Saturday Night

"I Didn't Tape the Dress Rehearsal"
 or

"Who Are You in the Metaphor?"

 

I like director Jason Reitman's work, whether he's swinging for the fences (Thank You for Smoking, Up in the Air) or playing it safe (Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Juno, Young Adult). I'm sure with every single one of his projects he did not believe he was "playing it safe." All of his films, I'm sure, had challenges that I'd never be privy to, that affected his decisions to make the film, or how he made them. 

 

Maybe it's because these projects all hover around the same theme, "Lies we tell ourselves," which seems to show up in all of his work, where we're never sure if anybody's telling the truth because it's our instinct to believe the lie. That's quite a sophisticated thesis and sometimes the movie doesn't warrant the effort and sometimes it does, but it's a very American trait, and given his willingness to go back to it again and again, I don't think Reitman could ever make a movie not set in the United States. We seem to have that weakness, whether it be hope or hubris or merely sleeping through the sedative of "The American Dream".

It's hard to say where Lorne Michaels (played, again brilliantly, by Gabriel LaBelle of The Fabelmans) falls in those options. I'd wager on "hubris" these days, but back in the days when "Saturday Night" (the first title of what would become "Saturday Night Live"*), who knows what it might have been. Lorne Michaels was Canadian, for one thing, but he'd had a lot of success in the States as a writer and when NBC was in one of their little tiffs with "Tonight Show" host Johnny Carson, they decided they wanted to prove to their late night star that they didn't need him and that they didn't have to fill an empty Saturday late-night slot with another re-run of one of his past shows. NBC Late-night "suit" Dick Ebersol (played by Cooper Hoffman) was charged with filling the time.

The idea was a "live" sketch comedy show with prominent musical acts who didn't show up on the likes of "The Dean Martin Show" and more in spirit with "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" (which had been canceled after many problems with the network over material deemed too controversial), but without regular hosts—initially the idea was to have rotating hosts of Lily Tomlin (Michaels had produced one of her specials), Richard Pryor and George Carlin, but Pryor made NBC nervous—and, with that spirit, aimed for a younger audience demographic and a hipper crowd than NBC was used to garnering. Michaels wanted to make a show that parodied television for an age-group that grew up watching television (and now, ironically, is making a version that for kids who grew up watching "Saturday Night Live"!)

Having read the oral history "Live from New York: The Complete Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests" (by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales), and I know a lot of the stories culled for Reitman's Saturday Night, some of which happened, some of which only happened later during the chaotic first season, and some of which didn't happen at all—the bit with Milton Berle (J.K. Simmons) dressing down Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) didn't happen (although Berle did show off the size of his penis to SNL writer Alan Zweibel...at Zweibel's curious request). Yes, a lot of it is true (and Reitman goes into the whole Johnny Carson dilemma with the moment it's decided to go "live" with the show or roll the Carson tape being the dramatic high-point), but some of it is left out...like character actor George Coe's short tenure as a "Not Ready for Prime-Time Player" and an awful lot of short shrift is given the writers. But if you put all of it in, it would have been epic-length—not unlike Michaels' 3 hour dress rehearsal that has to be cut down to an hour and a half.

Even with the deletions, Reitman has to move his movie fast and it hurdles along in long tracking shots until it finds a conversation of interest or an arresting image—frequently involving a llama—then swings his camera between each side of the discussion before veering off with a passer-by who'll act as tour-guide to the next section, as sub-plots whirl in the background. It's not done in one continuous shot—something this complex would make Alfonso Cuaron's head, or Alejandro González Iñárritu's continuity director, explode—but one gets the simulation of continuous unbroken action for a good part of the film and it ramps up the tension, if the myriad disasters falling around Michaels' head—be they flaming scripts or newly-installed studio lights or a Belushi-hurled ash-tray—weren't enough. 

Of course, it's tough to give this stuff any verisimilitude without threatening to turn it into caricature—Labelle assiduously avoids the Michaels-based "Dr. Evil" voice, for example**—but one wonders if the audience cares, since they know Chevy Chase from endlessly repeating "National Lampoon" movies or his "older" roles and probably don't know any of the writers at all. Some of the passing references to other "Saturday Night" bits might go over their heads. And one, rather sheepishly, admits that the movie will probably play with "the older crowd" beyond the show's originally intended demographic so that it becomes an episode of nostalgia. Yikes.

I remember "Saturday Night", initially, because it aired in rotation with NBC "Weekend", a brilliantly written news program with Lloyd Dobyns and Linda Ellerbee, that was a favorite of mine and I was always fairly irked when it wasn't on and "Saturday Night" was. It grew on me, however, when Paul Simon and then Richard Pryor hosted (in one of the best overall episodes of the show's first season). And although I think the past couple of seasons have been pretty strong, one can't help but be chagrined that the show is 50 years old and that it's audience is about the same as our folks' when they were watching "Dean Martin."

It would have been the ultimate irony if Reitman had ended the film with an acknowledgment of that fact. One would doubt it would get the approval of Michaels and his production company Broadway Video who had little to do with this movie other than to say "well, we won't say you can't can't do it" (and the "disclaimer" about "work of fiction" and "persons, living or dead" is a briar-patch of timorous legalese). Even self-described "revolutionaries" get old and stale after awhile...just as sure as "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead".

The very first sketch on "Saturday Night":

Head-writer Michael O'Donahugh, John Belushi and Chevy Chase

* The reason they didn't use the the "SNL" title initially was because competing network ABC already had a variety show called "Saturday Night Live"...hosted by...Howard Cosell?

 

** And kudos must go to Nicholas Braun, who plays both Andy Kaufman AND Jim Henson.

 

Competing posters of Saturday Night

which, more, in spirit, tells of the difficulties they had.