A Limo for a Lame-O

"A Limo for a Lame-O" is a commentary delivered by Al Franken during Weekend Update on the May 10, 1980, episode of Saturday Night Live (SNL). Using the framework of his own desire to have a limousine drive him to and from his job at NBC, the network which broadcasts the program, Franken attacked network president Fred Silverman for NBC's poor showing in the Nielsen ratings during his tenure. It has been called "one of the meanest acts of character assassination in the history of—well, in the history of mean acts of character assassination."

Silverman, who had not been informed of the commentary beforehand due to a series of communication failures, was furious. He believed that SNL producer Lorne Michaels, who was in the midst of negotiating a new contract, had orchestrated it as revenge for Silverman's failure to attend a meeting with Michaels to discuss those talks the previous day. After hundreds of letters and postcards were delivered to Silverman's office the following Monday, he refused to accept a letter of apology offered by Franken, whom he said later he had never liked to begin with.

The commentary, and Silverman's reaction to it, had several effects on the show. Michaels and many of the people associated with the show were emotionally exhausted after five seasons, and he had planned for almost everyone to take some time off. Since the show had been one of NBC's few successes under Silverman, the network wanted it to continue that fall. Franken and his writing partner Tom Davis, with Michaels' support, had expressed interest in producing the show while Michaels served as its executive producer. NBC executives were also hoping they could persuade Michaels to stay, an option he was still open to if the contractual provisions he wanted were offered.

After Franken's commentary, he and Davis lost any chance they had had of succeeding Michaels as producer. NBC also assumed Michaels was not interested in continuing and began making plans for a future SNL without him. This led to Jean Doumanian, one of the show's associate producers from its inception but never involved in the writing process, being hired to replace Michaels, a decision kept from him since he believed any new producer should have been involved in the writing aspect of the show. She oversaw a wholesale replacement of the cast and writing staff, and was fired before the end of the next season, called the worst in the show's history by author Brian Finamore.

Background

In spring 1980, Michaels and Saturday Night Live on the one side, and Silverman and NBC on the other, were in drastically different positions.

Lorne Michaels and SNL

By its fifth season, SNL was an unqualified success. It had made stars of its cast members and spawned blockbuster movies, hit singles and many lines of merchandise. Three of those stars, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, and John Belushi, had left. But all the show's other repertory cast members remained, and midway through the season Harry Shearer was promoted from featured player status to replace them, although he soon alienated his colleagues with his attitude.Hill and Weingrad, Ch. 28 Many of the show's writers, who had long been playing minor roles in sketches, including Al Franken and his longtime partner Tom Davis, were in turn named as featured players.

But behind the scenes many of the cast and crew had grown weary of the show. Their celebrity status led them to keep company with each other, and other celebrities who they had become friends with, so that they would not be mobbed as they often were in public by fans who asked them the same questions over and over. Increasing cocaine use, particularly the addictions of Garrett Morris and Laraine Newman, had exacerbated existing interpersonal friction, and stories of egotistical behavior by the stars began to reach the media. Producer Lorne Michaels had felt it necessary to bring the staff up to Mohonk Mountain House in the Hudson Valley for a weekend retreat before the season, the first time that had been necessary, which the senior cast members declined to attend. Competing network ABC had also started a competing sketch-comedy show called Fridays, putting further pressure on Michaels (who was incensed that it was produced by two other clients of his manager, Bernie Brillstein), the cast and crew.

Hanging over the show was the question of whether Michaels would renew his contract and continue the show for another season. Many of the cast and crew did not want him to. "Everyone was looking beyond the show," recalled writer Alan Zweibel. Critics complained that, in the absence of its two biggest stars, the show had become less creative, and Lorne joked to the media that that had been his intention all along. "[It's] going to get worse and worse, and eventually will never be funny again." By Christmas 1979, Michaels' assistant Cherie Fortis said, "everyone just said 'Okay, let's get through the rest of this.' People were praying Lorne wouldn't come back. We were waiting for it to end."Hill and Weingrad, Ch. 32.

Fred Silverman and NBC

Michaels' return did not seem likely. From the beginning of his tenure at NBC, Silverman had been convinced that a weekday variety show starring Gilda Radner, whom he saw as the next Lucille Ball, could be a hit. Michaels was less certain. Radner told NBC executives she could not do two series at once and did not want to leave her SNL castmates behind. In November 1979, two weeks after Michaels—who had lost his most important ally at the network when Silverman's predecessor Herb Schlosser, an early supporter of SNL, left—stated his refusal clearly and definitely, Silverman called him to his office once again to try to persuade him to do it. The meeting ended in a shouting match, and Silverman's already somewhat negative view of Michaels became much more severe. Michaels and Radner's aversion to a weekly show, however, did not prevent them from mounting a one-woman Broadway show, later filmed as Gilda Live.

While SNL, despite its internal conflicts, was still successful, NBC was not. Shows like The Tonight Show (itself embroiled in a contract dispute with host Johnny Carson at the same time) were mainstays of the schedule along with SNL, but the network had had very few of the prime time hits it hoped president Fred Silverman, known until then for his apparently unerring instinct in understanding what audiences would watch, would be able to deliver for them as he had for ABC and CBS earlier in the decade. NBC's weak ratings position was aggravated in early 1980 by its shaky finances—a loss of millions in broadcast fees when President Jimmy Carter decided to boycott that year's Summer Olympics in Moscow in order to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the preceding fall, and the failure of Supertrain in spring of 1979, the most expensive series in television history at that point, had pushed the network to the verge of bankruptcy.

From the beginning of his tenure at NBC, John Belushi had played Silverman in a series of sketches. While Silverman himself was not fond of them, he knew better than to intervene in one of his network's few hits. He also said later that despite his antipathy, he recognized that Belushi was a talented performer and the impersonation got laughs.

In the spring of 1980, Michaels began renegotiating his contract. Believing that NBC would, as it had four years earlier, take over Studio 8H, where the show was staged, for coverage of that year's presidential elections, his hope was for a later start to the season, to give everyone a bit more time to rest. When it returned he wanted to totally restructure it, probably with a new cast, and would have filled the role of executive producer, since he had signed a three-picture deal with Warner Brothers, leaving the duties he had handled for the previous five seasons to someone else, possibly Franken and Davis. Most of the cast and crew had wanted to just end the show, but admitted that if Michaels had wanted to continue they would have done so with him. He also had some ideas for side projects, such as Yesterday, a half-hour version of Weekend Update that would air late on weekday nights (an idea soon abandoned when Johnny Carson, in his contract, effectively got the right to approve any show that came on after his; Carson had never been a great fan of SNL'''s style of humor).

May 8 meeting

On May 8, 1980, Michaels and Brillstein had scheduled an afternoon meeting with Silverman and other network executives. Michaels had previously made clear to the network that he was amenable to staying, even at the same salary, as long as the network accommodated his request for a later start to the season, the restructuring of the show, and technical improvements to 8H. Rather than haggle with the network, he had told the executives to get back to him with the best counteroffer they could put together within 24 hours.

Silverman had been up all the previous night putting together the network's fall schedule so he could present it to the network affiliates' board of governors that morning. That meeting had not gone well; many of the affiliates were disappointed with NBC's performance under Silverman, and some of them were openly talking about changing their affiliation. Silverman skipped the afternoon meeting; Brillstein and Michaels were told only that he was ill, and felt disrespected.

That feeling of disrespect was further intensified by their interactions with the NBC executives who were at the meeting. Irwin Moss, the network's vice president for business affairs, began by noting the $2.5 million NBC had paid, sight unseen, for the broadcast rights to Gilda Live, which had failed commercially and critically. "So, you're here to gouge us again?" he joked. Brillstein did not think that was funny. Moss then pulled out a copy of Michaels' most recent contract, and asked him what he wanted.

Another shouting match, between Brillstein and Moss, ensued. Both Brillstein and Michaels were stunned by how poorly the executives had prepared themselves. They finally left after Moss refused to commit to any more than six episodes of a possible prime time series; Brillstein and Michaels had wanted 17. Afterwards, Michaels was convinced his relationship with NBC was, at this point in time, over. "They would have had to make me feel special [to come back], and they didn't," he recalled years later.

The next day, Silverman called and apologized for his absence, and rescheduled the meeting for the following Monday. He and Lorne met by themselves that afternoon. Silverman offered Michaels more money, primetime shows, anything he wanted, as long as he'd stay at least nominally involved with Saturday Night Live.

Commentary

Franken's was not the first Weekend Update commentary that season to be a self-serving personal attack. In 1979, just before Christmas, Bill Murray, who had felt abandoned when Aykroyd and Belushi left, leaving the show overly reliant on him for the first half of the season, had used the critical and commercial failure of 1941, Belushi and Aykroyd's first post-SNL movie, to taunt them. Murray deliberately mispronounced the film's title, and pointedly overlooking the pair, he instead misidentified past SNL hosts Christopher Lee (who did have a role in 1941) and Carrie Fisher (who did not) as two of the film's three top-billed stars. "Carrie and Chris Lee have both been on Saturday Night Live, and if you ask me they should never have left," he said. "They wouldn't listen and now they have this Christmas turkey on their hands. And now my two old friends are going to have the most miserable Christmas of their lives." Murray ended his commentary by recommending audiences to go see Meatballs, his film debut from that summer.Hill and Weingrad, Ch. 30