Saturday Night, directed by Jason Reitman, tells the behind the scenes of the evening when that show of comedy sketches and music aired for the first time live on the national channel NBC, all over America, on October 11, 1975.
Jason Reitman (c) Eric Charbonneau/Sony Pictures
Since then, and for the next 50 years, SNL has launched the career of actors who have become world famous: Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Billy Crystal, Ben Stiller, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Dana Carvey, Jason Sudeikis, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Andy Samberg, and many others.
In addition to regular comedians, famous actors and singers have always enthusiastically accepted the invitation to participate in the show. Only in the first season of 1975–1976: George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Lily Tomlin, Rob Reiner and Penny Marshall, Candice Bergen, Buck Henry, Elliot Gould, Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, Dick Cavett, Anthony Perkins, Jill Clayburg, Raquel Welch, Paul Simon, Randy Newman, Patti Smith, Carly Simon, Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge.
In the years following, many well-known characters in the world of entertainment appeared on the stage of SNL. Steve Martin, to name one, has been a presenter 16 times.
Elisa Leonelli, from Los Angeles, interviewed for a Best Movie exclusive Jason Reitman, who distinguished himself with films such as Juno (2007) and Up in the Air (2009), son of Ivan Reitman, director of Ghostbusters (1984) and many other feature films.
What themes were you interested in exploring with this film?
With my co-writer Gil Kenan, we interviewed over 30 people who were there during those weeks in NBC’s studio 8H at Rockefeller Center in New York, and they told us many stories that were often contradictory, because memory plays tricks after 50 years. But we were able to weave an intricate canvas of what happened in that last 90 chaotic minutes of preparation and countdown to a show that would be on live and not pre-recorded. We wanted to capture the kind of adrenaline and euphoria that only test pilots or heroin addicts experience.
Ever since you were a child, you knew Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray, who starred in your father’s films. When did you find out about other comedians?
As we all remember the songs we loved when we were teenagers, the same thing happens to the comedians we loved when we were young and who define a generation. As soon as I got my driver’s license when I was 16, I went to the Groundlings Theater on Melrose, where I saw comedians like Will Farrell. I liked Adam Sandler, Phil Hartman and Dana Carvey. In 2008 Lorne Michaels invited me to write for Saturday Night Live for a week, and the most famous names of that time were Amy Poheler, Kristen Wiig and Andy Samberg.
How do you explain the talent of Lorne Michaels, producer of Saturday Night Live, the central character in your film?
In the early 1970s in Chicago and Toronto, there was a breeding ground for new comedians, as a reaction to the kind of comedy from before, and both Lorne and my father, Toronto-born Jews in Canada, had a nose for this kind of comic talent. As my father did in film, Lorne had a vision of comedy for television that he could not always articulate in words, but he managed to convince everyone, including NBC officials, to believe in his idea. That’s his genius.
Why did you choose Gabriel LaBelle, who played Steven Spielberg as a teenager in the autobiographical film The Fabelmans (2022), to play Lorne Michaels?
Although Gabe was only 21 when I met him, I quickly realized that he had the kind of energy to be able to act as a father for these young comedians and writers. Lorne, who grew up without a father, who died when he was 14, created a kind of orphanage for these lost comedians. We joke with Gabe that after these two films he will play all the most famous Jews of the twentieth century: Groucho Marx, Ernie Kovacs, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen. With everything that has happened to the Jews for 3,000 years, if we didn’t have a sense of humor, we wouldn’t have survived.
What was so disruptive and revolutionary about this kind of show, which had never existed before on national television?
We all recognize those moments when we realize that culture is changing before our eyes. If you lived in the US in the late 1960s, you knew what the Woodstock festival and films like The Graduate, Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces meant. It was the same with Saturday Night Live, this counter-cultural show, which has managed to reinvent itself for 50 years, has become the centerpiece of American comedy, music and politics.
On the September 28 episode of Saturday Night Live, the first of this season, the sketch preceding the show (Cold Open) satirizes the candidates in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris, Dana Carvey as Joe Biden.
How important is this kind of political satire in America today?
Without a doubt, Saturday Night Live is the most important show on American television in terms of the presidential election, because it has a lot of viewers, even if young people like my 18-year-old daughter maybe watch it on YouTube with their cell phone instead of on television. For decades, ever since Chevy Chase mocked Gerald Ford, every year we’ve had a good time guessing who will play the U.S. President on Saturday Night Live. Political satire provides us with the opportunity to have a debate on political issues in a less serious forum than we would otherwise have, since real conversations that allow us to talk about politics are very rare these days.
One last question, given that Saturday Night is coming out shortly in our cinemas, after the premiere at the Rome Film Festival. What do you think of Italy?
I am hopelessly in love with Italy. While we were shooting Ghostbusters-Frozen Empire in London, I spent as many weekends as I could in Italy. I took a road trip in the north from the lakes to the Dolomites, with a stop in Turin to see the cinema museum. As for all Americans, Italy is an obsession for me, obviously it is a country with a rich history, and I find it a privilege to bring my latest film there.
Click here for original Italian.