Lorne Michaels in 'Lorne' Focus Features Logo text A few years ago, there was a run of documentaries about various Lakers and Celtics teams, each project featuring some selection of identical talking heads, giving the impression that there must’ve been a junket somewhere with Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Shaq, Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan and a few others sitting in hotel rooms, being visited by a procession of directors asking about the same iconic playoff games and historical intersections. The documentaries felt separate, but the same.
More recently, it’s happened again with all things Saturday Night Live. There were four short docs released under the SNL50 banner, plus Questlove’s Ladies & Gentlemen…50 Years of SNL Music and Brent Hodge’s Downey Wrote That, all on Peacock and boasting myriad overlapping talking heads, filming locations and generally celebratory approaches to the beloved sketch show. Then there were the documentaries focusing on Saturday Night Live cast members Chevy Chase and Eddie Murphy, as well the eternally SNL-adjacent Steve Martin.
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Lorne
The Bottom Line Amusing but surface-deep. Release date: Friday, April 17 Director: Morgan Neville 1 hour 41 minutesSaturday Night Live impresario Lorne Michaels appeared in several of the projects, but he was mostly a looming figure whose blessing was implied through access and aura.
This weekend, Michaels finally gets his own standalone spotlight, courtesy of Morgan Neville.
Lorne is getting a theatrical release, but the documentary will inevitably find its largest audience when it hits streaming, presumably also on Peacock, where it will blend in with the SNL50 docs far more seamlessly than one might want from a movie helmed by an Oscar-winning director.
Though Neville employs a variety of narrative devices to cover for the film’s lack of insight and depth, it feels like an amiable puff piece, an uncomplicated celebration of a very slightly enigmatic genius and a star-studded commercial for his most recognizable creation. Not only will you learn almost nothing new from Lorne if you’re a big enough Saturday Night Live fan to have watched any of the promotional films that accompanied its 50th anniversary; you’re certain to feel like the documentary tells you a lot of things that you already knew with less rigor than stuff you watched less than a year ago.
But hey, as amiable wastes of time go, it’s a lot of fun.
To his credit, Michaels and everybody within his creative cohort make it clear to Neville that he isn’t going to learn anything about Lorne Michaels from making the documentary. Cast members and writers who have worked with Michaels for years, and in some cases decades, admit that even they don’t know anything about Michaels other than an assortment of trademark eccentricities and, as can be collectively agreed on, his fierce dedication to Saturday Night Live.
One might initially feel that Michaels and his pals and employees are being disingenuous about how guarded and uncomfortable Michaels is when discussing himself. They are not.
It’s suggested that Michaels agreed to do the documentary inadvertently, but Neville doesn’t go into the logistics of how he got Michaels to allow the crew to be present for what appear to be long stretches of the show’s 49th season, with particular focus on episodes hosted by Timothée Chalamet, Ayo Edebiri, Emma Stone, Shane Gillis and Kate McKinnon.
Neville offers a day-by-day breakdown of how the typical Saturday Night Live week operates — a less writer-specific version of the show’s unique schedule than the vastly more in-depth “Written By: A Week Inside the SNL Writers Room” episode of SNL50. Michaels and his contributions to this process — reciting stage directions at the table read, holding meetings with individual hosts and producers, sitting under the bleachers shaking his head in disapproval during the dress rehearsals — are ostensibly central, but the process has been mythologized repeatedly in the past and nothing here is all that enlightening. It’s fun, but it’s a repetition of an established myth, not a deeper dive into anything.
Providing more distinctiveness is Neville’s tagging along for the weekly dinner with the host (Edebiri in this case), Michaels and select cast members, which takes place early in the schedule and at the same Italian restaurant every week. The cameras are present, albeit at a great distance, for Michaels’ other ritualistic weekly dinner, at a different Italian restaurant — a meal that features Steven Martin in the documentary.
Michaels has been enigmatic and evasive for long enough that he doesn’t seem more or less uncomfortable having a camera in his vicinity, knowing darned well that he isn’t going to let anything slip by accident. This same principle lets Neville linger in Michaels’ office and even, in the film’s closest-to-revelatory moments, at Michaels’ lakeside getaway in Maine. Nothing Michaels says, at these locations or in their various sit-downs, is all that revealing or candid, but Neville’s eyes are still allowed to wander, inviting viewers to latch onto Michaels’ life ephemera and read meaning onto it.
Is his love of gardening an extension of his devotion to cultivating talent? He won’t say so, but maybe. Is his office filled with fish that he refuses to name as a mirror of the constant rotation of cast members on his best-known show? Dunno.
Neville puts Michaels out front, but he very quickly lets other people steer the film, including Chris Parnell, who serves as a wry narrator, and a representative but hardly definitive assortment of writers, producers and stars from the show’s past — going all the way back to Chevy Chase, who says very little, and as current as Sarah Sherman, who admits she knows very little about her boss. Professional credits other than SNL are featured in the documentary, but not exhaustively.
Not surprisingly, the people with the loosest lips are the people who no longer rely on Michaels for a paycheck, with many of the highlights coming from one perfectly selected room featuring John Mulaney, Fred Armisen, Bill Hader and Adam Sandler swapping stories. Mulaney, like Tina Fey, Conan O’Brien and a few of the veteran writers, gives the strongest impression of knowing where the bodies are buried when it comes to revealing details about Michaels. But each of the people who appear to know him best has an “I can never repay Lorne for [calling me in rehab, producing 30 Rock, getting me a talk show on NBC]” story that makes it clear they aren’t saying anything Lorne wouldn’t want said.
Speaking of “giving the impression,” you won’t be the least bit surprised to know that the documentary includes at least a dozen people doing their Lorne Michaels impressions. Because Lorne is so very much the opposite of voluble, it’s hard to determine who does the best impression. The one that gets the most exposure comes from Robert Smigel, who can be heard over the TV Funhouse-style animation that amusingly fills in various gaps in the story, gaps that might have been filled by Michaels were he a more eager subject.
Neville is able to use the animation and deflections from his talking heads to give the impression that the documentary is covering the pricklier aspects of Michaels’ Saturday Night Live tenure, when really it isn’t. It’s up to Michael Che and Colin Jost, another excellently paired interview, to mention Donald Trump’s hosting. Michaels does not. Somebody else briefly touches on Sinead O’Connor’s notorious picture-tearing. Michaels does not. Shane Gillis’ firing and subsequent return as host comes up at the dinner with Michaels and Martin, but only for a sentence or two. Nobody in the doc has a single negative thing to say about Michaels here, even if they’ve had quibbles about Michaels or their SNL tenures elsewhere. Come on, Chevy Chase and Chris Rock. We know you’ve got more than this.
Count comedy legend (and Michaels’ ex-wife) Rosie Shuster, summer camp pal (and former SNL musical director) Howard Shore and neighbor Paul Simon among those who know more than they’re saying in a documentary that spends nearly as much time giggling about incorrectly reported details from Michaels’ biography than filling in actual details.
If Michaels were to retire after this season, Neville’s documentary could be shown at his retirement party without anybody feeling awkward. When Michaels passes away someday, Neville’s documentary could be shown at his memorial without a trace of discomfort. It’s an aggressive glossing-over of a career that is worthy of both reverence and introspection/interrogation/investigation. Entertaining, funny and light on its feet to a fault, Lorne offers only the first.
Full credits
Release date: Friday, April 17 Production Company: Focus Features Director: Morgan Neville Producers: Morgan Neville, Lauren Belfer Executive Producer: Caitrin Rogers Editors: Alan Lowe, Jake Hostetter Cinematographer: Graham Willoughby Music: Darian Sahanaja Narrator: Chris Parnell Animation produced by: Robert Marianetti, Robert Smigel, David Wachtenheim 1 hour 41 minutesTHR Newsletters
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