There’s a lot of media centered on the origins of things. We routinely invent mythologies for cultural touchstones, even if those myths are built heavily on embellishment. Embellishment is at home at the address of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where Saturday Night Live has persisted as a cultural mainstay for 50 years, but Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night goes back to the beginning in 1975, when the yet-to-debut Saturday Night was the redheaded stepchild of juggernaut NBC.
The film centers on Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) as he’s set to step into his role as producer of the sketch comedy show some 90 minutes before the first episode is scheduled to go live. The only problem is… actually, there’s a host of problems. Lorne is young and inexperienced, naïve to much of the politics within NBC. There still isn’t an approved script for the episode, and the studio’s set-pieces are in disarray. The actors/comics are combative with each other, most notably Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) and John Belushi (Matt Wood), the latter of which is aggressively temperamental and hasn’t even signed his contract yet.
Reitman’s movie, like the subject it covers, is a feast of sketches and ensemble cast synergy. The story of SNL is already foretold; we already know it’s one of the most successful television shows of all time, so how do you build interest in the suspense of its origin? Reitman has two answers for this – inducing anxiety in the audience through the film’s many confrontational situations, but also paying that off through euphoria. The film is a tense romp, reliant on the plot device of the show going live in under 2 hours. Thus, every argument, every miscommunication, pratfall, and accident is a danger to the show even hitting air, as NBC execs seemed poised to pull the episode in favor of a re-run of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
We, as the audience, know they must make this deadline, but how they do it is the draw. The movie operates on, well, movie time, in that the “real-time” 90 minutes that it depicts isn’t really accurate, especially with the number of events that are packed into this timeframe. At one point, one of the characters has time to go ice skating of all things. What makes this a worthwhile journey is the litany of characters, almost all famous faces and icons, yet here most of them have yet to achieve their greatest fame. So you’re seeing the likes of Chase, Belushi, George Carlin, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin, Billy Crystal, and Dan Aykroyd in uncompromising/amusing/depraved/rude situations, a little look behind the curtain at what these personalities may have thought or acted like when the cameras aren’t rolling.
Reitman sets out to illustrate the significance of Saturday Night in an evolving television landscape, of which the medium had only been around for a few decades. When asked to define what the show even is, as alarmingly no one in the movie seems to have been told what the show is about, Lorne tellingly states that his goal is to produce the first TV show made by “the people who grew up watching TV.” This is a sea-changing moment, positioning Saturday Night as one of, if not the first truly Meta weekly television program. SNL is understood today as a show that isn’t afraid to feature lewd humor, political satire, or an ability to lampoon current events. It operates as sort of a weekly pop culture party, but part of that party is in establishing a tone that is critical of the culture around it – celebrities, attitudes, societal norms, and political figures.
TV, up to this point, just didn’t feature this level of vulgarity, irreverence, critique, and crass humor on a weekly show for a broadcast network. Much of this can be forgotten in hindsight, but consider the trajectory of the real-life Chevy Chase – whose stardom was accelerated partially due to the success of films like National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983). Fans look upon that movie as one of the best comedies of its decade, but not as many people associate it with the short story that inspired it: John Hughes’ Vacation 58 (1979). In that story, the template of a nuclear family going on a cross-country trip to an amusement park is still there, along with much of the humor. However, where Vacation 58 differs from its cinematic counterpart is how much darker, cynical, biting, and ultimately tragic, the tale is. It’s a satire of American ideals and the promise of a prosperous life – a vision that Vacation 58 largely considers fantasy, poking fun at how the American Dream can still be unobtainable due to personal folly, economic hardships, and strained relationships with marginalized groups.
The comics at the center of Saturday Night are emblematic of this multi-layered comedic style, offering biting humor but also uncomfortable truths underneath the surface, and an acknowledgement of the darker realities that the mainstream often edits out. Many of the characters riff and get off on telling uncomfortable jokes, such as Michael O’Donoghue (Tommy Dewey) telling a crude but admittedly humorous yarn about the life of Jesus Christ. Much of the film’s conflict stems from this young group of disrupters coming into direct competition with the older establishment and authority of the time. The O’Donoghue joke is in protest to the aggressive censorship that’s intended to be placed on the show. Lorne is infringing on the territory of Johnny Carson, the latter of which making quite clear how threatened he is.
The always welcome JK Simmons appears as Milton Berle, who brags about his old show once commanding a 97% viewership share, an unheard of number in modern times. That’s because media has aggressively changed, but Saturday Night is starting up at a time when television real estate was significantly more finite, competitive, and exclusionary. The villains in this story don’t really want Saturday Night to succeed because it’s a threat to their own status. Perhaps that’s why Berle has a startling inappropriate encounter with Chase and the latter’s Fiancé, in one of the movie’s most memorable moments, but one I’m also 99.9% sure never happened. The moment is more thematically motivated than an example of truth, but indicative of a narrative surrounding an old guard being solely succeeded by their younger and more eccentric counterparts that remain pertinent.
The execution of a project like this is dependent on its cast, even more than usual. Nicholas Braun actually pulls double duty as Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman. He fits the aesthetic of both, although I would have enjoyed to see more of his Kaufman, who is somehow made to look silly in a different way due to Braun’s absurd height. Nicholas Podany does well as a hapless Billy Crystal lobbying for screentime, while Lamorne Morris nails Garrett Morris’ mannerisms while demanding to know why a Juilliard actor is stuck with such “low-brow” material. Gilda Raynor (Ella Hunt) is among the many original cast members who are short-changed on time, as the ensemble is seemingly bursting at the seems. Instead, much of that screentime goes to Lorne arguing with Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), the latter of which the movie wants you to believe is an annoying dork that’s standing in the way of television history.
That history is best glimpsed in the film through Wood and Smith as Belushi and Chase. They get along like oil and water but are also the yin and yang of the production. Smith captures Chase’s arrogance but also simmering charisma and likability. Wood is given one opportunity to give us the unfiltered, unbridled Belushi experience, and he nails the scene as the movie illustrates, rather than just telling you, the chaotic energy hidden within the show’s unique cast. It goes without saying, but the movie is well aware that it’s documenting sacred history. This sometimes comes off as a bit over the top – I almost had to laugh when the movie throws a parade for itself for introducing Weekend Update.
But the film’s reverence for comedy’s past is dramatic without betraying the edge that time period had. It’s a snapshot of imperfect people trying to become famous by appealing to underserved sensibilities in the general public’s anxieties, often resulting in a dark but goofy sense of humor. It’s when a lot of our comedians stopped telling jokes, and started yelling jokes to let you know that something’s not quite right in the world. There’s nothing funny about that, but we still need the laughter to cope.
While the ensemble cast shines, the film’s pacing and embellishments may not resonate with all viewers. Still, it’s a fun ride for fans of the iconic show.