“Live from New York, A History of SNL” by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales

Oral histories are super fun. They combine so many different voices and so many different anecdotes and points of view that they are never boring. I expect they are also extremely difficult to put together. Consisting of hours and hours of interviews, which then have to be transcribed, organized, split apart and then reworked to create a narrative, this is an editor’s genre. It’s also a genre that lets the past speak like few others. (Studs Terkel’s Working is a masterpiece in this respect — and, I mean, his name is sort of amazing.)

With Live from New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests, James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales have created an exemplar of the form. Even better, it’s on a truly fascinating subject. Although I did not grow up watching much SNL (our family was more partial to SCTV), I remember watching some of the movies that were connected with (or adjacent to) the SNL world — Three Amigos, Coneheads, Wayne’s World.

I started watching the show more in earnest in my early twenties, catching the tail-end of Will Ferrell’s era. By the time I was married in 2005, my wife and I would regularly turn on the show Saturday nights, watching Tina Fey and Amy Poehler knock Weekend Update out of the park every time. Although the book highlights how important the first five years were to the establishment of the show (1975–1980), many of its interviewees acknowledge that the early 2000s (with stars such as Maya Rudolph, Fred Armisen, Andy Samberg, and so many others) represented a kind of golden age.

Now, with our kids, we regularly cycle through various clips and sketches — just the clean ones, mom! The punchlines and references from the show have become memes that the kids swap with each other. “I need more cowbell,” indeed. There has been some fun synergies between certain SNL casts from the last decade and other shows our family enjoys like the new DuckTales series. Although we are still getting to know the current cast, the “Please Don’t Destroy” crew from the show are very popular in our home. (That being said, my wife and I are so looking forward to introducing our kids to the Lonely Island guys — in my opinion, the superior trio.)

The book opens in the years just prior to the show starting. The interview approach works well here to allow some of the inconclusive aspects of this time to stand unresolved. What were the respective roles of Lorne Michaels, Dick Ebersol, Albert Brooks, and others in the founding? Brooks had the idea to rotate hosts, but was less interested in doing it live. Dick Ebersol (who was with NBC) and Lorne Michaels both were deeply involved from the outset. Ultimately, though, as this book makes clear, this is Lorne’s show — and he’s been with it for nearly its entire run.

The experience of working behind the scenes on the show comes alive through the stories of dozens of cast members, crews, and hosts. (There is a great list of the cast for each year in an appendix.) SNL is where so many of the most famous comedians of the last fifty years got their start (or at least their mega-boost to stardom). Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Tim Meadows, Amy Poehler… (Probably not wise to write a list.) There were several folks that I hadn’t realized worked on the show — Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Gilbert Gottfried, Janeane Garofalo, and others.

There were fun facts about the production too. I loved reading about Lorne’s insistence on having excellent hair and makeup people and top-notch equipment. The pressure and hackery and sheer expertise required to make the whole thing happen is unreal.

The work environment and pace of SNL is bonkers. Sunday is off, but by Tuesday people are often writing all night, Wednesday is the table read, Thursday, they’re building sets, and dress rehearsal happens Saturday, ending an hour and a half before the live show. After the show is done, everyone goes out to celebrate another week. Sometimes they’re celebrating a great show; sometimes they’re just celebrating being done a tough one.

A key takeaway for me was that there were a lot of drugs in the 70s. Pretty wild stuff. On the other hand, more recent members of the cast talk about the health culture in Studio 8H these days. Bill Hader has a great line about a host showing up and being informed that so-and-so is “going off sugar.” Seems like a trend in a good direction!

The book is 800 pages long and boasts more characters than a Tolstoy. Given this, I was impressed that the voices aren’t all saying the same thing. It really does seem “uncensored,” as the title claims. Lorne is interviewed a lot, but so are a bunch of folks who aren’t fans of Lorne. There’s a lot of shade cast in different directions. Miller and Shales have done a great job putting these voices in dialogue with each other, but allowing the reader to come to their own conclusions.

Fun read!