Lorne Michaels Isn’t So Hard to Know

Lorne, the documentary about Lorne Michaels, isn’t so much a valentine as a funny gift card. The boss comes in for a lot of ribbing, and the film plays a jolly game of keep-away with the audience. Talk of the real Lorne Michaels periodically surfaces (“Who is Lorne Michaels?” the narrator asks) only to be batted aside by another reminder of his unknowability. The saps want the real Lorne, those of us in the know don’t fall for that nonsense—such is the undercurrent that I detect in this brisk, well-made, very in-the-know portrait directed by Morgan Neville. Go along with the idea of Lorne the sphinx and you’re part of the gang, if only the extended gang of hand-me-down insiders. “Smash cut!” John Mulaney says as he and some fellow vets of Saturday Night Live riff (showbiz term) about how the documentary will be edited. The rest of us all get it—we know what smash cut means.

I’d say that Michaels was hard to read, not to understand. Most of what’s remarkable about him is straightforward: intelligence, ambition, executive ability, love of luxury, and a firm intent to keep his job. His one wrinkle is that this man who runs the show avoids going nose-to-nose with anyone. He doesn’t confront, he sidesteps; he doesn’t argue, he wraps you about in his loopity-loop sentences. That complication’s been well explained by Susan Morrison in her Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, a nonintrusive but thorough biography that appeared last year. When he was 14, Michaels had a fight with his father, and his father very suddenly died later that night of a pulmonary embolism. Ever since Michaels has stepped carefully and obliquely while pursuing his lifelong goal of getting things his way.

Lorne the documentary gets to this incident about two-thirds into the movie and deals with it at speed. Paul Simon, acting as a sort of major domo to the Lorne inner sanctum, gives us the bones and then we’re on to 30 Rock and how Jack is Tina Fey’s rendition of Lorne. The film does have a few moments of truth-baring, but they’re more for flavor. Ayo Edebiri is tense and prone to overburble when making conversation with Lorne, and the camera stays on the two as they finally look away from each other and sit there. The maître d’ of Lorne’s favorite restaurant is asked what the man orders and he answers with a cool bit of New Yawkah bravado: “It’s like Vegas. What happens here stays here.” This bit of color would’ve done fine on its own, but again the camera stays. Having delivered his line, he waits for a response and receives silence. So he twitches and we see it. Not much is revealed here except the moment-to-moment embarrassments of life, but it feels like truth is being served up.

For an old-timer, it’s striking that Chris Farley’s death is treated as a milestone while John Belushi’s gets no mention. Not that Belushi’s absence is a fault necessarily, but what a sign of our changing world. Lorne’s various wives or children aren’t mentioned either, which I suppose isn’t so much a gap as an indication of the movie’s intent. This is a movie about Lorne the boss. “Big Boss Man” plays us out (showbiz term) for the finishing credits, and Paul Simon’s the only person we hear from who isn’t an employee or some other work associate. Lorne doesn’t matter because of his writing or acting, he matters because of his work situation, and it’s one he created. The apparatus around Lorne Michaels delivers Saturday Night Live to the TV three times a month, eight months a year, and has been doing that (or similar numbers) since Reagan was president.

Michaels started the show and built the apparatus, and then he rebuilt it again after walking off. Now he’s kept things running and it’s 40 years plus. So there’s a film about him. Lorne’s about a manager, as in a man with employees. His work matters to everybody else, depending on their interest in the show, but the man himself matters to a smaller circle, namely the people who work for him. That’s where the sphinx business comes in. To them he’s a sphinx: he won’t laugh at auditions, he won’t come out and say you’re hired (“Are you good about moves?”). When you’re up for renewal, maybe he’ll let you dangle a bit before you get a call.

For the rest of us, he’s not such a sphinx. He’s a powerful, gifted man who isn’t all that considerate, and all right, he likes to hang back and weigh his options. But there’s no mystery, not unless he’s pondering a sketch and you wrote it. (Lorne pulls his chin. Then: “Vigor works when the audience knows it bought a ticket.” You panic—what?) But you can worry about that. The rest of us, for our purposes, find your boss predictable. He’ll put on your sketch about the menstruating hamburger, or some other sketch about a horny French fry (or a gameshow for ex-girlfriends, or suburban couples acting weird). He likes being in charge and making big money and he knows what he’s doing. The show will keep chugging along.