It’s difficult to conceptualize now, with it being such an institution, that Saturday Night Live was once cutting-edge. Nearly fifty years on, it has fallen into tedium, barely anything on the show can be considered truly original, daring, or groundbreaking -and you could make the argument it is less relevant than ever as the sole standard-bearer of American sketch comedy, with fairly meagre political satire, and a cast who with less prospects in a comedy-depleted media landscape are less likely to break out beyond its parameters. But when it was formed, it represented a new and radical kind of television comedy, a nexus-point in the counter-culture driven by some of the most distinct young talents of the era waiting to break out. And it’s that nostalgia that director Jason Reitman and his writing partner Gil Kenan feed on in Saturday Night, a movie chronicling the chaotic night and enormous stakes of the franchise’s first ever show on October 11th, 1975.
And the circumstances of that show are certainly compelling, from the context involving contract disputes between NBC executives and Johnny Carson, to the sheer number of wildly diverse acts planned including two musical guests, stand-up monologues, esoteric acts from non-cast performers, and the Muppets, and of course the various egos and drugs causing problems for cast and crew behind the scenes. It’s a miracle the show made it to air at all, at least that’s what Reitman and Kenan would have you believe; but even where liberties are taken, the air of bizarre chaos is in perfect keeping with the atmosphere of that time and that bunch of wild unpredictable characters occupying the same space.
Wrangling them all (and the film’s National Lampoon-inspired poster does a great job illustrating this) is Lorne Michaels, played by The Fabelmans’ Gabriel LaBelle, and the film follows not quite in real-time the last hour and a half before the show hit the air, as he winds up involved in or observing an array of problems at 30 Rock involving the talent, crew, and most dauntingly the network executives and affiliates.
In this manner the movie almost plays like an episode of Saturday Night Live itself, with various sketches honing in on little corners of the production; like a religious network censor clashing viscerally with the show’s acerbic head writer Michael O’Donoghue (Tommy Dewey), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), a playwright, trying to figure out his place in this comedy ensemble, Lorne’s assistant Neil (Andrew Barth Feldman) accidentally getting high on LSD and locking himself in a closet, and walking ego Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) getting into fights with both an intoxicated John Belushi (Matt Wood) and TV icon and back-up host Milton Berle (J.K. Simmons) trying to seduce his fiancé. All the while sets are falling apart, network pressure is skyrocketing, and everybody tries to communicate with Michaels the impossibility of the endeavour, especially with so many acts for the runtime, and his frustrating inability to define what the show is.
Reitman very quickly captures a frenetic atmosphere, darting from room to studio to control booth as he touches on and establishes several different situations and characters that tout the insanity of the production. You might have forgotten, as I did, that Andy Kaufman, played by Nicholas Braun, was involved in that first show. Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podanay), later a cast-member himself, was supposed to perform a stand-up set in addition to those by the host George Carlin (Matthew Rhys). And Jim Henson (Braun again) is around too, coming in with complaints about the writers’ harassment and refusal to write material for his Muppets. All of this considered, and Michaels’ vague description of the show as a “night in New York City”, does an ample job showing just how weird, unusual, and risky this whole endeavour actually was. Even taking into account what we now know of Saturday Night Live, that first show resembled it in only the loosest of ways. And both Reitman and his cast draw attention to just how young everyone involved was.
LaBelle, though nearly a decade younger than his real-life counterpart, makes for a good Lorne Michaels. Like the man himself he's not particularly charismatic, but he captures that focus, intensity, and drive paired with a healthy dose of arrogance and stubbornness. Quite appropriately, LaBelle is at the forefront of a cast who, like some of the characters they are playing, are a murderers' row of up-and-coming talent in the industry -from Rachel Sennott as Michaels' wife Rosie Shuster, making up for his lack of charm with the cast, to Cooper Hoffman as his producing partner and foil Dick Ebersol. Smith, Ella Hunt (as Gilda Radner), and Dylan O'Brien (as Dan Aykroyd) each go beyond mere impressions as they adopt the cadence, attitude, and various personal quirks of their characters to a tee -true also of Rhys, an unexpectedly convincing Carlin. And Wood's Belushi is astonishingly close to the real guy in both talent and temperament. Feldman is fun and Dewey's O'Donoghue is a real highlight; and Willem Dafoe is there as the token elder statesman, expressing confidence on behalf of the network, but scepticism too. Braun's Kaufman is good but his Henson is lacklustre, portraying the guy in a manner that comes off as an empathetic nuisance, afraid to swear or confront anyone directly. The way he is treated by the other characters though, unfortunately speaks accurately to Henson's brief experience at SNL.
Reitman surprisingly doesn't play things all that safe, though there are doubtless some details he tempers. He keeps the momentum high though, up to select scenes of character drama. Indeed some of that self-seriousness he and Kenan imbued their Ghostbusters movies with, shows up here in most of the beats centred on Morris or a thread regarding Rosie's show credit and the not especially tenuous state of their relationship, or even a moment of Berle mocking Chase and his ambitions to fame. The movie makes a lot of Michaels and his collaborators as unsung visionaries, often framing him especially against an onslaught of doubt and disbelief. Several times across the movie he is bluntly told the stakes and that what he wants can't be done, and of course he proves them wrong. Michaels himself couldn't write a better puff piece.
And yet for these beats of grandiosity, the movie on a whole doesn't come off as ostentatious or unduly self-important -certainly not in the way those Ghostbusters films do. Indeed, what makes the movie fun is the irreverence of spirit and humour that dots even its most grounded moments. Reitman very much positions the conception of Saturday Night Live at a turning point in American culture and comedy, and the wildness of this debut episode compliments that and makes the movie feel a little bit closer to the 70s than it might otherwise. Some of the details are surely not authentic (and at least one of the sketches they rehearse didn't actually air until Lily Tomlin hosted later in that first season), but a picture is painted of a revolution in TV. And yes, some of the figures are lionized as icons, but the film captures effectively the synchronicity of their personalities in this moment in time. Some scenes do indeed feel blatantly artificial, like Michaels rescuing Belushi from the NBC skating rink or the construction crew after blowing it off for an hour deciding at the last minute, in the spirit of the show, to help the lone carpenter fill in the bricks on stage. And there are some such scenes that really halt the momentum, like a last act stretch where Michaels picks up amateur joke-writer Alan Zweibel (Josh Brener) at a bar to come write for him. But this and his picking up a lighting technician from a neighbouring NBC show emphasise the maverick energy of the enterprise.
These are a couple of several characters whom the climax partially credits with saving the show from being canned before it could even air. Michaels's vision certainly gets credit, but Reitman nicely acknowledges the group effort from multiple areas of production. Saturday Night is a funny movie, even as the opening sketch the film ultimately builds to doesn't quite land fifty years on. It makes good use of its assortment of personalities and it situates you well in the manic energy, the rapid-fire intensity of its environment. In chronicling a hectic debut, Saturday Night makes the case for the show's uniqueness, inspiration, and function in that moment in time -when that audience felt (and Reitman impresses it on his) the excitement of not knowing what to expect.
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