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Those guys probably knew Farley better than I did. He was always loud and acting up, and one time I caught his eye and said, “Take it down a notch.” So after that, if I’d look down at him, he’d go, “Take it down a notch.” I got to know his family; we had Mother’s Day specials two years in a row, and he brought on his mother and his family — all great people. I think Chris just wanted to make people laugh. He wanted to make sure that he was funny. He always felt he had to be funny — that was his torture.

AL FRANKEN, Writer:

It got to be when cast members and new people came in, they sort of had this template to go by, which is do the show, become a star on the show, get movies, and become Eddie Murphy. And the problem was, many of the cast members that came in thought that would be their arc. And many of the people who came into the show thought it was sort of chapter two or chapter one in the incredible career of “Them.” Like, “This is Manifest Destiny. This is meant to happen. I am Eddie Murphy.”

And the worst of that was the attitude, “Get out of the way, old man,” to any of us who’d been there awhile, instead of, “I want to learn something.” Now Farley was not that way. Farley revered the show. And with anyone who had any contact with the old show, he just wanted to sit and listen.

JON LOVITZ, Cast Member:

I was in California and Brad Grey calls me and said, “Lorne called and said they’re doing something on the show and it’s just a joke and they love you.” I said, “Oh. All right.” So I watched the show that night, and it’s a cold opening, and Lorne says, “You’re really leaving, huh?” And Dennis goes, “Yes.” And then Lorne says, “You’re not going to keep coming back like Lovitz are you? It’s pathetic.” I was like really hurt. I was like, “You asshole.”

And the audience didn’t laugh. It bombed. But I was really pissed. And I was like, “Fuck them, I’m not going back.” I thought it was really shitty. Because they kept asking me to come back. And then after that, they still asked me to come back! Lorne goes, “Oh, it’s just a joke.” I go, “Oh, what’s funny? It didn’t seem funny to me, and the audience didn’t laugh.” It was really mean-spirited.

Worried about losing cast members to the movies or prime-time television, Michaels overstocked the show and in the process proved that there can be too much of a good thing. A cast so large was bound to be fractious, with the competition for airtime fever-pitched. The SNL troupe of the early nineties tended to split along generational lines, with Sandler, Farley, and Rock — the new boys — pitted against veterans like Carvey, Hartman, Nealon, and Franken. Mike Myers sort of straddled the field, prepping for his own film career.

The show was turning another corner. Baby boomers who’d grown up with it were becoming less demographically desirable to advertisers. As the decade progressed, Michaels relied more and more on young, “hot” stars to host the show and lure younger audiences, knowing that viewers who’d been with SNL from the beginning might never have heard of them but that their kids — yes, now they had kids — probably had. It was a time of less than subtle humor but, often, huge laughs.

CHRIS ROCK:

I’ve been friends with Adam sixteen, seventeen years — since I started stand-up. I was a young comedian and he was a young comedian but also in college; he was going to NYU.

I was doing some movie, Hangin’ with the Homeboys, and they wanted to meet with me. And little-known fact: Lorne Michaels makes you wait two, three hours to see him. There’s many a funny comedian that couldn’t wait. None of them are very successful now that I know of. So I waited.

We auditioned the same night. There were all these great character guys ahead of us and we really felt inferior. We didn’t know why we were there. I didn’t even wait around to meet Lorne after the audition, because I knew I wasn’t going to get it. I guess Farley auditioned the same night too, but he auditioned at Second City. I got to audition, and then I stuck