MOSTLY LIVE FROM NEW YORK
by Don Hall
My buddy G. decided to go in on getting the Peacock app and gifted me with a shared membership. Of course, with the timing, I immersed myself into the SNL 50th Anniversary flood. Frankly, SNL hasn’t been a personal go-to in decades but there is the sense of nostalgia and using this cultural icon as a benchmark tracking the unkind march of time.
In watching the three-hour anniversary special, I was reminded of a quote attributed to Lorne Michaels when he was pitching the show—it should feel like the television studio had shut down for the night and had been taken over by a bunch of kids. As the show unfolded, I started to notice that the ‘bunch of kids’ are as old as dirt. Steve Martin (79 years old). Will Ferrell (57 years old). Kenan Thompson (46 years old). Kristen Wiig (51 years old). Eddie Murphy (63 years old). Martin Short (74 years old). Tina Fey (54 years old).
Lorne Michaels (80 years old).
In 1975, he was 30 years old and Ackroyd was twenty-three. The kids are not in charge of the television studio anymore. They all grew up, had kids, bought houses, and became the very establishment that the original cast was mocking. Watching an 88-year old Garrett Morris sit center stage to introduce a Tom Schiller (75 years old) film starring Belushi from 1978 was a little bit like watching Biden try to debate or remember what day it is. Seeing Sir Paul McCartney (82 years old) strain to reach the high notes made me worry he might slip and break a hip.
Look around. The ghosts of giants shuffle through the corridors of power, rattling their dentures and waving their weathered hands, muttering that things were better when they ran the show. Maybe they were. Or maybe they weren’t, and nostalgia is just another drug—one that numbs the sting of irrelevance. Time doesn’t care about your legacy. Time doesn’t give a damn how many wars you fought, records you broke, revolutions you started. It grinds down all monuments into the same pile of dust.
That brilliant Schiller reel, entitled Don’t Look Back in Anger, featured Belushi (who was dead and buried at 33) gleefully dancing on the graves of his friends who outlived him by decades. In 1978 it meant one thing. In 2025 it means something very different. As the Book says, I don’t think this means what you think it does.
This is not to suggest that the elderly should somehow just hide in a closet, put away their toys, and give up the fight but it does occur to me, that in a near constant battle of culture that permeates our hobbled and limping political system, maybe those in charge of one of the most lasting cultural touch points in my lifetime might be served better with some thirty-year old visionary and his GenZ friends mucking things up. They need to move out of their parents’ basement first, so there’s that, but when the idea of comedic anarchy is run by folks who need naps and whose bed time is far earlier than the show time, the image of the old clinging to the glory days is depressing.
I don’t know. I stopped going to my high school reunions after the first ten year deal because it felt kind of awful and sad.
Good Christ… what a depressing take!
Okay. Let’s back up a bit. I suppose I’m coming to grips that my investment, on a day to day level, into the ongoing culture is less than it used to be. My investment in the political future is less than it used to be. We Gen X slackers were never entrusted with control of the steering wheel so there is less for us to cling to and, while not an old fogey sitting on my saggy ass barking at clouds and the crazy kids and their pronouns, focus as we age is necessarily about making the time better for us as well as paving roads for the kids to succeed rather than inject ourselves with whatever new chemicals promise to hold back the tide, surrounding ourselves with yes-men who tell us we’ve still got it, that the young should wait their turn. But turns are taken, not given. And the young don’t want to wait. They’re pushing, climbing, kicking down the doors and laughing as the relics shake their heads and mumble about respect.
And so it goes. The old make way for the young, whether they want to or not. They can fight it, but they’ll lose. They can whine about it, but no one’s listening. Eventually, even the loudest voices grow weak, and the hungry, snarling pack of the new generation steps over their fallen bodies, taking their place in the grand, vicious cycle. The only question is whether they’ll see it coming before the fangs sink in.
In the meantime, I’ll blissfully enjoy both the movies of my coming of age years and the movies made by that young kid with a dream this year, listen to the Beatles when they were moving the needle and appreciate the bands with twenty-year olds belting out their songs, enjoy that which came before while still appreciating that coming around the corner. That’s the best part of the whole getting older thing—I get to swim in all the ponds without demanding anyone listen to me.
As for SNL50, it was a fun reminder of all the show has brought to the culture but better is the four-part docuseries that dives in behind the history.
