Saturday Night

by Julian Spivey

Photo: Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures

Director: Jason Reitman
Starring: Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott & Willem Dafoe
Rating: R (language, sexual references, drug use & brief nudity)
Runtime: 1 hour & 49 minutes

 
On Oct. 11, 1975, television changed forever when the first group of people who grew up watching television took over television for 90 minutes late on a Saturday night. The show was “Saturday Night” (which would become “Saturday Night Live”) and director Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night” tells the story of the 90 minutes before the show changed television.
​
I’m predisposed to enjoy “Saturday Night.” I’ve been a fan of “Saturday Night Live” for most of my life. I watch every new episode of the show, and the history of ‘SNL’ is one of my favorite topics in pop culture history. So, “Saturday Night,” the film would’ve had to be REALLY bad for me not to enjoy it.
“Saturday Night,” which Reitman co-wrote with Gil Kenan, is certainly not REALLY bad.

The film begins roughly an hour-and-a-half before the first episode of ‘SNL’ is set to go live on NBC, and there is mayhem in Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center. Some cast members are fighting (Chevy Chase and John Belushi), some are having existential crises (Garrett Morris), and some haven’t even signed their contracts (Belushi). Meanwhile, the crew is in disarray, with the lighting guy being let go after lights almost crushed a couple of cast members during rehearsal. Some crew members refuse to help laying bricks because it’s not part of their union. Oh, and the show itself is running about two hours too long. It’s a mess, but Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), creator and producer of the show, insists everything is going to work out fine, even though he can’t even quite tell NBC’s Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), who was tasked with finding a program for late Saturday nights, and NBC’s head of talent David Tebet (Willem Dafoe), what the show is.

If you’re a hardcore ‘SNL’ fan, as I am, you will need to try not to fact-check the film to enjoy it. Did everything happen exactly as it does in this film? No. But the film is trying to capture the essence and feeling of the night, and how many who were there 49 years ago even remember accurately every little thing? What’s impressive is much of what you see in this movie did reportedly happen, just maybe not in the 90 minutes leading up to the first show – like Milton Berle (J.K. Simmons) waving his Little Miltie around, Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris) singing “I’m going to get me a shotgun and kill all the whiteys I see,” etc.

There’s so much to love about “Saturday Night,” like how Reitman, Kenan, and cinematographer Eric Steelberg crafted the film's breakneck pace with walk-and-talks throughout the studio halls that make the film come off like a thriller and the fantastic, nearly perfect casting that makes you feel as if you’re in the room with legends like Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Belushi (Matt Wood), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), and Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien).  

Rachel Sennott as writer/Michael’s partner/cast whisperer Rosie Shuster and Nicholas Braun in the dual roles of Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson (imagine being tasked with portraying two pop culture legends!) are true standouts.  

Pretty much every character in this film gets their particular scene to shine, something that I imagine was challenging to do with a story essentially told in real-time and the lead character, Michaels, needing to be at the forefront of much of the story.

LaBelle does an admirable job of leading the cast as Michaels, even if he’s almost a decade too young for the part. But the real star of “Saturday Night” is the script by Reitman and Kenan, which keeps it speeding through one problem after another until Chase finally utters that iconic line “Live from New York, It’s Saturday Night.”

If you’re a fan of ‘SNL,’ I don’t know why you wouldn’t love this film. If you’re not all that interested in the show, it might not be for you, but it also works as a nice behind-the-scenes snapshot of a time in history.