At 50, ‘Saturday Night Live' celebrates its past as a comedy icon — and wonders about its future
NEW YORK (AP) — Tune into the Oct. 11, 1975 premiere episode of 'Saturday Night Live' — then without 'live' in its name — and you may be instantly surprised at some of the bones of the show that are still intact today.
There's the cold open skit, featuring cast members John Belushi and Michael O'Donoghue. At its end, Chevy Chase gingerly walks by the prone bodies of the two actors, playing dead, for the very first call of 'Live from New York, it's Saturday night!'
NBC is rebroadcasting that episode Saturday, part of a feast of 50th anniversary programming that includes a three-hour special on Sunday reuniting dozens of past cast members and friends and a homecoming concert from Radio City Music Hall being livestreamed Friday night on Peacock.
The original cast surely would have mocked the display of showbiz excess, much like the actors in last year's fictional backstage depiction of opening night in the movie 'Saturday Night' couldn't hide their disgust at Hollywood legend Milton Berle.
Not ready for prime time? Hardly
Back then, they were known as the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. Success has long since made a mockery of that name. Among viewers under age 50, the late-night show is more popular than anything NBC airs in so-called prime time, and that doesn't even reflect the way many people experience it now, through highlight clips online.
'Saturday Night Live' is the engine of comedy, minting generations of stars from Belushi to Bill Murray to Eddie Murphy to Adam Sandler to Will Ferrell to Amy Poehler to Kristen Wiig to Kate McKinnon to Bowen Yang. It launched movie franchises too numerous to mention, and NBC's late-night comedy lineup of Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers traces its lineage to 'SNL.' It's still the first place people turn when they want to make comedic sense of current affairs.
At its center, then and now, is the inscrutable figure of Lorne Michaels, the executive producer who was 30 during that first season and turned 80 last fall — on a show night, naturally.
Michaels left 'SNL' for five years and, upon his return in 1985, hit upon the formula that guaranteed its continued relevance.
He recognized, as author Susan Morrison writes in the biography 'Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live,' due to be released Tuesday, that 'just about every person who has ever watched SNL believes that its funniest years were the ones when they were in high school.'
That means constantly moving forward, always adding new blood, even being ruthless about it. That means trusting young writers to keep the cultural references relevant, and invent new ones. That means booking musical acts that Michaels and his good friend, singer Paul Simon, probably haven't heard of but his people tell him are on the cutting edge.
It's not perfect. It never was.
'The history of the show reads like an EKG,' said James Andrew Miller, co-author with Tom Shales of the 2002 book, 'Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live.' 'There are fantastic years, there are growing years, there are years to make you carsick, there are years to make you wonder if it should still be going on.'
Substitute the word 'shows' for 'years' in that quote, and it still makes sense.
Creating viral moments before 'viral' was a thing
'Saturday Night Live' is often — usually — wildly uneven. But it produced viral moments before the internet existed. Garrett Morris' news for the hard of hearing, Murphy's irascible Gumby, 'Lazy Sunday,' the cowbell sketch, Tina Fey's impersonation of Sarah Palin: The memories alone produce laughs. The duds, the ideas that never took off or hosts who couldn't rise to the challenge fade away. Or maybe they're the price of genius.
It can be easy to lose sight of how hard this actually is, said Bill Carter, veteran chronicler of television comedy and author of 'The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, and the Network Battle for the Night.' A 90-minute program is written from scratch every week, sets are constructed in a New York office building, hosts of various degrees of talent accommodated.
Ready or not, the show must go on Saturday at 11:30 p.m. The clock is unforgiving.
'It's a different creative enterprise, every show,' Carter said. 'That's why it is good and bad, but it's also why it's exciting ... 'Live,' that is the essential feature of the show. You know when you are watching that it is actually happening in New York City right now.'
Only so much polish is possible. Someone may flub a line, or get the giggles. Sinéad O'Connor may rip up a picture of the pope, or Ashlee Simpson's lip-sync might fail.
'Saturday Night Live' has leaned more into its history in recent years. Alumni make frequent reappearances, and spotting unbilled cameos has become sport. The Five-Timers Club of guest hosts, while a joke, treads the line of smugness.
It may seem like a franchise with no foreseeable conclusion, and is even built for that. Michaels will have more to say about that than anyone. The backstage boss is also the longest-running on-screen character; his appearance as a straight man to then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on the first show after the Sept. 11 attacks is one of 'SNL's' most poignant moments.
'Can we be funny?' Michaels asked.
Replied Giuliani: 'Why start now?'
How long will Lorne Michaels stay with the show?
Observers say Michaels has stepped back a bit, relying more on the capable team that he's built. There's no indication that his eye for spotting talent has diminished. Those who have seen it say that his most fearsome skill — making a series of instant decisions between the show's dress rehearsal and performance, shortening or lengthening skits, moving and changing them to produce the broadcast viewers see — is flourishing.
The years leading up to the 50th anniversary have been filled with speculation that this will be when he steps down, talk he's even fueled himself in the past. But he hasn't discussed it, or even given interviews surrounding the festivities. The subject is the focus of 'After Lorne,' a new piece in New York magazine, where author Reeves Wiedeman describes Michaels as a man of mystery, sometimes an intimidating force, to those around the show.
Whoever replaces him — names like Fey, Meyers and Colin Jost have been mentioned — would likely face crushing pressure. At a time when broadcast television is fading, NBC would be sorely tempted to cut costs around the program in a way they haven't with Michaels in charge, Miller said.
If the 50th anniversary were to trigger his exit, Carter said that likely would be known by now.
'It's his life,' he said. 'Why would you walk away from your life if you don't have to? This was a special, unique thing that he created, and if you enjoy doing it, which I think he still does and can do it, I don't see any reason he should leave.'
Someday, that time will come. In the meantime, enjoy the show.
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