Splitsider

“I remember a summer Sunday walking along the beach in Sagaponack. Lorne was, again, telling me something about himself as we approached a group of Hamptonites standing in a semicircle. In their midst was a beached and apparently deceased shark. ‘Is it dead?,’ Lorne inquired. No one seemed to know or be willing to find out. To my surprise, Lorne broke the circle and, placing his mouth inches from the beady eyes, said to the shark, ‘A rabbi, a minister, and a priest walk into a bar … ‘ There was a moment of tense silence as Lorne finished the joke and waited for a reaction. Getting none, he stood [...]

Alec Baldwin has secured the comedy podcast get to end all comedy podcast gets for Here's the Thing: the man, the legend, the Lorne Michaels. The full episode drops next Monday, but here's a clip. (You gotta hand it to them for name-dropping Tina Fey in under 35 seconds.)

Lost Roles is a weekly column exploring what might have been in TV and film comedy, taking a different comedian, writer, or work each week and examining the casting possibilities and career moves that almost came to be. This week: the nixed casting possibilities for the 1978 movie Animal House.

It's difficult to put into perspective how huge a pop cultural event the release of National Lampoon's Animal House was in the summer of 1978. While there was a big hubbub made over The Hangover two years ago when it became the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time; when inflation is factored in, that film pales in comparison [...]

One of the benefits of Up All Night's cast and crew being full of TV veterans is that they can call on their friends and colleagues to drop by every now and then to spice things up. Last night’s episode featured appearances by Will Forte and The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone, both of whom worked on SNL with Up All Night producer Lorne Michaels, creator Emily Spivey, and star Maya Rudolph. (Forte also co-starred with Will Arnett in The Brothers Solomon.) Up All Night's three-person cast is extremely tiny — smaller than any network sitcom in recent memory*, and because of this, guest turns by comedy stars like Forte [...]

The Hollywood Reporter has a pretty huge profile of Lorne Michaels that just went up, one that resulted from a writer hanging with him the entire week of the Helen Mirren episode. It's full of great insights and anecdotes and well worth reading. For example: did you know that he has a "World's Funniest Boss" mug? Maybe the only one of those "World's ______ ______" mugs that is actually accurate.

Lost Roles is a weekly column that takes a particular comedic performer or writer and dives deep into all of their movie and TV projects that came close to happening but didn’t for one reason or another. This week, we turn our attention to beloved and much-missed original SNL castmember Gilda Radner.

I’ve recently noticed that, amongst the current crop of comedians and comedic actors, two of the most often-cited influences are for guys, Bill Murray, and for girls, Gilda Radner. These two members of Saturday Night Live's 70s golden era hold a prolific place in the hearts and minds of those in the comedy community. While Bill [...]

After making the transition from one American comedy institution (Chicago's Second City Theatre) to another (Saturday Night Live), Tina Fey spent nearly a decade on SNL as a writer (and later a cast member) before creating a comedy powerhouse of her own: the critically-acclaimed NBC sitcom 30 Rock. Fey followed in Conan O'Brien's footsteps by pulling off an unusual and unexpected shift from writing comedy to performing it under Lorne Michaels's watchful eye, and she subsequently established herself as one of the leading comedic voices of her generation. From SNL to Mean Girls to 30 Rock, Fey has navigated her career wisely, creating a resume that's free of any [...]

Weekend Update is by far the longest running segment in Saturday Night Live's history, with the anchor position being one of the most coveted gigs on the show. Since the fake news sketch debuted in the show’s very first episode (then hosted by Chevy Chase), it’s been featured in just about every episode of the show (except for during the Lorne Michaels-less era in the early 80’s when it was retitled SNL Newsbreak and Saturday Night News). Weekend Update holds an important place in comedic history in that it served as the spiritual predecessor to other pieces of faux-journalism that came to dominate American comedy in the 21st century [...]

Say what you will about the quality of Chevy Chase's movies, but you have to admit his influence on modern American comedy is vast. As Saturday Night Live's first breakout star, he was largely responsible for the show becoming a surprise hit, paving the way for every comedic actor and actress that followed in his footsteps by transitioning from castmember to movie star. On SNL, Chevy Chase co-created (with writer Herb Sargent) and hosted the segment Weekend Update, which has gone on to become the longest-running sketch on what has become arguably the most influential comedy show in this country’s history. Although fake TV news had existed prior to [...]

Lorne Michaels is giving Keenan Thompson a movie, one called Party Starters. Nothing is known about the plot, other than the fact that it'll be "an original high-concept comedy." It'll be written by SNL writer Bryan Tucker, and there's no studio currently attached, so this one is clearly in the very, very early stages of development.

Lorne Michaels is the guest on Alec Baldwin’s Here The Thing podcast this week (which if you haven’t listened to yet, what are you doing reading this because it is exactly the type of thing you would like) and on it, Baldwin runs down a list of this season’s SNL guests and, intentionally or not, reveals two yet to be announced hosts: Jonah Hill and Justin Bieber.

Jonah Hill has hosted before, back in March 2008, but skinny Jonah Hill has not. Over/under three jokes about this?

But who cares about that old nerd anyway? The Biebs, who was the musical guest for the April 10th, 2010 show, [...]

This week marks the 25th anniversary of Three Amigos, one of the best-regarded comedies of the 1980's and one that brought together a half-dozen of the greatest comedic minds going at the time. Three Amigos starred Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Martin Short, was written by Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels, and Randy Newman (who also composed the music and did the voice of the Singing Bush), and was directed by John Landis, who even hired a pre-SNL Phil Hartman and Jon Lovitz for supporting roles. Few comedies can boast a team that is so remarkable and that made such a significant mark on comedy, both separately and together. The [...]

Ever since the first Wayne's World movie became a surprise hit, making $183 million from of a scant $20 million budget, releasing a sea of catchphrases into the public consciousness and turning Mike Myers and Dana Carvey into actors in high demand, Lorne Michaels and his producing partners have been searching for the next big SNL movie. In the three years that followed, Hollywood released a string of SNL spin-offs that failed to reach Wayne's World's level of success, including Coneheads, It's Pat, Stuart Saves His Family, and a second Wayne's World film. In 1995, because of the underperformance of these titles and SNL hitting a creative slump, several [...]

It didn't seem possible, but the chances of you playing Miley Cyrus on SNL this year are even lower than your chances of playing Miley Cyrus every previous year, as everyone from SNL's current cast is staying on this season. According to TV Critic Roger Catlin, Lorne Michaels confirmed the news while at the Television Critics Association press tour yesterday, where he was hyping Up All Night and 30 Rock. "Nobody is leaving the cast of “SNL” next season, Lorne Michaels says. Still, he’ll audition at the end of August for possible additions," Catlin tweeted. So stop fine-tuning your Will Smith impression and move on. [...]