Live from New York, Austin is now home to the Lorne Michaels collection

From KUT News:

The Harry Ransom Center is giving the Debbie Downers, the David S. Pumpkins-heads, and the Stefon stans a reason to rejoice. UT Austin’s world-renowned research library and museum announced Wednesday it had acquired the collection of Saturday Night Live creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels.

And if you’re thinking, “we’re not worthy!“, think again.

Harry Ransom Center Director Steve Enniss said it has a history of and reputation for documenting great cultural achievements in literature, photography, art and film. That ranges from the papers of Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez to the archive of actor Robert De Niro.

“Our film and television holdings have become a growing part of our collections and get extraordinary research use,” he said. “We were absolutely delighted when Lorne Michaels approached us about his interest in placing the Lorne Michaels collection here.”

Enniss said the center is grateful to Michaels for the materials and that the acquisition adds to the rich collection of archives at the center.

“We have a Gutenberg Bible and Shakespeare’s First Folio, and now the Saturday Night Live archive,” he said. “Those things fit together very nicely, I think.”

UT President Jay Hartzell also hailed the acquisition.

“Lorne Michaels changed entertainment and shaped generations of American culture, and we could not be more grateful and excited that he has selected UT and the Harry Ransom Center as the home to much of his life’s work,” Hartzell said in a news release.

The materials included in the Lorne Michaels Collection span from his teenage years through his decades-long career in TV and film. It includes scripts, photographs and correspondence related to shows he worked on early in his television career, such as “The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show” in 1968 and “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” from 1968 through 1969. But Enniss said the bulk of the collection is focused on production materials associated with SNL, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

“What we have in the archive is really the production history of each episode over 50 seasons and this includes materials related to the planning and writing and rehearsing and broadcasting and marketing of the show,” he said.

Enniss said there are memos about casting decisions, marked up scripts, audition tapes and candid photographs.

The Ransom Center will open a special exhibition called “Live from New York! The Making of Lorne Michaels” on Sept. 20.

“It will offer really a panoramic sweep of Lorne Michaels’s career and the riches of this archive,” Enniss said. “I should add though that the collection, once it’s fully catalogued and available for use, can be requested in our reading room.”

Materials in the collection will also showcase Michaels’s work in movies, including “Wayne’s World” and “Mean Girls.” And maybe it’s no coincidence this announcement came on a Wednesday, since on Wednesdays we wear pink.

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