Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests

by Tom Shales

MGM once boasted of “more stars than there are in the heavens,” and Saturday Night Live could make the same claim for its current stock company and all those illustrious graduates. Too many of them, alas, really are in heaven now.

groan

Mickey Rooney was always talking—“I was the number one star in the worrrrld, you hear me? The worrrrld. Bang! The worrrld! Judy Garland never owned a car. They pumped her so full of drugs they killed her! How long has Robert Redford been in the business, ten years? I’ve been in the business sixty-one years!” He was sixty-two at the time. He would act out entire movies that he thought of, with lines like, “How are you, Mr. Fuck? I’m Mrs. Shit.”

Farley once stuck his ass out the window of the seventeenth floor at 30 Rock and took a shit.

And he’s trying to talk about the lousy dress, and I think Bob Odenkirk, who was very junior at that point, whispered to somebody something, and Lorne just went, “Odenkirk, you speak again, I’ll break your fucking legs.”