SNL Insider Dishes on Early Days

The early seasons of Saturday Night Live “set an almost impossibly high bar” for the future, writes Stephanie Zacharek in Salon, and Al Franken’s writing partner shows why in his new book. Tom Davis offers a backstage pass to early antics at 30 Rock, and it's a compelling read even though the "connect-the-tokes structure sometimes makes it a little difficult to piece together exactly what happened when."

"In the book's livelier passages, he describes what it was like to be part of a group of people dedicated to working their asses off, just to get a few laughs out of people come Saturday night," Zacharek writes. The book, studded with anecdotes about everyone from George Harrison to Chris Farley, “may be a little woolly at times, but it's very rarely sour.” (More Saturday Night Live stories.)