How the ‘Most Impersonated Man in Show Business’ Keeps SNL Humming
A new biography of Saturday Night Live founder Lorne Michaels chronicles the comedy impresario’s decades of relevance.
Illustration: Jose Berrio for Bloomberg
American audiences can’t get enough of stories about shrewd survivors — the kind of scrappy competitors who somehow manage to outfox unsavory rivals to capture one crown or another, leaving everyone tittering and slack-jawed in their wake. From Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games to Richard Hatch of CBS’s Survivor to Player 456 of Squid Game, the bestseller and most-watched lists are routinely home to prime specimens of this beguiling archetype.
None of them have a thing on Lorne Michaels.