Liberals loved this earnest Kate McKinnon moment on ‘SNL’ — but Lorne Michaels wasn’t a big fan
After Trump’s win in 2016, “Saturday Night Live” opened it first post-election show with Kate McKinnon at a piano, singing “Hallelujah” like a dirge.
Lorne Michaels, the creator, executive producer and Grand Poobah of “SNL,” wasn’t pleased by its “mawkish righteousness,” writes Susan Morrison in her new book “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live,” out now.
As Michaels’ longtime friend, singer/songwriter Randy Newman, told the author, “Lorne’s got a real old-fashioned, 1930s hard-boiled antenna for that kind of liberal bullshit.”
It didn’t help that alumni Chris Rock, who came to early rehearsals to watch with Michaels, turned to the producer and asked, “Where are the jokes?”
Rock joined host Dave Chappelle for the first scene after the Hillary/“Hallelujah” requiem, in which they played the only Black people (and the least surprised by Trump’s win) at a party of white millennials gathered to watch the election returns.
When one stunned attendee declares, “This is the most shameful thing America has ever done,” both Chappelle and Rock burst out laughing. “The show’s young head writers hated the sketch,” writes Morrison, “but Michaels liked that it was a corrective to the earnestness of ‘Hallelujah.’”
No matter what, Michaels is intent on making sure his show is always about jokes over preaching.
“SNL is just show business [to him],” Morrison writes. “Even when the world wants it to be something else — an anarchist collective, a settler of political scores, a cultural institution.”
In March, 2019, Michaels sat down with his cast to remind them of, in his words, “the distinction between their own political feelings and the script.”
It was sparked by then cast member Cecily Strong, who “was in a sulk about being asked to make fun of the Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein,” writes Morrison.
“On whatever side, if there’s idiocy, we go after it,” Michaels explained to the cast, according to Morrison. “We can’t be the official organ of the Democratic Party.” He urged them to remember that “we’ve got the whole country watching — all fifty states.”
As “SNL” celebrates its golden jubilee, Michaels’s legacy is getting renewed appreciation. It’s already well-known that he’s a “mythic figure” in comedy history, writes Morrison. But it’s less known how much he’s guided the show’s political leanings and, at times, tempered it.
“It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan,” Michaels told the author. Everyone on the “SNL” cast and crew have their individual biases and beliefs, of course, but he insists that it should never bleed over into the comedy.
Michael said he is particularly unnerved when fans approach him and thank him for the show’s political sketches, especially those that lampoon elected officials they dislike. “Like this is an act of patriotism,” the producer said. “And I go, ‘No, no. I’m in comedy.’”
On the eve of Trump’s first election, in 2016, Michaels recalled that the many of the “SNL” cast members actually wept. He addressed the group, telling them they needed to shift the emphasis away from “Saint Hillary,” as he put it, and focus on what mattered.
Cast member Kate McKinnon was especially devastated by Trump’s win, but Michaels told her nothing about it was unique.
“When Nixon was elected, he seemed to us as bad as Trump,” he said to McKinnon. “I didn’t know anyone who would have voted for Richard Nixon, so it came as a complete surprise.”
And in the meantime, Michaels continued, “we have a job to do, and we have to get on with it.”
Michaels didn’t always have this perspective. In one of his first jobs as a comedy writer, for radio in the mid-60s, he and his writing partner “did political satire and thought we were bringing down the government of Canada,” Michaels told Morrison. During his tenure writing for the TV series “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” in 1969 — a job he only kept for a year — “Michaels was frustrated that he couldn’t get any Nixon jokes on the air,” the author writes.
When he launched “Saturday Night Live” in 1975, Michaels finally had more control over satiric targets. But he also began to learn about restraint. Chevy Chase’s non-impression of then-president Gerald Ford presented him as a klutzy oaf, which Michaels loved because “it defied expectations,” writes Morrison. “Rather than eviscerate Ford, it made him human; it let the audience in.”
Over the years, Michaels developed a distaste for what former “SNL” head writer Seth Meyers dubbed “clapter” (a combination of “laughter” and “clapping”) — when an audience reacts to a joke not because it’s funny, but because they agree with its political sentiment.
“People don’t plan to laugh,” Michaels told the author. “They’re taught when to applaud, but they’re not taught when to laugh.” Clapter, Michaels believes, “is why ‘The Daily Show,’ which was unapologetically liberal, beat out SNL for an Emmy seven times.”
When Trump hosted “SNL” in November 2015, just months after announcing his candidacy for president, “Michaels was attacked for sleeping with the enemy in the name of ratings, and the staff was unhappy,” writes Morrison.
Tim Robinson, a show writer at the time, was so upset that he smacked the table and said, “Lorne has lost his f–king mind and someone needs to shoot him in the back of the head.”
Former cast member Taran Killam, who sometimes portrayed Trump on the show, complained that Michaels insisted that he make the president “likable,” which Michaels doesn’t deny.
“One of Michaels’s core comedy tenets is that every impersonation should contain a speck of humanity or charm, to make the character relatable,” writes Morrison.
It’s a strategy that can sometimes have political consequences, like it did during the 2000 election.
“The show was credited with affecting the outcome of the election that put Bush back in office,” writes Morrison, mostly by making George W. Bush, as played by Will Ferrell, seem charming and harmless.
“We all know a guy like that,” Michaels said. “Whereas [Al] Gore — we didn’t know a guy like that.”
