Saturday Night Audiobook By Doug Hill, Jeff Weingrad cover art

Saturday Night

A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live

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Saturday Night

By: Doug Hill, Jeff Weingrad
Narrated by: Bill Hemberger
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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 Audiobooks Entertainment & Performing Arts Film & TV History & Criticism

Critic reviews

“ It reads like a thriller, and may be the best book ever written about television.” Associated Press“

A chilling real-life cliffhanger.” Washington Post“

An anthropological masterpiece.” Vanity Fair
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Most relevant  
I love SNL, I really liked the book but the reading was, I suspect, done by A. I. Because of the several random mispronunciation of names and places that a human being would know. Or at least someone in a sound studio could stop him and correct him.
“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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The narrator underwent a commendable Herculean task telling the story of the early years of SNL, but there were some odd choices in pronouncing names like “Lorne” (alternates between “Lorne” and “Loren”), “Tebet” (“teBET” instead of “TEbet”), and “Zweibel” (“ZWYbul” instead of “zwyBEL”). If you can get past those, then it’s a great listen.

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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