REVIEW: “Saturday Night” - Inside the 90 Chaotic Minutes Before SNL’s Legendary Debut

by Jacob Jones

Saturday Night Live is as ubiquitous to American television culture as sports channels like ESPN and syndicated network dramas like CSI or Grey’s Anatomy. In fact, so widely known is the variety sketch comedy series that the acronym “SNL” doesn’t really need explaining at all; most people just know what it is. So many of today’s great comic talents – from Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Maya Rudolph to Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, and even Bill Murray – either got their start on or had their careers boosted by appearing on the show, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Almost anyone who’s previously appeared as an SNL cast member has gone on to have an illustrious career in either film or television (sometimes both), and eventually become known as “one of the greats.” From Andy Samberg to Kristen Wiig to Eddie Murphy to Julia Louis-Dreyfus to Joan Cusack to Chris Farley to Jimmy Fallon to Billy Crystal and even Robert Downey Jr., the sheer number of awards and accolades for which NBC’s late-night hit could take credit if it so chose is staggering. But it wasn’t always that way. For one thing, the show didn’t add “Live” to its title until the season 3 premiere – hosted by Steve Martin – due to ABC’s rival comedy show at the time being called “Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell.” More importantly, however, the SNL we know and love today, the one responsible for so much of entertainment culture’s brightest and funniest minds, almost never happened.
 
Saturday Night, directed by Jason Reitman from a script by Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan, chronicles the chaotic frenzy of the ninety minutes immediately before Saturday Night Live’s debut and follows producer Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) as he strives at all costs to get the show on the air. Along the way, he has to drum up a live audience to attend the show, wrangle a litany of stars from Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) to Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien) to Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt) to Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson (both played by Nicholas Braun) to name just a few, finalize the production credit of his partner Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), quell the anxieties of producing partner Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), figure out how to lock a finished script for air time and finish the set build, and most challengingly, get a less-than-enthused John Belushi (Matt Wood) to sign his contract. And all of this has to be done before 11:30 p.m.; if not, the network pulls the plug. The film also stars Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin as Kim Matula, Andrew Barth Feldman as Neil Levy, Jon Batiste as Billy Preston, Kaia Gerber as Jacqueline Carlin, and Finn Wolfhard.
 
Even for those more familiar with the deeper history of SNL, Saturday Night is a wild ride. The inherent chaos of live television production in any context would be enough to fill ninety minutes of screen time with a whole host of interesting set pieces, but for a variety sketch comedy series so singularly unique that for years it was the only one in its Emmys category, that chaos is compounded tenfold. Lights break, sound systems go down, cast members are nowhere to be found, props are introduced and then abandoned, sketch orders are swapped and then scrapped and then re-implemented, with some bits getting removed entirely. And yet in journeying with us through all of this, Reitman never wears out the audience or so convolutes his script that the plot is lost entirely. As director of photography Eric Steelberg’s fluid camera follows Lorne through all manner of backstage hallways, green rooms, dressing rooms, elevators, and sound booths, we never lose sight of what his ultimate goal is or what we are here to witness. For all the quick movement and constant shifting from location to location, the staging and immaculate choreography of it all keeps us centered so that we always know where we are and what we’re doing. And that controlled chaos is what gives the film its quick pacing as it tells its story more or less in real time. That and the reliably great performances of its stacked ensemble of young stars (the real new Hollywood A-list, if you will), all of whom turn in work which is lacking in impressionism but full of pathos and a clear understanding of who they’re playing.
 
Still, as fun as the film is to watch, there are moments where one does wish it reached for something deeper than what it’s offering. At one point in the film, Lorne posits that one of the main appeals of “Saturday Night” is that it’s the first live television show made by a generation of people who grew up watching television. But this is the closest the movie gets to developing and putting forward a thesis about its own existence, or indeed the existence of the show it’s valorizing. There’s a clear reverence throughout the movie for what SNL is, and a recognition of just how revolutionary it was to the television landscape, but there’s not much in the way of exploring what all of this actually means, or why this particular show was so important at the time of its inception. As Lorne struggles against the network executives and fights for the show to go ahead, we’re rooting for him to succeed, but there’s not really a clear purpose as to why this matters. Why does it matter that it’s SNL, and not another sketch comedy show years down the road? Is it just that it’s the first of its kind, or is there some deeper reason for Lorne Michaels – and by extension us, the film’s audience – to need this success? Saturday Night unfortunately doesn’t seem to know the answer.
 
Even if all Saturday Night is is a narrative examination of just how insane it can be to produce live television or get a new show off the ground, that alone would be enough to whet the appetites of just about anyone – including myself – with a modicum of interest in how the entertainment business works. To the film’s and Jason Reitman’s credit, it largely succeeds in that pursuit. It’s entertaining as hell, driven by great performances and fast-paced dialogue, and is chock full of terrific hair and makeup work. No, there’s not really anything deeper to glean from its myriad of chaotic sequences or its deceptively simple plot, but even at its weakest, a theatrical experience like it is worth the time.
 
I’m giving “Saturday Night” a 7.8/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan