41/43
At 11:30 p.m. on October 11, 1975, a fierce troupe of young comedians and writers changed television forever. Find out what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live (1975). Matt Wood plays John Belushi on Saturday Night, check out the rest of the cast and their real-life counterparts. Dan Aykroyd was the only original SNL cast member to read the script. When the show airs, John Belushi enters the frame 39 seconds late through a door. He actually entered the scene right away. Lorne Michaels: Look, my name is Lorne Michaels, I’m the producer of “Saturday Night.” Doorman: All night? Lorne Michaels: [sarcastically] Yeah, all night. The film opens with a quote from Lorne Michaels: “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready, it goes on because it’s 11:30.” Appeared in Eddie Murphy: The Black King of Hollywood (2023). Ixoo ‘Chickenweed’ Chawz Written by Don Cento and Martin Garner Starring Don Cento and Martin Garner. Saturday Night has some funny scenes and moments, and the first half is also quite engaging, as it is a biopic about the night of the first SNL (90 minutes to be exact, since the film shows us the clock, a mistake I will come back to) and Lorne Michaels getting swept up in all the chaos that awaited him with a show he wasn’t even entirely sure what it was going to be. Smith as Chevy Chase (perhaps the most interesting character because of how he was set up and treated by other characters like Milton Berle) and the guy who plays Dan Aykroyd are probably the best and most engaging. Unfortunately, Reitman has that problem that sometimes happens to biopic directors – and in his case he probably knew one or two of these kids when he was in diapers – where this sense that this subject is SO important and that what happened here would have repercussions throughout the history of modern comedy, pop culture, and television as a medium… well, one, we *get* it, especially after the first time you explain it all (and by the third, fourth, or fifth time I’ve lost count in the last third of this, especially everything involving Willem Dafoe’s character (he does his best but this guy is like so many others here a one-note joke), and two, if you happen to approach this film with only a very superficial admiration for Saturday Night Live, it can feel even more jarring. I have this feeling seeing this with my significant other, who has never watched a full episode of the ’70s series (probably many of you haven’t either, let’s be honest, I haven’t seen any until now). (didn’t get a DVD release a few years ago), and came away not only disappointed, but found the portrayals like John Belushi’s to be completely irritating and Jim Henson’s downright offensive. I get that, too, because unlike Chase we don’t get a full sense (aside from a Weekend Update moment) of what Belushi had as a mad comic genius, so he comes across as a rancid human being (no shade to actor Matt Wood), and once you get to that part about ice skating at Rockefeller Center (in October, eh) Reitman has settled into a sentimentality that is just garbage and not touching. If you’re feeling the emotion coming from the latter sections of this, I get it because it’s easy to buy because it came after Reitman had already reshaped and reformed so much of the story in this one-night OMG marathon, so some might need that release. I found that these moments where Reitman and co. look at this story with the “Wow, this was INNOVATIVE, guys” Glasses detracts from what really works here, which is showing the smaller moments and process, once again showing us how unbalanced and argumentative people could become BTS and the thousand problems that came with making TV stuff in 1975, instead of telling us about it, and building real dynamics between the characters, which are a lottery.
