SNL's Last Survivor (Huffington Post) about Tom Davis, Al Franken and SNL

Wasn't Al adorable?



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-perrin/snls-last-survivor_b_168567.html

His new memoir, Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss details his triumphs and defeats, offering one of the more candid looks inside the original SNL. Davis lays it out so honestly that he had Grove Press delay the book's release until Minnesota's Senate race ended, not wanting to give Norm Coleman any ammo against his ex-partner Al Franken. This generosity of spirit permeates Davis' memoir, though he's not lax in the graphic remembrance department. Some of his anecdotes, primarily those dealing with his heroin and cocaine use, are hard to read, simply because you wonder how he survived some of these scenes. Yet he did, and is here to tell us how it all went down.

Davis' timeline jumps all over the place, from his upbringing in Minneapolis, to he and Franken struggling as club comics in early-70s Los Angeles, to his intense friendships with Timothy Leary and Jerry Garcia, his many relationships with incredibly beautiful women, and naturally, his various runs on SNL, beginning in 1975. His depictions of Lorne Michaels, "The Boss" as Davis calls him, are the most forthright since O'Donoghue, who rarely if ever kissed Lorne's ring, a requirement for many seeking comedy fame. Not that Davis trashes Lorne; he repeatedly thanks SNL's godfather for the opportunities Davis enjoyed. Still, Lorne comes across as a Machiavellian figure, pitting egos against each other, showering certain people with praise while freezing others out. As Lorne became wealthier and more powerful, these traits solidified, turning SNL into a mirror of his personality. The show's rough edges were sanded down to the bland, celeb-worship model we see today. None of this reflects Davis' comedy, which is why over time, he too was slowly erased from SNL.

The writing on the wall became evident in this scene:

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