The retelling of the behind the scenes lead up to the first taping of Saturday Night Live is basically Birdman on cocaine.
Have you ever wondered how a show like Saturday Night Live ever got started? I’m sure you have, but you will never be able to guess how chaotic and stressful it was during the first-ever live show. Thankfully, director Jason Reitman captures the insane environment from 1975 perfectly in Saturday Night. Strap in because you’ll be locked in during the entire runtime.
The best way this film can be described is Birdman meets a less explicit The Wolf of Wall Street – less than 2 hours. First off, the pacing in Saturday Night is insanely good. It feels like you can’t take a breath until the credits start rolling, which goes to show how engrossing and stressful the film is on the whole. It follows the perspectives of various crew members and comedians as they attempt to go live with the first ever episode of Saturday Night Live in New York City. What is meant to be an hour and a half show has three hours of content and virtually no structure or direction; a bunch of ideas pinned up on the wall. However, producer Lorne Michaels remains confident in his vision and unwavering potential for the show, even though the audience going into this knows it’s going to be a huge hit. But even with lightning-quick pacing, a sharp script, and stressful environment in the middle of it all, director Reitman makes it seem like there is no way it will succeed.
One thing that has to be discussed is the music for this film. I was fortunate enough to see this at the Nashville Film Festival where director Jason Reitman held a Q&A afterwards and he gave us a fun fact about the movie that was fascinating. He stated that the score was recorded live on set as opposed to the traditional way at the end of post production. Essentially, they would wrap a day of shooting, edit together a rough scene, and the composer and his band would watch it and record everything on set hours after most of the crew had left. It is a really unique approach that pays off, as it makes for one of the best scores for a film of 2024 and has a similar feel to 2014’s Birdman.
Similar to Birdman, Saturday Night feels very intimate and self-contained. Reitman said that initially he wanted to film it as a one take film, but they ultimately decided on more longer takes. They also recreated the studio and set almost identically to what it looked like in 1975 and shot the entire movie in that one location. This helped it have a very natural and genuine feel because the actors were familiar with it from living on that set for two months of filming.
Of course, this film would not work if not for the cast which is fantastic from top to bottom and makes for one of the best ensembles of 2024. We could go on and on about everyone from Gabriel LaBell as Lorne Michaels to Matt Wood as John Belushi and Rachel Sennott as Rosie Shuster. But in short, everyone nails their role and most (if not all) of the ensemble is memorable. Their performances add a substantial amount of stress and anxiety to what feels like an impossible situation that twe now know turned out to be a huge win in all of television history.
Saturday Night is unlike anything that Jason Reitman has directed in his career, and it might be his best. This film is right up there with Juno in terms of directing and enjoyment in addition to having plenty of rewatch value. Much like the actual show currently celebrating its 50-year anniversary right now, this film is a must-watch – especially in a theater.