Book Review: Lorne

Over the fifty years that Lorne Michaels has been at the helm of Saturday Night Live, he has become a revered and inimitable presence in the entertainment world. He’s a tastemaker, a mogul, a withholding father figure, a genius spotter of talent, a shrewd businessman, a name-dropper, a raconteur, the inspiration for Dr. Evil, the winner of more than a hundred Emmys—and, essentially, a mystery. Generations of writers and performers have spent their lives trying to figure him out, by turns demonizing and lionizing him. He’s “Obi-Wan Kenobi” (Tracy Morgan), the “great and powerful Oz” (Kate McKinnon), “some kind of very distant, strange comedy god” (Bob Odenkirk).

Lorne will introduce you to him, in full, for the first time. With unprecedented access to Michaels and the entire SNL apparatus, Susan Morrison takes readers behind the curtain for the lively, up-and-down, definitive story of how Michaels created and maintained the institution that changed comedy forever.

Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live by Susan Morrison will be published February 18, 2025. Random House provided an early galley for review.

This year marks the 50th anniversary for Saturday Night Live, so there is no better time for this biography to drop. As a fan of the show for much of my life, I was very excited to check this one out.

Morrison structures this memoir in an interesting way. With six sections, each starts with a day-in-the-life as the reader is walked through a weekly breakdown of how an SNL episode is created (which I found very enlightening). Then, within those sections, we get to see Lorne's life unfold from his youth in Canada to his start in television all the way up today.

As an entertainment sponge, I learned a lot from this one. His connections to earlier programs and specials were fascinating. It helped to show the evolution of his approach to programming. Of course, I enjoyed the section covering the creation of and first five years of SNL (a most infamous era). I had not realized that he had zero involvement for seasons 6 to 10, or that, when he returned for the 11th, that season's cast was all a one-and-done. The sections that focused on his work with The Kids in the Hall as well as the other late night shows were also enlightening.

All in all, this was a solid look at the man who had major influence on American television for five decades.