Years later Steve Martin and I had a discussion about how exhilarating that first season of SNL was, even to those of us who were mere spectators. Steve was living in Aspen at the time, and when he saw those first few episodes, his reaction was, “They’ve done it. They did what was out there, what we all had in our heads, this new kind of comedy.” Meaning that someone (Lorne Michaels) had finally worked out a way to channel our comedy generation’s loose, weirdo, hairy, nontraditional bent—Belushi’s manic energy, Aykroyd’s subversiveness, Chevy’s smart-ass leading-man thing, Gilda’s woman-child
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