For 49 years and 50 seasons, the Not Ready for Primetime Players have entertained audiences with positively insane sketches, zeitgeist-hijacking music videos, and musical moments that have shifted entire industries in the live sketch program Saturday Night Live. It’s a staple program in the NBC Universal catalogue from which everyone has a favorite season and the current one is “never as good as before.” Without SNL, there’re no Blues Brothers, no Wayne and Garth, no Coneheads, and no Stefan, but also no Happy Gilmore, Rod Kimble, or any other project from any of the talent in front of or behind the camera who audiences connected with because of their work on the show. Director/co-writer Jason Reitman (Up in the Air; Ghostbusters: Afterlife) and co-writer Gil Kenan (Ghostbusters: Afterlife & Frozen Empire) unleashed their take on the 90 minutes prior to the very first broadcast of Saturday Night Live. After opening in select theaters around the start of the 50th season, Saturday Night is now available on both digital and physical formats so you can relive the chaos on home video with a small smattering of bonus features which will enable fans of the retelling to get a sense of the work that went into making this dream project real.
Director Jason Reitman on the set of Columbia Pictures’ SATURDAY NIGHT. © 2024 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
For a spoiler-free exploration of Saturday Night, head over to EoM Contributor Justin Waldman’s initial TIFF 2024 review. Moving ahead, we’ll be talking about this like it’s the West Coast rebroadcast.
In the world of entertainment, there is no such thing as a night off. Either you do a show or you get replaced. As Johnny Carson (voiced by Jeff Witzke) battles NBC to allow re-runs of his program on the weekends in order to afford himself more time off, showrunner Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) prepares for his very first recording of Saturday Night, a live sketch show that includes a collection of relative unknowns, Muppets, and first guest host George Carlin (Matthew Rhys). What should be a night of great anticipation is marred by an incomplete set, an overbooked show list, a cast member who still hasn’t signed his contract, and equipment that is either broken, on fire, or without an operator. To make matters worse, programming executive David Tebet (Willem Dafoe) is watching in the wings, ready to pull the plug at any moment. Audiences know the legacy of entertainment Saturday Night is about to birthed, but, for 109 minutes, uncertainty hangs in the air at Studio 8H as thick and long as Milton Berle’s reputation.
The first thing to dispel about Kenan and Reitman’s Saturday Night is that it’s not a traditional biopic in any way, shape, or form. You’re there to observe and take in the insanity, not necessarily to learn anything about the figure around whom everything revolves: Michaels. To that end, Saturday Night delivers on the entertainment value by pulling together an ensemble that captures the essences of the people involved, avoiding mimicry and authenticity of the real-world counterparts by aiming for their spirit and the energy that coursed through 30 Rockefeller Center. Using Michaels as the audience’s proxy for the majority of the time, the film has us navigate the pandemonium along with him, stopping to engage in the Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany) performance that almost was, the sizing up and dressing down of Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), and the speech that got Tebet to understand what Saturday Night as a show *is*. From the production design to the costuming to the performances, the details present in the film beautifully create the illusion of the moment, so that, for 104 minutes, we truly believe that with every choice Michaels (and anyone else trying to make SNL happen) carries the weight of The Fates as they wield their scissors.
Milton Berle (JK Simmons) in SATURDAY NIGHT. © 2024 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
That said, with Michaels at the center, this typically enigmatic figure who appears from time to time on SNL to take part in sketches; whose stories told by alum like Seth Myers (Late Night with Seth Meyers), Amy Poehler (Parks and Recreation), Bill Hader (Barry), and John Mulaney (Big Mouth) paint different pictures of the man; remains a mostly ethereal figure. We know from LaBelle’s performance that this is a person flying by the seat of his pants, rolling with every single problem that pops up, desperately trying to remain positive in the face of potential historic failure, but we don’t learn much about him personally. Only through cross-edits in which we’re shown images of things when the camera holds on Michaels do we get a sense of his internal conflict, but nothing is ever truly opened up. The most we really get about who Michaels is and why he does this comes from Rachel Sennott (Bottoms; Shiva Baby) as Rosie Shuster, his then wife (who is also not really his wife) and co-writer on the show, when she talks to another character about Michaels. The elusiveness about Michaels would be charming if not for the fact that the show wouldn’t exist without him, so the absence of him as a figure explored becomes notable when the audience stops being blinded by the history of the night.
Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt) IN SATURDAY NIGHT. © 2024 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This may seem like killjoy-type mentality, but there’s a lot in the execution of Saturday Night that requires knowing the history of the early years of SNL to truly understand. Coming in during the Sandler/Myers years myself (around the time I was allowed to stay up late enough to watch the show, though usually at a friend’s house), I couldn’t tell you who Shuster is, let alone Michael O’Donoghue (Tommy Dewey), and I don’t think I could even now. Certainly, Sennott doesn’t disappoint, her natural charisma and comedic talents making it easy for the actor to not only make Shuster a full-person but someone who can clearly run circles around the on-screen talent audiences are likely to know. Similarly, O’Donoghue is presented as someone important to the show, a master of the crass and inappropriate, yet, even if we don’t know why he matters, Dewey’s (Your Monster) performance makes us lean in and pay attention. And yet, even though one feels the absolute rush and joy as Chase finally gets to say the now-iconic opening line of SNL before the film cuts to credits, the entire experience, leaves one unclear if they learned anything beyond the sheer fortune that the show was broadcast.
L-R: Cinematographer Eric Steelberg and Director Jason Reitman on the set of Columbia Pictures’ SATURDAY NIGHT. © 2024 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
At the very least, the bonus features turn things around for audiences who are interested in learning more post-watch. The bulk comes from the 16-minute “The Making of the Movie of the Show That Almost Never Made It” which features cast and crew talking about the making of the film. This touches on how composer/actor Jon Batiste (The Color Purple) would wrap his shooting day and then come back to set with his recording team and live record the score using dailies, how the various cast members approached their characters, and important details on the production design and costuming. If costuming is your thing, there’s a two-minute “The Look of Saturday Night” that’s a dialogueless fashion show-like presentation of the actors moving through the set in costume. Though there’s no gag reel — which is odd, especially in this case — there is a nearly-five-minute “Super 8 from Studio 8H: Home Movies from the Set” featurette in which a collection of personal movies are edited together to give home viewers a peek at the antics on set. Strangely, considering how interesting the creation of the score is, Baptiste is only given an 80-second featurette, “Jon Batiste: Scoring Live,” to show off what he did and how. Given the high-level of skill required to do this, more of it would be better, but something is clearly an improvement over nothing. Finally, in terms of featurettes, there’s a 13-piece set of featurettes under the “Creating Comedy Icons” heading where, for a total of 10+ minutes, audiences can zero-in on select actors and learn how they approached their respective performances. An odd thing is the clear inconsistency in direction (or understood direction) as it relates to whether the performers were supposed to talk to the still-living individuals they came to replicate to a degree as some said that they weren’t versus others who did. In either case, if you have a favorite, you’re given very little time in what are clearly specific-for-marketing-purposes shorts to give people a sense of the approach to each Saturday Night personality.
The best thing, though, and this is stated with all sincerity, is the filmmaker commentary. If you’ve seen the film already, just turn this on and sit back as Reitman is joined by members of the production, costume, and sound teams to discuss a variety of details about the making of the film that truly enhance the viewing experience. By now, most folks know that it’s thanks to the real Billy Crystal that Reitman was able to get his hands on the script for the first night show. Through the commentary track we learn that every single version of the script we see on-screen — getting passed around, tossed out, and set on fire — are digital copies of Crystal’s original. We learn about how significant the sound is to the film in terms of capturing dialogue, as in where to focus and where to block, amid such an active ensemble that makes up not just the central cast but all the extras who are actively bustling in the background. We even get some information on the significance of Michaels’s and Cooper Hoffman’s (Licorice Pizza) Dick Ebersol’s costuming in terms of authenticity, but also as representative of their respective metaphorical armor being removed throughout the film ahead of their big conflict toward the end. You’re not going to get much in the way of details as it relates to performances, but you will learn how Reitman set up LaBelle for a somewhat secret audition with Reitman’s team via a movie screening in London, how Tracy Letts (Ghostbusters: Afterlife; Ford v Farrari) got attached to the project, and the difficulty of not just shooting the film in terms of capturing the chaos, but in tracking the chaos itself for continuity purposes.
One of the best pieces of information one learns in all of the materials is how Dafoe (Nosferatu) came to set one day, sat in the upper bleachers, and watched the cast filming, which made everyone seriously uncomfortable. A very Dafoe as Tebet thing to do, and the telling is quite charming.
Just an FYI that while a home review would ordinarily confirm what is available special features-wise on the digital edition compared to the physical, the retail review copy provided by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE) did not include the advertised digital code. This appears to be an accident with the packaging in the retail review copy sent and not an overall issue with the home release, as confirmed by an SPHE representative.
Cast/character polaroids for Columbia Pictures’ SATURDAYNIGHT. Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. © 2024 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
On the whole, Saturday Night can be enjoyed on its own, fanning the legacy of SNL and Lorne Michaels, whether you know anything about the real people or not so compelling are the performances from the cast and the details on display. But it can’t be enjoyed as much as it could be without (a) coming to the film with a larger than average base knowledge and (b) accepting that you may not learn anything about the show’s creator. There’s no arguing that Reitman and Kenan understand the *what* of SNL, but one doesn’t really have a clear vision of *why* beyond the counter-cultural movement of the era, which, again, requires some knowledge of the cultural shifts occurring in the 1970s — information that would come in handy by getting to know the creator through the chaos swirling around him. Thankfully, at least through the commentary track, we can enhance our knowledge enough to understand what Reitman and Kenan envisioned and there’s no denying their sincerity and affection for the subject matter.
Saturday Night Special Features:
- Filmmaker Commentary
- The Making of the Movie of the Show That Almost Never Made It (16:23)
- The Look of Saturday Night (2:10)
- Super 8 from Studio 8H: Home Movies from the Set (4:49)
- Creating Comedy Icons (10:52)
- Jon Batiste: Scoring Live (1:21)
- Previews (7:30)
Available on digital November 12th, 2024.
Available on Blu-ray and DVD January 7th, 2025.
For more information, head to the official Saturday Night website.
Final Score: 3 out of 5.
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Categories: Home Release, Recommendation
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