On October 11, 1975, television changed forever at the hands of an unlikely ensemble of unknown 20- and 30-somethings and a sketch comedy series called Saturday Night.
The truth is, even more than film, television has been in a constant state of evolution since the first broadcast of the Summer Olympics in 1936. By the mid-1970s, the world was changing, comedy was changing, and viewing habits were changing. As the networks battled it out for the leaders of late night, NBC turned to young up-and-comers Dick Ebersol and Lorne Michaels to develop a new kind of late night comedy series. The result would eventually be called Saturday Night Live, but it debuted simply as Saturday Night.
And now, on the cusp of its unprecedented fiftieth season, director Jason Reitman brings to the big screen the chaotic story of the 90 minutes before the show went live for the very first time. Playing in real time, the constantly roving camera captures it all. Last minute rehearsals. Arguments in the writers’ room. Fist fights between stars. A llama in the hallway. It’s frenetic and unwieldy and Lorne (Gabriel LaBelle) dashes from one crisis to the next.
Most viewers first got to see LaBelle in Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans in 2022. Though he had a handful of credits already, the role as a (sort of) young Spielberg opened a lot of doors. And now the fate of Saturday Night rests on his shoulders as the young Lorne Michaels. LaBelle brings the kind of youthful optimism the role requires, keeping his and everyone else’s spirits up while the set is literally falling down around them.
Also stepping into the shoes of TV and comedy legends, the cast includes an incredible performance from new Emmy winner Lamorne Morris as Garret Morris (no relation), a playwright who spends the whole night wandering the set and asking anyone in earshot, “What am I doing here?” Morris delivers with increasing desperation, getting progressively funnier and more desperate as they get closer to airtime. Cory Michael Smith has the task of showing Chevy Chase as both an insecure, misogynist asshole and a guy who could be mistaken by audiences as a loveable jerk. He imbues Chase with a sort of paranoid bravado that feels like more than simply an impression.
Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Jane Curtain (Kim Matula), Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), Alan Zweibel (Josh Brener) and Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) in SATURDAY NIGHT.
As much fun as the guys are, though, the ladies in the cast are shortchanged. Rachel Sennott plays Lorne’s wife, Rosie Schuster, and as one of the main writers she shows up the most frequently. And through one particularly insightful conversation, she gives us more about her relationship and specifically about Lorne Michaels than anyone else ever does. But Jane Curtin (Kim Matula), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), and Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn), all legendary comediennes who were instrumental to the show’s eventual success, are left mostly in the background. Even Billy Crystal’s (Nicholas Podany) appearance, which was cut from the first episode, is treated with more reverence.
Like Lorne Michaels standing in front of storyboard and deciding what had to go, one can imagine Jason Reitman gave Jane and Gilda and Laraine the same consideration. A compact timeline and a ticking clock mean that not everything can make it into the final cut and one would hope Reitman did not casually set them aside.
Reitman had to make a lot of choices in bringing this story to screen. The biggest question he had to answer was what are the stakes?
When we already know the show will go on and on and on for the next fifty years, will launch countless careers, and earn hundreds of Emmy nominations, what is the point? Every time a studio exec threatens to pull the plug or a producer warns Michaels the show won’t make it past the first week, we already know they’re wrong. And that’s okay. Because when it comes to this experience, the fun is in the twinkling eye of Lorne Michaels. He knows it will work and we all just get to go along for the ride, fully aware that in just an hour or two, all of these naysayers will be tipping their hats to him while praising themselves for “knowing all along” that it would be a hit.
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