Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [77]
Whatever Lorne might have been, I do know he was unflappable. The only story I heard about him breaking character happened when the band Skid Row was on the air. During the live show, Lorne always sat in a director’s chair under the bleachers, and he always had an Amstel Light at the ready. The show was live and Skid Row was introduced. Sebastian Bach took the mike and said, “It’s good to be here and we are live, motherfuckers!” Lorne dropped his Amstel Light onto the stage floor. Instantly he regained his composure, turned to one of the stage managers, calmly said, “Cancel their second song,” and walked away.
I know enough to know how historically significant Lorne is to television. He definitely broke the back of the Lawrence Welk America. In my mind, he had started it all: antiestablishment, underground cool, late-night television. He created the mold and then threw it away. Every other imitator in his wake failed. Saturday Night Live originally went on the air in 1975, and Lorne Michaels has been executive producer of every episode, except for a brief hiatus from 1980 to 1985. How many people have produced the same television show for that long? Zero.
Even the supposed bombs of movies that Lorne produces are cash cows. They cost practically nothing to make, and they’re already written by the time you get the idea to put them on film. In my opinion, the guy has written the book on how to be successful. Professionally speaking, if I were to analyze his career, I would have to give him As across the board. Personally speaking, I didn’t really form a clear-cut opinion of Lorne. As the Brits might say, I always found him to be rather pleasant, but mind you, I rarely actually saw him.
I would joke to people who asked me how he was to work with that he was like Charlie on Charlie’s Angels. I seldom laid eyes on him, but each week he was the one providing me with my mission. Oddly, I never heard him crack a joke either. Was he funny? He had delivered the great line “If you want to pay Ringo less, it’s okay with me.” So when friends would ask me what type of guy Lorne was, all I could muster was an “I don’t really know.”
Lorne’s office was on the other end of the seventeenth floor from the writers’ room, as well as from the offices of most of the cast and the writers. I’m sure this was by design. With the exception of waiting for the Monday-night pitch meeting to begin, there was never a reason for you to be hanging around his office. You could pretend that you were reading letters of protest for only so long.
Lorne had an incredible number of secretaries. Stories about the show say they are called the Lorne-ettes. When I was on the show, I never heard anyone ever refer to them that way. They were all called by their names. They were all pretty beautiful, too. That, I’m sure, was also by design. There were at least five, but probably more. I could never make a definite head count because they were never all at their desks at the same time. But they were certainly there. No one could walk unimpeded to Lorne’s office without passing at least one of them. Checkpoint after checkpoint stripped you of your privacy as you arrived at the door.
One thing was clear about Lorne: He was the master of our domain. In a strange way, the show ran itself until he felt like running it. I just didn’t know from where or when he did it. Though he did it rarely, Lorne made it clear he was the boss. During my second season when Lorne was addressing the outside rumors of the show’s impending demise, he lectured us. “Many of you hear things from the outside