Live From New York - James H. Miller [299]
NORMAN LEAR, Host:
I have a routine that I’ve done with my daughter Kate since she was four years old. It’s an ancient burlesque kind of sketch. I ask her to help me tell a joke and she tries very hard and messes up and I jump on her for it and she begs for another chance. She messes up in a different way and I jump on her. And it builds and I get angrier and angrier at this child. And it was always terribly funny. I had a wonderful and still have a wonderful relationship with Lorne, and I told him I’d love to do this and he saw it and he said, “Oh God, that’s great. We’ll do it.” But we’re now talking the live show. Lorne had somebody making cartoons, I don’t remember who it was, and halfway through this live show, I’m about to come out and Lorne says, “I want to run the cartoon” and to cut the sketch with my daughter. So pretty soon I’m out there introducing Boz Scaggs, my music act, and I’m looking at my daughter, who’s sitting with her mother and her sister in such anticipation. And when it comes time to go to the cartoon, I instead start the thing with Kate, and I bring her up onstage, and we do the routine — which played very well, very well. And Lorne never said a word to me, but I knew he was furious, and he had every right to be. But it was either my daughter or his wrath. And I chose my daughter. In a show business sense, it was not the thing to do. I’m guilty. But Lorne never said anything to me about it. He also never asked me back.
ANNE BEATTS:
I had been out to dinner with my father, and I of course had to go back to work. My father was kind of drunk and against my will insisted on coming back with me to the office. In the hall, he buttonholed Lorne and started telling him what he was doing wrong. He was basically telling Lorne how to produce the show. And I was horribly embarrassed and mortified by this. I remember Lorne said to me, “He’s not you. Remember, he’s not you.” I thought that was very kind.
FRED SILVERMAN, NBC President:
Lorne and I didn’t go out to dinner every night. I think he had a different relationship with Herb Schlosser than he did with me. Maybe he needed more tender loving care at that point in time than I had given him. It’s one of those things where you really attack your problem areas. If something is working — like Saturday Night Live was — you say, “God bless you,” and you just let them alone. I think Lorne mistook that for a lack of love, which really wasn’t the case. It wasn’t an intentional slight on my part. There were just major fires all over the network. So I think that was part of it. He never felt he had that daily support and tender loving care.
MIKE SHOEMAKER, Coproducer:
No one takes more shit on television than Lorne, and most of the stuff that’s written doesn’t make it to air because people are not that interested in seeing it. But I guarantee you, every week he’s at the read-through, there’s something that punctures Lorne’s status, like he’s getting a pedicure or something.
There’s a running thing that we do where Tracy Morgan says to Lorne, “Go get me a soda, bitch.” Smigel started it all, but the reason Lorne doesn’t stop those things isn’t because he’s worried about the press. He’s worried about seeming thin-skinned.
BUCK HENRY, Host:
I wish he’d make better movies, but then I wish I’d make better movies. So that’s no big deal. It wasn’t a mistake for him to come back to the show, because it’s what he has done the best.
AL FRANKEN:
I was actually thinking of giving Lorne a scare and telling him that my daughter is on the Lampoon and her stuff is really good and she would love to come to SNL. And then he would feel like he would have to hire her.
MOLLY SHANNON:
Lorne’s a deep thinker. He can