![]() (As Amy Poehler puts it, “People that cared a lot about his approval never got it.”) But just about everybody is fond of Michaels, grateful for whatever chance they got, and mildly amused by his quirks and mystified by his understated, indirect speech. The people who were let go, or feel thwarted, are more tortured about him. Generally, the people who succeeded on “S.N.L.,” who chose to leave after many years, and who went on to make movies or to have their own shows, enjoy their relationship with Michaels. Listening to “Lorne Stories” puts Maron’s obsession in perspective. It’s called “Lorne Stories,” a collection of those clips: twenty different interviews in which Maron asked people about Michaels. ![]() Like the President Obama episode of “WTF,” this Lorne Michaels special event comes with a sidecar: a bonus episode that reflects on it and pays respect to its magnitude. Because he did not get the gig, and because of similar career starts and stops, he found his way to the right thing at the right time, his ideal form: pure talk, angst, hard-won wisdom, on a podcast, using the brilliant insights and damaged relationships he’d developed along the way as fodder for great listening. Maron’s “Saturday Night Live” dream seems more about the dream of making it than about the show itself. He’s great at riffing with guests, but the idea of his fitting into someone else’s world, even as a “Weekend Update” commentator in nineties-“S.N.L.” A. He’s not a yes-and guy, an improv-team guy-he’s an unhinged garage-podcast messiah. Of course, the notion of Maron’s actually being on “Saturday Night Live” at any point in his career is a bit counterintuitive. “I liked keeping Lorne Michaels this evil wizard who had somehow shunned me and exiled me from a possibly much different career in show business,” he says. Maron describes the pain of rejection in 1995, “when it was hot and new,” as feeling like “I got fucked, or Lorne doesn’t like me, or Lorne is evil, or Lorne is some sort of demonic puppet master, or I was used to pressure somebody else.” (Somebody such as Norm Macdonald.) He calls the subject “an ever-flowing rabbit hole of possibilities for me to either think I was fucked or that show business was fucked.” Talking to people about Michaels and “S.N.L.” over the years gave him perspective and empathy-which he didn’t necessarily want. In this, as with other interviews he’s done on “WTF,” Maron went in preloaded with vibes-not quite the grudge-beef vibes he’s had with other standups over the years, often rooted in jealousy, self-pity, and insecurity-but with the questions we have about someone who has made us feel slighted, rooted in the same things. Oh, it fucking happened, people,” Maron says at the beginning of the episode. “I didn’t know if it was ever going to happen! But it happened. ![]() The episode, which is two hours long, posted this week. Maron, now a big success himself, has wanted to interview Michaels for many years. The Lorne story in a person’s life takes on a mythic quality because it’s often the moment at which a life changes-or, crushingly, doesn’t. Everyone from Harry Shearer to Amy Poehler to Jimmy Fallon has discussed Michaels on the show some people have weighed in on theories about the Maron meeting most have done Lorne impressions. Maron has talked to “S.N.L.” veterans about this meeting, and about Michaels himself, on his podcast, “WTF,” often. Afterward, though, he never got a call, the call. For Marc Maron, and countless others, that person is Lorne Michaels, the creator and producer of “Saturday Night Live.” Maron met with Michaels in 1995, for reasons that were unclear-a possible “Weekend Update” commentator gig, it seemed-but thrilling to imagine. ![]() Many of us have a person from our past who’s broken our heart-personally, creatively, or professionally-and made us wonder what if. ![]()
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