaker 5 I think, no, I think that's right.

Speaker 5 And Dana, I remember that when I interviewed you, you told me that when you showed up there, you thought you were probably going to be in the last cast of sml you thought it was on its way out and it was kind of a hail mary pass and yeah you know it's interesting because i met lauren when he was perhaps at an even lower point you know even lower for him well i worked for him when he did the new show which was the new show yeah i remember public spectacular flop

Speaker 5 and you know i don't think people thought he was going to be coming back from that. And he also lost his own money in that show.
It's strange it was such a flop because it was packed with talent.

Speaker 5 You know, the writer's room was incredible. Jim Downey, Jack Handy, George Meyer.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 5 John Candy did amazing work on that show. It's worth looking up.
Food Repair Man.

Speaker 4 No, I watched it. It was funny.
It was just that besides in Living Color, which was a niche kind of

Speaker 4 prime time, and it was on Fox in the day, primetime sketch. I did one that didn't make it.
Martin Short,

Speaker 4 you'd have to line them all up. That's your next book.

Speaker 4 Why was there a bazillion sketch shows in prime time, the 50s, 60s, and into the 70s, and then so many swing and a miss? You know, I don't know if you have, I've never totally figured that out.

Speaker 5 I, I mean, I, I have a, I have a theory.

Speaker 3 I mean, Lauren Press,

Speaker 5 he loved, uh, oh, sure.

Speaker 1 We've been recording. Don't worry.

Speaker 3 I'm kidding.

Speaker 5 Lauren loved variety TV. You know, he grew up watching, you know, Sid Caesar and her show shows and all that stuff.

Speaker 5 And when he went to LA in the 60s and 70s, he just bounced around from one cruddy variety show to the next. You know, Perry Como, Burns and Schreiber, Villa.

Speaker 3 Burns and Shreiber. What about Burns and Schreiber where he met his wife?

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 the thing is, he liked the form, but he thought that it was like stuck in the 50s. You know, the people writing those shows were guys who had written for radio.

Speaker 5 And his big idea was to take that format and bring it into the modern world. You know,

Speaker 5 movies were cool. You had Terence Malik and Robert Altman.
Music was cool, but television was like a really weird backwater.

Speaker 5 So he was the first person who said, let's make variety TV something that has something to do with what people in their 20s are like. You know, let's put drugs on

Speaker 4 in my age group.

Speaker 4 You remember that when George Carlin was on Ed Sullivan in a suit and tie and a short haircut.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And then he was like so

Speaker 4 a symbol of this change in one lane of it when he became the hippie long hair and all that.

Speaker 4 So there was a whole, I don't even call it counterculture, but Laugh In maybe was the last water cooler sketch show that was so different, of course, than SNL. But yeah,

Speaker 4 it was in the ether. And then Lauren picked up the toys off the carpet and said, okay, we're going to play with these.

Speaker 5 But you know, I mean, mean, the other thing that Lauren will say is that when he was pitching a show like SNL for years and nobody wanted it.

Speaker 5 And what happened is that they needed something in late night on SN, you know, on NBC to replace Carson's reruns. And Lauren had never thought of late night.

Speaker 5 But the thing, it ended up being what made the show work because the way he put it, you know, the network thought of late night as like a vacant lot on the edge of town.

Speaker 5 They weren't going to pay attention to what was going on there. They They weren't going to meddle.
You know, he just got to do whatever the hell he felt like.

Speaker 5 And with no notes, you know, no interference.

Speaker 1 Right. And you can be a little dirty, like even TV shows on at eight versus nine when I was a sitcom.
You can say a little more at nine because kids are asleep. You can say way more at 10.

Speaker 1 And when you're way up there at 11.30, they don't worry so much about content as much.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think he thought they were probably not even watching.

Speaker 3 Well, they didn't care.

Speaker 4 It was

Speaker 4 anti-slick and late. So right out of the bat.
I'm just a little curious. Sorry, David.
Did you have something to say?

Speaker 4 I don't like to interrupt him.

Speaker 4 Did you see the movie Saturday Night?

Speaker 4 And what was your reaction to it? I mean, obviously it's trying to get a feeling rather than a linear story. Yeah.
But

Speaker 5 how did you feel about that? Well,

Speaker 5 I guess I had several simultaneous reactions.

Speaker 5 You know, the journalist in me was watching and my head exploding because there were so many things that were fictionalized or you know five years worth of events were kind of crammed into one night but i i did think that it it it captured some of as you guys know you've lived this you know just some of the nail-biting knife edge chaos that i think gives the show its uh continues to fuel the show it's funny i talked to some of the current people, the people at the show now, some of the writers and cast,

Speaker 5 and they were indignant about it.

Speaker 5 They said that it was sort of like watching somebody, you know, screw up your song at a karaoke bar or something, you know, that someone they were feeling proprietary about it.

Speaker 5 What did you guys think?

Speaker 4 Well, I went in into it with a, you know, kind eyes because I knew it was an impossible thing to really capture. So we interviewed Jason, the director.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 there were things that I really liked. We, you know, in real time

Speaker 4 that there probably wasn't a bulletin board on 8H with like 80 sketches on it right before air, or that Lauren Michaels was the update guy until right before air.

Speaker 4 So you have to kind of give into it and see, did it capture the essence? I wasn't there then. They weren't famous.

Speaker 4 The show wasn't famous because as it evolved, it would never, no one would go ice skating right before the show. And most of the show is disappointment, even in the best seasons and the best shows.

Speaker 4 I'd say maybe if you can get one out of five great sketch, pretty good. Most of the time, I was just there for 10 weeks.
Most of the time we all went, well, I guess that's it.

Speaker 3 Just walked off stage.

Speaker 5 I mean, I found it enjoyable to watch. It kind of, you know, it felt like the Poseidon adventure or something.
You know, it was almost like an adventure flick. Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, that's what I. I love that reference.
I love the historical. Yeah.

Speaker 4 There's got to be a morning after that.

Speaker 4 There's got to be a party after the show.

Speaker 5 Other people I know told me they had similar reaction to mine.

Speaker 5 At the very end, when it comes off, and they do the Wolverine sketch, and Chevy comes out and says, live from New York, it's Saturday night.

Speaker 5 I mean, I kind of teared up a little bit because it made you realize how improbable the whole show was and how close it came to not happening. You know, it could easily have not happened.

Speaker 1 I did like little things I didn't know. Now, Dana, I was going to ask Jason about that Lauren one for update because I did like the chaos.

Speaker 1 I did like it was almost obviously too chaotic, but definitely knowing

Speaker 1 no fame. It just shows people, it's like sort of, here's what it was.
If you don't know how it started, this is, they weren't famous. No one thinks of Dan Aykroyd or Belushi as not famous, you know?

Speaker 1 So you have to go back and say, hey, they all get a job. It's a cruddy place.

Speaker 1 They're just throwing together and then it there's a you know billy crystal leaving those are cool moments where you go oh my god there's just so many things that happen where

Speaker 1 everything there was life-changing you get to be in the first sketch chevy's on update like this this he's a big good-looking dude i thought there was a lot of parts about i really did like and uh and you're right when it all came together like what are the bricks on the stage i don't even know like i don't know what part was real what wasn't you know fictionalized that was real that that was real.

Speaker 5 They were hammering those bricks in the day of the first show. And of course, the old-timers on the crew looked at Eugene Lee, the designer, you know, who wanted brought in old oak doors and bricks.

Speaker 5 And they said, What the fuck are you doing? You know, we just use cyclorama walls.

Speaker 5 And, you know, the way it used to be in old variety shows where instead of a set, you'd have like you know, a window frame or a tree in a pot, yeah, suggests a park.

Speaker 5 But Lauren's idea was that you wanted this hardwall reality.

Speaker 4 And it looked counterculture. And I did love one,

Speaker 4 was it J.K. Simmons?

Speaker 4 He played Milton Burrell and he's doing a song and dance number. And that was a really interesting juxtaposition because the variety shows everything was shiny and clean.

Speaker 4 8-H still looks the same. It's kind of beat up.
And if you walk in there without an audience, you're like, it's kind of a shithole.

Speaker 1 Everyone thinks it's tiny. People go, this isn't where you, because I went back to do Hunter Biden.
It was just again, like when Dana going back, you go, oh, so here's Tom and Wardrobe.

Speaker 1 You know, there's a lot of the same people, and a lot of, it's obviously bigger and a little fancier in places, but you get out there, it's the same tiny stools.

Speaker 1 Even people I was with were like, this isn't where the audience sits.

Speaker 3 This is it.

Speaker 1 This is, this is where every sketch is. This tiny room.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 I know. Wow, it is true.

Speaker 1 That's the fun of it. You know?

Speaker 4 Can I,

Speaker 4 just say, unless you have something you need to say, actually.

Speaker 5 Well, one thing I was just going to say to, you know, we were talking about the improbability of it and how those people weren't famous.

Speaker 5 It's one of the things that was fascinating for me to learn is Lauren had trouble hiring people.

Speaker 5 Like, who wanted to be on this late night show with this weird Canadian guy no one had never heard of, had ever heard of? And,

Speaker 5 you know, Chevy almost didn't come on because he was doing a play at like a dinner theater with Paul Lind, you know?

Speaker 4 I didn't like Broadway.

Speaker 5 Yeah. And I love that Paul Lind stood in the way of another hire.

Speaker 5 Alan Swight Bell almost didn't come

Speaker 5 because he had been offered a job in prime time writing the questions for Paul Lind in the center square of Hollywood Squares.

Speaker 1 I have a dirty joke about Paul Lynn.

Speaker 3 You want to hear it?

Speaker 5 Anything about Paul Lind will come in?

Speaker 3 I love it.

Speaker 1 Paul Lynn walked into a party and he goes, it smells like pussy in here,

Speaker 1 I think.

Speaker 1 Anyway, Dana, back to you. No, I was.
I don't know.

Speaker 4 I don't get the reference. I just thought he was a funny guy.
I mean, I don't understand.

Speaker 1 Paul Lynn was a hero, by the way, with Hollywood Squares, Unreal.

Speaker 3 When I was a kid, I laughed everything that dude said.

Speaker 4 Oh, he was always hilarious.

Speaker 5 And I was bewitched.

Speaker 3 Oh, my God. And bewitched.

Speaker 4 And wherever he went to the money. But the money was low.
He had a great kind of rhythm, you know, just naturally funny. I was just curious.
So you knew Lorne during the news show.

Speaker 4 Is that when you met him?

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 I was brought into the Brill building

Speaker 5 in 83 by Tom Gammel, Gammel and Pross, who I'd gone to college with. And I met Jim Downey

Speaker 5 for the first time. And Jim hired me.
Just one second.

Speaker 4 I can talk to you in a little bit. I'll just be right back.
I'll be right back. No, I want to talk to you.
I really do, but I got to go.

Speaker 3 Sorry. Go ahead.
Stay Stay right there. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Stay right here.

Speaker 5 So, but yeah, so Jim, in a rare act of decisiveness, right, hired me that day.

Speaker 3 A rare act.

Speaker 3 It's funny. To be his

Speaker 5 assistant.

Speaker 3 I was 23.

Speaker 3 I was 23 years old.

Speaker 5 My job chiefly consisted of ordering shitloads of food from the Carnegie Daily. I mean, you know, if I didn't know what chicken in the pot was, you know, then I

Speaker 4 writers eat. They have to eat.

Speaker 4 Just feed their brains.

Speaker 5 And, you know, it was a great thing for me. I was really young.
My mom had just died suddenly and I was kind of at sea. And so I got to go to this place with all these funny people every day.

Speaker 5 And they were so kind to me, you know, and think about it. I mean, what a, and Christina McGinnis and Lorne and George Meyer and Jack Handy, you know, Zwaiabel.
It was really, it was fun.

Speaker 5 So I didn't have a lot of one-on-one time with Lorne, but it was a, it was a pretty small operation. And we were all just in this little, on the ninth floor of the, of the Brill building.

Speaker 5 So, yeah, I mean, I knew him a little bit. And

Speaker 5 again, I didn't realize that what I was witnessing was this soul-crushing

Speaker 5 failure on his part.

Speaker 4 How did he take that failure, if you could even remember? Or all of you, because I did a real, I did a variety show that lasted eight episodes and kind of blew up the network.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So was this, did you get a full season?

Speaker 4 I don't know how long.

Speaker 5 No, it wasn't. There were,

Speaker 5 we were, I think we did like eight shows. And then,

Speaker 5 and this is the thing that was really weird about it. You know, Lauren had been used to working live, but the new show was taped on Thursday to air on Friday.

Speaker 5 So it brought out all of Lauren's, you know,

Speaker 5 less genius impulses. I mean, people always say that, Lauren always says that the show doesn't go on because it's ready.
It goes on because it's 1130. And, you know, he needs that deadline.

Speaker 5 He needs the deadline. And that's when he gets into his kind of superpower mode, you know, the meeting between the dress rehearsal and air.

Speaker 5 But if you think about it, so the new show, we would be taping. And he would yell cut and then it started sketch over.
And sometimes these tapings would last for five hours.

Speaker 5 And, you know, because the audience.

Speaker 1 You're perfectionist and you can't stop fixing.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And I remember the audience trying to leave in droves and Tom Gamble coming out and going, like, you quitters.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 4 so they're watching the same sketch over and over again.

Speaker 1 Well, it's like a sitcom. You know, you're trying to get a run.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 When you're on a movie and it's a big budget that happens where you just do take after take, someone's got to go, hey, are we eating good? Like, can we just move on? Like, this is it.

Speaker 1 The best we can do.

Speaker 5 And then they'd be up all night in the editing room, like splicing the takes together so that it leeched all of the, you know, the magic out of it.

Speaker 5 I mean, you guys know, because you've done it, the live, the adrenaline of live really adds something. But imagine these comedy sketches pieced together.
They had to add laugh tracks, right?

Speaker 3 So it's all different.

Speaker 5 I remember knowing that it wasn't going well. And then I guess Brandon Tardikov said to Lauren, after, I can't remember, maybe eight shows, like, why don't you just not make the rest of them?

Speaker 5 And instead, and here's a novel idea. Let's make best of the new show ours best of

Speaker 3 all after only eight episodes we're gonna do best of finished out

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We're back.

Speaker 6 We're better. Let's get it.

Speaker 4 By the way, I don't know. We have what time we have.
How did you end up writing this book?

Speaker 5 I'm just, that's popping up. So, you know, I, I, I, I was only, that was my only time in television.
I switched to journalism. I switched to journalism after that.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 5 But I stayed, you know, I stayed friends with a lot of all those writers and a lot of them, including Steve Martin and Jack and, you know, have written for me at the New Yorker and other places I've worked.

Speaker 5 So I was always kind of in the, you know, I would see, run into Lauren every five years and say hi. I think our daughters knew each other in school.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 after the 40th anniversary, I just,

Speaker 5 well, I was an empty nest or I had this crazy idea I was going to have a lot of time.

Speaker 5 And I just realized, it really hit me how Lauren is like single-handedly responsible for what America thinks is funny, you know, across so many generations.

Speaker 5 And I thought he'd be a great subject for a book. So

Speaker 5 I sold the book first. I did a proposal.
There was a bidding war. I chose Random House.
And then I went to see him in his office. And I said,

Speaker 5 because I know, you know, you guys know Lauren, he likes to be out of the frame. He likes to be behind the curtain.

Speaker 5 He's not a very public-facing guy. So I said, Lauren,

Speaker 5 I just

Speaker 5 signed a contract to write a book about you and the show. I don't need anything from you.
You know, I know your people and I'm kind of around.

Speaker 5 But if you wanted to talk to me and participate in it, it'll be a better and a richer book. And, you know, your legacy deserves that.

Speaker 5 And at first, he looked like he was going to have a heart attack, you know. He just was like, yeah.
And then, you know, he said, you think about it. And

Speaker 5 we had a drink a couple of days later. And

Speaker 5 he just started telling those stories. He just started talking.
And so he was in.

Speaker 5 We didn't have any kind of agreement. You know, it's he liked the fact that it was my book.
It's not a vanity project that he had any approval over or anything.

Speaker 5 But, you know, he's smart enough to know that that's better to have like a real work of journalism about you and not some silly, you know, sort of puff book.

Speaker 4 He had always told me I would never write a book because I couldn't tell the truth. So in terms of like you're writing this

Speaker 4 and like, what do I include? You, Susan, what do what do I not include? Is this unflattering to Lauren, who I have affection for and I think is seminal?

Speaker 4 Um, and though, so when he was sharing with you, it was stories that you felt were benign. I mean, the book's coming out.
Uh, did he bury people? What did he say about me?

Speaker 5 Oh, Dana, you know, what he said about you is it's a fucking show pony. I mean, you

Speaker 5 both of you, um, both of you are really

Speaker 5 up there in his pantheon.

Speaker 5 No, I think that he,

Speaker 5 I think one of his reservations in the beginning, and this is very smart of him, he knows that people have very selective memory.

Speaker 5 You know, I don't know that he read deeply in those, like the oral history by Tom Shales and Jim Miller, but he certainly knew that over the years, people had put out versions of things that were wildly exaggerated.

Speaker 5 You know, and he also knew that comedians like to kind of embellish a story to make it funny, right? That's a human thing. So I think he was a little worried about that, but he,

Speaker 5 you know, you know, he, I asked him lots of questions. He told me lots of stories.

Speaker 5 I'd say in the final two years of the reporting,

Speaker 5 what I was doing was I'd go over there on a Friday night and I'd say, okay, now what we're going to do is try to do some like fact checking, because a lot of times I'd have three or four different versions of an event.

Speaker 5 And I wanted him to try to be a tiebreaker. Like, what do you think actually happened here? And, you know, he was very honest.
A lot of times he just said, God, I don't know. It was the 70s.

Speaker 5 But I, but again, because I, you know, work at the New Yorker and we're fact checking and accuracy are important. I worked really hard to try to get

Speaker 3 it to the point.

Speaker 5 And there were definitely things.

Speaker 5 And I brought all these things to him. There were definitely things that maybe stung a little bit or that he would have preferred not be in the book.

Speaker 5 he never said like, oh, God, don't put that in the book. You know, he, he, he understood that,

Speaker 5 yeah.

Speaker 5 And I, God, I really respect the hell out of him for that. You know, I mean, he knew I was going to write a real book.

Speaker 5 And, but the response among, you know, his world and his publicists and the people around him has been really, has been really positive. People think that I really got him.

Speaker 5 But, you know, I mean, going into something like this with a character as mysterious and feared as Lorne is.

Speaker 5 I always knew that there would be a contingent of people who said, Oh, God, this is just a blowjob. And then there'd be other people who would say, This is a hatchet job, you know, right?

Speaker 5 So I think, I mean, I'm, I really, I, I, I'm in awe of Lauren and I really admire him. And I admire and like him even more at the end of this process than I did at the beginning.

Speaker 5 I think what he's done is incredible. But you guys work there when people would be bitching about this or that or, you know, it's a tough place, right?

Speaker 1 Do you, do you, did you talk to any cast that

Speaker 1 said anything that, or are any, any personalities just very different than what you thought once you get them on the phone?

Speaker 5 Huh. Let's see.

Speaker 1 Or is everyone kind of that's it?

Speaker 5 That's such a good question. Did you hang up with someone and go, wow, they were very one person who blew my mind

Speaker 5 was Dan Aykroyd because he talks in these

Speaker 3 sentences. Have you guys ever talked to him?

Speaker 4 We did

Speaker 4 live podcast with him at David's house.

Speaker 5 You know what I mean? Like, he talks in perfect paragraphs.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 he's so, I just would never have thought that he, you know, he's somebody who, and he's so thoughtful and uses such interesting words.

Speaker 5 Um,

Speaker 5 let's see.

Speaker 4 You know, you know, they didn't, they didn't know what to do with the lumber back in Canada in 1955.

Speaker 3 He has a lot of

Speaker 4 steel, the steel manufacturer is very infamous.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he is like this, And he made it

Speaker 3 comedy rhythms.

Speaker 4 He did it as Coneheads.

Speaker 1 Conheads has a lot of that talk in it.

Speaker 4 Long,

Speaker 4 free consciousness kind of speeches. So it's part of his.

Speaker 5 Well, it makes you realize that, you know, Beldar Conehead and Van Aykroyd are very similar, aren't they?

Speaker 3 Very close.

Speaker 1 Parental units. I told someone, are you with your parental units tonight? And then I said, after I've said this a million times, I go, you know, that's from Cohenheads.

Speaker 1 They're like, What is that term? I go, I think so. Isn't it? Remember, he goes, Parental units, and no one knew that.
I go, Oh, that's so funny. It just gets in the ether.

Speaker 1 And people, you had some good quotes here from a lot of the stars. I think some are funny, some are just straight ahead, interesting.
And I like Steve Martin.

Speaker 1 It says, Dave Letterman is genuinely self-deprecating.

Speaker 1 He genuinely doesn't think he's any good. Those issues don't come up for Lorne.

Speaker 3 So funny. And also.

Speaker 3 Go ahead.

Speaker 1 Oh, Jane Curtin saying he spent a lot of time talking about where he's going to eat.

Speaker 3 It's that very

Speaker 4 at nine o'clock. Chevy will be there.
Chevy Chase? No, no, no. Chevy Wilson.

Speaker 1 One of the Pauls.

Speaker 4 You'll find with Susan, she's that thing of like, you know, she wants to please and yet she has an eagle eye.

Speaker 4 And she sees what others don't.

Speaker 3 Bill Hayter's fine.

Speaker 3 Bill Hayter. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Bill has a great Lauren.

Speaker 4 You have different, you just are very much very.

Speaker 1 He says, Dana, if you start drowning, he's not like, Hey, here's a life jacket. He's like, ooh, that guy's drowning in my pool.
Let's go here and let's go hang with Alec Baldwin.

Speaker 5 Well, you know, it is funny. One of the things that is so interesting about Lauren is that

Speaker 5 even though people early in the show, as the show started getting successful and Lauren started getting richer with fancier friends, you know, people would bitch and moan about that.

Speaker 5 You know, Belushi referred to Lauren's fancy friends as the dead, you know, all those socialites and everything.

Speaker 5 But I think that it was kind of interesting the way Lauren managed to parlay that into kind of a comic character on the show, you know.

Speaker 5 Um, like the Lauren that you see in the Smigles TV funhouse, like

Speaker 3 you know, and and going back with more shows, Yeah.

Speaker 5 You know, he kind of, I feel like he almost,

Speaker 5 you know, the Lorne

Speaker 5 Pasha, like producer character, became a character on the show as much as like Church Lady. Yes.

Speaker 1 You know, the aloof producer that just stands over with a beer or something or a glass of wine.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And I remember, you know,

Speaker 5 I actually, I mean, I hope we hear more of your Lorne data today, but I remember asking Alec Baldwin at one point, who do you think does the best Lorne impersonation?

Speaker 5 And Alec just said, Lauren.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 4 telling.

Speaker 3 Roy.

Speaker 4 It's that thing of like, I never met anyone who talked like that, you know, but I do believe that that's what I'm kind of curious about. And so you went on this journey.

Speaker 4 And it's not so much just like, what makes Lauren tick, but it's sort of like,

Speaker 4 where's the marshmallow inside this this veneer you know because I think he wants to be one of the guys and he I think he is very observant and wonders what people are thinking of him and gets easily wounded in a way but he's also so resilient I mean he's trumpian yeah in just that way to which we probably talked about just keeping the show consistent now 50 years we have data now a fucking half century Where did this guy come from?

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who is he?

Speaker 4 Will that be answered when I buy the book?

Speaker 5 I think you're going to get your $38 worth. But no, everyone I talk to about Lauren, it's the same.
They're all kind of trying to unriddle him.

Speaker 5 You know, Conan, Conan says, everybody thinks that Lauren has the secret.

Speaker 5 You know, part of that is that he isn't, like, unlike a lot of guys who got rich and famous in the 80s, you know, like Barry Diller or Michael Milken or people like that.

Speaker 5 he's never been like a show-off workaholic. You know, he's not one of those people who says, I get up at 4 a.m.
and work out with a trainer, and then I, you know, he

Speaker 5 does seem to know how to live. You know, he is a he kind of invented work-life balance, you know.

Speaker 5 But, yeah, but then, in terms of you say, the marshmallow inside, I don't want to be too psycho-babbly or, you know, too much

Speaker 5 and easy answer, but go ahead. A lot really does

Speaker 5 take you back back to Lauren suddenly losing his father when he's 14 years old. He was completely

Speaker 5 at sea. And his father collapsed one night after having a big argument with Lauren.
He had a big fight. Father collapses, disappears into the hospital.
Lauren never sees him again.

Speaker 5 This gives you some indication of why, you know, you never see Lauren having a yelling match with anybody. You know, he's very, he keeps it very low.

Speaker 5 You know, he, I, I think at one point I, I say in the book that he speaks in the register of a man announcing a golf tournament, you know? Yes.

Speaker 5 But he, I think that his whole world got smashed when he was 14. You know, then he had a bad year.
His mother thought he was going to be a juvenile delinquent, to use the term

Speaker 5 popular in the juvia.

Speaker 5 And he had to kind of rebuild. He had to put it all together.
I think it gave him a kind of resilience,

Speaker 5 that a kind of resilience that helped him throughout his whole career.

Speaker 5 You know, just when I was starting the book, I interviewed Judd Apatow for the New Yorker Radio Hour, and he said something that really resonated with me.

Speaker 5 When Judd was 14, his parents had a really bad divorce. And I think he, you know, there were financial problems.
His whole world kind of fell apart.

Speaker 5 And he told me that he definitely, because of that, like that's why he he kind of early in his life abandoned his dreams of being a performer and instead became a director and producer.

Speaker 5 Because, you know, when you're that guy, you've got the clipboard, you've got the call sheet, you're making sure that everything

Speaker 5 works. You're making sure that it's not going to be chaos.

Speaker 5 You're taking care of everything as opposed to, you know, if you're a performer, you're just kind of looking, you're doing, strutting your own stuff.

Speaker 5 And I thought that that reminded me so much of Lorne, you know, because he also was a performer early in his life.

Speaker 5 You know, he is, he's determined to not let anything fall apart because his own world fell apart when he was 14. That'll be $350 for that.

Speaker 4 I always thought it was people who started out in comedy and just saw that it wasn't going to happen for them. And then they became a writer.

Speaker 3 It's more consistent.

Speaker 4 I did not realize when I was on Sarah Night Live that every single writer essentially wanted to be in front of the camera.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I didn't realize that.

Speaker 5 I didn't know that until I started reporting this book. So, every, you know, think about all the people who were just writers.
Mulaney, Odenkirk, you know,

Speaker 5 those guys never got on stage.

Speaker 4 Robert Smeim. They all want to be, they all want to be, trust me.

Speaker 1 Conan.

Speaker 4 I love that kind of Lauren. You know, well, do you think Mike will be here? He's visiting.
It's not very far from, you know, the bleachers to where the cameras are.

Speaker 4 You know, see, he has so many senses.

Speaker 3 It's a little short walk. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's funny.

Speaker 4 But when you do Lauren, you get to kind of inhabit Lauren. And I do think because the show is Magnificent Chaos, that's also part of his methodology is he'll be the calm.

Speaker 1 Was anybody angry?

Speaker 5 Oh, well, yeah, there's definitely some people who are angry.

Speaker 5 Because, you know, it's... One of the things I would say that maybe Lauren's biggest achievement was just creating this kind of culture with walls around it.

Speaker 5 You know, it's a tribe and you're in it or you're out of it. You know, it's like the godfather kind of.
And, you know, there are full of people

Speaker 3 who, you know,

Speaker 5 who, you know, I mean, I think that's one of the reasons it was so painful for Conan when he lost the tonight show and went to TBS.

Speaker 5 He was, he was kind of, you know, he had spent his whole career at NBC. And

Speaker 5 for a while, he had, you know, a little bit of a frosty rupture with Lauren. I think he was off the guest, off the t-shirt list,

Speaker 5 stopped getting the Broadway video.

Speaker 3 You guys still get those, the Broadway video t-shirts? I don't know if I still do. I think so.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 I do. Yeah.
Lauren, he wants to be in the loop.

Speaker 4 He did not produce the Conan Tonight show, right? For some.

Speaker 5 That's right. He produced late night for Conan.
And then when Conan went to LA, NBC, I mean, it was kind of a drama.

Speaker 5 NBC told Conan and his producer, Jeff Ross, oh, you don't need Lauren to be your EP.

Speaker 5 But I think that was a misstep.

Speaker 5 I think it probably would have been a good.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I think in the end of the day, and this, there's been even current things that I will mention with different people is just show that's important to Lauren.

Speaker 4 And maybe it's how he reacts to other people in his life. You show respect.

Speaker 4 You know, you want to. You want to give Lauren the chance to say, I think you should do it without me.
You know,

Speaker 4 If you started with him and he gave you your break, then you do kind of have that feeling.

Speaker 1 But it's a hard back and forth to say, Lauren, do you want to produce this movie? Because now you're putting him on the spot sometimes.

Speaker 1 If he doesn't, but if you don't and it's success, he's like, why wouldn't you bring that to me?

Speaker 1 It's very, it's very touchy because you don't want to go, I want a new favorite.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I want a favor from you. Also, this thing about networks is tough because also, you know, let's say I did a show for a network, like I've done sitcoms,

Speaker 1 and they're always whining and dying you

Speaker 1 for a sitcom the whole run.

Speaker 1 And the second it's over, let's say you do a pilot or something, or they even just cancel your show, there's always part of you that thinks mistakenly, but this network, we were friends.

Speaker 1 Like, how could they do that? That's the weirdest thing that you realize. It's all just for the moment.
Things are going good. Everything's great.
But don't get too chummy because

Speaker 1 you're just a

Speaker 1 card on a a

Speaker 1 you know

Speaker 1 board where they say we don't need that anymore we're putting this here they don't think like that they don't go oh is someone's feeling is gonna get hurt they're just like this does better than that that we got to put that there it's very hard it's very rare they go hey i mean they might say it but they're not just saying hey just because we're all buds we should keep this on forever yeah i think that for lauren it's these it's a relationship business you know and he really does for that

Speaker 5 one of one of his old canadian friends uh told me that even from the very beginning, you could tell he likes rabbits' feet. You know, he likes to have these familiar people around.
And

Speaker 5 I think, you know, one time he was kind of half joking, but he compared himself to, he said, I'm like Prometheus.

Speaker 5 You know, I brought, I brought, I'm the bringer of fire to these young people, you know, the people he hires and whose life he changes. And

Speaker 5 he is aware that.

Speaker 5 you know, he's very aware that you want to stay tight with the people who were there for you at the beginning. Sure.
You know, it's why he kept Bernie.

Speaker 5 I'm sure he was paying Bernie Brillstein 15%,

Speaker 5 you know, up to the very end.

Speaker 5 When was the last thing Bernie did for Lauren?

Speaker 1 Even when it went to 10%, he's probably still paying him 15%.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 By the way, Prometheus, for all the kids listening, is a rapper.

Speaker 5 Lil Prometheus.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Lil Prometheus.

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Speaker 5 Bezos now ripped to shreds on his super yacht, and the boxes keep coming.

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Speaker 3 Terms apply.

Speaker 1 By the way, I have it off the off the grid here. The new show.
Is it possible you would remember this? I think this is a dumb joke for the news show.

Speaker 1 A. Whitney Brown and Louie, were they both on it, possibly?

Speaker 5 I don't think they were. Weren't they?

Speaker 3 But on camera.

Speaker 5 No, they weren't on it.

Speaker 1 They weren't on the news show?

Speaker 5 No, they weren't. They weren't.

Speaker 1 Okay, because this joke is from something else. It could have been.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 5 weren't they on Dana's show?

Speaker 4 Louis C.K., I hired as my head writer.

Speaker 3 No, Louis.

Speaker 4 A. Whitney Brown was not writing

Speaker 4 for it.

Speaker 1 I remember a sketch with Louis Anderson and Whitney Brown.

Speaker 3 But what could be done? Louis Anderson and Whitney Brown.

Speaker 5 It could have been

Speaker 5 on a bad episode of SNL.

Speaker 1 On a figment of my imagination.

Speaker 4 Might have been in the 85 season. I think that's when A.
Whitney got hired.

Speaker 1 Here's the joke. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 1 It's like a just quick cutaway, like I'm laughing. They walk out in Roman togas.

Speaker 1 One's ripped and one isn't. And Whitney Whitney goes,

Speaker 1 No, yeah, Whitney goes to Louise that's ripped and says, Euripides? And he goes, Eumenides?

Speaker 3 And that was it.

Speaker 5 That's right out of that Solomon.

Speaker 3 Isn't that a weird?

Speaker 4 That's it. That's Topo Gijo right there.

Speaker 3 I mean, Topo Gijio.

Speaker 1 I'm pretty sure I'm lying, but why would I even think of this when you're doing a lot?

Speaker 5 But you know, that reminds me of

Speaker 5 when Lauren directed his show in college, UC Follies, which was very much like a proto-SNL thing. There was a Shakespeare take parody in it that Lauren wrote.

Speaker 5 This is actually one of the first funny joke that I've ever, that Lauren Michaels wrote to my mind. There was a character in it named Handenbra.

Speaker 3 Get it? Okay.

Speaker 5 Got it. Instead of Fortinbra.
Yeah. Handenbra.
You get it?

Speaker 3 I like it. I got it.

Speaker 5 It's pretty good.

Speaker 4 I like a good brand.

Speaker 1 That's the beginning, middle, end.

Speaker 3 Handen bra.

Speaker 3 It's very economical.

Speaker 5 It's the 50s people.

Speaker 3 I love it.

Speaker 1 Listen, I laughed harder at Hee-Haw. I don't know what, you know, I catered any reference.

Speaker 3 I laughed at Donnie Marie.

Speaker 4 Bernie Berlstein told me, they take your Hee-Haw money in London.

Speaker 3 You know, because he was producing EA.

Speaker 4 He didn't like it. I don't like fake art.
He just thought the art scene was ridiculous.

Speaker 1 You know, it's funny when people say, like, you know, Belushi only made $400 a week on SNL and he made $10,000 for Animal House, which is not bad money, especially when you're an unknown.

Speaker 1 They forget that they weren't a huge star in the cover of Time magazine.

Speaker 1 Did Belushi get on the cover of Time? I heard Chevy did.

Speaker 5 Did Belushi? Belushi was on Newsweek. Oh, Newsweek.
Chevy for Animal House. And Chevy was on New York magazine at the end of season one.
They called him the heir apparent to Johnny Carson.

Speaker 5 And that's basically what started. all kinds of splintering in that first cast.
Oh, yeah. You know, the idea wasn't for one person to emerge as a star.
That kind of screwed everything up.

Speaker 1 Immediate problems. That's always been there since then.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. You know, you were talking about the,

Speaker 5 asking about the new show. I just remembered one funny little conflict that happened there.
I remember Gamelin Pross wrote a sketch called Time Truck. It was a time traveling truck.

Speaker 5 And it was for a show which

Speaker 5 Kevin Klein was hosting. And the idea was Kevin Klein was supposed to play Abe Lincoln.
And they were supposed to go back in time to prevent

Speaker 5 Lincoln from getting shot. But Lauren thought that it would be much funnier to have his close personal friend, Paul Simon, play Lincoln.

Speaker 5 Just as a side gag.

Speaker 5 The writers are like, Paul Simon is not a comic actor.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 He's very quiet.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Anyway.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Reason number 800. Why the new show didn't

Speaker 1 fly off the shelves?

Speaker 4 Did we talk about just the well, obviously, you mentioned Lauren hacked life? That's the new phrase. Like, you go to buttermilk and you ski, you know, and then you're in St.

Speaker 4 Bart's and you go to Wimbledon. And Paul and I would often go out and just buy socks.
You go downtown. So, and he did pace himself.
That's part of the half century is he does pace himself.

Speaker 4 He knows when it's important for him to lock in.

Speaker 5 And that's the, especially this Saturday, that 30 minutes is where everything's made and the whole show is based on add and procrastination so at laurene's core does he have both those elements because i do yeah well you know jim downey had a really smart way of describing this he said lauren is a guy bad at term papers great at tests You know, so if you give him an open-ended thing that he has to sit down and fiddle with, he's just never going to finish it.

Speaker 5 But when there's a deadline, when there's an alarm bell that goes off, that's, you know, I think someone said the deadline is Lawrence cocaine. You know, it's, it's the thing that gets him galvanized.

Speaker 5 And can you imagine if that show was taped? You would never have that moment, you know, at 1030 where he's saying,

Speaker 3 you know, but

Speaker 5 yeah, I think that he

Speaker 5 he definitely, he definitely has said to me a bunch of different times that he

Speaker 5 was always his whole life reluctant to burn a bridge or to close a door you know he always felt like oh if i do this then i won't ever be able to do this i mean he's he and he also told me a story this kind of related he told me yeah it's a real memory of once his father taking him to a diner when he was a little boy and saying just order anything you want off the menu so he ordered a hot dog and a hamburger and a grilled cheese and onion rings and french fries and

Speaker 5 you know, couldn't eat it all. And then his father said, let this be a lesson to you.
You know, your eyes are bigger than your stomach.

Speaker 5 Now, I don't know how Lauren converted that into a lesson about comedy,

Speaker 5 but he did.

Speaker 5 And I think that if you think about that plate full of junk food at the diner, it's not unlike what the show is like Saturday going into, you know, they still have way more than they can use.

Speaker 3 Sure.

Speaker 5 And it's chopping it down.

Speaker 1 And you don't need everything. You don't think you don't need everything you think you need in life also is a bigger way.

Speaker 3 It's true. Right, right, right, right.
I want to go

Speaker 3 out to the next one. lunch with his dad yeah

Speaker 4 i need to learn things that's a good one buy me a hot dog um yeah we both have dad stuff i mean maybe do all comedians have mom or dad stuff right

Speaker 5 i don't know well i thought it was you know a lot of people talk about these different rules lauren has about comedy these lauren-isms and i think all the comedy ones are interesting But it was also really interesting for me to hear how many of them were just about like how to live your life.

Speaker 5 You know, so many people talked about how Lorne would say, buy yourself an apartment that you think you can't afford.

Speaker 5 Because then you'll come home after a hard day at work and you'll go, wow, who lives here? And you'll go, wow, I live here.

Speaker 3 He told me that.

Speaker 1 He said, buy, he said, get,

Speaker 1 it matters where you live. So if you're torn, get the nicer one.

Speaker 4 He does his Lorne, and a lot of it is just good old-fashioned wisdom. Yeah.
Well, well crafted. Did we talk about the one that sort of took me by surprise, you know, about

Speaker 4 this generation or whatever, snowflakes or anxiety or whatever? You know, we were raised in the wilderness and we've got like civilized.

Speaker 4 They're raised civilized and then we want them to go out into the wilderness, which is sort of brilliant. I said that to Howard Stern.
I go, what does that mean? I go, Howard.

Speaker 5 No, he said, he said that to me too. And I totally get it.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 5 But, you know, it was also, I spent so much time hanging out there that it was really interesting for me to see, he's so patient kind of with the millennials and some of the snowflaky,

Speaker 5 you know, sensibilities. But one day he said something that really cracked me up.
This is in the book.

Speaker 5 We were walking, we were walking in the theater district and we walked past the Mean Girls, Marquis,

Speaker 5 and he had just got tickets for his friend Margaret Trudeau to go and but he was really mad because one of the leads had called in sick

Speaker 5 because she had to take her dog to the vet. The dog had eaten glue or something.
And

Speaker 5 he just said, if it was Patty Lupone, the dog would be dead.

Speaker 5 I couldn't believe

Speaker 5 that this person's pet was

Speaker 3 ruining it.

Speaker 1 In the new days, there's just options you didn't have.

Speaker 1 You can just not do things anymore. And in the old days, it's like, no, you go.
No matter what, you go to work, you go to school, you do this.

Speaker 1 And now it's like, if you feel like it, unless you want to call in a day, you're not mentally feeling like it. It's like, or you have anxiety.

Speaker 1 If I had the word anxiety back then, I would have used it all day.

Speaker 4 I think Lauren has a classic characteristic of somebody who

Speaker 4 has power in a meeting.

Speaker 4 And that is if things are going around the room, and then Lauren will sort of sum up something or say something that's not exactly on topic, but related to the topic in very few words, you know.

Speaker 4 And it's like, I just think I will, you know, I don't know, this is a hackney one, but it just needs to breathe or whatever.

Speaker 4 You know, make sure that the audience knows you're actually performing, you know, sort of,

Speaker 4 you know, don't just do it to each other. So that's kind of one of his superpowers.
And that's really important with the suits and Universal and stuff.

Speaker 4 I, I had, I was at parties with the suits and Lauren.

Speaker 4 He doesn't talk a lot, but when he does, it's usually it's pretty hard

Speaker 4 or it's interesting.

Speaker 5 Yeah, no, he has a lot of things like that that can kind of close off discussion. Like he'll say, it'll get there.
Yeah. You know, or he'll say, it knows what it is.

Speaker 4 Stuff like that. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Really good, good things.

Speaker 4 Yeah. All I'm saying, you know, he never really says, do this.
All I'm saying is like, do we really have to go there with that right now?

Speaker 5 I thought it was also interesting that even though, you know, in that meeting between Dress and Air, he really is like a general, you know, and that's that's the time at which he famously yelled at Bob Odenkirk once, Odenkirk, if you talk again, I'll break your fucking legs, you know.

Speaker 5 But mostly.

Speaker 3 That's when he's most confrontational because there's no time left.

Speaker 1 It's no time for any fun bullshit.

Speaker 3 It's like, go, go, go.

Speaker 5 Right, but

Speaker 5 even though he is, you know, that is his moment, he rarely forces somebody to change something. I mean, writers are always telling us.

Speaker 5 Yes, he'll give you the note. He'll say, maybe this, maybe that, but he isn't going to say you have to change the ending.
You know, he lets it belong to the writers, which is so unusual.

Speaker 1 Some, you know, some of mine got dirty and he would say, to interrupt you, he would say, I don't know if you need that.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Put it if you want, but I don't know if you need it. And that's a good way of saying, oh, you feel like it's a little dirty? It's kind of smart the way it is.
I don't know if you need that.

Speaker 3 And you go, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 Like, okay, well, if you say it, I'm obviously younger and just new on the show. I think I would take your gut feeling over mine.

Speaker 4 I know, because I said to Lauren just in the fall when I was there, I said, you're like an AI. Like you have downloaded the show in your brain.
That's a good thing.

Speaker 4 So Lauren's blink is the best blink because he can't even.

Speaker 4 He's going back to, you know, Danny did that in my early days. So it's similar to a Chevy idea.
You know, it's like, so he, that's why his blink is really good.

Speaker 4 He kind of knows, he can't even totally describe what's wrong in a way, but his spider sense, because he's, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's downloaded the show.

Speaker 5 But he might say, as David was just saying, he might say, well, do you think it's working?

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 do you think it's working?

Speaker 5 But Dana, this is reminding me what David just said, is the story you told me about. the time he thought Church Lady got too dirty with a football player.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And he he was he was really kind of right it was just

Speaker 4 um you know it was joe montana

Speaker 4 and walter payton and i'm doing a church chat and so it was just became vaudevillian sexual innuendos like we're playing football squeeze the between your legs and let me you know it was just a lot of that

Speaker 4 and lauren was like

Speaker 4 you know does it really it was like a little you know and he didn't want church lady for a while like the weekly i think she needs a name, you know, and stuff like that.

Speaker 4 And he didn't really like the Superior dance. He wanted to be more grounded in reality.
But like, he never told me yay or nay. But he, the,

Speaker 4 the Joe Montana one, um, because maybe it was lowbrow or something. It was later in the show, but it killed so hard that the old-timer sound man said, I've been here for 20 years.

Speaker 4 I've never seen the needles go that high.

Speaker 3 So I, you know,

Speaker 4 anyway.

Speaker 5 You know, that superior dance thing. I mean, I didn't know he didn't like that because, boy, I think that's so funny.
But

Speaker 4 well, I, I, I think he wasn't a fan of it, but maybe he probably accepted it as the, as the character grew, got bigger. Yes.

Speaker 5 She became a signature. Yeah.
Because I know Conan told me that, uh, or maybe Lauren told me, maybe they both told me.

Speaker 5 Um, rare instance of everybody agreeing that Lauren was always telling Conan to get rid of that string dance thing that he did, you know, where he would touch his nipples and go, oh,

Speaker 3 yeah.

Speaker 5 Lauren hated that, you know, but Conan stuck with it and it worked. You know, there are people,

Speaker 3 you know, people, I guess.

Speaker 4 Well, that is the thing about catchphrases and/or repetitive physical things, your signature Johnny Carson does the golf swing.

Speaker 4 I don't know if there's something homey to your brain, you know, oh, Conan's doing that again. You know, we all do it.

Speaker 5 Right, right. Well, Mark McKinney told me that at the original, at the initial read-through of the Kids in the Hall

Speaker 5 series, the one thing that Lauren just didn't like, didn't understand was the, I'm crushing your head guy.

Speaker 5 And that when Mark, you know that sketch is

Speaker 4 a camera set up so it looks like you're yeah, when he played

Speaker 4 him as a little kid,

Speaker 5 when Mark first read it, Lauren said, like, oh, so it's a funny voice thing, you know, but he didn't, it wasn't. Danny, you can say that better than me.

Speaker 5 But then when he saw it, when he saw that it was a visual, you know, like that, then he, then he got it and he liked it. So again,

Speaker 5 you have to have, you really have to have a sense of yourself, I guess, right? Because

Speaker 5 a more of a fading violet kind of performer would have just said, okay, we'll cut that sketch. Right, sure.

Speaker 4 Right. And Lorne is, he's, he's open too.
If it works, it works. I mean, he just loves a laugh.
So

Speaker 4 if, you know, that makes him so high.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 You know, and you see how he still just suffers. If the show's going a little flat, you see it in his body language, his attitude.

Speaker 4 If the show is lifted, it's just, you know, from across the way, if your sketch destroys, you'd be like,

Speaker 3 you know.

Speaker 4 And that's like a really good coach that never overpraises, but when he does, it means a hell of a lot.

Speaker 5 So that's right. Yeah.
So many people told me about how they would come off stage and just feeling like they really killed. And, you know, then in the Monday meeting,

Speaker 5 he wouldn't talk about that, but he would say, you know, like, no, Nora, you were breathtaking as the fourth waitress, you know, that kind of thing.

Speaker 4 I thought Jen's exit was breathtaking.

Speaker 3 Exit.

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Speaker 1 Well, Susan, Dana, anything else for this young lady who's

Speaker 1 written a great book?

Speaker 4 So now your book is emerging

Speaker 4 within this gigantic SNL 50th,

Speaker 4 whatever you want, extravaganza. You know, and I can't keep track of all the documentaries.
People, I don't, you know. Were you in that one?

Speaker 5 The Cowbell one is great. We've got to watch that.
It's a hot.

Speaker 4 I just went to a little house they rented for me and said, will you talk about Cowbell?

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 4 And then they were talking about.

Speaker 4 I don't even remember what I said, but it's such an extravaganza.

Speaker 4 And then your book's coming out. I guess that's a good thing rather than if the book had come out during just a regular year.

Speaker 5 Well, it took me so long to write it.

Speaker 3 Only 10 years.

Speaker 5 This wasn't part of the plan. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I love it. It's going to come out five years ago.

Speaker 1 Fell under right now is good.

Speaker 5 It really, yeah, it really worked. And I'd say, I mean,

Speaker 5 it definitely works. And especially because so much of the hoopla, so much of the other stuff, you know, it's like snippets of sketches.

Speaker 5 And, but my hope is that, you know, people really don't know that much about Lauren. You know, the comedy cognizanti know that he's Obi-Wan Kenobi and everything else.

Speaker 5 But I think that the greater world doesn't know how complicated and fascinating and strange and brilliant he is. And

Speaker 5 I, you know, I hope, as you were saying, Dana, I hope I'm kind of able to explain that a little bit.

Speaker 4 So the one thing people ask me today about the show that I don't have an answer for, just a basic answer, I guess, but how the numerologically the cast has started to expand and then become an expansionist cast.

Speaker 4 So like 20 cast members. So people will ask me, why do they have all those cast members? And I go, well, I guess a safety net or

Speaker 4 did he ever talk about that?

Speaker 5 I think that's a really good question because I know there was a time in the 90s when he was trying to do the changeover, like between the Hartman cast to the Sandler cast.

Speaker 5 He was hiring a lot of people. I thought it was maybe just to ease the, you know, create a buffer.

Speaker 5 And then there was like some big budget cutback and he had to get rid of a bunch of them. But yeah, I don't know the answer to that unless.

Speaker 5 And I'm speculating here, unless it's a diversity effort, you know, to just try to get a more diverse cast. But I don't think it serves the show because I think that there's so many people.

Speaker 5 You're kind of, who's that one?

Speaker 1 You don't know for sure.

Speaker 3 You don't know, for sure. It's just

Speaker 3 people.

Speaker 4 It's very hard. I talk to some of the young cast members because if you're not in it a lot, and then you get in there

Speaker 4 and then you maybe flub a line or don't totally score, then you go back again. Where I think I was part of the last small cast.

Speaker 4 And then when David and Sandler and Farley all, you know, we got some really great people to add to us and some left. But me and Phil and John, I think, were just the three major male sketch players.

Speaker 4 So I was in four things the first show or five things. And

Speaker 4 I have a lot of empathy for the cast members that are, they're in the dugout. They're on the bench.

Speaker 3 They're not on the bottom.

Speaker 1 And do you quit or do you stay and you go, I quit SNL. I didn't get anything out of it.
Like it's so hard to sit there and rot going, am I going to ever score? It really takes one good sketch.

Speaker 1 Then you're on the map.

Speaker 5 What was yours, David? What was the thing that made you feel like?

Speaker 1 God, it took a long time.

Speaker 1 I think it was the one where I played a receptionist was the first time i got any any sort of and you had a catchphrase did it at it it was in dress the last sketch in the air it was the first sketch and so oh that's that's the case that was

Speaker 4 the catchphrase

Speaker 5 just a dry bit based on kind of lauren going to see and and the and the assistants yeah yeah and all that you know the thing the thing about the huge cast it's even harder now dana and and when i was hanging around there a few years back

Speaker 5 you know the cast would also, they would let you know. I mean, of course, it's thrilling for them when geniuses like you and, you know, Alec and everybody come in to play these cameos.

Speaker 5 But during the first Trump administration, you know, it's so many, you know, you have all these stars coming in. Yeah.
And that also squeezes.

Speaker 4 Matt Damon and so forth, all great people doing great parts.

Speaker 5 And if you were in the cast, you might be pissed.

Speaker 3 Of course. Well, I did ask.

Speaker 4 And I was sincere about it when they asked me to do biden i said does mikey still want to do it does anybody want to do it and i you know and they said no because biden was sort of a thankless task it was a difficult one and there was the whole energy around should you make fun of his mental acuity or not and and threading that needle so i was totally aware of that and um

Speaker 4 They're all incredibly sweet. They seem sweeter than we were, but they're very nice people.

Speaker 4 But we never, we had Dan Aykroyd come in and do Bob Dole. That was it once.
Yeah. Yeah.
And then it was all us playing at some.

Speaker 3 I don't know.

Speaker 4 I, I mean, Lauren has his thing. I don't think he likes when people leave.
I think when Belushi and Aykroyd left, it kind of left him flat-footed. And so he likes a, I get it.

Speaker 4 He likes a bench that can come in.

Speaker 2 And, you know, so

Speaker 4 50 years. Now, a final question.
Okay. How much longer, since you've been inside this Lauren brain,

Speaker 4 will he go?

Speaker 5 Well, I firmly believe, I don't think he's going to just say over now. You know, he's never missed a show.
He's never missed a show.

Speaker 5 I think they'd have to carry him out of there in a stretcher. But I don't think that any

Speaker 5 of them.

Speaker 5 I don't buy any of the replacement theories. I don't think Tina or Seth or...

Speaker 5 I can't see any of them doing it.

Speaker 5 What I think is the likelier idea, and I hope this doesn't doesn't sound too McKinsey, you know, but

Speaker 5 the way I see it, Lauren is completely essential two days of the week. He has to be there during read-through because he really pays attention to the room.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And then he, you know, picks the show after that with his deputy's help. And then Saturday, you know, when he's sitting there under the bleachers, it's a good theory.

Speaker 5 And, you know, so I think he has this great team of people who could do the other stuff.

Speaker 5 And if he came in, you know, was wheeled in on Wednesday afternoon and on friday and on saturday evening stretcher

Speaker 4 well there's an element there's a there's like a soft element of that now you know yes i would want an answer and we'll let you know when lauren gets here it's four o'clock that's lauren knows how to pace himself and when to lock in yeah so he's doing a soft version of that you know yeah i think that's right and and all those people you know doyle and and henward and higgins they really know him you know so they can give a pretty good approximation.

Speaker 5 Yeah, when he'll come in,

Speaker 4 what he might say.

Speaker 5 Yeah. But, you know, there's no,

Speaker 5 there's no one could do what he does under the bleachers. I mean, when I'm sitting there under the bleachers with him, and you guys, I'm sure you've done this, right? And he's,

Speaker 5 I mean, the funniest one, when we got, I was there for the Jonah Hill show, and Maggie Rogers, who was then just starting out as a singer, comes out on stage at dress, wearing this big red calftan and no shoes.

Speaker 5 And Lauren just goes, barefoot. Where is she from? A place with roads?

Speaker 3 You know, he was so mad.

Speaker 4 I know. Well, the funniest one is just that he watched the dress show and the Chardonnay should be more pale, you know, stuff like that.

Speaker 4 But he notices things. You're not even aware.
But I think he's going to go. a while.

Speaker 5 He seems very, you know, he's very with it and alert.

Speaker 5 And and i've never seen him sick you know he he's taking good care of himself i don't hear that i've never i've never it doesn't look like even i was there briefly it doesn't seem like he's

Speaker 1 you know barely getting to this 50th it's like 50th then they got the rest of the season after the big show and then uh they start working on next season i don't i don't know when this podcast airs but i i bet you lauren he is He's only human.

Speaker 4 I mean, he will be kind of a little bit relieved when this whole hoopla is over. Because we can't, unless it was the mic drop, the show ends.

Speaker 4 He knows that pretty soon, okay, we've got 10 more fucking shows to do.

Speaker 5 Well, one thing he did tell me when the Reitman movie came out,

Speaker 5 you know, that was sort of the beginning of,

Speaker 5 you know, like his anonymity being blown in a way. I mean, he.

Speaker 5 He told me he didn't see it. I mean, who knows? Who knows if he didn't see it? I said, I saw it.

Speaker 4 I saw it for you. And you come off great.

Speaker 4 So I said, you don't have to see it.

Speaker 5 But he said, he said, I just feel like I've lost control of my life. You know, it's like he,

Speaker 5 as a 50th approach, I think he's really excited about the show and he's excited about seeing everybody. You know, he loves everybody.

Speaker 5 But he does feel, I mean, even to some extent with the book, it's just like he's kind of stepping out. You know, the Reitman movie put him center stage.
This book puts him center stage.

Speaker 5 It's a shift for him.

Speaker 4 Right. And in the end of the day, he is the linchpin.

Speaker 5 He's bigger than any cast member as far as the history of ml he is sure you know well he is as as i think i quote some agent in the book saying that when her she is clients going to audition for lauren she says you got to remember he is the star of the show it's lauren yeah you know which is

Speaker 3 interesting

Speaker 4 interesting but he loves funny people and

Speaker 5 yeah he really does he does and and and he's funny he's a funny person which a lot of people extremely dry droll wit yeah that that hits you pretty hard sometimes.

Speaker 4 Wow. Well, congratulations.
It's hard to write.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I'm sure it's going to do really well. And what was your advance? How much did you got so far?

Speaker 3 So, February 18th.

Speaker 5 Thank you so much. February 18th.

Speaker 3 Really,

Speaker 5 really fun, you guys.

Speaker 4 This flew by. It was easy.
We love talking about our old boss.

Speaker 5 Call back anytime, okay?

Speaker 3 I can't wait to read my chapter. All right.
Bye. Thanks, Liz.

Speaker 4 Have a great day.

Speaker 3 You too. Bye-bye.

Speaker 1 This has been a presentation of Odyssey. Please follow, subscribe, leave a like, a review, all the stuff.
Smash that button, whatever it is, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 Fly on the Wall is executive and produced by Dana Carvey and David Spade, Jenna Weiss-Berman of Odyssey, and Heather Santoro. The show's lead producer is Greg Holtzman.