At least once a decade, various naysayers are ready to call Time of Death on “Saturday Night Live,” lamenting that the show peaked during the early Aykroyd/Belushi years, or started going downhill after Eddie Murphy left to become a movie star, or will never match the roaring madness of the Chris Farley era, or can’t even hope to equal the ensemble brilliance of the Bill Hader/Kristen Wiig/Amy Poehler/Fred Armisen/Maya Rudolph/Jason Sudeikis/Seth Meyers/Andy Samberg/Kenan Thompson cast, and so on and so on. Nevertheless, the show marches on, with the Sept. 28 premiere of Season 50 drawing the biggest premiere numbers since 2020 and ranking as the most-watched “SNL” episode ever on Peacock.
Over the years, “SNL” has become a well-oiled machine with the indefatigable Lorne Michaels at the controls — but it was born of chaos and seemed doomed to failure before it ever made the air. We are reminded of that in Jason Reitman’s kinetic and wickedly funny and unabashedly sentimental “Saturday Night,” which chronicles in near real-time the madness of the 90 minutes leading up to the show’s debut, which was “Live From New York!” on Oct. 11, 1975.
Reitman (who co-wrote the screenplay with Gil Kenan) delivers a stylized, “Birdman” meets Altman’s “Nashville” docudrama. The camera whips around, sometimes in dizzying fashion, taking us to the sets and dressing rooms and backstage hallways of Studio 8H as a 30-year-old Canadian named Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle from “The Fabelmans”) relies on his keen instincts while embracing a precarious, scattershot approach as he tries to winnow a three-hour dress rehearsal into a 90-minute show.
It’s a smart choice to filter “Saturday Night” through the lens of Michaels’ experience, but over the course of a fast-paced 1 hour and 49 minutes, the script somehow manages to incorporate running storylines involving not only the cast members and guest stars, but various network executives, writers, stagehands and musicians.
The casting is nothing short of remarkable, with the filmmakers wisely tabbing a group of talented, up-and-coming performers to play the soon-to-be-famous regulars, with a sprinkling of familiar character actors in supporting roles, e.g., J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle, who drops in on opening night to lend his support but also to remind everyone he was once the big swinging, um, king of TV; the great Tracy Letts as world-weary veteran writer Herb Sargent (who co-created “Weekend Update” with Chevy Chase and Al Franken), and Robert Wuhl as Dave Wilson, who directed the series for a total of nearly 20 years.
As Michaels fends off the concerns of old-school network suits such as Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman) and David Tebet (a fantastically serpentine Willem Dafoe), we eavesdrop on the young and talented cast members in the moments just before they are thrown into the deep end of the pool on live network television.
Matt Wood delivers on the volatile essence of John Belushi, who considers himself a Brando-esque talent, hates the bee costume and has yet to sign his contract. Dylan O’Brien displays an uncanny knack of replicating Dan Aykroyd’s unique speech patterns and laser intensity. Cory Michael Smith from “Gotham” creates a Chevy Chase who is handsome, relatively polished, acerbically funny and clearly the star of the show before it even airs — and is already starting to display signs of a massive, overbearing ego.
Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, Kim Matula as Jane Curtin and Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris have their moments to shine, though we can see how the women often will be relegated to supporting status, while the classically trained Morris, the lone Black cast member, wonders what the hell he’s even doing there, and finally lets loose in memorable musical fashion.
“Saturday Night” peppers in sly references to upcoming bits, including a glimpse of a land shark prop, and a running gag with writers Al Franken and Tom Davis (Taylor Gray and Mcabe Gregg, respectively), working out the kinks on a fake blood gizmo that will eventually be utilized for the famous Julia-Child-spurting-blood sketch in Season 4. Rachel Sennott shines as the writer Rosie Shuster, who has an unusual but loving marriage to Michaels, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t salute Nicholas Braun for a dual role in which he captures the sweet and weird genius of Jim Henson and the sweet and even weirder genius of Andy Kaufman.
Even with a coked-up George Carlin (a spot-on Matthew Rhys) and the ubiquity of marijuana and the hard-R language, “Saturday Night” is a smooth and polished gem — a far cry from the spirit of raw anarchy permeating the birth of the series. Jason Reitman clearly worships at the altar of “SNL” and has composed a gushing fan letter to its legacy. It remains true to the spirit of that opening night while also taking considerable poetic license, and it has me keen on revisiting highlights from that inaugural season in all its magical, subversive, uneven, scattered, hilarious and influential glory.