USA Today has a feature article today about the release of Saturday Night Live: The Complete First Season on DVD. It includes snippets of conversation with Dan Aykroyd, Laraine Newman, Lorne Michaels and Al Franken, who all try and make things sound as pleasant as possible, conveniently skipping over all the drugs, chaos and other noise that would eventually dissolve the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players.
For example, in this excerpt, note how Franken leaves out the detail that the reason there was so much laughter going on because of this particular sketch was because of the amount of drugs he and his writing partner Tom Davis were on at the time:
"Al Franken, the progressive radio talk show host who started his career as a writer for Saturday Night Live, says, "My favorite memories are of just rolling on the floor, laughing at something we'd written," he says. "We did this Final Days sketch with Dan playing Richard Nixon, roaming the White House a little bit drunk at night, with Madeline Kahn as Pat writing in her diary. I heard later that when Bob Woodward saw it, that was when he really felt the book was big."
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