Celebrate 40 Years Of ‘SNL’ And The People Who Made It Possible With This Collection Of Photographs

The excitement for tonight’s SNL 40th anniversary special is growing, and many of the players in tonight’s festivities have been sharing their thoughts and memories on social media leading up to the big event.

It’s hard to deny the importance of this anniversary and of the show as a whole. People lob complaints and call for it’s demise on a weekly basis, but those calls have been happening for years. Yet there are few shows in television history that have allowed a certain brand of comedy to exist on the air the way SNL does. It’s a cultural force rivaled only by the likes of The Simpsons in terms of its impact. The show has earned this status, primarily due to the people who populate the halls of Studio 8H.

It’s the type of people that Adam McKay talks about in a Rolling Stone essay. People who are young, raw, and passionate about what they’re doing.

Those are the kinds of people who populate these photos, which cover the past and present of a show as divisive as the first day it aired (a point plenty of folks agree with after watching the first episode last night). So enjoy this brief look back, and make sure to laugh later tonight:

https://twitter.com/jormataccone/status/566486321779048448

https://instagram.com/p/zILPi8JLNY/

Producer Mike Shoemaker tweeted a treasure trove of classic pics that spanned his tenure from 1986 to 2008:

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