Saturday Night Live is Lorne Michaels' baby. The acclaimed producer is extremely protective of the ongoing NBC sketch show and the legacy that he's helped create for it. His number of particularities in terms of how the show is run, performed and managed is clearly one of the reasons why one ex-Saturday Night Live cast member called him a "cult leader".
Nevertheless, there seems to be much appreciation for Lorne's involvement amongst the vast majority of the current and former performers and writers on the show. Most of whom were happy to let him hold the reigns of the program. Yet, the outlandishly wealthy producer did let one other person involved with Satruday Night Live have control as well as the freedom not afforded to others involved. That would be Robert (Bob) Smigel. Here's why he was trusted so much and how he basically became the second Lorne Michaels...
Lorne Michaels Had An Affection And Respect For Robert Smigel And Gave Him The Ultimate Freedom
Robert Smigel was one of the few writers and cast members to keep his job through the tumultuous second half of the 1980s. This was a time when the casts were at their most vulnerable as well as weakest. Lorne had just returned following a brief hiatus and was ready to change things up. But as much as he did alter the way the show looked, he kept Bob by him side. Then, into the 1990s and early 2000s, he let Bob ( who created Triumph The Insult Comic Dog) create sort of a pop-up show within Saturday Night Live. TV Funhouse featured a number of animated shorts that were completely from the mind of Bob Smigel. Fans loved it. The cast loved it. And Lorne, especially, loved it.
"My sense was always that Lorne really respected Robert and believed in what he was doing," SNL producer Samantha Scharff, said in an oral interview about the Robert Smigel SNL bit "Christmastime For The Jews" by UPROXX. "Lorne actually fought for a lot of the things that Robert wanted to do but that the standards department thought we shouldn’t do."
"I started off with some very strong cartoons: “Ace And Gary” and “Fun With Real Audio,” which felt very fresh and new. Lorne was buoyed by that success. It got to the point fairly quickly where he just said, 'I just want to be surprised on Saturday'. It was like a unique pleasure for him to just watch something with no preparation. Most of the time, he enjoyed them. We usually agreed on any changes that the cartoon needed. He rarely gave me notes. Even if he didn’t love a cartoon that much sometimes he would just put it on a little later in the rundown," Robert Smigel said to UPROXX. "Once Lorne gave me that much control I became my own Lorne. My name was going to be on these things and I knew that Lorne was giving me pretty much carte blanche so I became my harshest critic."
"We would watch the cartoon inside the studio when it was playing on the screens for the dress rehearsal audience. They had a live audience. Robert always wanted the jokes to go over. Sometimes, if certain jokes didn’t go over we would cut them out or we would rework them in between dress and air. That sounds really simple to do but often times it was very complicated. That’s why we would be editing up until midnight and then the cartoon would air at like 12:15," Samantha said.
Robert Smigel Worked The Writers As Lorne Michaels Did
While Robert Smigel was a comedic mastermind, he needed the support of the SNL writing staff. His bits, like Triumph The Insult Comic Dog and the TV Funhouse cartoons, needed a bunch of writers funneling in all of the jokes. By trusting a few of SNL's best writers, Robert could really focus on the detail of the animation, which he absolutely loved doing.
"I was used to the routine of… Smigel would have something going and he would reach out to a few writers over email and we would send ideas. Robert has always been extremely generous when it comes to helping out young writers," Scott Jacobson, a writer on SNL, explained.
"Robert’s process was to get a bunch of people together on an email list and have people throw 300,456 jokes at something. And then he would look at them and worry and worry and worry and worry about it. And change his mind and change his mind. Eventually, when everybody on the production couldn’t stand it anymore, he finally decides what will be in the piece and everybody’s happy because it ends up being brilliant," Eric Drysdale, another writer said.
Robert loved the collaboration process and appreciated the opportunity to run his own portion of SNL with Lorne's permission. In the interview with UPROXX, Robert summed it all up by saying, "I’d be my own Lorne and create my own little group of people that I’d run ideas by."