SATURDAY NIGHT CAPTURES THE SHOW’S CHAOS BUT LEAVES YOU DIZZY:
No need to wait in line in Midtown Manhattan for a front-row seat at SNL — Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night drops you right into the coked-up whirlwind of the show’s October 11, 1975, debut. The film is more than just a nostalgic trip back to the chaotic birth of a comedy institution; it’s a study of the age-old clash between unruly creatives and their corporate overlords, all unfolding within the storied halls of Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza while cultural shifts pulse through the bustling New York City streets below.
The movie effortlessly transports you to the 1970s, when television’s golden age was fading and a new generation — that was brought up on television but never truly saw itself on-screen — was rising to take its place. The opening scene flickers through a cathode-ray tube, as if you’re watching vintage SNL clips on your mom’s old TV. The attention to detail — from the haircuts to the line delivery — is impeccable. It feels less like a re-creation and more like you’re experiencing the raw talent that defined the show’s early days unfold in real time.
I’m not sure if “real time” is the right phrase here. I saw it over the weekend, and as someone who loved the show’s first five years, I enjoyed the film quite a bit. But it’s a comedy movie, not a documentary, and compresses the events of the months leading up to the show’s debut into a frenetic 109 minutes of non-stop insanity. For example, a comedy writer who in real-life had been with the show almost since its inception is found by Lorne Michaels in a bar about 15 minutes before SNL debuts. In the scene before that, Michaels is bombing as the would-be host of “Weekend Update,” and immediately decides to give the mock news segment to Chevy Chase. And according to Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad in the meticulously researched 1986 book, A Backstage History of Saturday Night, coke wasn’t that prevalent with the SNL cast and creative team until a year or two into the show’s run – marijuana was the drug of choice when the show first began. An early scene in Saturday Night depicts Billy Preston, who along with Janis Ian performed in the debut episode, handing Garrett Morris a vial of pharmaceutical grade coke. Those knowledgeable of the show’s history will make the connection that Morris is reported to have developed a massive addiction to freebasing coke by the show’s fifth season. (Although to be fair, most viewers will at least make the connection that almost everybody on SNL would soon have coke issues of their own.)
Dylan O’Brien, the actor who portrays Dan Aykroyd, absolutely nails the young Aykroyd’s voice and performing style. But the Saturday Night movie depicts him rehearsing sketches that were months, sometimes years away from debuting on SNL. Willem Defoe plays Dave Tebet, a grizzled real-life NBC executive who worked as a fixer to Johnny Carson, and had grave doubts that SNL could succeed. But Herb Schlosser, the NBC executive who conceived of a live show out of Rockefeller Center replacing Carson’s Saturday night reruns, and championed Lorne Michaels’ vision of the show that would fill that timeslot is nowhere to be found in the movie. And while, at first glance, J. K. Simmons is a very unlikely choice to portray Milton Berle, he does an excellent job – though in real life, Berle was actually nowhere to be found when SNL debuted, but he did host the show (disastrously) in its fourth season, in 1979.
The more inside baseball knowledge you have of Saturday Night Live’s brilliant first five seasons, the more you’ll enjoy Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night movie. It’s not entirely accurate, but to paraphrase the line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, when the legend becomes fact, film the legend – and add plenty of simulated mescaline, to boot.