David i dont consider myself a journalist. Nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on a life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . Did you think at the beginning that you were going to change Television History and the history of comedy when you were starting that show in 1975 . Lorne i dont think i thought of it in those terms, but i thought if we got on the air, and did the show, that the people who were doing the show would stay home to watch. I thought there were enough people like us, because we all come from the audience. I was the person who had the most experience in television, but most people, it was the first time they had been on television. David you were only 30 years old . The others were in their 20s . Lorne i think dan aykroyd was 22, john belushi was 24. Chevy was a little older than me. David why would a 30yearold be picked to produce this show . What was your background that enabled somebody to think you would have experience to do this . Lorne it was very low stakes. Latenight doesnt average in primetime ratings, so it was no ones real responsibility. Carson was on five nights a week. That was doing really well. So when i had done television, and i had done television in los angeles, both in the late 1960s and then when i moved back in 1972, and the more ambitious things that i would suggest, or go in and meet about, they always said it wouldnt work in primetime. In those days, you needed a 40 share of the audience to stay on the air. David it means 40 of the audience lorne 40 of the audience is watching you. They would say it wont work. I was from canada, and i kind of knew what was in between the coasts. I thought there were plenty of people like me out there. It was a different generation, and if we could we were at the beginning of the baby boom. I had worked on shows like laugh in, as a writer, and ive done several shows with lily tomlin, richard pryor, which were always specials. And i had done enough that i sort of knew how you did it. And it was a question of putting together a show which was on some level was new wine in old bottles. We took elements of variety shows and knew that we would be different because we would be doing it. David you grew up in toronto . Did you grow up and say i want to be a lawyer or doctor, like all nice, young jewish boys . Lorne no, i think it was my grandparents owned a movie theater, and i think from an early age, if asked in like the third grade what i wanted to do, i probably would have said lawyer because that is what you said or Something Like that, but i would have wanted to be in the movies. David at one point, did you say i want to make my career in canada or the bigtime is in the United States . Lorne 1967 was the 100th birthday of canada, centennial. There was a new spirit in the country and i thought i would be perfectly happy to be here the rest of my life. And then got an opportunity to do a show in california called the beautiful Phyllis Diller show. And i was working with a partner, and we would write and perform and wrote some standup for various people, woody allen, joan rivers, not that we influenced their careers, but we had had enough experience and we performed. David you picked a number of famous people that later went on to great fame and fortune. The first show goes on. When it is over, are you convinced you have a great hit or you are not sure . Lorne when we were beginning, i had all of the ingredients, i didnt have the recipe. Between the first show and the second show, we changed. Second show was paul simon. Third show was rob reiner with penny marshall. By the fourth show, we found the show that resembles the show today. David the original idea was to have a cast of characters and a host. Lorne a different host every week. David who was the first host . Lorne george carlin. David was he so funny in those days you knew it would be a hit . Lorne he had monologues that worked and i thought he was funny. The biggest controversy in the first show was the network wanted him to wear a suit, jacket and tie. And he didnt want to. He wanted to wear a tshirt. It was not the biggest thing in my life. I was, let him wear whatever he wants, but the compromise which took up a lot of time on show day was he wore a suit with a tshirt. Perfect solution. David did you have to have a censor . Lorne we had a lot of discussions about what we could do and could not do. And what you could do at 11 30 and what you could do at midnight. I think that we sort of, all those phrases from the 1970s, cutting edge and pushing the envelope, we were trying to reflect life as we were living it. Also 1975, the end of the vietnam war. The president resigned. New york city was bankrupt. It was a little window that opened where it wasnt business as usual. David 1975 to late 1970s or early 1980s, how has humor changed . Do people laugh at the same kind of things, or are there certain things you could make fun of now, you couldnt or vice versa . Lorne there is a must nothing we did in the 1970s . Gilda radner could not have played rosanne rosanna, john belushi could not play japanese. Garrett morris doing the news for hard of hearing would be making fun of the handicapped. It is all, values change. I said between the movie arthur and the movie arthur 2, alcoholism became a disease. No one wanted to laugh at drunks, whereas for 200 years, they had. David anything that makes you laugh so uproariously that you lost control . Lorne some things i am proud of and also comedy is a disruptive thing. People dont plan to laugh. They are taught when to applaud, but not taught when to laugh. David lets take people through how the show is produced. On a monday, do you recover from the previous week and do you go to work on monday . Lorne everybody has to show up on mondays. I have a meeting i have had since the beginning of 5 00 on mondays which has all the writing staff, all the cast, the host, people from the music department, film department. We all gather in my office they gather, i am behind a desk. I go around the room and ask everybody what their idea is. David in your 45 years of doing it, have you ever had a private equity person as a guest host . Not yet . Lorne it has been suggested, but we havent done it. David maybe there is opportunity at some point. Tuesday and wednesday you have a dinner, and then thursday and friday you do dress rehearsals . Lorne we choose the show on wednesday. We read 40 to 45 pieces, looking for 13 or 14. Once that is chosen, the designers begin designing the sets. Then, those plans go to the shop that night and they start. The film unit goes off to figure out how they are going to shoot the two or three pieces we are shooting. We are always assessing who has not as much to do as wed like. We have left the opening of the show and generally one or two spots open for anything that happens. David have you ever gotten worried you picked a guest host not up to the task . Lorne yeah. David how do you coach them . Lorne you can get almost anyone through it. It is an odd hybrid because you are on stage. There are lots of people who are good at that, and there is also cameras and the script is constantly changing up until the last minute. It takes a level of focus. There is a point which the host really gives up and goes, you have to trust at this point. That it will all come together. David in anticipation of my getting a chance to do this with you, you invited me to come to one of the shows recently, and i was surprised how small the studio actually is. This is a studio that Arturo Tuscanini conducted the nbc orchestra at one point. Lorne it was built on springs. The nbc symphony orchestra, it was that important. Rockefeller center had been built so they put this in between floors so the subway noise would not affect it. A lot of it was changed when television came in because they thought sound wouldnt matter. Turns out, it did. David i noticed you Walking Around the set, and sometimes you are staring at what is going on. You dont smile that much when you are doing this. Do you ever think this isnt going as well as i thought, so you tell people fix it or do Something Different in the middle of a show . Lorne no, there is some of that, but mostly it is about time. The casts are good enough that if you are running a minute or two long, you can go, and they understand, pick it up. Or we take a page out of something. David there are cases were you have a funny sketch and all of a sudden people arent laughing in the studio, or the reverse is you are not sure it is funny and it suddenly becomes funny. Lorne yes. You choose the pieces on wednesday, rehearse them thursday and friday, and again saturday afternoon in costume and makeup. You do the dress rehearsal, which is the first time 300, 400 people come in and see it. Whatever you thought, if they disagree, they are right. We adjust from that, things you thought were surefire dont play and things that a lot of it is placement, where they were in the show. If it is a harder piece, if you play it early, it probably wont work. It is where you play things, running order and also topicality. David you dont get people calling you from the network nbc is owned by comcast now saying, you are being too tough on a political figure . They just leave you alone. Lorne they leave us alone and the comcast people have been brilliant. I dont think they want to be doing the show themselves, so theres that. And also it has been stephen burke, roberts, unwavering support. David when you are not doing saturday night live, you are producing other shows. You are producing latenight. Lorne i did the tonight show , and seth meyers, latenight show. In all of those, 30 rock is a perfect example. Tina fey was a brilliant head writer on snl and then cast member and did update. She wanted to do a series. We did mean girls together. She wanted to do a television series, it ended up being 30 rock. What i will do is i will be all over it at the beginning to make sure that it is on track and the best version of what it could be. And then once it is sort of going or going well enough, i will tiptoe out of the room and go back to my other job which is snl. Most of my focus is snl because it is compelling and because you dont know what is happening from minute to minute. With the tonight show with jimmy fallon, and seth meyers on late night, these are people i worked with and we have a shorthand. I have faith in them. You can sort of see that process. David sometimes humor is so funny on your show you cant stop laughing. Lorne they do eventually. David is there something that makes you laugh so uproariously that you cannot control your own laughter . Lorne there is always something i am proud of, and comedy is a disruptive thing. People dont plan to laugh. They are taught when to applaud, but not taught when to laugh. There is something that is always surprising. When you see the pairing of really good writing and a brilliant performance, when they are locked in, it is thrilling. David when people are made famous by your show and go on to great fame and fortune, do they ever say thank you for everything you did, could not have done it without you or do they forget to do that . Lorne there is strong feelings on both sides. When we did the 40th anniversary, a couple years ago, i think everyone, all the people were invited who worked on the show, plus people who hosted. When people looked around the room and saw all the different generations of people who had done it, it was some of people realized what we had done was important. Recently, a couple weeks ago, adam sandler was hosting the show. He did a song about chris farley. I did a lot of work with chris farley, and adam and he were very close. He was doing this tribute and looked around the studio, and the crew were the same crew, the people in design were the same people, and you sort of saw people tearing up and you realized it is an important thing. On that stage, in that room, where everyone has been working forever, it had real power. David are there things you would like to do with the show you have not done yet . Lorne the show continues to morph. Since the last election, it has been much more political because the audience can follow it. There were times in the mid1990s if you asked one of the cast members who the Senate Majority leader is, they would not know. David on your lapel, you are wearing a pin which i guess is the order of canada . That signifies the highest order you can get is a citizen of canada . Lorne you can be elected prime minister, i suppose. David people would rather have that. You received that as you are a canadian and american citizen, but you have also received the highest civilian honor our country can give which is the president ial medal of freedom. You got it from president obama. What was that like . Lorne thrilling. My family was there. It was thrilling to be there. When i got the call telling me that i was to receive it, i was in the middle of working out, then i sort of took it in and i went, oh. Valerie, who called me, said id appreciate you not talking about it. There was a month i knew before it was going to be announced and i took it very seriously about not talking to people about it. David when you are as prominent as you are and have been doing it for as long as you have been, are there people in their 20s who say this is funny and you say no and they argue with you . Lorne 3 00 in the morning, you see two writers in the hall and in the 1970s, it would have been seamless, but now they just stop talking as i get closer. If they suggest an idea, and i am thinking, well, we have done that eight or 10 times, i wrote it three times, it has never worked. But if you ever said it wont work, they think, he doesnt get it. Which is infuriating. But, they have to be able to write it, and hope springs eternal maybe this time it will work. There is no idea that somebody brilliant is not able to pull off, so we are always hopeful. David today as you look at next season and so forth, are there things you would like to do with the show you have not done yet . Lorne i think the show just continues to morph. Since the last election, it has been much more political because the audience can follow it. There were times in the mid1990s where if you would ask one of the cast members who the Senate Majority leader is, they wouldnt know. So politics becomes, obviously postwatergate, politics is very important, and to the baby boom generation, remained important. And then in good times, it sort of recedes. We are always doing what is topical. It might be politics right now it is. David if somebody says i want to be like lorne michaels, a successful producer, master of television, what are the qualities this person should have . Hard work, smart, good sense of humor, motivate people what are the qualities that are the most important ones . Lorne i would not advise anybody on it, but i think that leadership in this field is the ability to change your mind. Quite often change your mind. If a better idea comes in from a firstyear writer, we will go with that, and it is a culture that thrives on it. It is not a status or hierarchy that determines. People the audience is dying to see in the cast could end up in one piece because the pieces got chosen. Everyone has heard them play at readthrough. There isnt a week where someone is not seriously unhappy. It is not fun walking past people after you cut their piece because we are running long and that is the piece that got cut. But there is always next week. You just keep moving forward, and you try and create a culture where everyone feels they are heard. David final question i would like to ask you, very often, i ask people what it take to be a leader . You are a leader in your area. The skill set, what do you think . In your observation of other people or your own life, the qualities you have seen that makes people an effective leader . Lorne if you are in power, Everybody Knows you are in power so you dont ever have to explain you are in power. I think that when you are in a room with talented people, you dont make many suggestions. Almost everything you are going to suggest has been covered by someone. So, it is more about you more lead by example. It is what you stand for and what your taste is. Mostly, it is about being right more often than you are not. Also pushing people forward because in my case, i think people know that all that matters for me is whether the show is good or not, and i will be ruthless in the search for that. That is what i am seeing. If you have not caught up with it on some level why i am doing something, i wont have time to explain but after a while, you will see a pattern because we have 45 minutes between dress and hair to figure it out. I go around the room and go, what do you think, what do you think . What if we put this here, and everybody speaks. Ultimately, the decision is technically mine, but you can feel consensus, and they are all people who want it to be good. David thank you for letting us talk to you and thank you for not making fun of private equity in all the shows you have done. It is a good thing. Lorne yes, it is a good thing. David thank you very much. Lorne thank you for having me. Staying connected your way is easier than ever. Youre just a tap away from personalized support on xfinity. Com. Get faster internet speeds with a click. Order xfi pods to your home in a snap. Or change your Xfinity Services with just a touch. All in one place. Youre only seconds away from all of that on xfinity. Com. Faster than a call. Easy as a tap. Now thats simple, easy, awesome. Mike i think the biggest struggle we are going to have to get by is not getting people to operate in the office, it is getting them to the office. And it is not simply about a turret or an office, it is about coming through the turnstile, it is about the cafeteria, the elevators. We are happy to continue to imagine and reimagine as we go forward the way we come to work, but at our core, we are a clientfacing, clientdriven business