Live From New York - James H. Miller [298]
LILY TARTIKOFF:
Seeing Lorne in L.A. is odd. If you want to see Lorne you should see him in New York.
BERNIE BRILLSTEIN:
No one remembers that Lorne was a great writer, he’s a great editor, and his comedy mind is fantastic. But he’s two different guys — he’s Gatsby and he’s Lorne the Canadian. He’s two different people. He loves that New York life. In fact, he loves New York more than I do, and I was born there.
DANA CARVEY:
Lorne loves New York because, as he would say, “you’ve got finance, you’ve got the theater, and you’ve got broadcast networks. It’s not this sort of one-trick pony.”
DAN AYKROYD:
I did get mad once and put a hole through a wall in Lorne’s office. I punched a hole in it because I was so mad at the way he would give us last-minute changes before air. We would have to run down and give them to the cue card guys, and they would be going crazy and saying, “Are you kidding?! You want us to get this on?!” And I just said, at a certain point, we have got to decide what’s in and what’s out within each sketch — what are the changes and they’ve got to be done in time, so that you can get them to cards and we aren’t standing there with them shuffling cards in front of us on the air. Because everything is read on that show. You can’t memorize; it’s happening too fast. So I had that one episode when I was mad at him, but I never had any other tense moments with Lorne. And that went away fast.
AL FRANKEN:
After Danny put his fist through the wall, Lorne came in and did his “I’m very disappointed” thing. That’s what I remember more than anything else about the incident. Lorne’s reaction was of “disappointment” — like a father being disappointed — instead of actual anger. I remember watching that and thinking, “That’s a smart way to handle this.”
CONAN O’BRIEN:
I remember once he was really mad about a dress that had gone really badly. And we were all packed into that little room afterwards. And he’s really pissed. Because this dress didn’t go well and a lot of things went wrong. And he’s like doing that Lorne thing that he can do sometimes — heavy, heavy sarcasm. Because Lorne will not usually confront you directly. He would just say things like, “Oh, I loved how it had no ending,” or “It was brilliant how it just sort of dribbled off.” And he’s trying to talk about the lousy dress, and I think Bob Odenkirk, who was very junior at that point, whispered to somebody something, and Lorne just went, “Odenkirk, you speak again, I’ll break your fucking legs.” And it was like the first time I had seen him actually swinging into action and actually beating someone up. It really made me laugh.
KATE JACKSON, Host:
I remember when I was hosting, somebody came in and said something to Lorne about John Belushi being in bad shape, and Lorne said, “We’re on live at eleven-thirty. He’s not allowed to die until after the show.”
ANDREW SMITH, Writer:
I used to call Lorne every year to see if he had a spot open, until the last time I had a meeting with him. He’d kept me waiting for about an hour and a half or more — a long fuckin’ time. And I finally got in there, and then he did his dinner reservations with his assistant during our meeting. Where was dinner going to be, what time was it going to be, that sort of thing. And then that was the end of the meeting. To make matters worse, Lorne still has to be introduced to me every time I meet him. Every time I see him, somebody will have to say, “Lorne, you know Andrew Smith, don’t you?” “Oh, yes, yes. Hello.” I think he’s become a full British subject now in his mind, hasn’t he?
BOB TISCHLER:
I have been told so many stories as to who came up with the idea for Saturday Night Live. Dick always tried to claim a certain amount