Similar to an Austinite’s rite to whine about how the city has changed, complaints that “Saturday Night Live” used to be funny have been happening since the show’s beginning.
“I’ve been a fan since this show started, but I’m disappointed in this season,” reads a piece of mail from 1978 now on display in a special Harry Ransom Center exhibit.
SNL had premiered on NBC just three years earlier, after Johnny Carson told executives he didn’t want to run old episodes of his show on Saturday nights. Producing a live show on Saturdays would be cheaper than a scripted one, and network executives turned to a young producer who had just won an Emmy award: Lorne Michaels.
“All I ever wanted to do was put on a cool show,” Michaels, creator of “Saturday Night Live,” told Steve Wilson, the curator of “Live from New York: The Lorne Michaels Collection.”
The collection, which includes costumes, scripts, index cards, cue cards, photographs, and more, opens tomorrow through March 20. Located on The University of Texas at Austin campus, the Harry Ransom Center is free to attend.
The exhibit is on display through March 20. (Courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center)
From New York to Austin
Michaels reached out to the Harry Ransom Center about donating his archive of work three years ago and, after visiting in 2023, reached an agreement to bring his trove to Austin. No one but him really knows why.
“We’re not really sure, we have some ideas,” Wilson said.
Primarily, he thinks, Michaels was interested because the center has a reputation for making collections accessible to students, scholars, and the general public.
“It’s quite possible, I think, that Lorne Michaels' archivist talked to Robert de Niro’s archivist and asked, ‘What do you think about this outfit?’” Wilson said. “As we happily know, Robert de Niro loves us and thinks very highly of us. We’ve done a good job for him for a long time, and that might have had something to do with it.”
The Harry Ransom Center has thousands of "Saturday Night Live" index cards. (Courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center)
Annotated scripts, production notes, and copies of every “Saturday Night Live” episode showed up in more than 500 banker’s boxes. Michaels’ full archive will be available for research in January.
Processing the collection took more than two years. As Wilson parsed through hundreds of items to build the exhibit, he would ask himself, “Is it cool? It is interesting to me?” Items that checked those boxes were put on a short list for the exhibit.
“I can’t tell you how much I love this collection. It’s really terrific,” Wilson said.
Center staffers have already started fielding questions as buzz about the collection has risen.
“That doesn’t necessarily happen with every collection,” Wilson said.
Iconic Moments
Even if you’re not a dedicated “Saturday Night Live” fan, the exhibit will be familiar to you. Around every corner is a costume or prop or photo from a moment so funny it rose off the SNL stage and into the zeitgeist.
In one section, a fabric mannequin appears to look down at you with its right hand on its khaki-covered hip. The mannequin is wearing a blue plaid suit jacket, a white button-down shirt, and a green, flopped over tie, looking just like Chris Farley.
“I am 35 years old. I am divorced – and I live in a van down by the river,” the wall behind the mannequin reads. Farley’s booming voice as Matt Foley nearly appears in the room.
Chris Farley, whose costume is seen here, was on "Saturday Night Live" for five seasons. (Courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center)
In front of the Farley mannequin is a photo of the Pope that Sinead O’Connor ripped up one week and Joe Pesci taped back together the next. Dan Aykroyd and Steve Martin’s wild and crazy guys costumes are near the cowbell, the freaking cowbell, from Will Ferrell’s forever funny, “More Cowbell” sketch, which is encased in a glass box.
Items from shows and movies that spun off of SNL are part of the exhibit, too, like costumes and scripts from “Mean Girls.”
Even the iconic “Dick in a Box” box is part of the exhibit.
“There’s nothing in this box,” Wilson laughed as he pointed at the box, which is wrapped in shiny red paper with green, pink, blue, and yellow rectangles.
The photo of Pope John Paul II that Sinead O'Connor ripped up on SNL in 1992. (Courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center)
More serious artifacts accompany the show, too. A video of Paul Simon’s SNL performance after the 9/11 attacks plays. The show’s plan for how the audience would sit during the COVID-19 pandemic is displayed near scripts of what would become Kate McKinnon’s performance of “Hallelujah,” which aired after President Donald Trump was elected in 2016.
The exhibit makes it clear that “Saturday Night Live” is more than just a funny show and Michaels is more than just a TV producer. “Saturday Night Live” has become a mainstay of our culture where viewers go to process hard news and where creators can try on characters. And, while the exhibit really is about Michaels’ life and career, it’s unmistakable that there’s no “Saturday Night Live” without Michaels and no Michaels without “Saturday Night Live.”
“(Michaels) has had a remarkable career and an incredible impact on our culture. It’s just astounding,” Wilson said.
