Tom Shales > Quotes

“Chris Rock, Cast Member: How can anyone hate the guy? A lot of people have problems with Lorne. A lot of people I've met from the show come from these great backgrounds, and they're not used to working for people. And you know he hired you to work for him, there's no working with. You're only working with if you count the money at the end of the night. Otherwise you're working for. And when you're working for somebody, you're going to have to do shit you don't want to do. And sometimes they're not going to talk to you. And that's what working for people is.”
― Tom Shales, Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live

“When you’re young, you have way fewer taboo topics, and then as you go through life and you have experiences with people getting cancer and dying and all the things you would have made fun of, then you don’t make fun of them anymore. So rebelliousness really is the province of young people—that kind of iconoclasm.”
― Tom Shales, Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests

“Keith Richards I remember. There was a horse backstage that week, and I was in my dressing area and I saw Keith Richards go up, hold the horse’s face in his hands, and go, “You’re a fine horse, aren’t you?” I’ll never forget that.”
― Tom Shales, Live From New York: An Uncensored History Of Saturday Night Live

“Chevy hosted the second show, and we were all so excited because, to us, Chevy was like a god. This was someone returning who’d been one of the original people and was this legendary figure. And we were just excited to work with him. And when he got there, he was a monster. I mean, he insulted everybody. He said to Robert Downey, Jr., “Didn’t your father used to be a successful director? Whatever happened to him? Boy, he sure died, you know, he sure went to hell.” Downey turned ashen. And then Chevy turned to me and he said, “Oh, you’re the gay guy, right?” And he goes, “I’ve got an idea for a sketch for you. How about we say you have AIDS and we weigh you every week?” It was out of place. So then he ended up having to apologize and actually coming to my office. He was really furious that he had to apologize to me. He was just beside himself. And it was just awful. He acted horribly to me. He acted horribly to everyone. When he got on the elevator at the end of the night—you know, we all go to the party afterwards—and everybody saw him coming, we hid. We wouldn’t be on the elevator with him. We were all hiding. We were plastered against the wall going, “Oh, he’s getting on the elevator, he’s almost gone. Oh, he’s gone.” No one wanted to be near him. I don’t know what he was on or what was happening to him mentally, but he was just crazy.”
― Tom Shales, Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests

“Eventually, television got louder and faster, and closed up the spaces between sentences that used to indicate human thought was going on.”
― Tom Shales via Bob Chancellor