George Carlin Couldn’t Understand Why He Was Never Asked Back for ‘SNL’ Anniversary Specials
George Carlin was the first-ever host of Saturday Night Live, but even if he were still alive, would he have received an invitation to SNL50? Carlin himself likely would have guessed no. After hosting SNL a second time during the Dick Ebersol years, “I never got called back,” Carlin told the Television Academy Foundation. “Even when I got super hot later and became a big name in comedy, I never got called back by Lorne Michaels.”
Not getting an invite to the anniversary shows stung. “I don’t understand it,” he explained. “They had a 20th anniversary (show), they had a 15th anniversary, they had a 25th anniversary, and they had people back who you haven’t seen in a long time. The most natural thing in the world for public relations purposes would be to have the original host to host one of those. Or just to stand up in the audience in his dopey tuxedo.”
What was the official explanation? Carlin never got one. “Nothing, never a word,” he said. “I don’t know. Must have had something to do with that cocaine week. I must have left a very, very sour taste in (Michaels’) mouth.”
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Carlin is likely correct. As dramatized in the movie Saturday Night, Carlin wasn’t a great team player as the show’s first host. In his book, Last Words, he details the missteps he remembers — he was “full of cocaine” and refused to perform in sketches. Carlin notes that according to Bob Woodward’s Wired, they had to break down Carlin’s hotel room door because he was so coked up. Could be true, the comic said, but he was too coked up to remember.
But there’s more, including new revelations in Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live. Carlin only agreed to do the show because he had a new album coming out. Michaels asked him to bring fresh material, but the comic insisted on doing tracks from the record. Then during one of the stand-up segments during the live show, Carlin pulled a fast one, performing an entirely different bit from the one he’d rehearsed during the week.
“That fucker,” Michaels said in the control room. During a live show that’s timed down to the second, swapping in a new set of jokes could have thrown off the entire night. Michaels also grimaced when Carlin did his goodnights at the show’s end, holding up a copy of his new album as if Saturday Night was his personal infomercial.
In retrospect, Carlin probably deserves a spot on the list of all-time pain-in-the-ass hosts. As bad as Steven Seagal or Paris Hilton might have been, neither refused to appear in sketches or went rogue with alternate material during the live show. With that sour, sour taste in his mouth, can you blame Michaels for not asking Carlin to host an anniversary show?
“I can see not hosting,” Carlin admitted. “But I can’t see not being somehow acknowledged in the anniversaries. It’s just weird to me.”
