Lorne Michaels

Brandon Tartikoff is on the phone for Lorne Michaels. The NBC programming boss is calling about a dispute with the network's censors over a skit scheduled for Saturday Night Live; it's a poker game that Michaels played for more than five years in the '70s as the show's creator and producer. In those days, the network's Standards and Practices department usually blinked. But, says Michaels, who returned to the show last season after five years away, the rules have been rewritten. "Standards have changed the way the country has," he reports, "and I think all of that to some degree comes from the President.

Gasping for breath in New York - it's Saturday Night. Amid withering criticism and burdened by the glories of yesteryear, the weekend TV beacon for a generation has seen its light flicker and dim. But NBC and Saturday Night Live czar Lorne Michaels are not standing still. They've dispatched boatloads of new hands to man the lighthouse. Can they survive the predators - three new late-night Saturday shows - lurking in surrounding waters? Twelve new writers are scribbling feverishly, alongside five holdovers, to get Saturday's SNL season premiere - guest host, Mariel Hemingway; guest musicians, Blues Traveler - on the air. Six new comedians join five holdovers in front of the camera, producing a leaner and meaner cast that's nearly a third smaller than last year's.

To the list of catastrophic historical arrangements that includes Russia's non-aggression pact with Germany, add the recent deal between Lorne Michaels and Hollywood to turn SNL skits into movies. The ensuing carnage includes movies like "A Night at the Roxbury," which extends to feature length a lame skit about disco weenies that strains to be funny on TV even at two minutes. "A Night at the Roxbury" has its genesis in the success that Michaels had with earlier movie hits like "Wayne's World," based on a Mike Myers bit first performed on SNL. That movie had more to do with Mike Myers, however, than with SNL. Myers has gone on to comedy hits like "Austin Powers," while SNL has languished.

Aquaman? Probably. Sarah Palin? Just maybe. That's an early read on this weekend's 34th season premiere of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" from "SNL" executive producer Lorne Michaels, who's balancing public expectations of a Tina Fey appearance as the Alaska governor and a guest host - Olympic gold-medalist Michael Phelps - who's a pretty big fish himself. Phelps, who appears to know no fear, told reporters yesterday, "I can usually adapt myself to almost anything" and that the hosting gig is "something that I'll be able to handle.

Dive from N.Y. . . . it's Phelps Tonight's Saturday Night Live season opener on NBC not only will be graced by that iconic Olympian Michael Phelps (and his smoother-than-smooth swimmer's bod), it will also feature a walk-on by presidential hopeful Barack Obama. SNL exec producer Lorne Michaels says he hopes to book the other principal candidates, John McCain, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, on the show before Election Day. Too close for comfort In a touching televised therapy session, Tatum O'Neal, 44, tells Oprah that her June 8 drug bust made her realize just how badly she had been managing her ongoing recovery from addiction.

Jokes aimed at President Bush, a regular feature on NBC's Saturday Night Live, will be sidelined for this weekend's season opener, executive producer Lorne Michaels says. "We won't do anything that attempts to undermine President Bush's authority or that is in any way disrespectful," Michaels said Wednesday. "We'll try to reflect what the country is thinking and feeling at that moment on the night of Sept. 29," Michaels said. "I think New Yorkers have been resilient, generous and tough through all of this.

Sketch comedy isn't as easy as it looks. (Ask Lorne Michaels.) Changing the world isn't easy, either. (Ask the Woodstock generation.) Tonight, the producers of "She TV" are attempting to change the world of sketch comedy. Not surprisingly, it often looks as if they're trying too hard. Originally titled "The Better Sex," "She TV" appears to be an attempt to right (and rewrite) some of the wrongs suffered by women at the hands of male comics, male writers and male producers.

Comic and former "Saturday Night Live" cast member Colin Quinn is applying baseball rules to his new series for NBC - specifically, the three-strikes-and-you're-out rule. "If we can't make the show good in three episodes, then I guess I don't deserve it," Quinn joked Wednesday about the "Colin Quinn Show," which launches Monday at 9:30 p.m. In an unusual step, NBC has ordered only three live, half-hour installments of the "Colin Quinn Show. " It will originate from "SNL's" studio 8H in Rockefeller Center.

Three new recruits from NBC's venerable Saturday Night Live will take the stage of the University of Pennsylvania's Irvine Auditorium tonight, doling out laughs for a worthy cause in "Stand-Up Against Homelessness. " The SNL supporting-cast members - Adam Sandler, Robert Schneider and David Spade - plus comic and MTV veejay Colin Quinn and the show's organizers hope to raise more than $40,000 to benefit the homeless in West Philadelphia. "Stand-Up" is sponsored by Comic Relief, known for its star-studded HBO fund-raising events.

"In the beginning," Lorne Michaels has often said, speaking the gospel of Saturday Night Live, "the idea was to be funny, to be dangerous, to be obnoxious. Concepts like 'revolutionary' or 'long-running' just didn't figure into our plans. " As it turns out, Saturday Night Live has proven to be all those things: funny, revolutionary, occasionally dangerous, frequently obnoxious and certainly long-running. Tonight, the show will celebrate the opening of its 15th season with a 2 1/2-hour special starting at 9 p.m. on Channel 3, a sort of Sunday Night Live that will include live performances and clips of the satirical show's greatest moments.

AROUND THE country she's "the woman known for her impression of Sarah Palin on 'Saturday Night Live' " or "the creator and star of '30 Rock.' " But at the Philadelphia Daily News she'll always be "Upper Darby's Tina Fey . " Tattle, in fact, has a function key that types out "Upper Darby's Tina Fey" in one stroke. So, congrats to Upper Darby's Tina Fey, who has won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

"MacGruber" summons up memories of mullets, "MacGyver" and Mike Myers. A blood-spattered, hit-or-miss character comedy of the "Wayne's World"/ "Austin Powers" school, "MacGruber" manages to be nostalgic and profane in equal measures, a movie that's retro and retrofitted to suit the new cutting edge in screen farce. Will Forte's thin "Saturday Night Live" sketch is stretched out and taken to places network TV hasn't yet been. It's a game attempt to raunch up the standard issue "SNL" sketch film for the R-rated Age of Judd Apatow.

IT WAS a big weekend for two indestructible superheroes. Despite lesser reviews than its predecessor, "Iron Man 2," starring Robert Downey Jr. as Marvel's gadget-happy billionaire with real abs of steel, earned $133.6 million domestically on its opening weekend, according to Paramount Pictures' estimates. The opening rocketed past the 2008 original's $98.6 million debut and became the fifth-biggest movie-opening weekend of all time. Having taken in $194 million overseas since it began playing in many international markets last week, IM2's worldwide now exceeds $327 million.

YOU'D THINK if you lived in paradise all year you'd be able to take a joke, but nooooooooooo. It's official: Hawaiians have no sense of humor. The state's lieutenant governor, James "Duke" Aiona, and some in the state's tourism industry are annoyed about a 4-minute "Saturday Night Live" skit that offered an over-the-top portrayal of two local bar performers who mock tourists from the mainland. Aiona said he's worried the skit might hurt the state's biggest industry (because people make their vacation plans based on Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson wearing a grass skirt)

The Good Sport Express cruised through Rockefeller Center over the weekend, as Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin turned up on Saturday Night Live to let the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, and a handsome movie star, make some more fun of her. She stood smiling in the hallway with SNL chief Lorne Michaels, as Alec Baldwin pretended to mistake her for his 30 Rock costar Tina Fey, who was onstage mimicking her, dismissing polls that show her...

Dive from N.Y. . . . it's Phelps Tonight's Saturday Night Live season opener on NBC not only will be graced by that iconic Olympian Michael Phelps (and his smoother-than-smooth swimmer's bod), it will also feature a walk-on by presidential hopeful Barack Obama. SNL exec producer Lorne Michaels says he hopes to book the other principal candidates, John McCain, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, on the show before Election Day. Too close for comfort In a touching televised therapy session, Tatum O'Neal, 44, tells Oprah that her June 8 drug bust made her realize just how badly she had been managing her ongoing recovery from addiction.

Aquaman? Probably. Sarah Palin? Just maybe. That's an early read on this weekend's 34th season premiere of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" from "SNL" executive producer Lorne Michaels, who's balancing public expectations of a Tina Fey appearance as the Alaska governor and a guest host - Olympic gold-medalist Michael Phelps - who's a pretty big fish himself. Phelps, who appears to know no fear, told reporters yesterday, "I can usually adapt myself to almost anything" and that the hosting gig is "something that I'll be able to handle.

There's really no connection, but just as Paramount was throwing Tom Cruise out of its corporate harem, it announced a two-picture deal with the creators of South Park, which recently caused a ruckus over its Cruise-bashing episode, "Trapped in the Closet. " Variety says Trey Parker and Matt Stone's deal will have the satirists making two live-action films, My All-America and Giant Monsters Attack Japan! There's no info on either comedy, except that Parker will direct with Stone producing.

The lovely, languid actress Laura Dern and the handsome, harmonious Ben Harper were married last week in a Christmas-themed sunset ceremony in Los Angeles. The nups, reports Us Weekly, were held at the former home of Gregory Peck with 150 of the couple's closest family and friends attending. Christmas trees, candles and ornaments were hung by the altar with care. Dern, 38, and Harper, 36, have been together four years. They became engaged last year, just before their second child, Jaya, was born.