I
was too young to watch Saturday Night Live in the 1970s. It was the sort
of show that my parents forbade me to watch despite their never having seen it
themselves. It was this “thing” that was on way too late and was occasionally referred
to but never really talked about because the perception was that it was
off-color and risqué. I only became aware of the cast members peripherally in
the ensuing years when I saw scenes from John Landis’s Animal House
(1978), Michael O’Donoghue’s Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video (1979), Steven
Spielberg’s 1941 (1979), and John Landis’s The Blues Brothers (1980)
on television. Two of the show’s most popular segments, Mr. Bill, the
clay figurine character, and The Coneheads both adorned elementary and
middle school-aged students’ t-shirts for years. By the time I finally did
manage to see new episodes in 1984, I felt that I was late to the party
following the tragic passing of John Belushi in March 1982.
I
became a fan of George Carlin that same year by collecting his comedy bits that
were released by Flip Wilson and Monte Kay’s record label Little David Records
(1969 – 1980) and was pleasantly surprised to see that he hosted the show’s
premier episode on Saturday, October 11, 1975, originally simply titled Saturday
Night. It is the 90 minutes preceding the show’s fateful debut that is the
focal point of Jason Reitman’s frenetic 2024 film of the same name which posits
a fictionalized account of creator Lorne Michaels’s full-steam-ahead mindset to
create a show very few believed would make it past its first broadcast, let
alone half a century.
Saturday
Night, which opened, fittingly, on
Friday, October 11, 2024 nationwide after limited runs in New York and Los
Angeles, does an expert job of finding people who look very similar to the real-world
counterparts they are portraying, in particular Dylan O’Bryan as Dan Aykroyd, Nicholas
Podany as Billy Crystal, Nicholas Braun doing double duty as Andy Kaufman and
Jim Henson, and Matt Wood as John Belushi. Gabrielle LaBelle, who portrayed
Steven Spielberg’s alter ego Sammy Fableman in the 2022 film The Fablemans,
based on Mr. Spielberg’s childhood, portrays Saturday Night’s creator,
Lorne Michaels, racing between offices and sets while trying to placate the
network suits and deciding which skits will make it to airtime and which will
not. Fielding questions from staff members and dealing with lights that nearly
kill two stars after they fall to the ground are just some of the situations he
must deal with.
The
action is shot on 16mm film, and it does a nice job of approximating the look
and feel of the mid 1970s. I love the result. It possesses the type of visual warmth
that one associates with film that is generally lacking from digital video recordings.
The film was shot in continuity. Coming from a television production background
at college and two local cable stations, I was thankfully never exposed to the
stress levels as displayed onscreen here, however there were always jitters
prevalent in the moments preceding a live broadcast. The film ends just before
show time.
Saturday Night is now available on Blu-ray and comes with a
wealth of extras. The cover art harkens back to the days of Mad Magazine with a
Jack Davis-style collage of the onscreen characters. It reminds me of The Big Bus (1976) and Animal House (1978).
The
audio commentary was recorded on Tuesday, October 1, 2024 on the Sony Lot,
formerly the MGM Lot where The Wizard of Oz (1939) was filmed. Director Reitman
explains that the film came about because he wanted to speak with the people
who were in the building the night the show premiered and depict the hours
before show time. What he found were different interpretations of people’s
experiences, hence the loose fictionalized account of the transpiring events.
He tells the story of how nobody he spoke to had the original script, except
for Billy Crystal (who would join the show nine years later) from whom they
copied and used in the film.
Cinematographer
Eric Steelberg discusses the grain structure and the color palette of the films
of the early 1970’s and how they approached capturing that in 16mm. They have
succeeded smashingly.
Jess
Gonchor is the film’s production designer who, along with sound mixer Steve
Morrow, weigh in and discuss the challenges they faced regarding their
contributions to the film. Saturday Night was shot on a set which was
created with meticulous detail.
Trailers
for the following films are included (strangely, no trailer for the title film
featured): Gil Kenan’s Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024), Damien
Chazelle’s Whiplash (2014), Craig Gillespie’s Dumb Money (2023),
and Robert Zemeckis’s Here (2024).
The
Making of the Movie of the Show That Almost Never Made It runs 16:23 and features comments from Jason
Reitman, Gil Kenan, Gabrielle Labelle, Corey Michael Smith, Matthew Rhys, Ella
Hunt, Matt Wood, Willem Dafoe, Lamorne Morris, Erica Mills, Joanne Perritano,
Eric Steelberg, Dylan O’Brien, Cooper Hoffman, J.K. Simmons, Emily Fairn, Kim
Matula, Rachell Sennot, Jason Blumenfeld, Jon Batiste, Danny Glicker, and Jess
Conchor and provides interesting insight into how the film was made.
The
Look of Saturday Night runs 2:10
and is an introduction to the characters in the film.
Super
8 From Studio 8H: Home Movies from the Set runs 4:49 and is a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the cast and crew
during breaks in the shooting schedule.
Creating
Comedy Icons runs 10:52 and features
the performers who portray Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd,
Jane Curtain, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, Jim Henson/Andy Kaufman, Lorne
Michaels, Rosie Shuster, Jacqueline Carlin, Dick Ebersol, and Billy Preston.
John
Batiste: Scoring Live runs 1:21 and
takes a much-too-short look at the creation of the score which elicits and
complements the onscreen pandemonium.
The Blu-ray also contains a digital code for viewing through an app.
It
is worth nothing that Chevy Chase’s reaction to the film: he stated on the "Morning Joe" chat show that it is not an accurate
account of what went on. Then again, how could it be if it was made by people
who were not there? It is based on others’ recollections, and for that reason it
is very entertaining.
