“What kind of show is it?” Copper Hoffman’s NBC weekend producer asks Gabriel LaBelle’s Lorne Michaels of the television show that’s supposed to go live at 11.30pm on Saturday night, Oct 11, 1975. Lorne Michaels can’t answer that it will eventually be the longest running weekly late-night show in the history of television. After all, who is Lorne Michaels? He’s an unproven Canadian writer who has done mostly radio and his soon to household names (but currently mostly unknowns) “Not Ready for Primetime” troupe are stoned, missing, fighting each other, or antagonising everyone from network executives, technical crew, and the old guard like ‘Mr. Television’ Milton Berle (J.K. Simmons).
Director Jason Reitman, the son of Ivan Reitman, grew up with many of the major cast members of NBC’s Saturday Night (later Saturday Night Live) as an extension of his family. Not only was Ivan Reitman the director of the original Ghostbusters films (which Jason took over) but he was involved as a producer for some of the National Lampoon movies including 1978’s Animal House. It’s a natural fit for Jason Reitman to co-write and direct Saturday Night as a fly-on-the-wall look at the chaos of getting the first episode on air in front of a live audience with a ticking clock counting down every obstacle in Lorne Michaels’ way. And there are plenty of them!
Set to Jon Batiste’s live jazz score (Batiste also plays musical legend Billy Preston whose band played on the first show) Saturday Night employs a lot of fluid camerawork and editing by Reitman stalwarts cinematographer Eric Steelberg and editors Nathan Orloff and Shane Reed. There are so many people in the mix that it is confusing to keep up with it all without Reitman giving some clear character beats to the main cast and writers.
Cory Michael Smith plays Chevy Chase with the swagger of a man who knows he’s going to be famous. He swans into 30 Rock (Rockefeller Plaza) with a beautiful fiancé, Jacqueline Carlin (Kaia Gerber). Chevy enjoys baiting the ‘animal’ John Belushi (Matt Wood) meaning that Lorne, his wife and writer Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), and Dan Ackroyd (Dylan O’Brien) take turns at “handling” him. Also needing “handling” is, well, almost everyone, but especially host George Carlin (Matthew Rhys) who hates “sketch” comedy not matter how much cocaine he’s ingested. None of it is helped by Michael O’Donoghue (Tommy Dewey) who tells Carlin that he can’t act because he’s too busy being “a ponytailed vulture feeding off the corpse of Lenny Bruce.”
The set is falling apart because Lorne has asked for lighting rigs the studio can’t handle. One almost crushes Belushi, Radner, Ackroyd, and Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris) during rehearsal. The lighting guy storms out. Microphones pop and stop working. The shop stewards refuse to build the real brick stage. Technical issues aside, there is NBC standards monitor Joan Carbunkle (Catherine Curtin) is trying to censor the jokes – those she understands. NBC big wig Dave Tebet (Willem Dafoe) is stringing along Lorne with little intention of letting the show happen at all and quietly sowing dissent by telling Chevy Chase he’s a “handsome, funny, gentile - that counts for something,” especially as Carson won’t be around forever.
Better known guests such as comedian Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson (both played by Nicholas Braun) have their particular eccentricities. Kaufman seems every bit the wide-eyed man-child he plays as a character. Jim Henson is treated like a ridiculous square by O’Donoghue who refuses to write jokes for the “furry little facecloths.” The other writers and performers keep putting the muppets in “compromising” positions.
There’s putting on a show, and there’s putting on a show that was never intended to go on. Lorne Michaels believes in his vision so entirely he hasn’t stopped to wonder why a major network would countenance a live to air show with no firm script, drug addled talent, put together by wildcards who scare off sponsors with their counter-culture sensibilities.
Gabriel LaBelle is fantastic as Lorne Michaels and is matched in purpose and belief by his wife “not really wife” played by Rachel Sennott. Not even mentioned here are the excellent appearances by Tracy Letts as Herb Sargent, Nichols Ponday as Billy Crystal (who refused to cut his spot down to two minutes, so Lorne cut him from the show), Andrew Barth Feldman as Neil Levy the extremely stressed then extremely stoned assistant searching for Belushi. Kim Matula who is brilliant as Jane Curtain, and many more.
Saturday Night is a tribute to the big dreamers and the unstable egos that made up the genius but unhinged proposition of live televised absurdism. Lorne Michaels wanted to make a show that was like an all-nighter in New York where you might run into a small gig by Paul Simon or discover a new underground comic talent (something he does himself just before the show goes to air). As Rosie says to Belushi to convince him to wear a bee costume, “It’s postmodern. It’s Warhol. It’s iconic.” It’s more pratfalls and winking satire – but it changed comedy.
Jason Reitman loves Saturday Night Live, and he loves (most of) the anarchic disruptors who made entertainment history. Saturday Night is poignant pandemonium and an exhilarating jump back in time – and probably the only film that will ever show Milton Berle’s prosthetic penis.
Director: Jason Reitman
Cast: Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith
Writers: Gil Kenan, Jason Reitman
Producers: Jason Blumenfeld, Gil Kenan, Jason Reitman, Peter Rice
Music: Jon Batiste
Cinematography: Eric Steelberg
Editors: Nathan Orloff, Shane Reid
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