Nobody wants to hear from a bunch of twenty year olds who are trying to make history. They haven't gotten the experience, the grudges, the ego, the no-looking-back grit to cut throats and defend what they built. They want to create and see what comes out of it. Like who ever made history out of taking chances. Many of them aren't even aware they're making history - they're there cause they were called and it was a gig, like at least they got a call cause the phone wasn't ringing at all. Or they were plucked from a network of friends, or were known around town, or they landed a good audition. Now, they gotta make something out of whatever they're there to do.
Saturday Night is filled to the brim with unknowns except what we do know - which is that Saturday Night Live still on television with one of its co-creators Lorne Michaels at the helm and at its home network fifty years after it first premiered.
We also know, depending on who you're talking to, SNL has been struggling for a while. Depending on the generation, it hasn't been as good as since - fill in the blank - the Gilda Radner years, the Chris Farley years, the Will Ferrell years ,the Kristin Wiig years, and everything in-between. These days they still have a great amount of celebrities strolling through those sacred halls; just by being there they can say they once hosted SNL. But again depending on who you're talking to, the impersonations are worse for wear, the jokes are one-sided, the risks are few and far between. Unlike some of the hundreds of hosts and musical guests and audiences at home, a lot of people are not sticking around and coming right back - so to speak - to director (and aspiring pop culture preservationist now) Jason Reitman's latest feature.
The movie is an hour and half countdown to the first hour and a half of skits, or I mean, sketches, as well as fake advertisements, celebrated musicians, up and coming comedians, and many, many ideas that are waiting in the wings for adequate screentime for a show that may or may not make it to air. While some of the confrontations, meltdowns, and revelations becomes a revolving door of 'oh to be the fly on the wall' moments, the script centrally focuses on Michaels spinning his wheels (with Rachel Sennott as his ex Rosie Shuster greasing the production wheels and Cooper Hoffman as Dick Ebersol shielding Michaels from the fury of the studio heads) - the expectations he's been putting off, the hail marys he hopes will kick in, his killer instincts that pay off when they actually do. The audience is mainly left to gauge who they can remember from memory, or relegate to look up later; for those who are well-initiated with the original cast, performances might get in the way of wondering how well they are pulling off their legendary comedian. Notes on voice inflections, mannerisms, body language, etc. are being weighed against impressions of stars we once watched or familiarized with.
For myself, I'm not a hardcore SNL fan, but for much of the film, I was continually impressed by the cast not committing to the bit of their scenes like they were auditioning to play such icons, but truly embodying who they were in a time capsule - Dylan O'Brien as the eccentric Dan Aakroyd, Ella Hunt as the effervescent Gilda Radner, Corey Michael Smith as the tight-lipped Chevy Chase, to name a few. While faces come and go, every scene is a kaleidoscope of interactions, where the twists and turns of Eric Steelberg's cinematography and Nathan Orloff and Shane Reid's editing builds onto the next one. The camera glides its way around Studio 8H to all of the nooks and crannies, allowing Reitman to show there was no place to hide as the chaos unfolds naturally and yet with extreme precision - it really is a question of how did they manage to do all that in 90 minutes, a similar pervasive question that comes up when you really see how crazy and precise the SNL production team has to be once they are on air.
At its heart, is the suspension of disbelief. Much of the movie relies on ignoring the familiarity that Saturday Night Live is one of the most iconic tv shows in history. It's asking you to believe in a greater idea - what if it never made it to air?
Granted, that seems to be what many reviews' issues are about Saturday Night. It's all a little much - all frantic style without any substance, which I understand but disagree with. At times, the direction and script plows deeper into the threads already fraying at the seams - Chevy Chase's fragile ego, Jim Belushi's want of comedic authenticity, the girls (Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman) trying to punch through the boys club, Garrett Morris wondering how he fits in. There are wisps where you can see how the chips on the show's impact lands on people's shoulders differently -for some it's a moment in a time capsule with new friends and family; it's the start of something bigger than themselves and trying not to get loss with the current; it's being given the keys of the kingdom one second and sweeping your dreams off the floor the next.
The first half of the film throws you into the deep end of who's who or where are they from, and doesn't really ask you to get comfortable with its pacing - you either do or you don't. I quite liked that risk, even if it doesn't pay off for everybody. So much of Saturday Night, the very grains of it, is heightened for the senses. You have to really key in to catch the one liners, the flickers of self-doubt, jealousy, or inspiration across a character's face, to hear the set-ups and comebacks, it's a story of a once in a lifetime comet passing through the night sky - blink and you miss it, keep your eyes open and you'll never forget it.
Did this kinetic energy exist on that fated October 11th, 1975 evening? Yes, there were once a few documentaries or books, and now an over-abundance of fact-checking articles and reels, that will say it didn't exactly happen this way or that way. How much of it was real or elevated lingers somewhere in the back of my mind both before and after seeing the movie. Saturday Night's real suspension of disbelief, after ignoring what we know of what happens in reality, is the letting go of the results and getting on with the show. For the most part, there is a trust-worthy falling in love with the magic of entertainment - the intensity of creativity, the yearning of authenticity, the desire to be seen and to be good enough, how it's tough to differentiate the rewards and the challenges from the journey or the destination. There is a palpable tension and necessary levity in differing views of comedy, and drama, and what's worth trying on for size. When the clock hits zero and it’s time to air, and Jon Baptiste’s incredible score hits for the ending credits, the tension washes over with relief – they did it.
Because conventionally, white men (including Lorne Michaels) has and currently is in power making the same kind of content because it guarantees comfortable results. They can count on the numbers and money rolling in, so what was there to change, why would any of them dream bigger. Yet a group of twenty old somethings (and then-some) thought a slice of entertainment could be more than that. Sounds like something we've been saying a lot for the past few years when it comes to film – itself – the constant inescapable podcasts, video essays, reels, and stories clamor about when are we going to slowly exit out of the comic book and reboot era for something about art for arts sake. Sometimes a good place to get lost in is for the hope of a revolution - what would become of history if it weren't for the risktakers.
Rating: ★★★★☆
The movie is an hour and half countdown to the first hour and a half of skits, or I mean, sketches, as well as fake advertisements, celebrated musicians, up and coming comedians, and many, many ideas that are waiting in the wings for adequate screentime for a show that may or may not make it to air. While some of the confrontations, meltdowns, and revelations becomes a revolving door of 'oh to be the fly on the wall' moments, the script centrally focuses on Michaels spinning his wheels (with Rachel Sennott as his ex Rosie Shuster greasing the production wheels and Cooper Hoffman as Dick Ebersol shielding Michaels from the fury of the studio heads) - the expectations he's been putting off, the hail marys he hopes will kick in, his killer instincts that pay off when they actually do. The audience is mainly left to gauge who they can remember from memory, or relegate to look up later; for those who are well-initiated with the original cast, performances might get in the way of wondering how well they are pulling off their legendary comedian. Notes on voice inflections, mannerisms, body language, etc. are being weighed against impressions of stars we once watched or familiarized with.
For myself, I'm not a hardcore SNL fan, but for much of the film, I was continually impressed by the cast not committing to the bit of their scenes like they were auditioning to play such icons, but truly embodying who they were in a time capsule - Dylan O'Brien as the eccentric Dan Aakroyd, Ella Hunt as the effervescent Gilda Radner, Corey Michael Smith as the tight-lipped Chevy Chase, to name a few. While faces come and go, every scene is a kaleidoscope of interactions, where the twists and turns of Eric Steelberg's cinematography and Nathan Orloff and Shane Reid's editing builds onto the next one. The camera glides its way around Studio 8H to all of the nooks and crannies, allowing Reitman to show there was no place to hide as the chaos unfolds naturally and yet with extreme precision - it really is a question of how did they manage to do all that in 90 minutes, a similar pervasive question that comes up when you really see how crazy and precise the SNL production team has to be once they are on air.
At its heart, is the suspension of disbelief. Much of the movie relies on ignoring the familiarity that Saturday Night Live is one of the most iconic tv shows in history. It's asking you to believe in a greater idea - what if it never made it to air?
Granted, that seems to be what many reviews' issues are about Saturday Night. It's all a little much - all frantic style without any substance, which I understand but disagree with. At times, the direction and script plows deeper into the threads already fraying at the seams - Chevy Chase's fragile ego, Jim Belushi's want of comedic authenticity, the girls (Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman) trying to punch through the boys club, Garrett Morris wondering how he fits in. There are wisps where you can see how the chips on the show's impact lands on people's shoulders differently -for some it's a moment in a time capsule with new friends and family; it's the start of something bigger than themselves and trying not to get loss with the current; it's being given the keys of the kingdom one second and sweeping your dreams off the floor the next.
The first half of the film throws you into the deep end of who's who or where are they from, and doesn't really ask you to get comfortable with its pacing - you either do or you don't. I quite liked that risk, even if it doesn't pay off for everybody. So much of Saturday Night, the very grains of it, is heightened for the senses. You have to really key in to catch the one liners, the flickers of self-doubt, jealousy, or inspiration across a character's face, to hear the set-ups and comebacks, it's a story of a once in a lifetime comet passing through the night sky - blink and you miss it, keep your eyes open and you'll never forget it.
Did this kinetic energy exist on that fated October 11th, 1975 evening? Yes, there were once a few documentaries or books, and now an over-abundance of fact-checking articles and reels, that will say it didn't exactly happen this way or that way. How much of it was real or elevated lingers somewhere in the back of my mind both before and after seeing the movie. Saturday Night's real suspension of disbelief, after ignoring what we know of what happens in reality, is the letting go of the results and getting on with the show. For the most part, there is a trust-worthy falling in love with the magic of entertainment - the intensity of creativity, the yearning of authenticity, the desire to be seen and to be good enough, how it's tough to differentiate the rewards and the challenges from the journey or the destination. There is a palpable tension and necessary levity in differing views of comedy, and drama, and what's worth trying on for size. When the clock hits zero and it’s time to air, and Jon Baptiste’s incredible score hits for the ending credits, the tension washes over with relief – they did it.
Because conventionally, white men (including Lorne Michaels) has and currently is in power making the same kind of content because it guarantees comfortable results. They can count on the numbers and money rolling in, so what was there to change, why would any of them dream bigger. Yet a group of twenty old somethings (and then-some) thought a slice of entertainment could be more than that. Sounds like something we've been saying a lot for the past few years when it comes to film – itself – the constant inescapable podcasts, video essays, reels, and stories clamor about when are we going to slowly exit out of the comic book and reboot era for something about art for arts sake. Sometimes a good place to get lost in is for the hope of a revolution - what would become of history if it weren't for the risktakers.
Rating: ★★★★☆
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