• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, January 16, 2025

The New Yorker devotes 13 pages -- a lot even for The New Yorker -- to a new profile of Lorne Michaels this week as his show, “Saturday Night Live,” marks its 50th anniversary this year.

The story by Susan Morrison in the January 20 issue out this week is a great read with a multitude of sources from every generation of “SNL” weighing in with their observations about Michaels, now 80, who founded the show in 1975 and still runs it.

The man himself was interviewed too, and he sheds light on his comedy influences, the creation of “SNL,” and what he learned about producing.

Here are some highlights.

“[Lily Tomlin] was probably the formative influence on me,” says Michaels, who produced three specials with Tomlin on CBS in the years just before “SNL.”

Michaels “paid close attention to Tomlin’s comedy style: She was freeing the form from punch lines [and] infusing sketches with psychological depth,” writes Morrison.

“There’s almost nothing we did in the ’70s that I could do now,” the story quotes Michaels as saying in 2019. 

Among the sketches cited in the piece are the ones John Belushi did in the role of a Samurai warrior spouting Japanese gibberish, and a sketch called “News For the Hard Of Hearing” in which Garrett Morris “interpreted” the news basically by yelling.

“The idea that I could do a show in which the audience would see it at the same time as the network was thrilling,” Michaels said of the network’s decision to make “SNL” a live show. The live scenario also meant there would be a lot less meddling by network suits before the show as well.

“It’s really difficult to make anger funny,” says Michaels. “What the English know is that if you’re playing the greatest villain, make him charming.” 

Paraphrasing Michaels, Morrison puts it another way: “Idiots, he says, play better than assholes.”

In the piece, Michaels says he has long likened “SNL” to a Snickers bar. Writes Morrison: “A Snickers bar isn’t the very best candy bar, but pretty much everybody likes it.”

Michaels unabashedly considers the lives of some historical characters as parallel to his own. Of one of them, Thomas Edison, Michaels says: “He didn’t think he invented anything. He thought he perfected things, and that all the ideas he perfected were already in the air.”

Michaels also finds similarities between himself and William Shakespeare. “I know he had a Belushi,” says Michaels, imagining a group of actors who Shakespeare used again and again. “That’s why Falstaff appears in three plays.”

Photo courtesy NBC: Lorne Michaels at the 2022 Emmy Awards.