Knock on Wood

We seem to be living in a golden age of Saturday Night Live. Not necessarily for the show itself, but for the show’s place in our culture – Seth Meyers and the Lonely Island have launched a successful rewatch podcast about the iconic Digital Shorts, Will Ferrell and Harper Steele’s friendship formed on the show is the basis of the new documentary Will & Harper, and the series just premiered its 50th season – making it one of the longest-running variety shows in television history.

Something just felt right about seeing Saturday Night, Jason Reitman’s real-time dramatization of the 90 minutes leading up to the airing of the show’s first episode in 1975, on the night of the 50th season premiere. To make it even more perfect, the wide release of the film will happen on October 11th, the 49th anniversary (to the day) of the original airing that the film fictionalizes.

Complex and controversial history aside, it’s undeniable that SNL changed the landscape of television and entertainment as a whole. This is the perfect time for a movie like this.

Reitman’s film follows SNL creator Lorne Michaels (played here by The Fabelmans breakout star Gabriel LaBelle) as he attempts to juggle a raucous cast, stoned writing staff, rebellious crew, and network executives in the hour and a half before he changed history forever. Saturday Night certainly has an arrogance to it, but it’s a charming type of self-congratulation that any fans of SNL will buy into, maybe even appreciate. If you don’t love the show, you might not be as big of a fan, but then again, I don’t think you’d like the movie very much, either. It’s a film made for fans, by fans, and it’s not ashamed to let those colors fly.

The entire original cast and crew of SNL are brought to life by a wide range of incredibly talented young character actors, the most impressive of which are Cory Michael Smith (Gotham), Kim Matula (LA to Vegas), and Matt Wood (Law & Order: SVU) as Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, and John Belushi, respectively. Dylan O’Brien (The Maze Runner) disappears into the role of Dan Aykroyd, and recent Emmy winner Lamorne Morris (Fargo) is hilarious as Garrett Morris. Other standouts in the remarkably impressive cast include Rachel Sennott (Shiva Baby), Ella Hunt (Anna and the Apocalypse), Emily Fairn (Black Mirror), Nicholas Braun (Succession), Kaia Gerber (Bottoms), Andrew Barth Feldman (No Hard Feelings), Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man), J. K. Simmons (Whiplash), Tracy Letts (Lady Bird), and Robert Wuhl (Batman). My personal MVP is Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza), who plays NBC executive Dick Ebersol, and gave me chills in one scene that reminded me very specifically of his father’s style of acting. It’s a real “who’s who?” both of the emerging young talent in Hollywood (which makes sense given the context of the film) and well-known character actors alike.

Most of these are not traditional impressions, by the way. The impressions are good, but it’s the emulations that are more impressive – capturing the essence and motivation of every one of these colorful characters in totality is an incredibly difficult task, and this cast is more than up to the challenge.

It’s worth noting – and this is something I’ve seen mentioned in many reviews of Saturday Night – much of the cast, especially Hoffman and LaBelle, are significantly younger than the characters they’re playing. This is a brilliant choice, and one that fully emphasizes just how young and professionally vulnerable these people are. They’re just kids, trying their best to make a good show. All of their careers are on the line if they don’t make this series work, and the best ticking clock in the world (emphasized by the occasional on-screen digital clock) only further heightens the tension.

But because it’s a historical dramedy (and because SNL jokes and memes are impossible to escape in the age of the internet), we know that the show will go on. We know that Chevy Chase will stand tall on the stage in Studio 8H and say, very confidently, directly to the camera “And live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” The question becomes not if they will get there, but how. How will the impossibly disorganized mess that Lorne Michaels finds himself entrenched in become the start of a television revolution?

It’s as chaotic as can be, and the film’s fine-tuned technical efficacy only further impresses the time crunch. The camera work is electric, at times discombobulating and disorienting, but always showing us exactly what we need to see. This is the type of chaos that requires meticulous rehearsals, and thus perfectly conveys the feeling of having an infinity of tasks without the proper time to complete them all. But even in that headspace, Saturday Night still finds time for the character moments where we actually get to know the stressed, exhausted, and adrenaline-fueled protagonists that make up our cast.

Jon Batiste (who also co-stars as musical guest Billy Preston) composed the film’s frenetic score, filled with both melodies and stray notes, that was composed in real-time at the end of every shoot day in tune with the dailies. What’s even more impressive is that every scene with a computer monitor showing a live feed of the stage was not keyed in during post-production; everything was connected to a live camera showing what was really happening on the Studio 8H set. That kind of operation is not easy to work with but feels appropriate for Saturday Night, a film all about the creative process and on-the-floor problem-solving.

Saturday Night may be Jason Reitman’s best movie. The script (which Reitman co-wrote with frequent collaborator Gil Kenan) is excellent, but it’s the performances that elevate the film into hysterics, and they all gel very nicely with the breakneck pace that does not give us a moment’s rest. There is always something happening, always a myriad of moving parts, but it’s exciting to see it all come together. Everything has gone wrong, now it’s time for it to go right.​​ This is Saturday Night, dammit, and that name means something – if nothing else, it promises 90 straight minutes of subversive, hilarious entertainment. That’s the SNL promise, and Reitman’s reverence for the show that so many of us grew up on shines through in a colorful parade of the most invigorating mayhem you’ve ever seen.

Saturday Night is playing in limited theaters now, and will have a wide release on October 11.