Live from New York: An Oral History of Saturday Night Live by Tom Shales
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Saturday Night Live is more than just a television show. Since its premiere in 1975, the show has served as a trendsetter in American humor and had a remarkable effect on American mores, manners, music, politics, and even fashion. "

What a lame way of choosing the epigraph to a book review! The above quotes the first two sentences in Tom Shales' and James Andrew Miller's Live From New York. An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (2002). In contrast to the reviewer's cliché approach, the book itself is actually unconventional. Almost the entire book is a compilation of quotes (on average a paragraph long) from interviews or conversations with people connected with the show: actors, writers, producers, TV network bosses, and - of course - the one and only Lorne Michaels, the Main Guy, the Boss, the creator of the show and its Guardian Angel. That the resulting mélange of monologue snippets, arranged chronologically, reads astonishingly well is due to skillful editing of the authors, who provide occasional segues.

In 1975 the bosses of NBC network needed to fill schedule space left after the network agreed to Johnny Carson's demand to stop airing the reruns of the Tonight Show on weekends. The network wanted to produce a comedy show aimed at a younger audience, they wanted to have "the first television show to speak the language of the time", something like - in words of Lorne Michaels - a cross between Monty Python and 60 Minutes.

The first show aired on October 11, 1975, with George Carlin hosting and the famous Not Ready for Prime Time Players cast (Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, and Gilda Radner). This cast, little changed, lasted until 1980, and established a standard of excellence for several "generations" of casts that followed. The seamless merging of the actors' outstanding performances and excellent writing produced one of the best things ever on American television. The following insightful quote comes from the authors of the book:

"Saturday Night Live invigorated viewers because it represented so many departures from the safe, the sane and the expected."

I first watched the reruns of the "first generation" of the show about 1983 (I found the 1983 version of it, despite the presence of Eddie Murphy, completely unwatchable) and I remember being quite surprised that one could see a show as good as SNL. 99% of everything else on television was seemingly aimed at middle-school-level viewers. Who can forget Aykroyd's "Bass-O-Matic" sketch? His Julia Child's parody? Belushi's Samurai Deli? Radner's Emily Litella? Weekend Update with the strait-laced Jane Curtin being called "an ignorant slut"? And so many excellent hosts giving lifetime best performances, such as, say, Julian Bond's in 1977. Sorry for the reminiscences, back to the book.

In 1980 came the low point of the show's history, Lorne Michaels left and neither Jean Doumanian nor Dick Ebersol managed to attain the greatness of the original. I have to credit the authors of the book for attempting to classify the show's changing casts into several generations. The book ends in spring of 2002, with the sixth - I think - generation of casts, so the 21st century shows are not mentioned at all.

What I mainly like about the book, other than its unconventional form of conversation/interview snippets, is the clarity with which it shows that making TV shows is first of all a business, a money-making venture, and it takes a genius like Lorne Michaels to sneak in some quality despite the guidance (i.e., harmful interference) of the total morons at the helm of a TV network. I very much like that someone in each generation of the show reminisces about Gilda Radner. She was the best and the sweetest! Bill Murray comes across as the most insightful, eloquent, and convincing raconteur of all performers. His tribute to Ms. Radner is truly touching!

Readers interested in dirt will find a lot of it here. The legendary drug abuse and sex excesses of the first generation are frequently mentioned as are the intrigues, conflicts, loves and hates. Ms. Curtin says it well:

"The fact that here we all were, our lives forever intertwined, and you had these love-hate relationships with people, and things got said that were just so incredibly perfect and mean and funny and honest. Some people laughed, some people gasped. It was pretty cool.

Apologies for an overlong review, but the book's size is 565 pages - the longest book I have read in many years. Way too long but very interesting!

Three-and-a-half stars

View all my reviews