Befitting the man, the Bernie Brillstein memorial on Monday night ran the emotional gamut from naughty to nice, from respectful to irreverent, from silly to sweet.

When none other than Kermit the Frog closed the two-hour tribute with a heartfelt rendition of "Rainbow Connection," there wasn't a peep in Royce Hall, other than sniffling and the rustling of tissues. The crowd for the event organized by Brad Grey and Lorne Michaels was large and high-powered, with virtually every major studio, talent agency, network represented, as well as an eclectic mix of top talent.

Royce Hall seats about 1,800 people, and it was packed all but for a few rows of the balcony so I'm guessing there were at least 1,200 or so who came out to salute the man variously described as a father figure, a trusted friend, a source of sage wisdom and "Santa Claus." The outdoor reception in the quad afterward was elegant and full of conversation, including talk of pending deals and new clients and projects to pitch -- the hum of a hopping showbiz party that no doubt would have made the honoree, who died Thursday at 77, very proud.

The Blues Brothers -- Jim Belushi and Dan Aykroyd -- even reunited for the occasion, pulling out the shades and skinny ties to romp through two numbers, "Messin' with the Kid" and "Flip, Flop and Fly." "That was for you, kid," Aykroyd called out as they shimmied off the stage.

Most of the speakers noted Brillstein's fondness for "kid" as a term of endearment, or as a conversation-starter.

"For the first time, I get to say, 'Don't let 'em get you, kid," Grey said, with a catch in his voice, in closing his remarks.

Grey told an only-in-showbiz story about having to work fast over the weekend to secure a funeral and burial service at Hillside Memorial this past Sunday. When the mortuary informed the Brillstein family that they were overbooked for the day, Bernie's widow, Carrie, reached out to Brad, who reached out to Lorne Michaels for advice, who suggested that Brad simply "bump someone."

Brad's first response was "I don't think you can do that -- these people are dead." But he thought about it some more, made some calls and, amazingly, got it done.

"We apologize and thank the Cohen family of Encino, who will now be burying their beloved grandfather Sherman on Tuesday," Grey explained.

Every speaker had a great Bernie story or two, and most had a great line, or two. To wit:

"You can't trust people who haven't walked through kitchens."

That was a vintage Bernie Brillstein-ism, according to his longtime friend and client Lorne Michaels. Michaels translates the Bernie bon mot to mean that talent needs to be honed through hard work and experience, and for comics, that often means the grueling biz of working nightclubs. And in many nightclubs, you have to walk through the kitchen to get to the stage.

Having spent most of the day talking to people about Brillstein (pictured with his wife, Carrie), who died Thursday at 77, I think I can safely say that the single-most defining aspect of his character was his "love of the game," as so many of his friends put it. He enjoyed the shoe-leather work of going to see a comic, or a play, or reading a spec script, or bumping into a promising staff writer on the set of a flailing TV show.

The latter scenario is how he met Michaels, 40 years ago on a Burbank soundstage that was briefly home to "The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show." The show was anything but beautiful, but it did mark the first U.S. job of a young Canuck scribe who was destined to meet his manager and mentor while working on that NBC show (and the two of them were destined to link arms and muscle "Saturday Night Live" on the air seven years later).

"The first night (on 'Beautiful') the taping went to 2:30 in the morning. We all spent a lot of time in the halls waiting around. And there was this guy Bernie who was both funny and profane and smart in a way that I'd never really experienced before," Michaels remembered.