Book Review - Susan Morrison's LORNE

The Definitive SNL Book, Available Wherever You Get Your Reading

Susan Morrison’s Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, out this month, is one of the best Saturday Night Live books, if not the best. And I’ve read quite a few of them, from early efforts like Anne Beatts and John Head’s Saturday Night Live (with Generalissimo Francisco Franco on the cover and reproductions of scripts from the show’s first two seasons, among other things) and Rolling Stone Magazine Visits Saturday Night Live (profiles of and interviews with the original cast along with writer Michael O’Donoghue and producer Lorne Michaels) to the more recent memoirs by cast members Laraine Newman and Cecily Strong.

I can’t imagine a more interesting subject when it comes to people whose contributions to entertainment have largely happened off-camera, though Lorne Michaels’ occasional appearances on SNL have always been memorable. And apparently everybody that has ever worked for the guy can do his or her own dead-on Lorne impersonation; it almost feels like an employment prerequisite. Ms. Morrison thoroughly covers Michaels’ life and career, bookending each section with a play-by-play of SNL’s insane (and once cocaine-fueled) weekly production schedule.

Thanks to the author’s unprecedented access to Michaels (I wonder how long Lorne kept her waiting outside his office?) and the members of his circle, we get an essential portrait of this enigmatic figure as well as a first-rate survey of the last half-century of pop culture, scars and all.

Buy the Book HERE So I Can Start Collecting Those Fractions of Pennies!