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Murray said the date marked another milestone, the thirteenth anniversary of Gilda Radner’s death. “Audrey’s gone, Gilda’s gone, Belushi’s gone,” Murray said, “and there’s so many other people that should have gone first. A lot of them are in this room today.” Much laughter from the crowd. “Anybody here that wants to admit that they should have died ahead of Audrey?” The question was rhetorical and facetious, but a few people raised their hands.

Michaels stood at the back of the room during the speeches, inescapably and perpetually, if remotely, patriarchal. It is a family, after all — a family of gifted misfits and brilliant oddballs — and it comes together now and then to remember, to celebrate, to mourn — and, no matter how solemn the occasion, to laugh.

ALAN ZWEIBEL, Writer:

Emotions are things that I’ve never really seen Lorne easily verbalize. I was hoping, hoping that there would be something emotional that he would say at Audrey’s memorial. Brad Grey, like many others, said it’s too bad he has so much trouble emoting. You just assume over the course of years, especially when people have kids, that there’s a softening, that there’s some sort of emotional acknowledgment, you know. I guess some people it doesn’t work with. I can’t speak about Lorne authoritatively, I just don’t know anymore.

I live in California, so I hadn’t seen a lot of those people and combinations of people in many years, and I was affected by it in a very, very profound way. In a wonderful way. I was happy that I had these kinds of feelings. My mind immediately went to, “Jesus, if Lorne dies, are we still going to be able to get together like this? Who’s going to throw the party?”

DON OHLMEYER:

I’ve always admired what Lorne’s been able to do for so long. When you think of all the different sketches that have gone into SNL since, what, 1975 — when you think of all the things that they’ve done, there’s a lot of chaff among the wheat. But God, the wheat is spectacular.

LORNE MICHAELS:

I tend to think that the most interesting work done each week gets on the air. I think that’s what an editor’s supposed to do, bring out the best in writers. Do we get the best writers? I think people who want to do this kind of work find us. Now there’s Mad TV, and on cable there’s a bunch of these kinds of shows. Conan O’Brien, Leno, do all these sketches. Most of the writers who have been on The Simpsons are people who passed through here. Seinfeld too.

I’ve never left here on any Saturday night thinking, “Well, that was a great one.” I tend to see only the mistakes. That hasn’t changed. Neither has the amount of adrenaline that you produce to get through the show. What has changed is that the hangover of it is generally gone by sometime Sunday, whereas it used to be that a show that didn’t work could ruin a whole month. You’d go back and obsess about it. It’s like at the beginning you just worry all the time, and when you get older you know when to worry.

Now on the weekend I have kids jumping on me. You can’t get out of it with “Daddy worked really, really hard,” or “Daddy was up till four-thirty in the morning.” The worst thing is when you find that you still have the taste of beer in your mouth and you’re getting up and being a dad and it’s only been four or five hours since you went to bed.

GWYNETH PALTROW:

Fame is such a weird and distorting thing. I’ve thought a lot about it, and my theory is that you kind of stop growing at the age you are when you become famous. Because what happens is, people start removing all your obstacles, and if you have no obstacles you don’t know who you are. You don’t have real perspective on the problems that face you in life, how to surmount them, and what kind of character you have. When you’re in the public eye, people project things onto you, and if you take them on yourself, they’re very scattering and they can alienate you. Being famous can be very damaging in lots of ways. Saturday Night Live is proof of that.