First Look on Saturday Night: How the SNL Film Captures the Exciting Premiere Night of 1975
First and foremost, Saturday Night is not meant to be a laugh-riot, despite being about funny people—writers and performers who have undoubtedly changed comedy—as directed by Jason Reitman.
Over the course of roughly ninety minutes, the film is shot in real time, with moments that are both raucous and extremely stressful and tense. The story begins on October 11, 1975, at 10 p.m. at 30 Rockefeller Center and ends with the first-ever Saturday Night Live broadcast. A suspenseful film with a ticking clock emerges.
“If you can call that a genre, it’s a thriller-comedy,” Reitman describes the movie, which opens in theaters on October 11. “I consistently compare this film to a shuttle launch, with the question being, ‘Will they break orbit?'”
The Michaels portrayed in this film is not the stylish, seemingly unflappable TV maestro that audiences have grown to know. Michaels was consulted by Reitman during preproduction, although he discouraged LaBelle from attempting to speak with him in advance. Instead, LaBelle grabbed onto other facts. He attributes his ability to reconcile his own dissolving version of Michaels with the polished operator he eventually become to a fragment of esoteric Bill Murray lore.
“Everyone views him as this fearless captain navigating the ship through the fog,” claims LaBelle. “Lorne told Bill Murray, ‘Wow, you really figured out how to do this,’ when he returned to host the show 15 or 20 years after he left.” (Murray isn’t shown in the movie because he joined SNL in its second season, following Chevy Chase’s departure to pursue a career in cinema.)
LaBelle felt that statement highlighted how the SNL producer needed some time to become steady: “He started it when he was 30.” Having done that for 50 years, he is now 80 years old. Nobody is aware of what to do when they initially begin.
Not only does Saturday Night relate Michaels’s narrative, but almost every member of the cast and crew from that first night is featured. Reitman states,
“This is about everyone who came together at the last minute to change television, not just the first seven actors.” This also includes the writers and the art department. This presentation was very unique not just because it was live, but also because of its unique format, which no one had ever seen before. Sketch comedy, two musical guests, a live band, stand-up comedians, Andy Kaufman, the Muppets, an Albert Brooks film, and more were all included.
“Time is the antagonist in this film. Similar to our Sauron. You are always aware of our Darth Vader, who is a clock.
Many of the main characters in the film were unknowns before becoming well-known figures: Dylan O’Brien is a pertinacious (find that word up while you’re at it), and Matt Wood plays the human cyclone that was John Belushi.
Ella Hunt plays the fairy-like Gilda Radner, played by Dan Aykroyd, while Cory Michael Smith plays Chase, a role that demands an ironic level of sarcasm.
In the meantime, Kim Matula’s Jane Curtin and Lamorne Morris’s Garrett Morris connect over their mutual doubt about what this show may be and whether they belong, and Emily Fairn’s Laraine Newman piles outfits on top of each other so she can jump into the next sketch in a matter of seconds.
While each Not Ready for Prime Time Player’s storyline in Saturday Night differs, they all arrive to the same place—together.
The film also explores the backroom politics of the NBC staff who delivered Saturday Night Live to American living rooms, starring Willem Dafoe as haughty executive David Tebet, who has to determine if the program is suitable for live broadcast. In addition, Nicholas Podany portrays Billy Crystal, an aspiring comedian who was heartbroken to be removed from the first show shortly before it premiered.
Reitman states that the traditional narrative holds that he rode the train back to his hometown and arrived in time to warn his family not to watch. “Time is the antagonist in this film. Similar to our Sauron. You sense the presence of our Darth Vader constantly, as it functions as a clock. Billy is defeated by the clock, too.