Saturday Night
A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live
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Saturday Night
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Narrated by:
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Bill Hemberger
About this listen
Saturday Night is the intimate, original history of Saturday Night Live, from its beginnings as an outlaw program produced by an unruly band of renegades from the comedy underground to a TV institution that made stars of John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy.
This is the book that revealed to the world what really happened behind the scenes during the first ten years of this groundbreaking program, from the battles SNL fought with NBC to the battles fought within the show itself. It's all here— the love affairs, betrayals, rivalries, drug problems, overnight successes, and bitter failures, mixed with the creation of some of the most outrageous and original comedy ever.
This reissue features nearly fifty photographs of cast, crew and sketches. Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad covered television for a wide variety of popular and professional organizations and publications, including The Associated Press, The New York Times, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, TV Guide, Broadcasting/Cablecasting, and Advertising Age.
©2024 Histria A&E (P)2025 Beacon AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 646
The first in-depth, behind-the-scenes audiobook treatment of the rivalry between the two comic book giants. They are the two titans of the comic book industry - the Coke and Pepsi of superheroes - and for more than 50 years, Marvel and DC have been locked in an epic battle for spandex supremacy. At stake is not just sales, but cultural relevancy and the hearts of millions of fans. To many partisans, Marvel is now on top. But for much of the early 20th century, it was DC that was the undisputed leader.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Loved it, but...
- By Smitty on 05-02-18
By: Reed Tucker
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Live from New York
- An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live
- By: Tom Shales, James Andrew Miller
- Narrated by: Christopher Burns, Eric Conger
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 990
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 643
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Story4 out of 5 stars 641
A history of Saturday Night Live that finally reveals what really went on backstage, on the set, in the writers' offices, and on the town. Dozens of stars, writers, and guest hosts recall the backstage gossip, feuds, foibles, drugs, sex, struggles, and calamities of the show that changed television.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Interesting inside look, so-so presentation
- By Tim on 12-22-02
By: Tom Shales, and others
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From Saturday Night to Sunday Night
- My Forty Years of Laughter, Tears, and Touchdowns in TV
- By: Dick Ebersol
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Dick Ebersol
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 56
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Story5 out of 5 stars 56
Think of an important moment in live TV over the last half-century. Dick Ebersol was likely involved. Dropping out of college to join the crew of ABC’s Wide World of Sports, Ebersol worked the Mexico City Olympics during the famous protest by John Carlos and Tommie Smith as well as the Munich Olympics during the tragic hostage standoff. He went on to cocreate Saturday Night Live with Lorne Michaels and later produced the show for four seasons, helping launch Eddie Murphy to stardom.
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5 out of 5 stars
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TV fan
- By Mary Ann Mattingly on 01-13-25
By: Dick Ebersol
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The Quick and the Dead
- By: Cynric Temple-Camp
- Narrated by: Mark Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
From the number one best-selling author of The Cause of Death comes an audiobook about the unlikely, extraordinary, obscure and often tragic ways humans meet their demise. A dead body without a trace of trauma; alien parasites; worms of the brain; crocodile attacks and bizarre eating disorders....In The Quick and the Dead, pathologist and self-confessed death-aficionado Dr. Cynric Temple-Camp takes listeners into a world of disease and death as he seeks answers for those who were unlucky, and those still alive to tell the tale.
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5 out of 5 stars
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New favorite
- By Kat Garcia on 06-03-25
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Lorne
- The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live
- By: Susan Morrison
- Narrated by: Kristen DiMercurio, Susan Morrison
- Length: 22 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 231
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 215
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 215
Over the fifty years that Lorne Michaels has been at the helm of Saturday Night Live, he has become a revered and inimitable presence in the entertainment world. He’s a tastemaker, a mogul, a withholding father figure, a genius spotter of talent, a shrewd businessman, a name-dropper, a raconteur, the inspiration for Dr. Evil, the winner of more than a hundred Emmys—and, essentially, a mystery. Generations of writers and performers have spent their lives trying to figure him out, by turns demonizing and lionizing him.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great read but several weird mispronunciations
- By Larry Carlat on 02-20-25
By: Susan Morrison
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Wish It Lasted Forever
- Life with the Larry Bird Celtics
- By: Dan Shaughnessy
- Narrated by: Dan Shaughnessy
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 258
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 232
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 234
Before primetime ESPN coverage, lucrative branding deals like Air Jordans, and $40 million annual player salaries, there was the NBA of the 1970s and 1980s. Enter Dan Shaughnessy, then the beat reporter for The Boston Globe who covered the Boston Celtics every day from 1982 to1986. It was a time when reporters travelled with professional teams—flying the same commercial airlines, riding the same buses, and staying in the same hotels. Drawing on unprecedented access and personal experiences, Shaughnessy takes us inside the legendary Larry Bird-led Celtics teams.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Enjoyable Read
- By Donna Daily on 12-03-21
By: Dan Shaughnessy
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The Comedians
- Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy
- By: Kliph Nesteroff
- Narrated by: Kliph Nesteroff
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 577
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 517
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 517
In The Comedians, comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff brings to life a century of American comedy with real-life characters, forgotten stars, mainstream heroes and counterculture iconoclasts. Based on over 200 original interviews and extensive archival research, Nesteroff's groundbreaking work is a narrative exploration of the way comedians have reflected, shaped, and changed American culture over the past 100 years.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Performance issues
- By E. A. Smith on 09-02-19
By: Kliph Nesteroff
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The Teammates
- By: David Halberstam
- Narrated by: Tate Donovan
- Length: 4 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 123
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 107
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 108
The Teammates is the profoundly moving story of four great baseball players who have made the passage from sports icons - when they were young and seemingly indestructible - to men dealing with the vulnerabilities of growing older. At the core of the audiobook is the friendship of these four very different men - Boston Red Sox teammates Bobby Doerr, Dominic DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Ted Williams - who remained close for more than 60 years.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Poignant male bounding without the smulch.
- By William R. Todd-Mancillas (Name includes hyphen and capitalized M). on 06-25-25
By: David Halberstam
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Opium
- How an Ancient Flower Shaped and Poisoned Our World
- By: John H. Halpern, David Blistein
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
Opium tells the extraordinary and at times harrowing tale of how we arrived at today's crisis, "mak[ing] timely and startling connections among painkillers, politics, finance, and society" (Laurence Bergreen). The story begins with the discovery of poppy artifacts in ancient Mesopotamia, and goes on to explore how Greek physicians and obscure chemists discovered opium's effects and refined its power, how colonial empires marketed it around the world, and eventually how international drug companies developed a range of powerful synthetic opioids that led to an addiction epidemic.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Opium a poor excuse for a better history.
- By Jeffrey Olsen on 09-12-19
By: John H. Halpern, and others
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Let's Play Two
- The Legend of Mr. Cub, the Life of Ernie Banks
- By: Ron Rapoport
- Narrated by: Charley Steiner
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 37
The definitive and revealing biography of Chicago Cubs legend Ernie Banks, one of America's most iconic, beloved, and misunderstood baseball players, by acclaimed journalist Ron Rapoport.
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4 out of 5 stars
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‘Mostly about Ernie Banks
- By Steven J Kaczynski Sr. on 07-11-22
By: Ron Rapoport
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More
- A History of the World Economy from the Iron Age to the Information Age
- By: Philip Coggan
- Narrated by: Philip Coggan, Kris Dyer
- Length: 15 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 15
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 11
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Story5 out of 5 stars 12
From the development of international trade fairs in the 12th century to the innovations made in China, India, and the Arab world, it turns out that historical economies were much more sophisticated that we might imagine, tied together by webs of credit and financial instruments much like our modern economy.
By: Philip Coggan
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Undisclosed Files of the Police
- Cases from the Archives of the NYPD from 1831 to the Present
- By: Bernard Whalen, Philip Messing, Robert Mladinich
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 123
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 111
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Story4 out of 5 stars 112
More than 175 years of true crimes culled from the city's police blotter, told through an insightful text by two NYPD officers and a NYC crime reporter. From atrocities that occurred before the establishment of New York's police force in 1845 through the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 to the present day, this audio is an insider's look at more than 80 real-life crimes that shocked the nation, from arson to gangland murders, robberies, serial killers, bombings, and kidnappings.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good History of Crime in NYC
- By Bob Shinders on 03-10-17
By: Bernard Whalen, and others
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The Skeptics' Guide to the Future
- What Yesterday's Science and Science Fiction Tell Us About the World of Tomorrow
- By: Dr. Steven Novella, Bob Novella - contributor, Jay Novella - contributor
- Narrated by: Dr. Steven Novella
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 269
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 217
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 215
In THE SKEPTICS' GUIDE TO THE FUTURE, Steven Novella and his co-authors build upon the work of futurists of the past by examining what they got right, what they got wrong, and how they came to those conclusions. By exploring the pitfalls of each era, they give their own speculations about the distant future, transformed by unbelievable technology ranging from genetic manipulation to artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Thin gruel from the rogues
- By James Weisner on 11-27-22
By: Dr. Steven Novella, and others
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The Way It Was
- My Life with Frank Sinatra
- By: Eliot Weisman, Jennifer Valoppi
- Narrated by: David Aston Reese
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 174
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 153
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 152
In the best-selling tradition of Henry Bushkin's Johnny Carson comes The Way It Was: My Life with Frank Sinatra, a candid and eye-opening inside look at the final decades of Sinatra's life, told by his long-time manager and friend, Eliot Weisman. Eliot Weisman worked with Frank Sinatra from 1975 up until Sinatra's death in 1998 and became one of the singer's most trusted confidants and advisers. In this book, Weisman tells the story of the final years of the iconic entertainer from within his exclusive inner circle.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Shameful that Sinatra was maintained on drugs.
- By A reader lives a thousand lives before they die. on 02-02-18
By: Eliot Weisman, and others
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39 Years of Short-Term Memory Loss
- The Early Days of SNL from Someone Who Was There
- By: Tom Davis
- Narrated by: Tom Davis
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 63
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4 out of 5 stars 39
i>39 Years of Short-Term Memory Loss is a seriously funny, offbeat, and irreverent memoir that chronicles the early days of Saturday Night Live and features some of its greatest personalities---Al Franken, Lorne Michaels, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Michael O'Donoghue, and Chris Farley.
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5 out of 5 stars
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GREAT MEMORIES!!!
- By Ruth R-Evans on 08-21-12
By: Tom Davis
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In the Garden of the Righteous
- The Heroes Who Risked Their Lives to Save Jews During the Holocaust
- By: Richard Hurowitz
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 14 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story5 out of 5 stars 25
Less than a century ago, the Second World War took the lives of more than fifty million people; more than six million of them were systematically exterminated through crimes of such enormity that a new name to describe the horror was coined: the Holocaust. Yet amid such darkness, there were glimmers of light—courageous individuals who risked everything to save those hunted by the Nazis.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Must read! Outstanding and compelling! Couldn’t stop until the end.
- By Integrity personified on 03-03-23
By: Richard Hurowitz
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The Amusement Park
- 900 Years of Thrills and Spills, and the Dreamers and Schemers Who Built Them
- By: Stephen M. Silverman
- Narrated by: Allan Corduner
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 14
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 10
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Story5 out of 5 stars 10
Step right up! The Amusement Park is a rich, anecdotal history that begins nine centuries ago with the "pleasure gardens" of Europe and England and ends with the most elaborate modern parks in the world. It's a history told largely through the stories of the colorful, sometimes hedonistic characters who built them. And, of course, this is a full-throttle celebration of the rides, those marvels of engineering and heart-stopping thrills from an author, Stephen Silverman, whose lifelong passion for his subject shines through.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A thorough history of amusement.
- By Dayton Burbs on 01-01-24
“Um,.. darling it’s ‘Lorne’. Not ‘Loren’. Let’s try that again…”
I’m outraged in general by A.I. taking jobs away from people who do work that reflect a human touch, like poetry, art, writing, etc. Here, while it sounds conversational, I don’t believe that a human would get so many words wrong.
So A.I. takes away a human voice, a human storyteller.
Man, this is unforgivable.
A.I. reader???
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Also, it’s updated for the 50th Anniversary in the intro alone. The epilogue is retained from the original release from the 1980s (a hopeful one where Lorne returns to run SNL for the 11th season). Would have loved to hear more, but that’s where “Live From New York” takes over.
Wonderful story, noticeable mispronunciations.
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