If you were watching
NBC over the weekend — and, actually, Nielsen numbers from the last few months suggest you probably weren’t — you saw the Lorne Michaels version of what
Saturday Night Live was like in the nineties, a Sunday-night prime-time clip show of the comedy franchise’s Clinton-era highlights. (“Must have been a short show,” quipped a
New Yorker.) Want the non-hagiographic take on
SNL in that era? We bring you back to the March 13, 1995, issue of
New York and Chris Smith’s cover story, “The Inside Story of the Decline and Fall of
Saturday Night Live.” Smith spent a month in and around Studio 8H, and he discovered a show with falling ratings, increasing expenses, mediocre writing, a miserable cast, and a detached executive producer in Michaels. “What’s really killing
SNL,” he wrote,” is a deep spiritual funk.” From the archives, here’s
his account of that
funk.
Comedy Isn’t Funny [NYM, 3/13/1995]
