An Unaired ‘60 Minutes’ Interview Really Pushes Lorne Michaels on ‘SNL’s Early Drug Culture
The legend of the early years of Saturday Night Live is that performers and writers churned out 90 minutes of live comedy each week fueled by cocaine and other substances.
Okay, it’s more than legend. Writer Tom Schiller called pot “an inspirational tool” in those early seasons, according to Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night. George Carlin admitted coke had him “in another world” on the show’s debut in 1975. Dan Aykroyd once read this joke on Weekend Update: “This just in from the National Drug Abuse Association: Cocaine and heroin do not mix. If you must snort, don’t shoot.”
Did Lorne Michaels simply turn a blind eye while all of this was happening on his watch? That’s what Lesley Stahl wanted to know when she interviewed him for 60 Minutes back in 2004. A lot of that interview ended up on the cutting room floor, but it’s been reassembled as an episode for the show’s new podcast series, 60 Minutes: A Second Look.
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The segment’s producer, Denise Cetta, remembers the interview getting “awkward” when Stahl asked Michaels about drug use on the show, per The Hollywood Reporter. At first, Michaels downplayed drugs’ role on Saturday Night Live but then said this: “There was a period which ended abruptly for me when John Belushi died, but there was something, a value system that was much more fraternal, in the sense of whatever gets you through the night or who might have judged what somebody else does as long as people show up on time, can do their job, whatever. Clearly, a bogus value system, and it didn’t work. And I think people felt that people’s privacy and what they did was their own thing.”
For context, drug culture in the 1970s was a different animal than today, especially around the use of cocaine, then considered a non-addictive high that merely gave one more energy and clarity. The show’s outsider ethos also made SNL a hotbed for drug use.
Does that let Michaels off the hook?
Stahl asked him if his “live and let live” attitude allowed him to ignore his cast members’ problems. Michaels denied it, arguing that he was “incredibly paternal” as a boss. The Hollywood Reporter noted that Michaels has always been proud that no one has died while a cast member on the show — congratulations? — with the overdose deaths of Belushi and Chris Farley happening years after they left SNL. And Michaels did send both Farley and Pete Davidson to rehab while they were cast members.
Jane Curtin was angry that Michaels didn’t do more to rein in Belushi’s out-of-control behavior, including the drug use. “Lorne and I stopped speaking,” she says in SNL oral history Live From New York. “I would say, ‘Why aren’t you doing something about John?’”
Judy Belushi even claimed that Michaels and Chevy Chase were the ones supplying John with cocaine. The two men sarcastically denied the accusation in Live From New York, even as Chase currently tells stories to Bill Maher about Belushi stealing his coke.
But Michaels has previously maintained there was only so much he could do about Belushi and other cast members who abused drugs. “John Belushi used to have heart-to-heart talks with people, particularly when they were talking about drugs, and they’d say, ‘I had a really, really good talk with John,’” Michaels remembered. “No — John was using his time in another way.”
Al Franken used to tell people there was no way the comics could have created early SNL if they were using drugs. “That was just a funny lie that I liked to tell,” he explained. “Kind of the opposite was true, unfortunately — for some people, it was impossible to do the show without the drugs.”
