Lorne Michaels as the ‘best man’: The all-star wedding party for Carrie Fisher and Paul Simon
To the surprise of absolutely no one, when two huge stars get married, the guest list is full of more huge stars. Specifically, when those two stars are Carrie Fisher and Paul Simon, the seating chart was always going to be a veritable who’s-who of A-listers.
In 1978, the stars aligned for one of the best celebrity couples around. Saying ‘best’ feels odd given that Fisher and Simon did eventually divorce and always had an on-and-off love, but in the 1970s, the coming together of Princess Leia and one of music’s most respected and beloved voices was a culture crossover for the ages as Hollywood royalty met folk royalty.
It played out in real time as well for the world to be invested in. The world was following along with the highs and lows as the pair met, dated, split for a while, started dating again, got engaged, split again, found their way back to each other, and finally got married, but then split again, dated once more before finally calling it quits after 12 years of push and pull.
Some might say that being so messy was simply a sign that it was doomed all along. But to the more romantic, and seemingly to Fisher and Simon themselves, it was merely the trials of love when two people cannot ever fully pull themselves from one another, despite the issues.
“Once they saw each other, no one else mattered to either of them,” Simon’s biographer Peter Ames Carlin wrote about their electric connection. Both brought what the other lacked. For Fisher, Simon brought peace and a certain serenity. To Simon, Fisher brought the opposite, as Carlin wrote, “Carrie added velocity to [Paul’s] life, a kind of wild energy that often set him alight and sometimes made him scream”.
It was intoxicating and beautiful and even poetic. For Fisher, Simon wrote what he always considered to be one of his finest lyrical moments, declaring ‘Heart and Bones’ a “better song” than ‘The Sound of Silence’. In its essence, this 1983 track was his wedding vows as he traced their tumultuous love affair to the year they finally said I do, singing, “Two people were married / The act was outrageous / The bride was contagious”.
Fisher shared her own poetic reading of the relationship too, in her memoir. “Years ago, there were tribes that roamed the Earth, and every tribe had a magic person,” she wrote in Wishful Drinking, “Well, now, as you know, all the tribes have dispersed, but every so often, you meet a magic person, and every so often, you meet someone from your tribe. Which is how I felt when I met Paul Simon.” It’s clear from both sides that despite not being able to make it work, the love they shared, no matter the mess, was true.
In 1983, they thought it would finally be forever as they exchanged rings and words to be bound to each other in a ceremony in front of their friends. However, with both being massively famous, those friends were stars in their own right. Robin Williams was there, Billy Joel was there, Star Wars creator George Lucas was there to celebrate his leading lady, Randy Newman and a bunch more of Simon’s musical peers were there. But up at the altar, next to him as his best man, Simon didn’t pick Garfunkel, but instead stood Lorne Michaels, the creator of Saturday Night Live.
“Lorne Michaels and I have been friends for more than 37 years,” Simon wrote in Vanity Fair in 2012. After meeting in 1975, Simon and Michaels’ own love actually predated his love for Fisher, so at the couple’s wedding, the SNL funny guy was right there, and chances are, through their messy and multiple splits, he was right there too.
