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 LaBelleof 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'sSaturday 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.
“A child is born into a world of phenomena all equal in their power to enslave. It sniffs - it sucks - it strokes its eyes over the whole uncomfortable range. Suddenly one strikes. Why? Moments snap together like magnets, forging a chain of shackles.”
“Look...to go through life and call it yours - your life - you first have to get your own pain. Pain that's unique to you."
Peter Shaffer "Equus"
There is a sequence in Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans that I found absolutely hilarious, but mine was the only laughter in the theater.
The set-up is that young Sammy Fabelman (at this point played by Mateo Zoryan) is being taken by his parents, Burt (Paul Dano) and Mitzi (Michelle Williams) to his first movie, The Greatest Show on Earth. Sammy is worried. It will be DARK and he's scared of the dark. Father explains the technical aspects of film running as still images that take advantage of the limitations of the eye's retention—the persistence of vision—to simulate a moving image, while Mom takes the romantic view: "Movies are dreams that you never forget." Already the family lines are drawn out between the adults: one is technical, one is artistic.
But, a child wouldn't know that. Driving home, Mitzi asks Sammy "What was your favorite part?" he can't answer...he doesn't answer, still gob-smacked by that approaching train and the disaster that he witnessed before his eyes. At Hannukah, Sammy gets trains as a present—Dad explains the scale and the connections and what makes it go. But, Sammy wants to watch them table-top height to re-create that scene from the movie and sets up elaborate things for it to crash into, inevitably breaking the engine and incurring Dad's disapproval. Break things? You're supposed to FIX things!
But, Mom gets it. Sammy's trying to recreate the scene to make it less scary—he wants to understand it, control it, master it. She gets some film for Dad's movie camera so Sammy can film the train again and again, so he won't be constantly breaking trains. And he shows Mom the movie he made of the train from various angles, various ways to make a model train scary.
But, before the part where Sammy shows his little movie to his thrilled audience, there's a sequence where adult director Steven Spielberg makes an honest-to-god recreation of that "Greatest Show on Earth" crash using miniature trains, toy cars and unsuspecting Hannukah decorations using the same angles DeMille did. And it's amazing. Also funny as Hell. To think Spielberg—at 75 years old—was determined to get that sequence he was trying to make at 6 years old look as good as possible. It's hilarious. It's fun. It's poignant. It's a little brilliant in its meta-sense.
The Fabelmans is Spielberg's telling (with a canny co-script by Tony Kushner*) of the story of his childhood, the birth of his love of making movies and the death of his parents' marriage. It's a story that spans two moves—from New Jersey to Arizona and Arizona to Los Angeles—and ten years and god knows how many hours with an eye to a viewfinder, hours squinting at film through a magnifying glass and cutting and splicing it together with glue as well as graduating from 8mm home movies to 16mm presentations. Oh. He also attended school, got bullied for being Jewish, and getting his first crush...on a shiksa.
Self-indulgent? Sure. But, then you're ignoring Hemingway's maxim "write what you know." Every film-maker (or author) taps into the well of their past** If you dismiss Spielberg doing it, you dismiss Richard Linklater or Francois Truffaut. You can't sneer at The Fabelmans and extoll Cinema Paradiso. Hell, Fellini made a career out of it. Howard Hawks used metaphorical occupations to tell stories about making movies. So, self-indulgent? Sure, join the club!
But, it's a fascinating exercise and an entertaining one, too, because it is Spielberg looking at himself through the rear-view-finder, looking through the aperture and seeing himself, fixing the story where it needs to be finessed or goosed (as he always does) and looking for the tell-tale detail that resonates. Only this time, it's personal, and it's fascinating to look at Spielberg's life as he observed it (or sees it now) and into his mind, as well.
For instance, there is a clear case of imposter syndrome where Sammy Fabelman is the family chronicler, filming everything as observer, story-teller, but ultimately outsider. The revelation comes out in a sequence that could be a horror movie. At a "family conference" it is announced by Mitzi and Burt that they are splitting up—he's going to remain in L.A. for his job and Mitzi is going back to Arizona for her sanity. It is a scene of tears and tearing apart. Spielberg
cuts to a shot of Sammy watching from the stairwell while the whole
traumatic scene unfolds. Cut to a closer shot of Sammy with a look of
horror in his eyes—is it suddenly dawning on him that his family is
splintering apart? Is he reacting to his sisters' emotional trauma? No.
He is reacting to the next shot Spielberg presents: Sammy sees himself (in a
fantasy sequence, inserting himself into the scene) figuring out how to
frame the scene with his camera.
That is a frightening scene. It shows that even in the most intimate, personal, affecting scene, he is outside, objectively looking for the angles, almost dispassionately when passions are running high. What has this "hobby," this obsession done to him that he can even see himself doing that, even if it is instinctually? It's a gift and a curse. As Sammy's Uncle Boris (a florid Judd Hirsch) informs him "Art. Family. It will tear you apart!"
The movie is full of small truths, revelations large and small, that inform the color of a life. I could go on and on about details, themes, structures, performance details that inform this movie (and have influenced Spielberg's entire body of work) but that would just be robbing you of a personal experience of discovery, the individual way of connecting dots and frames. In a way, all movie-makers are communicating personally, whether they are telling their own story or somebody else's.
There is another sequence in the L.A. apartment Sammy is sharing with his father. It's very simple; disarmingly simple. Sammy comes home. Burt, soon after. Sammy is tired, frustrated, isn't getting anywhere in L.A. looking for work. The mail's on the table and there's a letter from Mitzi in Arizona, with pictures, snapshots. Does Burt want to see them? Sure.
There's then the standard Hitchcock sequence of three shots. Burt looks at the pictures. Sammy looks at Burt looking. Back to Burt, as Sammy seems him. But, the two shots of the father are not the same, obviously so, even though from the same vantage point, more or less. The first shot includes Burt looking at the pictures. Cut to Sammy looking. The next shot of Burt does not include the pictures—the camera has moved up and the ceiling of the apartment is weighing down on him. That is the shot of Sammy seeing his father's reaction to the snapshot of his absent wife—the sadness, the contemplation, the emptiness. It is SO simple, but it is importantly different, delivering a visual gut-punch you can feel and that is communicated, even if you don't recognize the shift. That is communication in its rawest, visual way, the way that make movies unique in how they tell stories. And Spielberg finds the best way, subtle and overt, to convey that to the audience (whether they recognize it as such or not).
This is why I love Spielberg movies. This is why I love movies.
The movie may not be the story of Spielberg's past, so much as it's the story of his DNA.
** Some film-makers go back to recapture their youth. Supposedly, Orson Welles made The Magnificent Ambersons because it reminded him so much of his early childhood. Fellini made Amarcord. Francois Truffaut made The 400 Blows. George Lucas made American Graffiti. Francis Coppola drew on his family life on quite a few of his films. One always gets the impression from Wes Anderson's films that he's tapping into his early years. Robert Benton made Places in the Heart. Mel Brooks produced My Favorite Year. Noah Baumbach made The Squid and the Whale. The trend seems to be gathering momentum. Alfonso Cuaron made Roma. Lee Isaac Chung made Minari. Last year, Kenneth Branagh made Belfast. Paul Thomas Anderson made Licorice Pizza.
