Lorne Michaels Tried to Quit ‘SNL’ After Just Four Shows

Jason Reitman’s recent Saturday Night movie told the story of how a young upstart producer named Lorne Michaels dared to revolutionize late-night television with his bold new vision for a sketch comedy series unlike any other, ultimately succeeding in his goal despite network meddling and Milton Berle’s attempts to to crush Chevy Chase’s soul with his giant hog.

The movie would have been a tad less triumphant had it included a post-credit scene in which Michaels bails on the show after just a few weeks for purely petty reasons. But reportedly, that’s what happened. 

Bill Carter, author of the quintessential late-night comedy text The Late Shift, recently spoke with Susan Morrison, author of the upcoming biography Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, for LateNighter. According to Morrison, one notable story about Michaels is the time he quit his own show less than a month after it premiered. When the fourth episode of SNL (which was still known as Saturday Night at the time) ended, Michaels “walked off the show” as soon as host Candice Bergen said the goodnights. And he didn’t show up to the office on Monday to prepare for the next show featuring host Robert Klein (not to mention the musical stylings of ABBA). 

NBC was soon contacted by Michaels’ manager Bernie Brillstein with a message: “Lorne’s out of here.” Surely something pretty horrendous must have happened to prompt such a dramatic exit! Yeah, not so much. 

Apparently, during the episode, a tech working at an NBC affiliate screwed up and neglected to air one of the show’s parody commercials, mistaking it for a genuine spot. Yup, Michaels reportedly “blew his top” simply because some people didn’t get to see “Ambassador Training Institute,” a fake ad for a school for wannabe diplomats. 

In Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, Neil Levy (Michaels’ cousin, and a production assistant at the time) offered a slightly different explanation for Michaels’ sudden departure. “They took away his lighting man and his sound man,” Levy explained. “Lorne had promised his guests the best sound and the best lighting. That was one of his promises to the people he’d gotten to do the first 10 shows.” 

To be fair, he likely also promised guests that he would show up to work. When Klein showed up at the start of the week, and there was no sign of Michaels, he asked, “Where’s the producer?” According to Levy, Michaels spent most the week playing poker in his apartment until NBC eventually relented. “I think he realized at the time that if he didn’t make a stand, they’d be stepping all over him,” Levy reasoned. 

Michaels told a similar, yet still contradictory story in an interview for Saturday Night Live: The Book, claiming that he quit because he was “highly strung” and felt “betrayed” that NBC hadn’t made good on a promise to deliver a lighting director.

Of course, these versions of events are a little more favorable to Michaels than the one in which he threw a tantrum over an honest mistake.