‘Saturday Night’ Turns ‘SNL’ Origin Story Into Late-Night ‘Bad News Bears’

It was never going to work. They couldn’t give enough tickets away to fill the seats. There were sound issues, lighting issues, drug issues, ego issues. Some of the crew walked out. A key cast member wouldn’t sign his contract, then went missing right before the show was supposed to air live. The host oozed contempt. The Teamsters didn’t like the long-haired freaks. The two alpha males in the ensemble didn’t like each other. Writer Michael O’Donoghue didn’t like anybody. They had three hours of material and an hour and a half (with commercial breaks) to air all of it. The only reason that the mild-mannered Canadian at the center of this storm got the 11:30pm slot on Saturday nights was because NBC was beefing with Johnny Carson, and this was supposed to be the network’s way of gaining leverage in their negotiations with him.

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And then somehow, against all odds and notions of logic, on October 11th, 1975, John Belushi mimed a heart attack onstage and Chevy Chase yelled, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” and the little countercultural sketch show that could came screaming into the world in what can only be described as a difficult, messy, violent birth. The modest audience that watched the very first episode of Saturday Night Live when it aired live that evening had no idea how close they came to seeing a Tonight Show re-run instead. Or, for that matter, that they were witnessing history in the making. But 50 years later, we know that the moment was one small step for Lorne Michaels, one giant leap for comedy-kind.

Part sloppy and overly reverent tribute, part hilarious 1970s gross-out romp, and an all-out assault to recreate the adrenaline rush of producing that inaugural SNL, Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night seeks to bring folks back to the 90 minutes leading up to the 90 minutes that changed the world. At the film’s premiere at the Telluride Film Festival — on a Saturday night, naturally, with the bonus of a Bill Murray cameo — the writer-director relayed two anecdotes to the audience during his pre-screening intro. One involved him asking his agent to contact Michaels about letting him write for the show for a week; the producer replied, “Fine, he can come to Space Camp.” That experience changed his life, Reitman admitted, and it was that controlled chaos leading up a live broadcast that he wanted to capture on film.

The other tale revolved around he and his cowriter Gil Kenan contacting every living person who was in Studio 8H that fateful night and gathering their recollections about the making of that first episode. “Everyone’s stories contradicted each other,” Reitman notes, so the two attempted to fashion a script that took all of these diverging, subjective narratives into account. This little tidbit goes a long way to describing the patchwork quality of this origin myth, which attempts to cram in every possible example of Murphy’s Law surrounding the countdown to showtime, no matter how outlandish or apocryphal. (Editor’s note: This is not to be confused with Eddie Murphy’s Law, a phenomenon which would not affect SNL until the 1980s.) The Print the Legend vibe is strong with this one.

It’s got its share of Easter eggs as well, from glimpses of the Land Shark costume to workshopping future classic sketches, like the hard-hat sexual harassment sketch from Lily Tomlin’s first hosting gig and the gory Julia Childs parody from Season Four . There are a number of deep cuts strictly for the heads as well, and you sometimes feel as if you’re walking through an exhibit devoted to the show rather than watching a movie about its beginnings. But mostly, Saturday Night rides shotgun with Lorne Michaels ( The Fabelmans ‘ Gabriel LaBelle) as he tries to put out metaphorical, and occasionally literal fires while wrangling cast members and calming jittery executive producer Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman). His wife and show writer Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott) handles a lot of the peripheral details so Michaels can gladhand the affiliates, deal with last-minute mutinies and fuck-ups, and try to bring the big picture into focus. She also does double-duty as a Belushi whisperer, since the mercurial John (Matt Wood) hasn’t signed his contract and is slowly losing his cool over having to dress up like a bee.

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Meanwhile, Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) is already being courted as a breakout star with a bright future. (“You’re a handsome, funny gentile,” a network suit tells him. “That means something.”) Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien) is flirting with every female in sight, and carrying on a not-so-secret relationship with Rosie. Lorraine Newman (Emily Fairn) is neurotic, Jane Curtain (Kim Matula) is ironic and WASP-ish, and Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt) is adorable and daffy. Because the original Not-Ready-for-Primetime Players are so well-known by now, the movie falls back on a lot of recognizable tics and characteristics rather than developing them as characters. The only person to get something resembling an arc besides Lorne is Garrett Morris ( New Girl ‘s Lamorne Morris, no relation), who spends the bulk of the film asking why he’s here playing pimps and maids — he’s a Julliard grad who sang opera, for fuck’s sake — until a third-act sound check answers the question for him.

There’s more, of course, with J.K. Simmons doing a blistering take on Milton Berle, Willem Dafoe turning NBC’s VP of Talent David Tebet into the troll guarding the late-night bridge, Matthew Rhys tapping into George Carlin’s rage, Finn Wolfhard as a 30 Rock page and Succession ‘s Nicolas Braun portraying both Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman. His Muppet-master is a hippy-dippy whiner who everyone gleefully taunts, and his portrayal of the groundbreaking stand-up relies on the man’s well-documented weirdness; in this particular retelling, Kaufman, like Mighty Mouse, saves the day. Saturday Night ‘s cast is an odd mixture of famous faces playing other famous faces and semi-to-complete unknowns bringing the young, hungry creatives to life. Like SNL ‘s first roster, some get more opportunities than others to shine. Smith’s smarmy, human-charm-offensive Chase is damn near uncanny. O’Brien nails Aykroyd’s I’m-just-visiting-this-planet vibe. Morris makes the most of his part and in a perfect world, Tommy Dewey’s pitch-perfect channeling of “the Prince of Darkness” Michael O’Donoghue will introduce new generations to the National Lampoon alum and get the actor more work.

It’s all admittedly funny and nerve-jangling, with the comedians mugging and the pressure mounting and the chances of Michaels’ dream of a show “made for the generation who grew up on TV, by the generation who grew up on TV” actually airing slipping away minute by ticked-off minute. The movie also heads to a foregone conclusion, courtesy of 50 years worth of history — imagine an underdog story about a group of ragtag baseball players who you already know will eventually turn out to be the 1927 New York Yankees. Reitman may be turning this backstage drama into a Slobs-vs.-Snobs comedy just like his dear old dad Ivan Reitman (cowriter of Animal House, director of Meatballs, Stripes and Ghostbusters ) used to make. But he’s also penning a gushing love letter to a hallowed institution, shot in 16mm and dressed up in Seventies cosplay. Saturday Night Live has long swooned over its own self-mythology, and Saturday Night is happy to add to that backpatting as the show’s golden anniversary approaches. Chaos and narcotics, raw talent and perseverance, Michaels’ stamina and the surprising luck of it all somehow led to the cameras capturing sheer anarchy loosened upon the world at 11:30pm. At least the second-hand high Reitman hotboxes you with is extremely potent.

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