As he does with all of his documentaries (including his one on Paul McCartney, Man on the Run, which was released mere weeks ago), director Morgan Neville tailors his latest film, Lorne, to the subject. In this case, it's Lorne Michaels, the creator of Saturday Night Live and producer of countless TV shows and movies. Michaels is notoriously private, seemingly quite reluctant to even have this film made, and is of a firm belief that talking about comedy kills laughter in its tracks.
Perhaps the most shocking takeaway from the film is that Michaels isn’t a very interesting guy. He’s a creature of habit and routine—he goes to the same three restaurants and orders the same thing, depending on which one he chooses on any given day; the process he uses to put together an episode of SNL has been the same since he invented it in 1975; and even those closest to him are clueless about huge portions of his life. The film succeeds in bits and pieces to peek behind the walls Michaels has put up around his life, and the result is fascinating, even if the subject isn’t—probably because his list of friends and colleagues includes some of the most famous people in the world.
Plenty of books and doc specials have been made about SNL—many of which came out last year when the show celebrated its 50th anniversary—but none have attempted to get into Michaels’ world quite like this movie. But because the most interesting thing about the subject is his involvement in the show, Lorne ends up becoming a history of SNL, if only from his unique perspective. The film gets into the many people who do impressions of Michaels, perhaps most memorably Mike Meyers, who based the voice for his Dr. Evil character in the Austin Powers movies on his longtime boss. But it seems like most SNL cast members have some level of impersonation in their back pocket.
Director Neville digs a little into Michaels’ childhood and early years as a comedy performer on Canadian television. This archival footage is some of the best stuff in the movie, but none of it really explains how its subject became so good at spotting and nurturing talent. The five years he wasn’t producing SNL were shown to be pretty rough on him and the show, but even after he returned, the show had one of its worst years ever. Michaels attempts to consider the times in his life where things didn’t go well, as well as the many years where the show was front-loaded with incredible cast members, but often he just starts remembering individual sketches or performers.
But the parade of famous faces can’t be ignored, including a host of iconic cast members and writers, such as Tina Fey, John Mulaney, Seth Meyers, Conan O’ Brien, Mike Meyers, Sarah Sherman, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, Chris Rock, Maya Rudolph, Jimmy Fallon, Michael Che and Colin Jost, and Adam Sandler. And then there are his smaller list of friends who have actually dined with him and/or visited his home in Maine, like Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, Paul Simon, and Lily Tomlin, whose stage show Michaels brought to television early in his career.
We also get behind the scenes of the SNL process (mostly from season 49), seeing hosts like Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Ayo Edebiri, Kate McKinnon, and Timothée Chalamet work with the writers and cast, while consulting with Michaels the entire time. It’s a work environment and format I never get tired of hearing about, so to be afforded a chance to see it in action is remarkable. And watching Michaels silently judge and evaluate each sketch—from the read-through to dress rehearsal—is like watching a magic trick take place. Whatever the film may leave out—the almost no mention of Michaels’ involvement in the Kids in the Hall series is so blatant that it feels intentional—one gets a sense that Neville got the best version of this story that anyone would be capable of getting, especially considering how bad Michaels is at giving interviews.
But with some great footage from the history of SNL and additional animated segments done in the style of the show’s “Saturday TV Funhouse” shorts (courtesy of Robert Smigel), we end up getting something close to revealing, without Michaels having to give the filmmaker too much of himself. That would be too much to ask for, and even the most dedicated documentarian wouldn’t want to be the one who made Lorne Michaels any less of an enigma.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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