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Few bosses inspire more fear in their employees than Lorne Michaels. More than three decades of running Saturday Night Live have not appeared to soften the Canadian-born producer in any way. He continues to steer the franchise he created with an iron hand, screening every single sketch before letting it go to air. As any of the current cast members will attest, the live broadcasts are a breeze compared to the dreaded weekly pitch-meeting with the boss.

"Man, I hate pitching sketches to Lorne," says cast regular Kenan Thompson. "I mean, he's super-cool and all, but God, he makes me nervous. The guy represents a lot of people's careers, you know?"

Sophomore SNL cast member Andy Samberg appears equally fearful. "Lorne is a smooth dude, but he can be very intimidating. He never gets animated or anything, but if he doesn't think something is funny, you know it."

Likewise, head writer and cast regular Seth Myers admits that when he joined the show in 2001, taking sketches to Michaels ranked a 10 out of 10 on the "terrified scale." Now? "It's about 9 &frac12. Lorne demands a certain level of intelligence in the comedy. At the same time, you know he will happily put something like Dick in a Box on the show. Lorne has very unique range."

But Michaels still knows funny, and how to pick his spots. Crass as it was, Dick in a Box was the sketch that single-handedly salvaged SNL's season last year, and it was a snap decision from the 62-year-old major domo.

Samberg took the concept — a soul music video with two smooth cats, played by Samberg and that week's host, Justin Timberlake, wrapping up special Christmas gifts for their ladies — to Michaels on the Friday afternoon before a live Saturday broadcast last December. Michaels sanctioned the idea, which was shot quickly on digital video and rushed to air for the Saturday show.

By Monday morning, an uncensored version of Dick in a Box had been watched by millions of viewers on You Tube. And this week it was nominated for an Emmy, in the Original Music and Lyrics category.

"That's the real power of the show — you can go from blank page to on-the-air in 24 hours," says Michaels. "And it was a perfect form for the Internet, the same way The Chronicles of Narnia exploded the year before. It gets it out there."

If just briefly, Dick in a Box made Saturday Night Live relevant again, and had people talking. It wasn't the show's best season, but then, like the New York Yankees, SNL has had great years and forgettable ones, with Michaels the manager providing stability and direction. He was there for the first broadcast in 1975, he left in 1980 for five years, and, on this day, he's at a posh Beverley Hills hotel promoting SNL's 33rd season starting in September. Basketball superstar LeBron James will host the opener.

Michaels is smallish, soft-spoken and well-dressed, but with piercing dark eyes that you can easily imagine boring through one of his comedy charges at a writers' meeting. Stepping aside from the press conference fray to chat, he doesn't smile or laugh much for a Canadian who got his own start in the business by writing comedy sketches.

Michaels, in fact, may be the most unassuming Canadian to enter the comedy business, and do it on American television, but nobody will ever match his eye for talent. Just about every major North American comedy star today came from his SNL factory. Working backward, the alumni include Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. Even Chevy Chase had a movie career. They were all relative unknowns before they started pitching skits to Michaels.

Saturday Night Live has been alternately praised and battered by critics over the years, but it remains a viewing tradition for millions. The show's undying strength, says Michaels, is that "it comes from another time in network television — its budget, the way it's produced. It's really a throwback to live television from the fifties."

Michaels also has a keen eye for what's hip on U.S. television, and to some extent he credits his birthplace. Born in Toronto as Lorne Michael Lipowitz in 1944 (a few months after NBC radio signed a young announcer named Don Pardo, who still opens each SNL broadcast), Michaels had the gift of seeing humour in his surroundings.

"Toronto was the best of all worlds in terms of comedy grounding," he says. "It was an unbelievably dull city when I was growing up, so the safety and dullness made you find ways to amuse yourself." And the best way for a kid to amuse himself in the fifties was via the black-and-white console television set in the living room. Networks had signed on and comedy was king.

Michaels absorbed all of it. "I used to watch The Colgate Comedy Hour with my family on Sunday night, but for me and my brother, it was always the Bilko show [with Phil Silvers]," he says. "On television we had Canadian comedy, American comedy and even some British comedy."

Michaels graduated from the University of Toronto in 1966 and teamed with a young lawyer named Hart Pomerantz to create comedy pieces for CBC. They tested themselves in Los Angeles, with fleeting writing stints for Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and a Phyllis Diller sitcom, and returned home to Canada. CBC gave the pair their own series, The Hart & Lorne Terrific Hour, a variety show with musical guests and improv-comedy players that included Aykroyd and Victor Garber. The show ran two seasons.

In 1975, Michaels was asked to put together a variety-style show for NBC to air in the post-news timeslot on Saturday night. The network was filling the space with reruns of Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show. Working with veteran producer Dick Ebersol, Michaels devised a casual variety format of sketch comedy and a weekly musical guest. He kept it simple.

"We came on right after Watergate, and in my generation, the things we cared about were the music, the films and politics," says Michaels. "The show has always been a mix of those three things."

To ensure the first season went smoothly, Michaels made calls home to some talented Canucks. "I just brought in the people who I knew were good," he shrugs. "Howard Shore was musical director and Paul Shaffer was in the band. Danny [Aykroyd] was on my show in Canada. It wasn't like I ever said: 'Okay, where are the Canadians?' I've always gone with the funniest people I can find."

No other program was making fun of the president at the time. SNL entered the zeitgeist of American culture during that first season and stayed there, with only a few vacations since. When the original cast began to fragment and people left the show, Michaels treated the departures as opportunities.

"The show was always meant to be about different people, different subject matter," he says. "If the people who were doing the show in 1975 were still doing it, we'd all have guns in our mouths. It's kept fresh from the fact new faces come into it every year, and it's people at the beginning of their careers. There's a certain energy to that."

And so it's gone on SNL for more than 30 years. To be fair, Michaels has always been more mentor than taskmaster to his cast. "Lorne is actually quite protective of us," says Samberg. "He's shown us how to interact with the press, with the crew and the host. He's a great teacher."

In several weeks Michaels will resume the 70-hour work weeks and will sit through hundreds of sketch ideas from his young, mostly unknown cast. He holds firm in his resolution that his Saturday nights shall remain booked for years to come.

"There are two driving forces in my life," he says. "One, I really love doing it. And two, my daughter gets out of high school in 2016, and that's a consideration because I want to be there. But I'm committed to the show. If I didn't think it was important, there are easier ways to make a living."