Lorne: A Review

LORNE

How does one make a documentary about someone when the documentary's subject shows no interest in participating in nor in blocking the project? This is the conundrum that director Morgan Neville faced in Lorne. This profile of Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels features someone who not only doesn't particularly want to be seen, but who doesn't seem to know who he is himself. We get in Lorne a most curious portrait of someone whom people talk about, but whom still is a bit opaque at the end.

Narrated by former SNL alum Chris Parnell, Lorne covers the rise, retirement and resurrection of Michaels along with his career. Lorne Michaels is seen pacing Studio 8H as he works on that year's season of the long running sketch series. We see how Michaels is a man of permanent, almost rigid routine. Larry Liberstein, who cleans Michaels' fishtank, literally calls him "a man of routine". Curiously enough, one of those routines is to never start a meeting when it is scheduled. We see in Lorne how a meeting set at 4:30 actually began at 6:37, which is par for the course in Michaels' world.

As Michaels works with various guest hosts ranging from Timothee Chalamet to Ryan Gosling to Emma Stone, we see how Michaels frets over various aspects. We see how the dress rehearsal shortly before airtime is where we see how long all those sketches the various writers and performers have gone through will make it or not.

"We don't go on because we're ready. We go on because it's 11:30", Michaels observes. 

Lorne also chronicles Lorne's early career prior to Saturday Night Live (originally titled NBC's Saturday Night). The young Canadian born Lorne Lipowitz had his own sketch comedy show in the Great White North, The Hart & Lorne Terrific Hour on the CBC. Michaels had already ventured into the United States, writing for Here's Lucy and Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. A major break was working with Lily Tomlin, who was instrumental in building up his career.

Lorne covers his various routines for Saturday Night Live hosts, like taking them and the cast/writers to dinner at the same restaurant he's taken all his guest hosts. We see how he walked away from Saturday Night Live for a few years. We see how his attempts to create a new show called The New Show bombed. We see how his return to SNL led to an even worse Season 11 (which I think he called the worst season). After that, however, Saturday Night Live started course correcting. Michaels was ruthless in firing flaying cast and writers, which he had been reluctant to do before. In Season 12, he brought in Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks (with Jon Lovitz surviving the purge). 

He reflects on some of the notorious moments, commenting that few people remember that a very good comedy sketch called Sweet Jimmy, The World's Nicest Pimp followed Sinead O'Connor's then-scandalous musical performance where she ripped the Pope's picture and declared, "Fight the REAL enemy". SNL cast members past and present all talk about working with Michaels. Of particular note is a roundtable with Bill Hader, Fred Armisen, Andy Samberg and John Mulvaney. They talk about the pressures of writing and performing. They, along with Carvey and via archival footage from Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy, show how they impersonated Michaels as a rather stiff figure.

I confess that I have not seen Saturday Night Live in years. I'm going to walk that back slightly. I did see parts of a 2024 season episode because Stevie Nicks was the musical guest. Apart from that, I could not name a current SNL cast member to save my life. The best that I could do today is I could identify the Weekend Update hosts of Michael Che and Colin Jost. For myself, I see Saturday Night Live the same way I see Dave Matthews Band: something I enjoyed while in college but haven't really cared for since.

One of the curious elements about Lorne is that in the end, Michaels is still a mystery. If one wants to see why Michaels runs, we do not see it in Lorne. I put that down to how Michaels really does not seem interested in being in front. My sense is that Michaels sees himself as a producer but not of much interest. It is interesting to see some looks behind the stern Michaels persona. I think Mike Myers was surprised that Michaels, for all his pressure to not have cast break out of character during the show, actually did exactly that on The Hart & Lorne Terrific Hour. 

We learn about Michaels' Maine retreat, which he finds restorative. We also learn about his love of blueberries. Lorne gives us bits here and there. Overall, though, Lorne Michaels still seems a bit of a shadow. Early on, Michaels comments that comedy is like pornography, you know it when you see it.

Lorne is not a bad film. It is, I would say, more of an inaccessible one in so much that the subject himself is inaccessible. I found Parnell's narration leaned a bit too much in the faux-serious tone, as if he thought his narration would sound dry and witty when it did not. I also found that once the animation segments that covered such things as Michaels' pool construction during his hiatus or his battles with network executives faded, Lorne became better.

One does, to be fair, learn a bit about what it is like to work for Michaels and on Saturday Night Live. We see how the writers work all through the night and essentially sweat it out as they go into the various proposed sketches. We learn that Michaels did have a bit of a stubborn streak early on. A sketch about Bees early on bombed. Michaels kept bringing back the Killer Bees despite network objections. Eventually, audiences embraced the oddball characters.

Again, after finishing Lorne, I did not learn much if anything about Lorne Michaels, the man. Well, I did learn that he keeps fish in his office. Lorne is best for those who genuinely care and are passionate about Saturday Night Live minutia. Apart from that, I think people should stick to watching the 2024 film Saturday Night if they want any insight, even fictional, into the longstanding ruler of late-night comedy.

DECISION: C+