‘Lorne’ Review: The New ‘SNL’ Doc Covers a Subject Who Doesn’t Want to Be There

There are several enigmas floating through Lorne, none bigger than its title character. Early scenes show Lorne Michaels, the creator and ruler of Saturday Night Live, wandering the halls of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, glowering at director Morgan Neville’s documentary crew, muttering under his breath about not wanting to be filmed. A narrator states Michaels “inadvertently agreed” to the documentary, a strange claim given no additional context.

Michaels himself sits for multiple interviews with Neville, but never discusses his family (who are shown only with their faces blurred out by large yellow circles). His longtime chum Paul Simon reveals that many of the details of Michaels biography, like the “fact” that he grew up in Palestine on a kibbutz, were invented by Simon himself for a magazine article he once wrote.

Although Lorne debunks that fictional origin, it barely offers a more accurate alternate history for the influential producer. You would only know that one of the talking heads, former SNL writer Rosie Shuster, is also Michaels’ ex-wife if you are paying very close attention to a title card that appears on one of her interviews. This is a film about a producer who insists that producing is “an invisible art.” If you’re good at it, Michaels adds, you leave no fingerprints. Both Michaels’ TV producing career and this documentary are evidence that this man is very good at covering his tracks.

Instead, he offers a cursory overview of his career, and allows Neville’s cameras to document the process of assembling an episode of Saturday Night Live, something that’s been covered many times before — including several films and specials made in just the last few years as part of the celebration of SNL’s 50th anniversary season.  There’s something interesting here in the sheer fact that Michaels has lived his life in the public eye for more than half a century, yet remains totally opaque beyond his status as “the guy who created Saturday Night Live.”

As Neville’s film notes, our collective knowledge of Lorne amounts to little more than the sum total of the many affectionate impressions of his droning speech patterns by his former stars. (“Doing Lorne ... it’s like that thing where everyone remembers he sounds like Dr. Evil, but then when you hear him talk it’s like ‘Ohhhhh .... riiiiiiiight.’”) But is there something pay-theater-prices-to-see-this-on-a-big-screen interesting here? Ehhhhhhh ... I don’t know about that.

Again, there is an astounding collection of talent from the world of comedy on hand to talk about Lorne, even if Lorne doesn’t want to talk about himself. The familiar faces include Chevy Chase, Laraine Newman, Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon, Conan O’Brien, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Any Samberg, Fred Armisen, Maya Rudolph, Al Franken, John Mulaney, and Dana Carvey, and those are just the names that I wrote down off the top of my head. (The biggest names missing in the film, at least that I noticed: Bill Murray and Will Ferrell.)

Instead of reenactments or narration over still photos, Lorne depicts some notable moments from its subjects’ life in animation, drawn in the style of SNL’s own “TV Funhouse” segment. These clips feature yet another impression of Michaels, provided by former SNL writer Robert Smigel. They liven up the doc’s visual aesthetic, but the cartoons are a little underwhelming in the comedy department, perhaps because they make it even more apparent how little of the real Michaels we’re getting from this film that bears his name.

Neville does follow Michaels to his farm in Maine, where he supposedly escapes to get away from show business. There he waxes philosophical about his garden and how nurturing its blossoms is a lot like the seasonal ritual of late-night television. But if you happen to run to the bathroom the one time his wife and children are mentioned, you might think the 81-year-old Michaels spends his days in Maine as a lonely old bachelor; he’s the only person onscreen in any of these scenes (and if he has a house on this property, which I assume he does, he never gives us a good look at it).

That’s where Lorne leaves you. With some poetic metaphors, and a couple tiny nuggets of insight, sprinkled around some amusing showbiz anecdotes.Tom Schiller, an early contributor to SNL, tells Neville that Lorne “will be the most boring documentary you’ve ever made.” He’s wrong, of course; like Saturday Night Live itself, there are too many great comedians involved for it not to be at least occasionally funny. But it’s surely not among Neville’s most insightful films. Michaels guards his secrets like someone in the Witness Protection Program.

RATING: 6/10

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