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TOM SCHILLER:

The hip thing to do in those days was to go to the desert and eat hallucinogenic mushrooms. So we went to Joshua Tree and Lorne did the mushrooms. I don’t think I really took them myself; it just seems like I did. He was talking a blue streak about this television show he was going to do; he would just never stop. I was really surprised that he could still take phone calls from New York at the pool after he had ingested those mushrooms. He never becomes noticeably different under any circumstances. You can’t get through the glaze of brown eyes. You can’t go behind them.

I didn’t want to work in television; I wanted to be a great director, but I said yes to Lorne because I hated L.A. so much. When I first arrived in New York, I slept on the couch in Lorne’s apartment. He would entertain people like Mick Jagger at the apartment, and Jagger would be sitting on the very couch that I was going to go to sleep on. I just couldn’t wait for him to leave, because the second he got up, I would go to sleep.

HERBERT SCHLOSSER:

No matter what anyone else tells you, the guy who created the show, and made it what it is, is Lorne Michaels.

LORNE MICHAELS:

So much of what Saturday Night Live wanted to be, or I wanted it to be when it began, was cool. Which was something television wasn’t, except in a retro way. Not that there weren’t cool TV shows, but this was taking the sensibilities that were in music, stage, and the movies and bringing them to television.

Michaels continued his search for talent, listening to suggestions from network executives that he never for a moment considered, protected to some degree by Ebersol from direct interference. Some performers had to be pursued, others threw themselves at Michaels. He also relied on the many contacts he’d made as a performer and writer in Canada and on talent gleaned from improvisational groups like Chicago’s and Toronto’s Second City and the Groundlings in Los Angeles.

DAVE WILSON, Director:

I got involved because I was editing a show called A Salute to Sir Lew Grade. British television decided to salute him on his eightieth birthday or whatever it was, and they did an all-star show at the New York Hilton. Gary Smith and Dwight Hemion were actually the producers, but they couldn’t stay so they left it all in my hands to get edited. And while I was editing, the production assistant on the show said she was going for an interview, there was a new show starting at NBC, some late-night thing that a Canadian kid was going to be producing. And I said, “Oh, what’s it called?” And she said, “I don’t know. I think it’s called Saturday Night.” I said, “Isn’t that Howard Cosell and Roone Arledge at ABC?” And she said, “Oh no, that’s the prime-time Saturday Night. This is the late-night Saturday Night.”

I called my manager and said I was interested and could he get me an interview. The funny thing about it was, I had to fight with my manager. He kept saying, “Oh, you don’t want to get involved with a late-night thing, you want to be involved with a prime-time show.” I said, “No, I don’t want to be involved with a prime-time show, this late-night show looks like it’s got some very interesting people involved.”

I got an interview in a weird way too, because Lorne wasn’t seeing anybody. I guess he had just had it with people being forced down his throat. But luckily my manager was a very good friend of Bernie Brillstein, and I had worked with Bernie on a Muppet show, “Sex and Violence with the Muppets.” And Bernie said, “I know Dave Wilson, he gets along great with Jim Henson. And if he can get along great with Jim Henson, he can get along great with anybody.” So he put in the word to Lorne that maybe I was somebody he’d be interested in seeing.

HOWARD SHORE:

I actually had to find the band. I’m an avid collector of music and of jazz and R&B, and I just called people I’d listened to on records. I got in touch with as many people as I could that I was interested in. I knew they were in New York.