Josh Reviews Saturday Night

Saturday Night depicts the tense and tumultuous ninety minutes before the very first episode of Saturday Night Live was performed and broadcast on October 11, 1975.  The film follows SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels as he attempts to wrangle his troupe of young and inexperienced comic performers and writers, who were often in conflict with the old guard production team and executives at NBC.  With the clock ticking and problem after problem mounting, the pressure mounts on Mr. Michaels to get his show on the air…

Saturday Night was directed by Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air, Young Adult, Ghostbusters: Afterlife), who co-wrote the film with Gil Kenan (who co-wrote both Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire with Mr. Reitman and directed Frozen Empire).  I had fun watching this.  Saturday Night is a fast-paced and enjoyable film.  Mr. Reitman directs the film with a propulsive energy, and I was impressed by the long-tracking shots frequently employed, that zip in and around the stages and offices at 30 Rock where SNL got made.  Those shots were technically impressive (I cannot imagine the coordination involved with so many cast-members and extras popping in and out of every shot) and a great way to suck the audience into the intensity of the film.  And the cast — about whom I will heap a lot of praise in just a moment — is terrific, absolutely excellent from top to bottom.

But I’ll also admit the film didn’t quite work for me.  It reminded me of Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which also attempted to mine Very Serious Drama from the behind-the-scenes creation of an SNL-like show.  Somehow, it feels incongruous to me to try to frame the creation of a comedy show as a matter with such life-and-death seriousness.  I do understand that, to the people who pour their hearts and souls into creating a TV show, this does feel like the most important thing in a world.  And this formula has worked before, in shows such as the afore-mentioned Mr. Sorkin’s own show Sports Night.  But it rings false to me here.  There is some humor in this movie, and I wish there had been more.  I wanted this SNL move to be funnier.  I think that had this movie had a more even balance of comedy with the drama, it’d have worked better for me.

What also rings false to me is the cavalcade of calamities with which Mr. Michaels is beset in this hour and a half before showtime.  It’s like everything that went wrong in the entire first several seasons of SNL was squeezed into this story.  It feels too much to me, too unbelievable.  I know that movies based on a true story often condense the timeline of the events they’re depicting, and there’s a certain degree to which I can suspend my disbelief.  To reference yet another Aaron Sorkin project, I’m reminded of his 2015 film Steve Jobs.  That film had a theatricality to its structure; I don’t for a second believe that Steve Jobs really had multiple critical life-changing conversations with the key people in his life during the three 45-ish-minute blocks of time depicted in the film.  But somehow I could go with it and it worked OK for me in that film.  Here, about 30 minutes in, my quota of suspended disbelief was about used up, and there were so many things in the film that just felt false to me.  Lorne Michaels, John Belushi, and Gilda Radner were really hanging out outside, at the 30 Rock ice skating rink, about 15 minutes before showtime of their first show?  Al Franken and Tom Davis were really working on the blood for the Julia Child sketch — which wasn’t aired until THREE YEARS later, in 1978 — 20-ish minutes before showtime of the first show?  Moments like that kept throwing me out of the story.

The film’s superlative cast elevates the procedings.  Gabriel LaBelle (Sammy Fabelman from The Fablemans, now all grown up!) is a lot of fun as our guide through this madness, as an increasingly stressed-out Lorne Michaels.  I loved that Mr. Michaels’ ex-wife Rosie Shuster, who was a key creative force on SNL for many years, was so strongly featured in this story.  Rachel Sennott (Bottoms) is terrific as Rosie.  Cory Michael Smith (Carol, May December) is fantastic as Chevy Chase.  He nails Chevy’s look, his arrogance, and his comedic timing.  (His delivery of the “I tripped over my penis” line killed me every time I saw a trailer for this film.)  Dylan O’Brien is perhaps even more perfect as Dan Aykroyd; he absolutely nails the cadence of Mr. Aykroyd’s fast-talking attitude and humor.  Lamorne Morris (New Girl, Fargo season five) is wonderful as Garrett Morris (they’re not related), bringing humor and dignity to Mr. Morris, who finds himself wondering what he’s doing on this show when they’re not giving him much of anything to play in the sketches.  Ella Hunt nails Gilda Radner’s very specific voice, and her sweet and spunky attitude.  I was equally impressed by how well Emily Fairn and Kim Matula captured Laraine Newman and Jane Curtin.  These are women with very identifiable styles and personas, and Ms. Fairn and Ms. Matula really got them.  Matt Wood certainly looks the part as John Belushi, though I was surprised by how angry he plays the character.  While Mr. Belushi certainly had a dark side, I’ve read so many stories about how lovable he was, yet we see little of that here.  (He finally gets to be funny in the film’s final moments, re-enacting the “Wolverines” sketch that opened the first SNL episode.)

Those are the actors tasked with capturing the “Not Ready for Prime-Time Players”, but I’ve barely scratched the surface of the tremendous cast of this film!  Nicholas Braun (Succession) plays both Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman, and you’d never in a million years guess that the same actor plays both roles.  He’s a dead ringer for the very unique-looking Jim Henson, and he perfectly nails the meek, accented voice Mr. Kaufman often used for his comedic performances.  J. K. Simmons destroys in a brief appearance as “Mr. Television” himself, Milton Berle.  Jon Batiste is wonderful as Billy Preston; Mr. Batiste is a perfect choice to play one of my favorite musicians.  (Mr. Batiste also contributed the wonderfully propulsive, intensity-inducing score for the film!  That score reminds me, favorably, of Antonio Sanchez’s jazz-drum score for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman.)  Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things, It) is fun to see in a small role as the NBC page trying to lure in an audience for the first show.  Cooper Hoffman (who was terrific in Licorice Pizza) is fantastic here as Dick Ebersol.  Is Mr. Ebersol really trying to help the show, or is he just looking out for himself?  I think history is split on that, and Mr. Hoffman’s performance skillfully allows both reads to be possible when watching this film.  Andrew Barth Feldman is sweet and funny as Lorne Michael’s assistant Neil Levy.  (Though why does Neil vanish from the film for the final 20-30 minutes, after the very funny sequence in which he accidentally gets high?)  Taylor Gray and Mcabe Gregg are funny as the writing duo of Al Franken and Tom Davis.  Nicholas Podany absolutely nails the look and voice of a young Billy Crystal, and Corinne Britti is a good foil for him as Valri Bromfield (who was famously told by Lorne Michaels to cut her monologue down from five minutes to two).  (Though I thought Ms. Bromfield was, in real life, the writing partner of Dan Aykroyd, not Billy Crystal?)

Robert Wuhl is great as Dave Wilson, the grizzled veteran working the control room, and Willem Dafoe is wonderfully menacing as NBC’s Vice-President of Talent David Tebet, the man who controls whether this crazy new show will actually go out on the air.  Tommy Dewey is very funny as the talented and arrogant head-writer Michael O’Donoghue, and Catherine Curtin (Orange is the New Black) is a pleasure to watch as his frequent adversary, the grumpy NBC censor Joan Carbunkle.  Matthew Rhys (The Americans) somehow looks like an exact replica of George Carlin (though I’m not sure he captured the humor and twinkle-in-the-eye of the real Mr. Carlin).  I was thrilled to see Josh Brener (Big Head from Silicon Valley) as writer Alan Zweibel.  Brad Garrett (Everybody Loves Raymond) kills in his one scene as an awful Borscht Belt comedian.  Paul Rust (Love) is perfect (and perfectly strange-looking), playing Paul Shaffer.  Tracy Letts (Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of August: Osage County, and a wonderful actor in projects such as Lady Bird and The Post) is terrific in his one scene as writer Herb Sargent (giving advice to Chevy Chase).  Kaia Gerber is solid as Chevy Chase’s girlfriend Jacqueline, and Brian Welch does a great job capturing the famous voice of announcer Don Pardo.

Do you see what I mean about this cast???  Wowsers!!

The film makes some odd choices in terms of who it depicts positively versus who it depicts negatively.  It’s strange to me that Chevy Chase — about whom a lot of ink has been spilled over the decades about his bad behavior and attitude — comes off so sympathetically in the film, whereas John Belushi comes off as an unremittingly self-absorbed and surly asshole.  Jim Henson — arguably one of the greatest geniuses to ever work in TV — is treated like a joke, looked down on by the SNL writers, and by this movie itself.  They present George Carlin as an old asshole who is so out of touch he doesn’t get the new brand of SNL humor.  In the climax, we see one comedy scene that makes all the production guys and executive elites laugh and decide to support the show… and that comedy scene is Andy Kaufman lip-synching to Mighty Mouse??  Look, I LOVE that sketch; I think it’s hilarious.  But it’s a strange and bizarre routine that hardly feels to me like a universal crowd-pleaser.  These are strange choices that Mr. Reitman has made with this story!

While I can’t say everything in Saturday Night works as well as I wish it did, I had a nice time watching this film.  I love SNL, and this behind-the-scenes story interests me, even if I have objections as to how this story was told.  This cast is top-notch and worth the price of admission.

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