Saturday Night (2024) Columbia/Comedy-Drama RT: 109 minutes Rated R (language throughout, crude sexual references, some drug use, brief graphic nudity) Director: Jason Reitman Screenplay: Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman Music: Jon Batiste Cinematography: Eric Steelberg Release date: October 11, 2024 (US) Cast: Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt, Dylan O’Brien, Emily Fairn, Matt Wood, Lamorne Morris, Kim Matula, Finn Wolfhard, Nicholas Braun, Cooper Hoffman, Andrew Barth Freeman, Kaia Gerber, Tommy Dewey, Willem Dafoe, Matthew Rhys, J.K. Simmons, Jon Batiste, Leander Suleiman, Naomi McPherson, Taylor Gray, Mcabe Gregg, Nicholas Podany, Josh Brener, Robert Wuhl, Tracy Letts, Corinne Britti, Brian Welch, Paul Rust, Kirsty Woodward, Abraham Hsu, Rowan Joseph, Ellen Boscov, Billy Bryk, Brad Garrett, David Michael Brown, Sergio Duque, Jeff Witzke (voice).
Rating: ***
Take a look at the release date of Saturday Night. Does it strike you as significant in some way? It should if you’re a fan of Saturday Night Live. The inaugural episode of the late night comedy sketch series, now in its 50th season, aired on October 11, 1975. I made it a point to see Saturday Night on opening day, the 49th anniversary of the iconic show’s launch into the annals of TV history. It’s a fascinating if crowded look at a pivotal moment that changed the face of late night television forever.
Jason Reitman (Ghostbusters: Afterlife) propels through the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of what was then called Saturday Night. Nothing like it had ever been attempted and network executives are nervous. Nobody thinks it’ll work. Even show creator/producer Lorne Michaels (LaBelle, The Fabelmans) has his doubts. Nothing is going right. It’s complete bedlam backstage with everybody rushing around trying to have everything ready by the time they go live at 11:30pm. Even then, head honcho David Tebet (Dafoe, Poor Things) might not let it go to air. He doesn’t believe in the show at all.
Michaels has to deal with a lot; unfinished sets, uncooperative crew, a sanctimonious censor and having to decide what to cut and what to keep. He also has to deal with his cast, a group of untried comedians who we all know as the first line-up of “Not Ready for Prime Time” players: arrogant Chevy Chase (Smith, Gotham), volatile John Belushi (Wood), fast-talking Dan Aykroyd (O’Brien, the Maze Runner movies), bubbly Gilda Radner (Hunt, Anna and the Apocalypse), resourceful Laraine Newman (Fairn, The Responder), straight-laced Jane Curtin (Matula, The Bold and the Beautiful) and sole black player Garrett Morris (New Girl’s Lamorne Morris, no relation). Chevy is full of himself. At one point, he gets into it with equally arrogant Milton Berle (Simmons, Whiplash). Belushi, the very definition of “loose cannon”, has yet to sign his contract. He storms off the set after NBC exec Dick Ebersol (Hoffman, Licorice Pizza) asks him to hawk a Polaroid camera during a sketch. Morris doesn’t understand his role on the show. He’s a classically trained actor and opera singer who’s done Shakespeare. Here, he’s playing black stereotypes.
The camera never stops moving as it follows Michaels around Studio 8H interacting with cast, crew and network people. He has to placate Jim Henson (Braun, Succession) who’s getting a lot of grief about his Muppets being on a show for adults. Incidentally, Braun also portrays comedian/performance artist Andy Kaufman, recreating his famous rendition of the Mighty Mouse theme. Michael also has to deal with the show’s first host, comedian George Carlin (Rhys, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), who thinks the show is a bunch of BS. Other notable persons hanging around include writer and Michaels’ wife Rosie (Sennott, Bottoms), writer and sometimes performer Michael O’Donoghue (Dewey, Step Up Revolution), musical guest Billy Preston (film’s composer Batiste) and assistant Neil (Feldman, No Hard Feelings) who goes crazy after band member Paul Shaffer (Rust, I Love You, Beth Cooper) slips him LSD. There’s also the NBC page (Wolfhard, Stranger Things) trying in vain to give away tickets to the show to passers-by outside the building. Oh yeah, Michaels takes a call from Johnny Carson that isn’t exactly friendly.
As a lifelong fan of SNL, I found Saturday Night fascinating. I’m the first to admit the show isn’t what it used to be when it first started. It’s no longer edgy. The subjects it tackles (e.g. sex, drugs and politics) are no longer taboo on prime time. It’s great (and a little sad) to be taken back to a time when it was revolutionary. A younger generation was taking over in the 70s. They didn’t believe in playing it safe like their parents’ generation. Entertainment had to change. It had to be bold, daring and not afraid to go there. That’s exactly what SNL did, it went there and beyond. Lorne knew it would succeed even if he didn’t know exactly what the show was.
In the role, LaBelle does a great job. He perfectly embodies Lorne’s stress, anxiety and worry as he frantically tries to make everything come together in less than 90 minutes. Now let’s talk about the performances of the actors playing the OG SNL players. It’s always a crapshoot depicting famous people familiar to most people. I grew up watching reruns of the first few seasons of SNL. I was worried Saturday Night would turn out to be another Wired, the lousy John Belushi biopic. It’s not. The actors do a pretty good job, a few in particular. Smith, Wood and O’Brien do excellent impressions of Chase, Belushi and Aykroyd. I wish more had been done with Gilda Radner. She was an integral part of the cast. Here, she mostly sits on the sideline save for a scene where she talks to Belushi about bringing their children to Rockefeller Center someday. It’s a sad moment when you remember that both of them would be gone by the end of the 80s.
Personally, I enjoyed seeing recreations of famous sketches like Morris singing the Shotgun song –i.e. “I’m gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whiteys I see!”- and the very first bit, the Wolverine sketch. We get to see Preston and Janis Ian (the show’s other musical guest that night) perform their hits, “Nothing from Nothing” and “At Seventeen”. I already mentioned Kaufman’s routine. We also see Al Franken (Gray) and Tom Davis (Gregg) preparing fake blood for the famous Julia Child sketch that would appear on a future episode. To me, Saturday Night is a nice trip down Memory Lane.
Sometimes, the movie’s frenetic pace works against it. It mainly affects the more dramatic aspects of the story like Lorne’s relationship with his wife who can’t decide what name she wants to use in the credits. Reitman, who co-wrote the screenplay with Afterlife collaborator Gil Kenan, does too little with the female players. However, Saturday Night does have a fair amount of humor amidst all the chaos. Some of the things O’Donoghue says are a riot.
In the end, I like Saturday Night. It’s entertaining and it’s a subject of interest to me. Now I have to go rewatch that first episode. I’m sure I’ll be looking at it differently knowing all the sweat and labor that went into getting it on the air.
