Not everything seen on television seemed to be executed perfectly at the premiere of NBC’s Saturday Night Live nearly fifty years ago. The behind-the-scenes story of SNL producer Lorne Michaels trying to reign in the chaos of the cast and crew minutes before the live studio audience made a perfect story needed to be told from Jason Reitman’s film Saturday Night.
The cast includes Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt, Dylan O’Brien, Emily Fairn, Matt Wood, Lamorne Morris, Kim Matula, Finn Wolfhard, Nicholas Braun, Cooper Hoffman, Andrew Barth Feldman, Kaia Gerber, Tommy Dewey, Willem Dafoe, Matthew Rhys, and J.K. Simmons.
Here is the official synopsis:
At 11:30 p.m. on October 11, 1975, a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers changed television—and culture—forever. Directed by Jason Reitman and written by Gil Kenan and Reitman, Saturday Night is based on the true story of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live. Full of humor, chaos, and the magic of a revolution that almost wasn’t, we count down the minutes in real time until we hear those famous words…..
Saturday Night is released in theaters on Friday, October 11.
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LRM Online’s Gig Patta participated in a roundtable interview with director Jason Reitman, during which he discussed the behind-the-scenes film, creating the behind-the-scenes moments of the production set of Saturday Night Live‘sspecial night.
Read the partial transcript of the roundtable interview below:
Journalist: Hi Jason. I enjoyed the film of the behind-the-scenes. It was amazing. I’m assuming it still goes on when Saturday Night Live shoots with that kind of craziness. With Lorne Michaels, he’s kind of a puppet master that we don’t know much about. He sits off in the background. We don’t know much about him. What was it like for you trying to capture this man in his early years? He’s not a public person.
Jason Reitman: I tell you what we do know about him: for over fifty years, he has continued to create a show that reflects the comedy of now or the comedy of tomorrow. He has been able to cast people decade after decade to become international superstars. I think most people are willing to kind of lean on their legacy. Lorne just looks at the windshield and looks to the future. We constantly considered who this person was before he became famous, and Saturday Night Live became a household name. Despite how stoic he is and what a cipher he might be, it’s how vulnerable you would be if you were trying to launch this show. Quite frankly, I found it very similar to being a director. You have a vision for something you can’t completely articulate, but you have a taste for it, and you know what you want to create. It’s how you convince the people with the money and the talent. How do you convince everyone to be motivated to create the same thing? Knowing that they’ll never truly understand it until the show goes live. That feels a lot like being a director. So that is what I thought about when I would direct Gabe [LaBelle].
Journalist: Jason, you grew up on film sets. Besides your research and all the stories, how much of the film is taken from that firsthand experience you had growing up? What would you say is the main difference between film and TV sets?
Jason Reitman: Going to see Saturday Night Live shot is unlike anything I’ve ever done. It’s similar to a full-count extra innings at the World Series or watching free throws in overtime during the NBA finals. It’s so intense. Our association was with the ensemble that was on camera. When you see it live, you realize another ensemble is creating the show behind the camera. They are, if not more, extraordinary than the actors themselves. The camera, sound, stage managers, and stage guys move the flats back and forth. It’s like a ballet that has to happen in 60 seconds every time to get from sketch to sketch.
I went to my first taping as a teenager, and I was just so blown away. Every time I’ve gone, I watch the most extraordinary modern dance. That’s really what I wanted to portray.
In that way, the film is very different. With film, you have more time, and you can make mistakes. You get extra takes. For Saturday Night Live, it’s about how they do this with everything on the line that I wanted to portray.
Journalist: I love the film. It has a high anxiety feel. So, I love it. I want to talk about the music with John Batiste. I listen to music with these beats: Brazilian drums and African drums. How was that? There was a moment when I almost stood up; being from Brazil, there was some samba. How is this collaboration with John Batiste?
Jason Reitman: It’s exciting. I’m so happy you brought this up because I haven’t been able to have any conversations specifically about how the music came together. There’s a lot of Brazilian music in the movie. I had an early instinct that the movie’s sound would lean on percussion. African and Brazilian rhythms would be perfect for this film. The first time I had a conversation with John Batiste, I was already sharing Brazilian drum music and Ethiopian drum music. We actually talked a lot about Fela Kuti explicitly. John and I decided that he would record the original score on set. That’s unlike anything I’ve ever done before.
At the end of each shooting day, he and his band would get back into their street clothes, and we would show my editor, Nathan [Orloff], rough cuts on a laptop. He would improvise ideas in real-time. We had three percussionists, two horn players, and an organ player, and John was on keys. He would point to instrumentalists and say, “Play A flat, then G and B.” Then he goes to a percussionist to mouth out a rhythm for them to try.
The whole cast and crew were on set. We’d watch them. He would start a rhythm, and we wouldn’t understand where it would go. Then we’d get to editing and realize what he was thinking. I could go on about music all day. I’m delighted you asked.
Journalist: Jason, I was actually fascinated by the casting decisions for this film because you have to cast a lot of young actors in it. I tend to forget that this happened 50 years ago, and a lot of these young actors weren’t even born yet. How do you help them get familiar with the characters for this film and with these real-life people?
Jason Reitman: The funny thing about young people now is that with actors in their early twenties, they are so astute at researching online that, if anything, I have to hold them back. Within a day, they’re Googling their hearts out and finding all sorts of old clips. They’ve read all sorts of old interviews. They’re coming back to me with all kinds of ideas that they learned about these people. And I have to be like, “Hold on. Just trust the script.”
There’s an essence to each one of these characters that’s most important for telling this story. The spirit of John Belushi is this sheer talent who is scared of what television might do to him, and as a result, he goes into hiding by refusing to sign his contract. The essence of Gilda Radner is this overflow of empathy, her willingness to carve anything from her own body to make someone feel better. The essence of Chevy Chase is this ego that needs to be humbled. Garrett Morris is searching deeply for his identity and place on the show.
My conversations with the actors would usually focus on one specific thing—this arc that they were going to be going through during the movie. Inevitably, I knew that they would be watching footage and looking for body rhythms, linguistics, and diction that would match the original character. That was nowhere as important to me as finding their way into that one arc they would be doing in the movie.
Journalist: So now that the movie’s almost out for everybody. Everybody’s going to be able to watch it. What was the most rewarding part for you to make this movie?
Jason Reitman: The most rewarding part?
Journalist: Yeah, the most rewarding part.
Jason Reitman: Strangely, it was my relationship with the background actors. I cast every background actor in person for two straight days for the first time. We brought in hundreds of people, and I interviewed them. I went home with all their Polaroids. I sat at my kitchen counter and wrote what they would do on every Polaroid. We put them through a boot camp where they learned how to operate the cameras and the sound equipment. And they worked every single day. They became the living, breathing heartbeat of that set. Background actors are usually the last thought of people on set. They were the heart of our set. We learned all their names, and they became like family.
Journalists: Jason, for your time.
Jason Reitman: Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone.
Saturday Night is released in theaters on Friday, October 11.
For news and interviews, contact Gig Patta at gig@lrmonline.com. Follow https://x.com/GigPatta, https://www.facebook.com/OfficialGigPatta, https://www.instagram.com/gigpatta or https://www.tiktok.com/gigpatta for all his postings and musings in entertainment.
Source: LRM Online Exclusive, Sony Pictures Entertainment
