Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - Lorne (2026), Saturday Night (2010)

Welcome back, midnight viewers to Father Malone's weekly round up. Two in a row. There will not be a third with me as always. Actually, Ripley is not with me. She is enjoying one of the first few days of cool we've had in the past few weeks here in Las Vegas, fucking cooking my brain in May.

No thank you, I'm gonna skip most of the goofy segments and just get right to the reviews. This week. There are two reviews, after all, And I don't want to sit here John forever, but I do want to say thank you to everyone. I'm not gonna make this show about my mental health or anything, but I am fucking completely humbled by the outpouring I receive. And you should know that I am getting better.

And it's gonna take a long fucking time because I'm just that messed up. But the work waits. I'm alive at last, all right, enough, Sweeney Todd, So back to Funda Malone's sporadic roundup. That has a nice ring to it, doesn't it. I am not saying I'm slowing or stopping, and I'm not saying it's going away.

I'm just trying to work out a balance where I can put out the regular show every week on Mondays and then perhaps a stripped down version of the round Up. The fact is, my goal, which I haven't always met, was to put out a half hour each week, and if it wasn't that length then I would freak out and pummel myself and pad it out. So going forward it might just be more of a stream of consciousness and less structured three acts show that I had been striving for. So I am not going to apologize anymore that this is gonna be a short one. From now on, the show's gonna be what it is, and it's gonna be the length it wants to be.

I hope you're all okay with that. If not, there's plenty more of this nonsense on the Patreon channel. We've already got two completely dedicated shows on there, Vault seven oh two, The Fallout Podcast with Nukakota Quantum and now Step Off about the early two thousands fucking gem of a TV show, The White Wrapper Show. Plus we've got Star trek Away missions on there, including a new episode with Randall Johnson, who wrote the film of The Doors, the Val Kilmer biopic, and he also wrote Dudes, which was one of my favorite punker films of all time. Even with John Cryer.

He is coming on to talk about his time as a young journalist and his misadventures in at mid nineteen seventies comic Con, where he rubbed elbows with every science fiction giant you can think of. So there it is speaking of Patreon in this show. Actually, please keep writing in the pen pals from around the world. Segment is officially retired here on the roundup turns out to be a lot more fun to answer those letters with little animated clips, which you can find on all of my socials. But if you want to ensure you see every one of them, go to the Patreon page.

You can join for free, and you're still going to get access to most everything I do here. I'm slowly building the back catalog so that all of midnight viewing will become available there, And if it had come out on the regular feed, then it's going to be free on Patreon. Plus you'll get the fucking emails of all the cuckoo bullshit that I do not put out for mass consumption. The link is in the show notes. Let's talk Saturday Night Live a can fother them alone.

I hear the hue and cry from the sizzling internet cables. Yes, I cannot avoid it. Lately. It was a time when you'd actually have to gather together our little articles and maybe find a book or two on the subject. But after the run up to the fiftieth and now in its wake, they just keep pumping out ducks that involve that hallowed eight h institution.

And while I did not plan, I swear to fucking God to sit down and watch two documentaries that echo each other. Here we are, let's start at the top, the one where the other documentary springs from. Ultimately we're talking about the new, theatrically released documentary Lorn. We're just killing time here. None of this can be live from New York.

It's Lauren Michaels, Lorne Michaels, the man who created Saturday Night Live. What is funny? It's like pornography. You know it when you see it. I don't think I would advise you to try and capture Lauren.

Jesus, you wouldn't be happy with that, and then you'll capture a guy who's not happy. Is this really necessary? It was probably too driven to be hippie. What I wanted was a voice in the culture, and sl was that vehicle. He has this man behind the curtain mystique about him.

I don't know Lauren the way Alec Baldwyn knows Lauren. I've never stood in the ocean with Lauren. He's going to have notes that are impossible to understand. Has beats. You'll know it's not playing the way Lauren thought it was going to play.

When he does this, it feels like he's blowing your soul out of your body. That's funny. Lauren is the ultimate show business survivor. He's still here and one hundred executives are not. You really have to search in terms of why you're here.

I don't say that often, but you're the best ator. All of life is reinventured so to be understood. Knocking up, so you gotta retire. Hey, that was mine for all I know. He works for the CIA.

If you told me he made maple syrup, I would believe you. I think his favorite band is Nirvana. You've all heard the impression doctor Evil, Right, mister Ross, Can I get you anything else? Churs Grappa wine, cappuccino. Take us to a Lakers game Land in Montana, Dana Carvey the myth I still have no fucking first dome.

Robert Smigel with the whole documentary thing. I mean, Paul did one, Steve did one, and it's like, at the end of the day, the work is the legacy. I mean, unless you think it's a good idea. They all do a pretty good job of impersonation, given they've spent as much time as they have with the man himself. What we also get from them and basically anyone in Lorne Michael's peripheral orbit, is the notion that that's about as close as they've ever gotten to him.

Not one of them seems to really know the guy at all. This is not a new phenomenon. Michael's after the initial publicity rush back in nineteen seventy five, has been rather notoriously elusive to both print and photojournalists, crafting over time a persona of the ultimate Aeradite, Northeastern US born and bred wasp, which is perhaps his greatest bit of humor, given he's Jewish and Canadian, But that's not new information. In fact, if you've ever had a passing familiarity with mister Michaels, You'll come away with about the same information as when you go in, Which is not to say that this documentary isn't entertaining. It is the talking heads talking up Lauren are a fucking murderer's row of the greatest comedic minds of the past fifty years.

But unlike previous generations of elder entertainment legends, Michael's remains at the forefront. I had visions of those old Friars roasts with fossilized comedians talking up their fossilized friends. Here, yeah, we get Steve Martin and Chevy Chase, but then we get Dana Carvey and Adam Sandler and Kristin Wigg and Tina Fay and Andy Samberg right up to the current cast. Current has always been Michael's forte, allowing the ebb and flow of culture to dictate how the show should function in any given season. This film was directed by Morgan Neville, who made the outrageously good Won't You Be My Neighbor back in twenty eighteen of the Life and Times of Fred Rogers.

I didn't get through the credits before I began bawling while watching that movie, realizing how much Fred Rogers had meant to me. Two years ago he put out the two part documentary Steve exclamation Point about Steve Martin. Given his familiarity with Martin and thus Lorne, it seems a natural to have him tackle this inscrutable subject, to pry loose some of those screws so we can look at the gears inside the man's brain. Nothing like that happens. It feels, as a matter of fact that Nevill abandons the idea right from the opening scenes, which is fine.

You can glean plenty about someone from other's observations and by just observing them yourself, you know, with a camera. Instead, Neville makes the absolute worst move and documentary can make. Looking at you Martin Scorsese and that Rolling Stones concert film, Neville decides that that's the premise. Who is Lorne? Will just keep asking as if it's hilarious that we're never going to find out Scorsese concocted that ridiculous We need to get the set list premise for his concert film.

How about this premise? The Rolling Stones play music and you film it as if you are Martin Scorsese. If there's anything sitting this look at Michael's apart from other attempts. It's the access granted. Michael seems to have given Neville the keys to the Broadway Video Library, and here and there appears footage I can't recall ever having seen before.

Not to mention footage of Michael's during his days as a duo with fellow Canadian comedian Loren's Heart, when they had their own variety show, The Heart and Lorn. Terrific hour, great title, and we get to see Lorn in action. It makes so much sense why he ended up behind the scenes. He's not bad, it's just not the level of greatness we associate with SNL. As I said, it's very amusing throughout and if you want to spend some time with your favorite cast members, this is the place to be.

But don't expect one bit of illumination from the whole affair. If you're an SNL fanatic like me, it couldn't help but disappoint. Although there is one moment of clarity about Lorn and his place in the comedy world, it's related by Mike Myers and hilariously appropriate. The story was told to him by Lorne himself. He told him about how he'd been driving through farmland pumpkins, to be precise, just mile after mile of pumpkins stretching on either side of the road to the horizon.

At a certain point, he came to a farm stand where a man was selling pumpkins. Michael stopped and asked why anyone would pay him for a pumpkin when they could just pull over and load their car full. The man said, they pay me for my eye. I picked the best pumpkins, and that's what Lauren has been doing for fifty years, picking the best pumpkins. A way more illuminating documentary awaits, however, one in which every creative process made on SNL is documented in loving detail.

No narration, minimal talking head stuff, Just a week at SNL, from the moment the guest meets the cast and the writers to the final good nights on the following Saturday. This Must be New? What's it called? Is it new? Must be New?

No, it's from fucking twenty ten, Although it was filmed in two thousand and eight by James Franco Yes I know, scandal noted he hosted that year and then was given permission to film a future guest. The guest in question, John Malkovich. The film is simply called Saturday Night. My name is Lord Michaels. I'm the crusher and creator of Saturday Night.

Were excited because there's never been a television show like this. Wait. No, that's that fucking horrible high school play version of Saturday Night Live from last year. No, this film had no trailer because it was in a weird limbo for years. It started out as a film school assignment make an observational documentary.

Having just hosted SNL and having a working relationship via Seth Rogan and super Bad, Franco chose Bill Hayter, then in his third year at SNL as his subject. Thus he gained permission from Lauren and Malkovich to get unfettered access during the week, and he fucking ran with it. I hadn't realized that Bill Hayter was originally the subject, so it makes sense now how heavily freighted it had been in his direction. But that is never a bad thing. And if the doc had zeroed in only on Hayter's POV throughout the week, then everyone would have heard of this film.

But I'm glad he didn't because Franco and his skeleton crew go hard filming any and everything they can. Particularly glorious are scenes with writers and performers crammed into tiny offices racking each other up with stuff that always ends up being way funnier than what ends up on our TVs every Saturday night. It also covers the anxiety and dread of the newer cast members, in this case Casey Wilson and Bobby moynihan, as they try to get their voices heard amongst a sea of SNL vents. Moynihan comes off as the sweetest cast member of all time, with instincts sharper than some of the writers he's dealing with. The Fact is, there's been plenty of footage over the years of the writer's writing and lighters lighting in the control room and Lauren under the bleachers, and pitch meetings and read throughs.

We've all seen that a million times, and admittedly for someone like me, at never gets old. Such concentrated talent in one room, no matter the era, no matter the cast, no matter the host, there's always an energy there that you can sometimes see leaping off of these folks. But I know that that's mainly dry for most people who rather just watch the goddamn show itself. Nevertheless, this is the first I've seen in documentary fashion where you hear those pitches, you watch everyone grind for days trying to come up with something worse for the read through. Then we actually get to see the process of elimination between Lorne and Malkovich and Steve Higgins and then lead writer Seth Myers, and then painfully watch as they mount too many sketches for the dress rehearsal, knowing full well one or two are not going to make the cut, including one that I thought was hilarious and killed from pitch to dress but just wasn't meant to be.

Franco hit at the exact right time and Golden Age as the Lonely Island in Seth meyers podcast call that period of SNL history. For all the rivalry and jockeying on display, it seems like the most well adjusted and genial cast and writers in the show's history, which stands in stark contrast as some of the horror stories of backbiting and sabotage that tainted the show throughout the nineties. Quite frankly, if you want to make a drama about Saturday Night live. Going to the origin story is dull as fucking dishwater compared to that fateful ninety five season where it was an entire cast seemingly peopled only by stand up comedians who are all willing to cut each other's throats to get on update for two minutes.

That was the waning Sendler Schneider Farley years when fake stoner and real knife cocksucker Jim Brewer was part of the cast. Goat boy hilarious. Those years or that year really would be high drama watching all of your favorite clowns trying to fucking curb stop each other in between opera man bits. Oh boy, somebody make that movie limited series. Do it on Peacock.

In any event, if you have even a glancing interest in how this show actually comes together without a bunch of silly prefab linking pieces or narration, just fly on the wall observations and then what feel like genuine conversations behind the scenes, this is the one for you. It's on fucking YouTube for free. That's how I stumbled on it. What is this? I muttered, And then an hour and a half later I was still buzzing about it.

Hell, it's been four days and I'm kind of still buzzing about it now. And it should be noted that the Lorn doc is basically the same length, and you not only get more of the one on camera conversation Franco has with him, you also get a portent about the man's future documentary from the man himself. That's a gift. Maybe he is clairvoyant. At one point in the conversation, Michaels muses that quote.

When you go into any situation where there's this level of talent and collaboration with writers and actors and designers and musicians, people are aware when there's cameras, Boy, don't they. That's true of Lauren, that's true of the cast, That's true of basically anything. Also true. That's the end of the round up. This week.

Told you it was re brief. I'm not gonna say it again. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. This was so much less pressurized for me, and I'm gonna do my best keep doing it every week if I can so. From Ripley Gene, I'm father alone.

Go out there and enjoy the daylight