Lorne Michaels in the documentary Lorne.Focus Features./Supplied
Lorne
Directed by Morgan Neville
Featuring Lorne Michaels, John Mulaney and Tina Fey
Classification PG; 101 minutes
Opens in select theatres April 17
In comedy, timing is everything. So why is Lorne, a new documentary about the enigmatic Canadian comic mastermind who has ruled over Saturday Night Live with an iron fist for almost the past half-century, arriving a full year after the NBC corporate machine already bled the 50th anniversary of SNL dry?
And what’s the deal with director Morgan Neville releasing a doc with the same title as Susan Morrison’s monumental biography of Lorne Michaels – a book that also came out a full year ago and does such a wonderfully thorough and insightful job tracing Michaels’s ascent from Toronto comedy nerd to Hollywood power player that no further biographical project is needed? (Let’s agree to not mention Jason Reitman’s sloppy dramatization of the show’s very first episode, Saturday Night.)
The answer might just be, to borrow the words of 30 Rock’s master of the universe (and Michaels stand-in) Jack Donaghy: “Synergy, Lemon! Synergy!”
Neville’s new film is being distributed by Focus Features. Which is owned by Comcast. Which is a unit of Universal Pictures. Which is a division of NBCUniversal. Which, of course, controls SNL. And like the very last, bottom-of-the-barrel sketch in a typical SNL episode, nobody inside the NBCU-niverse seems to have taken the time to ask themselves, “Is this a good idea?”
As bland as a DVD bonus feature and quite possibly the least funny 101 minutes you’ll ever spend watching the funniest people alive, Neville’s doc is the definition of inessential. If you have any interest in the storied history of SNL and the complicated legacy of Michaels – which, to be clear, you absolutely should – then you must read Morrison’s book. Or watch the smattering of mini-docs that NBC produced last year to mark the 50th. Or read James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales’s terrific 2015 oral history Live from New York.
Heck, even rewatching Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (whose shambolic plot basically pivots around Mark McKinney’s spot-on Michaels impression) or Mike Myers’s various turns as the Michaels-coded Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers films will give you more insight into the quirks and quarks of the SNL icon.
From left to right: Erik Kenward, Steve Higgins and Michaels in Lorne.Focus Features./Supplied
If, though, you are the world’s most rabid SNL acolyte and still feel like you need to know just that much more about Michaels, then I suppose that Neville’s film will scratch the teensiest, tiniest of itches. Over the past few decades, the director has specialized in a certain celebri-doc mode of filmmaking, sometimes delivering poignant portraits of performers (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, 20 Feet from Stardom) and at other times falling into the kind of toothless rhapsodizing that comes with near-unlimited access (Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, last year’s Paul McCartney doc Man on the Run).
Lorne sits decidedly in the latter camp, with Neville’s cameras allowed into several shows’ worth of production meetings and dress rehearsals, wedged between a handful of one-on-one sit-downs with the director and his elusive subject.
Yet for all the behind-the-scenes footage and ostensible opportunities to grill Michaels about everything and anything, Neville’s film walks away with the impression and insight that anyone paying even half-attention to network television over the past few decades already knows.
Michaels is the strong but silent type of comic genius, not particularly funny himself but a magnificent shepherd of talent. He can not only spot potential in the wild, but nurture and develop it to unparalleled levels of success. And he likes popcorn.
Michaels in Lorne.Focus Features./Supplied
That’s about the extent of it, according to Neville’s doc. Perhaps realizing that his subject isn’t much of a talker, the director deploys a number of framing devices to the doc to enliven things, though many fall flat.
There are, of course, loads of talking heads, some of whom get away with being funny, despite Neville and his editor’s best intentions: Conan O’Brien, Tina Fey, John Mulaney and Alec Baldwin each do what they can, but Bill Hader, Fred Armisen and Andy Samberg (all rich performers in their own right) are reduced to chuckling over semi-private jokes.
Meanwhile, an attempt to have Chris Parnell deliver faux-serious narration à la Bill Kurtis doesn’t work. Neither does interjecting the action with Robert Smigel-produced animation in the style of SNL’s TV Funhouse sketches.
Midway through the film, Neville points out how “Saturday Night Dead” became a favourite headline of SNL skeptics in the press. But the director fails to realize that his own doc feels about as inspired as that lazy bit of display copy.