“The writers on the seventeenth floor tied a belt around Big Bird's neck and hung him from my dressing room door.” Jim Hensen (Nicholas Braun)
Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air) has inspirationally co-written with Gil Kenan and directed a zany docudrama, Saturday Night, about the night in 1975 that changed TV forever—90 min before the first Saturday Night (Live) debut at 11:30 PM.
Reitman’s film about the counterculture sketch comedy series mirrors the manic time before the live performance that would make anyone involved in entertainment weep with recognition about the numberless miscues and faux pas possible for the first production of any new show. (See Jim Hensen and his Muppets in the quote above.) Here a lighting rack can fall at any moment or a script get lost or a major actor not show up.
It all requires the patience of Job, in this case the showrunner, Lorne Michaels (Fabelmans’ excellent Gabriel LaBelle), while NBC seems ready to delay at least a week. Scripts are not finalized, and John Belushi, not wanting to work in a bee outfit, refuses to sign a contract. Whether or not any of these calamities were a part of the evening is not important—that the evening seemed doomed if only because NBC, represented by Willem Dafoe’s stern negativity as NBC head-of-talent David Tibet, seemed to hope the show would fail and go away forever.
The hope is best exemplified by Belushi, who, clearly a comic genius, seems ready to tank the whole production but comes in at the end delivering brilliance almost matched by the supremely witty Chevy Chase. Or Gilda Radner or Jane Curtin, or any of the other young comic women whose promise it seems is to up Rache Sernnott playing Rosie Shuster married to Michaels, captures the chaos end the males in a still male-dominated world by saying to him, “We may be married, but I am not your wife.” Their time has almost come.
Enter Jon Batiste with a spot-on zany score and a role as musical guest Billy Preston. JK Simmons as the crafty and witty Milton Berle is no surprise brilliant and watchable. With crisp 16 mm film and cinematographer Eric Steelberg and the gifted but unknown ensemble, history is made.
This is one of the best movies of the year
Saturday Night
Director: Jasson Reitman (Juno)
Screenplay: Reitman, Gil Kenan (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire)
Cast: Gabriel LaBelle (The Fabelmans), Ella Hunt (Lady Chatterley’s Lover)
Rating: R
Length: 1h 49min
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take (recently listed by Feedspot as two of the ten best NPR Movie Podcasts) out of WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com