Elizabeth Tenety
Producer, washingtonpost.com

Elizabeth Tenety

Elizabeth Tenety is the producer of On Faith's 'Divine Impulses' video feature.

 ALL POSTS

Divine Impulses: Lorne Michaels

When it comes to tragedy, what's comedy got to do with it?

"It [experiencing death] leads to a seriousness that is very helpful in comedy," Lorne Michaels said in an interview at his home with Sally Quinn.

"I think of that Dylan lyric --'When you've got nothing you've got nothing to lose,'" said the Saturday Night Live creator and longtime producer.

Michaels has presided over one of America's funniest shows for more than 30 years, but says that "bracing the reality of death" is central to the ability to poke fun at people and their predicaments.

»Watch Michaels talk about mourning his father's death, how he experiences God and why altar boys make great comedians with On Faith's Sally Quinn.

Links/ Items mentioned during interview:
Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal, 1729
Saturday Night Live

Lorne Michaels website

By Elizabeth Tenety  |  September 12, 2008; 4:47 PM ET
Share This: Technorati talk bubble Technorati | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook
Previous: My Rock | Next: Many Questions on the Candidates' Beliefs

Comments

Please report offensive comments below.



Post 050
That thou art thus estranged from thyself?
Thyself I call it, being strange to me,
That, undividable, incorporate,
Am better than thy dear self's better part.
Ah, do not tear away thyself from me!
For know, my love, as easy mayest thou fall
A drop of water in the breaking gulf,
And take unmingled that same drop again,
Without addition or diminishing,
As take from me thyself and not me too.
How dearly would it touch me to the quick,
And such sweetness is my love that rises

Posted by: baron | September 25, 2008 10:28 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Put this on my tombstone please.

I laughed I cried
I did all that I could
It was enough worth a try
Maybe more so not done
God knows I tried
Now the trials of life
End the strife
I shall rest in peace
I will see you
After you decease
Until that time
Live in happy peace

Written by: 42

Posted by: 42 | September 14, 2008 4:15 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Thee Creator is creative, so will be done what is willed of creation. The good publisher is helping me in ways that I only imagined as a boy. Grandmothers divine impulses did not stop with her pulse. Now when the time is right, we shall have plenty of spare time and not a moment to be wasted on foolish things. The rather complicated bank problems in New York, should be over soon and more time can be applied to the paper solutions for the publisher in Washington. Problems sometimes do mount and solutions require paper, ink and people to sort through ideas for newspaper pays with quality and books pay interest. You must find your security, like your pleasures where you can. New York is becoming a bigger pain for Washington and time is being lost counting the ways to lose money and the combination of ways to manipulate the losses. In Washington the press keeps rolling forward and it's forever a new frontier in publishing. In New York more grinding halts are to be expected as more damage is done. In the mean time pray for Texas and send what help you can. They really need it. I'd suggest the government forget the New york crisis and focus on more pressing matters, if I thought it would be heard.
Perhaps it will

http://www.houstonredcross.org/

Posted by: 42 | September 14, 2008 2:26 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Proceed Solinus to procure my fall,
And by the doome of death end woes and all
Therefore by Law thou art condemn'd to die

Yet this my comfort, when your words are done,
My woes end likewise with the euening Sonne

My deed is death and we come back from there to visit it upon he who finds our fate his humorous delight

So we shall take him from where we have been
Punish him for our dying sin, he who wrote our death lines

He who should laugh at his own open grave
What shall he have to lose bvt a life lost for many profit from chosen grief
The children we pray their sovls to keep

Now as I am a Christian answer me,
In what safe place you haue bestow'd my monie;
Or I shall breake that merrie sconce of yours
That stands on tricks, when I am vndispos'd:
Where is the thousand Markes thou hadst of me?

How shall I collect and how shall I keep
An old promise I mvst collect on a bet
A safe bet given she was fair for the asking
And we were both alive to see it through
She could not be made to fall for grace
It saves with enough love for all
A greedy one who well is rich should be
Made pauper before his death
No errors about it
Time for everything, always love and an example
Made for all to see
A warning for all who shall be jealovs
That I do play fair and play for keeps

God giue
you good rest
May the devil greet yov and yovr friends
In hell to keep
They shall show you the way back home
There will be sovr wine from sovr grapes
Wrath with find yov a place to sleep
She will give yov introdvctions to the devils
Mistress a pvblisher of fine plays
She will svpport yov and yov shall have riches
Together yov shall rule the underworld
We have much time to wait

Posted by: Marchant | September 14, 2008 1:38 PM
Report Offensive Comment

I wonder if he would like to play a little O50 with us. Some errors are more fatal than others. We can have the students teach the teacher a lesson or too ra la la.
Winner takes all. Loser is left with eyes to cry with and maybe tears. Maybe not. Let's get sporty with this and be creative. Creative is good, so don't panic until instructed to. Now I'll hand it over to the kids, for it is all childs play. Above all else, love your work. We'll send some people to sing an Irish lullaby to put the dead at ease. Have fun kids!
http://www.greenville.k12.sc.us/greerhs/students/2008/images/ComedyofErrors/play050.html

Posted by: Irismafia | September 14, 2008 1:06 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Get stoned Sally.
Was Bob Dylan into the drug scene of the 60's-70's
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080802234834AAtQV3C
Get all stung out, just don't do the murder suicide act. It's not funny. We're to the point where we might as well all get stoned. We are in Flintstone Faith land.

Posted by: F.F. | September 14, 2008 11:31 AM
Report Offensive Comment

It's all about death in the end. There are writers strikes and there are the other writers strikes. In one, the words cut through all the defenses and you have a direct hit and a target gets destroyed. In the other you end up with people marching with picket signs, yelling catcalls and complaining about how bad the money is and how they deserve more for writing sitcoms and keeping the average dope in stitches. We all pay our dues and there are some don'ts who just don't care about their little death opera. People end up hurt and as SNL proves, people end up hurting themselves. Labor pains looking for a bigger laugh and looking to shake somebody down. Then you have a strike that shakes you up. It's like soldiers and mercenaries. The mercenary gets paid better, the country gets served better by the soldiers and they don't need a union representative or agent. We have guns.

Posted by: Anonymous | September 14, 2008 6:09 AM
Report Offensive Comment

Only love is perfection. Death is not perfection. Basing comedy on love builds people up. Basing it on death takes people down. It's suicide by laughter and the table of death begins working in reverse. Some people will do anything to push your buttons and then people stop laughing and people start killing themselves. This appears to characterize the Saturday Night Live experience, which is fairly true to the American view on life. It's held in cheap regard and families break apart and children suffer, so it is not always as humorous as we want to believe. It could be humorless on one level, it is souless on all levels as a matter of fact. It degrades society for the sake of generating corporate profits for investors. It can not be considered wealth by a decent standard. A corporation has no soul to damn, which shows the importance of keeping business under family control. Family control makes a moral difference. Corporate control makes a public spectacle out of everything sacred and honorable in the country. More problems are ahead and more corporate failures are ensured. The markets always correct injustices, so business either lives or dies. Family is the only thing that can't die because certain traditions are always honored. Corporations always die, because they are driven by greed rather than spirit. Corporations go down and family keeps going up and children keep growing up. There is no monopoly on family or power.

Posted by: 42 | September 14, 2008 5:33 AM
Report Offensive Comment

Love leads to a seriousness that is very helpful in comedy. Love makes you laugh and death makes you cry. I guess my idea of what is funny is based on what is fun and I've seen death and it was not fun. Turning 9-11 into a comedy act is mission impossible. If we turn that memory into a stand up comedy act, we surely all will be disgracing the seriousness of what happened. It's a non-starter.

Posted by: 42 | September 13, 2008 3:14 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Death and killing can be funny and then there's the darkness of it. "what police say appears to be a murder-suicide initiated by Mrs. Hartman."
http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/TV/9805/28/hartman/

There were a string of SNL suicides, so pushing peoples buttons has unexpected consequences following the law of such. Keep the wife happy guys. They were making everybody laugh and couldn't make the people nearest to them happy. You look at divorce, terror, society and all the problems so what is important? Laugh often and love much. I believe television is doomed or at least the people who spend time watching it are doomed. It brings you down. I have no faith in television. It's great if you want a programmed society, if you want complacency. We can't afford complacency with the security threats we face today. We never could.

Posted by: Anonymous | September 12, 2008 7:59 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Thank God for the funny people. I'm focused on death and killing, so there's always something to lose. It's not real fun or funny and there's no time for television. At least here. I've been called funny. I'm

Posted by: Anonymous | September 12, 2008 7:02 PM
Report Offensive Comment

The comments to this entry are closed.

 
RSS Feed
Subscribe to The Post

© 2009 The Washington Post Company