By: James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales

Rating: 👍

“I’ve never been broke a day since I met Lorne Michaels” -Chris Rock

“The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30” -Lorne Michaels

There’s a lot of TV that is long-lived because it’s bland or un-opinionated (a lot of soap operas or reality TV, in my opinion). Some TV rises to become part of the zeitgeist because of its short life (think Seinfeld, Game of Thrones, or any other appointment TV). SNL is the rare show that everyone as watched at some point, and that everyone has loved (at some point).

“Live from New York” is a great view into that show for a couple of reasons. First, it’s something that everyone is already acquainted with. Second, and more importantly, it has a unique structure in that there is no “main character” per se - the book is an oral history of the first 40 years of the show. The entire book is quotational excerpts of the author’s interviews with the cast, crew, writers, hosts, etc. Lorne Michaels certainly operates as a load-bearing character in the history, just given his role as the creator, but surprisingly the book doesn’t focus primarily on him, and covers all the major narratives about SNL in its 40 year history.

There were a handful of operating principles that - whether by design or emergence - seemed to contribute to the shows success.

Violent Rejuvenation: For whatever reason, the employees were all brought on for 7 year contracts to begin, and very few renewed beyond that. This created a forcing function that made the writers and cast members cycle out and create a new bench of talent that could respond to new audience demographics as well. This was surprisingly common with how DARPA structures its program managers. Famous cast members like Adam Sandler were even fired to maintain this principle.

No Rules: In addition, there was no real set of rules or operating principles on what could or could not be on the show. A lot of cast members comment on how they didn’t know what to do when they started, but conversely I imagine this let them pursue a lot of their own tastes and ideas.

New Formats & Technologies: The entire production was always open to new content formats - things like the famous Cold Open, Weekend Update, SNL shorts were all experiments that they tried and worked out well.

At one point, they talk about some particular Emmys year not because of SNL winning best show, but because basically all the nominees, all of the hosts, all of the writers, and all of the producers of winning comedies were all SNL alumni. That was so mind boggling to me - I can’t think of too many institutions that are so dominant in their domain that their alumni also represent the upper echelons of that domain. Maybe Tiger and Tiger Cubs in the hedge fund world, PayPal and its mafia in technocapitalism, and the Manhattan Project in deep science.

What is even crazier is that this alumni boost applied not just to cast members or not just to working in comedy. Alec Baldwin (a recurrent host) at one point remarks in the book how he now tries to be nice to anyone involved in the show, because any random employee can end up becoming successful post SNL. Adam McKay (head writer) directed The Big Short, Bob Odenkirk (writer) became a dramatic actor, Conan O’Brien (writer) became a TV host, John Mulaney (writer) became a notable stand up comic. Even Al Franken (cast member) became a US Senator.

This phenomenon obviously begs the question of why - many cast members remark that SNL is like a “finishing school” of comedy, but that seems at odds with the fact that there’s no real “curriculum” or “education” aspect. It seems to me that it is purely a communal effect - you have some kind of vouching mechanism to know that someone is funny or talented enough to give them forward credit on projects - comedic or not.