Live From New York - James H. Miller [294]
ROBERT SMIGEL, Writer:
After my first season I thought I was going to be fired, because Franken said, “Well, I know it’s not looking good. I mean, you did great, but it’s going to be hard.” So I went back to Chicago that summer to work on a stage show. I was really expecting to be fired, and then Lorne brought me in days before the new season and just interviewed me. He asked, “What was your favorite thing you did last season?” It was a very odd kind of short interview. “All right, well, we’re just figuring things out.” I’d flown from Chicago to talk to him and then all he said was, “I’ll let you know.” I flew back to Chicago and got another call from him, and he said, “I don’t know, you didn’t write for the women much.” I said, “Well, you know, I just did the best I could, I thought I wrote a lot of good things.” “Well, you wrote good showbiz things, but you gave some of the actors a hard time.” So he was saying these things and then said, “Okay, get on a plane, come tomorrow.” It was so weird.
People get all paranoid about him unless they know him, and as I got to know him over the years, he’s a pretty real person and he really is in a very difficult situation. Whether he likes the situation and likes the grief that comes with it, I don’t know. It’s a very difficult setup here. Everybody’s pitted against each other. People have egos and people are insecure and it’s a formula for paranoia. When I was producing the Dana Carvey show, I actually got to see some things from the perspective of being in charge, and I called Lorne and said, “I apologize for ever not understanding what your job is.”
RACHEL DRATCH, Cast Member:
I never get feedback from Lorne. You always get your notes from some middleman, like, “Lorne wants you to pick up the pace here,” or whatever. Sometimes after the show if you did a scene that went really well he’ll say something, but he never gets specific like, “Oh my God, when you said that line it cracked me up!” You just have to be able to do without stuff like that.
CHERI OTERI, Cast Member:
I don’t think you ever really know where you stand with Lorne, and I think that’s frustrating, because it’s almost like a family, even with its dysfunction, because you want to please him. I always say, “Did Lorne laugh under the bleachers?” I don’t have much dialogue with him at all. You live for him to say just once, “Good job.” That’s the hardest thing, is not having the dialogue that I feel like you should have with your boss.
If you want to see him, he’ll see you eventually. But sometimes I think you wish that he would offer things to you. You want a little guidance. But he’s not that way. And in a way it’s good, because he lets you go and you’re very free to do whatever is instinctually there. And the other cool thing is, sometimes they’ll say, “He doesn’t want you to do that,” and I’ll go in and I’ll say, “I’ve got to do that, that’s important,” and he’ll say, “Okay.” He really trusts our instincts, the performers. I think he’s very respectful of what our instincts are.
One time I came back from the summer and he said, “I’d embrace you, but I think I might be coming down with a cold.” And I was like, “It’s okay, hug me anyway.” But I’ll go up and I will hug him sometimes and I will kiss him whether he likes it or not, because I feel it. But it’s hard when you don’t get it back. I understand people who aren’t comfortable with stuff like that. They can just give so much. And I guess he’s one of those people. He can just give so much, but when you’re working for him you really go like, “Anything??? Oh, nothing, huh?” Like, “Say ‘good show’ once. Just say it once.” You know? Nothing. And it’s like you feel starved sometimes. But then you get used to it, I guess. It’s fuckin’ crazy, it really is.
CAROL LEIFER:
Lorne and I had such a strange relationship. I don’t know what possessed me, but near the end of the season I saw him walking down the hall to go to the elevator, and I hid around the corner, and when he came around the corner I just went, “Boo!” And it kind of really startled him. And I remember