Jonah Naplan September 30, 2024
Chevy Chase. Lorne Michaels. George Carlin. Dan Aykroyd. Rosie Shuster. Laraine Newman. John Belushi. Gilda Radner. Garrett Morris. These people sat on the cutting edge of greatness on the night of October 11, 1975 as the first episode of “Saturday Night Live” premiered on NBC. Directed by Jason Reitman (“Ghostbusters: Afterlife”), and written by him and Gil Kenan, “Saturday Night” transports us in a time machine back to that fateful evening where stress levels were high and the staff was higher. It’s a 109-minute steaming powder keg of a movie with an immaculate quick pace and some excellent impressions all around, opening up a time capsule from an era where watching television was not only different but, get this, popular.
The movie mostly takes place in real time. We open at 10:00 pm, just an hour and a half before the show is to go live at 11:30. Nothing is prepared and everything’s in shambles. The script still isn’t finalized, set pieces are falling apart and catching on fire, cast members are arguing and physically assaulting one another, and fifty big suit NBC executives are anxiously waiting nearby to be proven right about the inevitability of Johnny Carson reruns until the end of time. It’s been confirmed by those who were actually present that “Saturday Night” is a winking exaggeration and heavy reimagining of what went down in New York City that evening (and, admittedly, the story does feel a bit improbable), but its unreliability doesn’t negate its reliable charm. This is a snappy, quick-witted and darkly hilarious movie with a hugely likable ensemble of characters who all feel like people we know and are close to. It made me think about other such films that deal with creating a visionary piece of art under harsh time constraints such as “Original Cast Album: Company” and an excellent documentary from earlier this year called “The Greatest Night in Pop,” about the nighttime recording session of We Are the World.
A young Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) knows he’s got something special on his hands but can’t exactly describe what it is in words, only what he wants an audience to feel when they watch it. He’s hired a murderer’s row of talented actors and comedians, singers and puppeteers to put on a show that will shake modern television out of the doldrums it’s been mired in for years thanks to the same old talk shows and predictable programs. It’s a variety show but it’s also world commentary and sheer slapstick entertainment. Carlin (Matthew Rhys) delivers snide remarks, while Belushi (Matt Wood) and Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien) perform comic sketches, Chase (Cory Michael Smith) recaps the latest news, and Jim Henson (Nicholas Braun) plays with his Muppets.
“Saturday Night” is a slapdash display of how all these elements merged together into one program, an improbability challenged by important figures such as David Tebet (Willem Dafoe), who monologues about how he’s been in this business for a long time and has “seen everything,” and also the legendary “Mr. Television” Milton Berle (J.K. Simmons) who talks a big game in denigrating Lorne’s show but knows deep down inside that his career is in jeopardy of being overthrown by a new generation of creatives who know what people want to watch. Lorne’s behind-the-scenes crew, which includes key writer Michael O’Donoghue (Tommy Dewey), the NBC exec who hired Michaels onto the project named Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman)—who claims he wants the show to succeed more than anybody—and Lorne’s wife Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), a key player in front of as well as behind the camera, is cheerfully vulgar in a lighthearted way, reminding us why, yes, these are just a group of twentysomethings throwing together a goofy old show like a project they might have made in high school. I’ve been there (I am there), and there’s a certain relatability in their desire to just create something that will make people laugh.
On the other side of the emote scale, I’ve also bitten off far more than I could chew with some of my ambitious projects before (and then realized I didn’t have enough time to do everything I wanted to do), so I felt all the stress of Michaels as he rushed through room to room, talking with colleagues, and evaluating and reevaluating the practicality of his vision. There’s something here about how the best and most creative ideas will never take flight without a will to execute and a crew of like-minded people who are just as dedicated, and the movie is especially thoughtful in the way it highlights all the team members to give them each a moment to shine. The anecdote of a young Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany) whose sketch was scheduled to appear on the first episode but ultimately got cut is particularly memorable, as is a run by Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), known as the first and only Black SNL cast member for quite some time, who gets a snarky moment to eat up the scenery with a song.
And yet for all its home runs, “Saturday Night” fails to say anything of note about what the show actually did for the world of television and why it remains regarded as a landmark of pop culture today. In fairness, the exigence of the film is that it details the process not the result. It’s about the action of how a show was made, not what that show is. The filmmakers assume we already know that stuff. But Reitman, with a script so smart and introspective, misses several opportunities to allude over to the reason why we care about this story and these characters and why what they did, even if the recounting is mostly fictionalized, still matters to us nearly fifty years later.
And yet, the film’s core is undeniably sincere, dealing in appropriate pathos throughout and ending on a note so triumphant that you’ll want to give someone a high-five on your way out of the theater. “Saturday Night” is an earnest crowd-pleaser from beginning to end that honors the creation of one of media’s shiniest crown jewels and focuses in on the important people who made it happen. It’s a sure good thing that Lorne Michaels isn’t a boring guy and that LaBelle is an endearing actor because the camera here is in love with him. Writing and set design and humor can make a project great, but dedicated actors make it a gem.
Now playing in theaters.