Excellent read over and over

Just finished book for third or fourth read find great insight into an American institution. If you are into how something works this is an excellent read.

Fascinating "backstage" look at a singular comedy show. Covers the first ten years of the show focusing primarily on the first five or six seasons. The book is full of strange and embarrassing tales of the cast and crew. Pride, racism, sexism, serious drug abuse, eating disorders, angry outbursts, self-centeredness, backstabbing, and manipulation were just a few of the things found on a weekly basis (1975-1985) in Studio 8H and Floor 17 of 30 Rock. Prepare to look at your favorite "early years" SNL actors in a new light. (My one complaint: too much time was given to all the ins and outs of how the show was developed. It makes the front end of the book drag and few readers will really care about that kind of thing, we are more interested in the cast and the making of the episodes.)

The book also provides an interesting look at human nature. It's amazing and horrifying to watch how the fame and money completely change nearly everyone who finds success through the show. There seemed to be constant bickering among the actors and writers when anyone started to really outshine the others on the show. While reading this I just kept thinking how terrific an HBO drama series based on the first five years of SNL would be. You couldn't make up drama this good. There have already been several TV shows about the making of a TV show, but none are as turbulent and dramatic as the backstage of SNL. Will never happen, but it's fun to imagine it. Very fun read.

Really good look at the early days of SNL. It only covers the first seven years or so but if that’s not enough for you then EXCUUUUUUSE ME

I read Saturday Night when it first came out. I looped back to re-read it but couldn't find my original copy. I found a fairly good copy used on Amazon and will be re-reading soon.

A look at the first ten years of SNL, written when the death of John Belushi was still a fresh wound, Gilda Radner was still alive, and Lorne Michaels was just resuming his producer role on the show. So much more has happened since then, but this book remains the essential history of the early years.

This big and well-written book documents the origins and first ten years of Saturday Night. For a quick grab overview of the first thirty-eight years, try Saturday Night Live FAQ: Everything Left to Know about Television's Longest-Running Comedy.

Part One, the first half of the book, tells the fascinating story of the antecedents and inspirations that germinated a fresh live show for a new generation tired of the day’s family-friendly fare.

Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In became a big hit in sixty-eight, serving as a comedy breakthrough for the generation that grew up with television. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, meanwhile, reflected the subversive attitude of the sixties but was thrown off the air because of the show’s viewpoint on Vietnam. Monty Python, with its cool and smart humor and nerve, influenced Lorne Michaels, SNL’s creator. Monty Python was “a revelation,” said Lorne.

Lorne demanded that no one over thirty work on the show. Each of the early cast members worked identical contracts, earning about thirty thousand a season, a paltry sum then.

Pot became a staple of Saturday Night, used openly in the offices. People laughed all time while a manic sense of hilarity prevailed.

“The freshest satire on commercial television,” wrote Tom Shales in The Washington Post after the fourth show, the one with Candace Bergen as guest. “A lively, raucously disdainful view of a world that television shaped.”

Saturday Night recreated the reckless adventure of the early, pioneering years at the network. It became the most chaotic, complicated and ambitious weekly program in television, write the authors. The show valued inspiration, accident and passion more than control, habit and discipline.

For all the attention paid to what Saturday Night put on the show, how it got on the air also intrigued the fans, which brings us to Saturday Night Live: The Experience, an interactive museum exhibit now in Chicago. A recent trip for that immersion led to reading this book for more background. http://snltheexhibition.com on State at Kinzie

Cast and crew produce eighteen shows a season, at a pace of three weeks on then one week off, enduring “the furnace of a production schedule,” write the authors.

The exhibition in Chicago recreates a week at Saturday Night, culminating in a replica of Studio 8H, where we sit for a quick program.

On Mondays, the pitch meeting of three dozen ideas. With the accepted ideas, the writers write through Wednesday, the day of the read-through. Pieces that survive then begin the production process of sets, props, wigs and costumes. Blocking the cast and cameras happens on Thursdays and Fridays. Weekend Update comes together as late as possible to keep it topical. Dress rehearsal ends an hour before before going live.

Two people work the cue card table, a flurry of big, neat printing, writing new cards during commercials and the countdown to the show. Some changes come in so late that actors see the lines for the first time on the cue cards.

Chevy Chase brought an inspired silliness to the show, including News for The Hard of Hearing during his Weekend Update. Dan Ackroyd earned universal admiration on Saturday night as a writer and performer. He bore an original talent so intense that it shot off sparks. His pinnacle during the first season included the refrigerator repairman and The Bass-O-Matic, fueled by Danny’s strong performance. The Bass-O-Matic sits on a shelf in the Chicago exhibition. Gilda Radner, the first one hired, inhabited her Baba Wawa, which bewildered Barbara Walters. Love, Gilda, a documentary, opens Sep 21. https://www.lovegilda.com

Lorne adjusted the recipe during the first few shows. Meanwhile, a producer sent buses to college for an audience to fill the seats for the first couple of shows. But demand picked up for the third show. By December the waiting list began.

Saturday Night in its third season grew beyond its cult into stardom. But fatigue set in from the eighteen-hour days and six-day weeks. And that closes the first half of the book. The second half examines a difficult period with ups and downs. While the first section makes it fun and exciting to share in the creation and early experience, the last half also includes many funny stories.

The authors spent three years working on this book, interviewing over two hundred people connected with the show. An excellent thirteen-page index supports the book.

Go to the SNL Experience in Chicago and see Love, Gilda. Along the way, read this book.

It's really a four and a half star book. A fun, terrifying and insightful Look into the creation and early existence of one of the most influential comedy shows ever. I only wish it was longer and covered even more history.

The prose is inelegant and the structure is occasionally clunky, but the details about SNL's early years are SO GOOD.

Loved this history of Saturday Night Live which ends just at Lorne Michaels returns. Seems to paint him as washed up and something of a failure but ends before Mike Meyers, Adam Sandler, Larry David, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Justin Timberlake ever wrote for or appeared on the show.

It's got great stuff about Louise Lasser and Milton Berle being horrible guests, makes Chevy Chase seem more sympathetic than I recalled

Does a good job of showing time and again how celebrity seems to eat people alive, destroy esprit de corp and make life miserable.

Focusing on the first ten years of the show (and really mostly on the first five years), this book is an insightful and inevitably somewhat gossipy history of how this comedy institution came to be. Be warned however, it is a surprisingly dry read, and its concluding chapters are severely outdated. (Disappointingly, this ebook edition does not include an update.) But the story it tells about those formative years are often fascinating, especially so when put into context of the global TV landscape at the time.

The best compliment I can give this book is that it made me really want to watch some of those older shows, some of which I recall from highlights broadcast on MTV Europe ages ago. Unfortunately, almost none of SNL's content seems to be readily and easily available in Belgium at the moment, a shame because the show has produced some hysterical sketches over time.

Good view of the early years. Funny to think that Al Franken's a senator.

A very good book about the early history of SNL. The only reason I'm giving it 4 stars in stead of 5 is that I thought it would cover a bit more of the history. This book was written in 1985, so it only covers the first 10 years of a show that has been on for going on 38 years. And even though this is a newer edition, they still don't update anything on the history.

A great book if you want to know about SNL between 1975 and 1985, though.