Mr. 'Saturday Night'

Lorne Michaels, who created 'Saturday Night Live' three decades ago and who tomorrow night will receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, plans to stay on as producer of the show: 'If it's up to me, at least another five years.' (Helayne Seidman For The Washington Post)

"Lesley Stahl's first question was 'Did you give drugs to John Belushi?' " Michaels says with subtle exasperation. "And I'm going, 'No,' but that period for people our age is the prism through which everything gets viewed. If you're 25, then it's when Dana Carvey was happening. When Jimmy Fallon did his audition, it was impressions of Adam Sandler and Chris Rock, and Adam Sandler, when he came here, was totally in awe of Bill Murray. They say that Chris Farley was the child that John Belushi and Danny Aykroyd almost had.

"It's like when you tap into it -- I know there are people working on the show who are not as old as the show [Fallon having been among them], and I think people within that environment, when they're working in that place, there's something different about their talent and about them than when they leave it."

Michaels and his wife, Alice, have three children: Henry, 12; Eddie, 9, and Sophie, 6. Can Michaels imagine a moment when one of them comes to Papa and asks for a chance to audition for the show? "Sure," he says. "After they finish law school."

That has to lead to questions about how long Michaels will be running the show he founded, and fought for. How long, O Lorne, how long? "If it's up to me, at least another five years." Yes, he can imagine doing it when, and even after, he is 65, about six years away. "I sort of watched Mike Nichols do 'Angels in America,' and he's past 70. Believe me, when the work's no longer good, people are going to let me know. They let me know when I was in my thirties.

"I think 'Saturday Night Live' is just one of those places where it's institutional, and I think it should be honored and preserved, and I'm going to do everything I can to make that happen."

Producing the show isn't the only thing about his glamorous life Michaels would miss. He knows so many celebrities and is known at so many chic restaurants that he's become a kind of suave honorary mayor of Manhattan. On a recent Saturday night, Jack Nicholson dropped by 8-H just to hang around during the telecast and sit in Michaels's little booze-stocked cubbyhole beneath the bleachers. Sen. Chris Dodd, Rudolph Giuliani, "SNL" alumni Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase, Paul Simon and Mick Jagger are among the gang that drops by to watch the show, running out from under the bleachers for a better view when the musical act performs. Michaels is the consummate gracious host.

Could he sit home at 11:30 on a Saturday night and watch a live satirical show with someone else's name in the credits as executive producer? People who've known him and the show since the beginning -- even allowing for the five-year sabbatical -- find it impossible to imagine. "I don't know if it would bother me," he says with his studied nonchalance.

But he must be aware of all the speculation about what will happen to "SNL" when he goes. His voice suddenly gets louder and he feigns paranoia: "Who's speculating this?!?!" Oh, uh, no one in particular (meaning the reporter is, among others). The show's three-hour prime-time 25th-anniversary special, in September 1999, was a huge hit, drawing 22 million viewers, but Michaels won't do a 30th-anniversary special and, mulling it over, thinks 35 is an odd number of years to celebrate.

"We're going quietly into this season," Michaels says. "The election is enough." He hasn't made any major cosmetic changes, like a new set, but that will come a year from now when Studio 8-H, and "SNL," are converted to HDTV ("The Tonight Show" has been in high definition for months). "The 25th anniversary show was, I think, a great night," Michaels recalls. "It was great seeing all those people in one place. But not enough time has passed for me to think about another celebration."

So is he saying the next one might be -- the 50th?

"I am," he says assertively. "I'm happy to. And if I can stand, I will be there."

Except for Fox's moderately successful, fitfully funny and younger-skewing "Mad TV," no one has ever come up with a formidable challenger to "Saturday Night Live." But someone conceivably could, the ratings could be an issue, and Michaels might have to get his saber out of its sheath to fight old battles all over again.

"I know that Jeff Zucker is a big fan of the show," Michaels says confidently, referring to the Elmer Fudd-like major-domo of NBC Universal. "I think he honors it, and there's been, in at least a decade, no attempt to alter or change the show or whatever. So I think we're good to go for a while."

Zucker has said he wants to use "SNL" as a kind of comedy farm to develop new NBC stars for its prime-time sitcoms. Michaels in his middle age doesn't object to that plan as he might have when he was 35. He says he doesn't even mind being considered a "company man," anathema to the generation he grew up with.