Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (83 page)

7

Lorne

TOM DAVIS,
Writer:

I think Lorne’s happy as a pig in shit. He’s doing exactly what he wants to do, and he makes tremendous amounts of money doing it. Lorne has a circle of friends that includes Jack Nicholson and Paul McCartney. Sting lives in the same building as he does. I don’t think he’s had to ride a taxi or a subway, ever. He certainly eats like a prince, at the finest restaurants in New York. He always has a limousine ready to go, and he gets a limousine ride out to his house in the Hamptons. And I say, good for him. He’s got a great gig. Nobody does it better than he does.

Now if this is a “can money buy me love” question — no, it can’t. But then we all have that problem. I don’t have quite that much money, so I have to improvise.

ALAN ZWEIBEL,
Writer:

I remember Gilda used to say that she would search through Lorne’s desk hoping that she’d find a note in there that said, “I really like Gilda.”

JULIA SWEENEY,
Cast Member:

I came into the office one day at the end of my first year and said to Christine Zander, “Oh my God, I had a dream about having sex with Lorne last night.” And she stopped everything and her body froze and she turned to me, like suddenly it was so like in a cult, and she said, “Julia, we all have those dreams. And I just want you to know it doesn’t have anything to do with sex. It has everything to do with power. Maybe that will help you.”

ANNE BEATTS,
Writer:

I’ve probably had more conversations about Lorne than anybody in my life other than my parents. He was a mentor and a very powerful figure in all of our lives. I do think that he tended to criticize more than to praise, in terms of a management style. But since that also reflected my father, I guess I felt fairly comfortable with that. Maybe he picked people who were dysfunctional in such a way that they did feel comfortable with that.

FRED WOLF,
Writer:

I had a turbulent family life and my dad wasn’t around that much, and I just think Lorne is the greatest. I’d be furious at him and I’d be like really happy sometimes and other times I’d be sullen, but he’s just the greatest guy that I’ve come in contact with, certainly in my career. Some people can get away with everything with him, and some people he just would never give a break to, and you can never really figure out why.

VICTORIA JACKSON,
Cast Member:

When we would sit in his office, we’d be on the floor and he’d be on the desk, like we were little preschool kids. From that sense, it’s kind of fatherly. He would never say, “You did a great show last week.” He would say, “Well, the show was okay. Do we have one this week?” So he didn’t play favorites and he didn’t compliment us too much. But I was used to that ’cause my dad doesn’t compliment me either. My dad was my gymnastics coach and he only said criticisms.

I never gained weight because I was on my toes all the time. Sometimes I walked down the hall and he would say, “Hi, Victoria.” And then the next time he would walk down the hall, I would say, “Hi, Lorne,” and he’d completely ignore me. I was one inch away from him, and he’d keep walking. It was a kind of scary, weird thing.

TINA FEY,
Writer:

He’s not terribly effusive. He does not give it out so easily, and that just makes you want to get praise and approval from him more. I think that people who most adamantly deny that they would want that approval are probably the ones who want it the most.

MARILYN SUZANNE MILLER,
Writer:

I read a thing in the
Times
about Tina Fey and she said something like, “Well, you really want to please Daddy,” with regard to Lorne. But Jesus, we thought he was Daddy when I was twenty-five and he was thirty. He was that strict father even when we were kids. You would always look to Lorne for approval. You wanted this father figure to say that was good. But I don’t feel by not saying that stuff he was hurting people. He wasn’t going, “I’m not speaking to you because your sketch didn’t go well.” He was that strict father who’d only tell you you did good when you did incredibly good.

I remember once he came up to me and said, “You did good,” and that was like him giving me a giant house in the Hamptons and a garage full of cars.

PAUL SIMON,
Host:

That’s not true that he was a father figure. No, he wasn’t. He was like one of the guys. He wasn’t a father figure to me. Not to Michael O’Donoghue. Not to Gilda. But Lorne became the father figure as the cast and writers became younger in comparison to his age. And I think that was one of his big transitional points, when he realized that he wasn’t one of their contemporaries; when he wasn’t one of the boys and he wasn’t looked upon as one of the gang. I think that’s when he started to act separate from everybody. He used to wear jeans and a blazer. Then he became a suit and tie guy.

LARAINE NEWMAN,
Cast Member:

Lorne was so close to our age, and because he was the person he was, he was uncomfortable being “the boss.” I don’t think he liked the barrier that that put between him and having true friendships with the people he worked with. I think the worst you can say is that he mismanaged or underestimated the impact he had on people who depended on him, and when he couldn’t make it good for them, how betrayed they felt. It’s tough, but I think that’s why a lot of people felt that the rug was pulled out from under them. I did too. I just felt like he was my guardian, you know, he had brought me from Los Angeles to do this show, yet all these people were getting more airtime than I was. I thought, why wasn’t he protecting me? Why wasn’t he making sure that I had as much time as anybody else? And it’s because I was one of many. It’s not as if he said to me, “Tough shit,” you know, or “That’s the way it is,” or “Love it or leave it.” He really tried to work with me. He really tried.

CHRISTINE ZANDER,
Writer:

We worked with him before he had children, and I think we were probably all his children before he had children. Lorne somehow manages to be a paternal figure, and I think that’s because he enjoys being a father. If he didn’t make eye contact with me for a day, I thought, okay, for sure I’m fired. And there would be nothing to support that paranoia.

JANE CURTIN,
Cast Member:

I think he picked the right profession, because he gets to lord over people who want to kneel at his feet and he doesn’t acknowledge them — which makes them work harder.

ANA GASTEYER,
Cast Member:

I think a lot of us are comfortable with or afflicted by or taken with distant fathers. I’m sure there’s a lot of alcoholism in a lot of families connected to the show, that’s what I gather. People here are comfortable with chaos. People here are comfortable with distance, with what’s not being said, and being able to read what’s not being said. So I think that there’s a comfort with Lorne’s silence for a lot of us.

ADAM SANDLER,
Cast Member:

Lorne does have a great way of making you feel comfortable. He can also make you feel nervous if he chooses to. But when Lorne would tell a cast member that their skit was funny or you did a good job in a particular bit that you did on the show, it felt great and it really helped your confidence. You felt secure and you felt like, “This guy’s seen a lot of different styles of comedy,” and he made you feel part of a cool group.

JON LOVITZ,
Cast Member:

Lorne says I made him like my dad, which I didn’t, but he was the boss, you know, and you want to please the boss. But he would say to me, “Come to me with any career problems or any problems you have.” I was supposed to do a movie with him and it didn’t happen. He blames the studio, and he told a friend of mine that it was my fault, and I got really angry. So then I said stuff about him and it all got back to him, so for four years we really didn’t get along. But the last few shows we made up.

I think a lot of us have mixed feelings for Lorne. We’re so grateful that he hired us and gave us this opportunity that we’d do anything for him. Then you want his approval. You want approval from your boss and the audience, and he’s just not the kind of guy who could do it all the time. I confronted him once, because every Monday he’d be screaming at me. I said, “Lorne, my characters are hit characters, I’m here until seven in the morning, I write three sketches every week.” Most of the other people weren’t writing for themselves because they didn’t know how. I said, “Do you like me? Do you have a problem with me?” Because I was determined not to be afraid of him. And then he goes, “Don’t do that, it’s too Jewish.” I was like, “What? What’s too Jewish?” And he says, “Saying you have a problem with me.”

ALAN ZWEIBEL:

Lorne’s modus operandi when it came to motivation was, we were a bunch of kids, and if we were denied Daddy’s — his — approval, we worked harder and harder to get it. Some thrived on that. Some didn’t.

HARRY SHEARER,
Cast Member:

I found that if you try to approach Lorne on an adult basis, make an appointment, go into his office, wait the requisite two hours, and try to have an adult conversation, you would find a very interesting, polished, smooth discussion that basically led to no results and no change at all. But I found that, as I watched what went on in the show, and sort of heard the stories of the previous years, it became more and more apparent that that was not the way to approach Lorne — that you really had to, if you were a cast member, act out. And if you set fire to wastebaskets, you’d get Lorne’s attention much more effectively than if you, you know, scheduled a meeting, waited, and talked like a grown-up with him.

I believed, and I think the evidence pretty much shows, that Lorne’s approach to the cast was to try to infantilize them. He wanted them to be like children; he’d be the daddy. That was his preferred way of relating to people. And I didn’t particularly want to relate that way.

NORA DUNN,
Cast Member:

Sometimes I would just get really, really mad and throw a fit to get attention. And then they’d think, “Uh-oh, something has to be done.”

You can’t help but make this sort of analogy that the show was our mother and Lorne was our father and you wanted to please both of them. You certainly didn’t want Lorne to be angry with you. The worst thing you could hear from Lorne was that you had “bad form.” He really meant it when he said that, and you really felt badly if you were accused of having “bad form.”

CANDICE BERGEN,
Host:

To me, one of the most, if not the most, interesting aspects is the relationship of Lorne to the cast. And all of the permutations that Lorne, as father figure, or as authority figure, goes through. There’s a kind of ambivalence that the cast had for someone who had really found them and put them in this and created their careers. It’s just unbelievable the number of talents that have come out of that show. And the resentment of Lorne is consistent with being a father figure and an authority figure — the desperate need for attention and for Lorne’s approval. These people went through all of this transference with Lorne as the father figure, with all the attendant complexities of it. The relationship of the cast to Lorne was just very complicated. Even to trying to keep people clean, trying to keep people sober, to keep people straight. I always felt Lorne was never given anywhere near the fractional credit that he deserved for really having such an impact on our culture and on comedy and on television.

RICHARD DREYFUSS,
Host:

We certainly were children. Actors can always be children. But Lorne was certainly an adult.

Of course, nobody knew he would do it for thirty years. But he was exactly the same then as he is now. He’s got good pace. He’s got a great rhythm. He never gets too excited — he never gets too up, he never gets too low. I would personally believe that he’s never been to a hockey game in his life.

JOHN GOODMAN,
Host:

You know, these are sensitive people Lorne has to deal with. A lot of them are people who are going to get hurt, because every once in a while they’re going to get their feelings stepped on. That doesn’t happen maybe as often as it used to, but it’s bound to happen from time to time. And anytime you’re dealing with people like that, there’s going to be a little hand-holding involved. Obviously Lorne knows this.

DAVID SPADE,
Cast Member:

When I first read “Hollywood Minute” at read-through, Lorne laughed all the way through it. It was really like having your dad say he liked something, and that was exciting.

JULIA SWEENEY:

I still have approval dreams about Lorne, which is very embarrassing. Like I wake up and I say to myself, “Oh God, how many fucking years does it take before you don’t have Lorne showing up in your dreams telling you that you did a good job on something?” I mean, like that’s pretty deep into the psyche.

BERNIE BRILLSTEIN,
Manager: