{"id":5813,"date":"2024-10-12T17:22:39","date_gmt":"2024-10-12T17:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=5813"},"modified":"2024-11-02T21:56:01","modified_gmt":"2024-11-03T01:56:01","slug":"saturday-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/12\/saturday-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Saturday Night<\/strong> (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Comedy-Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 109 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language throughout, crude sexual references, some drug use, brief graphic nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jason Reitman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jon Batiste\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Eric Steelberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 11, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt, Dylan O\u2019Brien, 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).<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Take a look at the release date of Saturday Night<\/strong>. Does it strike you as significant in some way? It should if you\u2019re a fan of Saturday Night Live. The inaugural episode of the late night comedy sketch series, now in its 50th<\/sup> season, aired on October 11, 1975. I made it a point to see Saturday Night <\/strong>on opening day, the 49th<\/sup> anniversary of the iconic show\u2019s launch into the annals of TV history. It\u2019s a fascinating if crowded look at a pivotal moment that changed the face of late night television forever.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Jason 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\u2019ll work. Even show creator\/producer Lorne Michaels (LaBelle, The Fabelmans) has his doubts. Nothing is going right. It\u2019s 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\u2019t believe in the show at all.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Michaels 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 \u201cNot Ready for Prime Time\u201d players: arrogant Chevy Chase (Smith, Gotham), volatile John Belushi (Wood), fast-talking Dan Aykroyd (O\u2019Brien, 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\u2019s 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 \u201cloose cannon\u201d, 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\u2019t understand his role on the show. He\u2019s a classically trained actor and opera singer who\u2019s done Shakespeare. Here, he\u2019s playing black stereotypes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019 wife Rosie (Sennott, Bottoms), writer and sometimes performer Michael O\u2019Donoghue (Dewey, Step Up Revolution), musical guest Billy Preston (film\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019t exactly friendly.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As a lifelong fan of SNL, I found Saturday Night<\/strong> fascinating. I\u2019m the first to admit the show isn\u2019t what it used to be when it first started. It\u2019s no longer edgy. The subjects it tackles (e.g. sex, drugs and politics) are no longer taboo on prime time. It\u2019s 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\u2019t believe in playing it safe like their parents\u2019 generation. Entertainment had to change. It had to be bold, daring and not afraid to go there. That\u2019s exactly what SNL did, it went there and beyond. Lorne knew it would succeed even if he didn\u2019t know exactly what the show was.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the role, LaBelle does a great job. He perfectly embodies Lorne\u2019s stress, anxiety and worry as he frantically tries to make everything come together in less than 90 minutes. Now let\u2019s talk about the performances of the actors playing the OG SNL players. It\u2019s 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<\/strong> would turn out to be another Wired, the lousy John Belushi biopic. It\u2019s not. The actors do a pretty good job, a few in particular. Smith, Wood and O\u2019Brien 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\u2019s a sad moment when you remember that both of them would be gone by the end of the 80s.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Personally, I enjoyed seeing recreations of famous sketches like Morris singing the Shotgun song \u2013i.e. \u201cI\u2019m gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whiteys I see!\u201d- and the very first bit, the Wolverine sketch. We get to see Preston and Janis Ian (the show\u2019s other musical guest that night) perform their hits, \u201cNothing from Nothing\u201d and \u201cAt Seventeen\u201d. I already mentioned Kaufman\u2019s 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<\/strong> is a nice trip down Memory Lane.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sometimes, the movie\u2019s frenetic pace works against it. It mainly affects the more dramatic aspects of the story like Lorne\u2019s relationship with his wife who can\u2019t 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<\/strong> does have a fair amount of humor amidst all the chaos. Some of the things O\u2019Donoghue says are a riot.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the end, I like Saturday Night<\/strong>. It\u2019s entertaining and it\u2019s a subject of interest to me. Now I have to go rewatch that first episode. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll be looking at it differently knowing all the sweat and labor that went into getting it on the air.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday Night (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Comedy-Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 109 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language throughout, crude sexual references, some drug use, brief graphic nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jason Reitman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jon Batiste\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Eric Steelberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 11, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt, Dylan O\u2019Brien, Emily Fairn, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Saturday-Night-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C930&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5813"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5817,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5813\/revisions\/5817"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}