Harry Houdini died Halloween night in 1926 from peritonitis that may have been due to appendicitis and/or some powerful punches he received a week and a half earlier. But my younger self didn’t know that about the most famous magician of all time; no, I believed he died in the famed “Water Torture Cell” after an act went wrong. And I thought that because I had seen the 1953 biopic “Houdini” starring Tony Curtis and that’s how the escape artist perishes at the end of the film. “Print the legend” is an alluring siren song for biographers and especially for dramatists telling a story based on fact. And it’s one that writers Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman completely go with for “Saturday Night,” a glorified handling that seeks to tell the night of the first episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975. There are still some uncomfortable truths mixed in with the rest of the elevated retelling, but director Reitman has built this ode to the Not Quite Ready For Primetime Players in such an inauthentic and over-reverential way that it becomes hard to swallow. The more audiences are familiar with the truth behind SNL and its creator, the less palatable some of these platitudes and assertions will be. The completely ignorant may find a fun bit of chaos and comedy and pop culture for 110 minutes, but they should know that “Saturday Night” is just as much an illusion as anything the great Houdini pulled off.
It’s October 11, 1975, and the new Saturday night variety show is less than two hours from going live on NBC. Led by a relative unknown named Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), the show has assembled a talented cast to do pre-written sketches alongside performances by two musical acts, a monologue from a host (George Carlin (Matthew Rhys)), something involving the Muppets as led by Jim Henson (Nicholas Braun), and a weird interlude of bizarro comedy from Andy Kaufman (Braun again), and more. Maybe. The fact is that the show hasn’t been locked in yet, meaning that with only minutes to go, it’s uncertain what actually will make it to the screen and what even this 90 minute TV program will be. Meanwhile, every technical problem possible is happening with lights plummeting, sound boards blowing out, and much more. There are ego clashes between the cast, especially with Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) and John Belushi (Matt Wood)—who still hasn’t signed his contract and is on the fence about even going on. While Michaels’ producer, Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), pleads with the creator to rein it all in, other NBC company people like Dave Tebet (Willem Dafoe) are merely using this whole debacle as leverage against Johnny Carson. Add into this that Michaels’ wife, Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), is sleeping with cast member Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien), Garrett Morris (Larmorne Morris) doesn’t know his place in the cast, and the various writers are all too interested in being anarchic goofballs to play nice with the censors or company men. What will actually make it to air and how are they all going to pull it off?
Credit where it’s due, Reitman does a good job balancing a ton of moving parts and making sure that the audience immediately understands the stakes, the relationships, and the characters involved with “Saturday Night.” They are all broad strokes and told in the most obvious of ways, but the script and direction make all the threads easy to follow and grasp the dynamics. A lot of that is done through pretty heavy-handed dialogue or through shortcuts like using the audience’s own knowledge of history (or…in this case…the future?) to fill in gaps. Reitman and Kenan craft a compelling “let’s put on a show” narrative that has been done to death on stage and film, but there is a genuine energy that pushes it forward to that 11:35 airing time all while carrying along dozens of subplots and characters.
But part of the issue with “Saturday Night” is that these folks on screen never feel like people, but instead caricatures of real humans. They are an assembly of famous lines and mugging that are more befitting a SNL sketch than an actual biopic. They are all fine imitations and impressions, some of them quite impressive and funny, but it all feels like surface level cosplaying. Michaels, Shuster, and Ebersol are arguably the most completely drawn people — they are also the three given real moments of quiet — but also all three make grandiose speeches that flesh out their characters while seemingly shattering any sense of grounded truth.
Realism isn’t always important — it’s most important that the film stays true to the reality it has created than our shared universe. But that gets a little foggy when it comes to biopics/historical films. The set design of “Saturday Night” is immaculate and every element of the studio at 30 Rockefeller Plaza feels lived in, complete with antiquated (even for the time) equipment, walls of cigarette smoke and more. The wardrobe is on point and the period elements ring true. But the grandstanding of Lorne Michaels and his sketcheteers as some sort of last vanguard of the counterculture rings horribly false. This is a TV series which poached most of the original writers and performers from National Lampoon’s radio show and magazine. This is a man who cultivated an environment of anxiety and competition in his production, encouraged horrible behavior in others and destroyed multiple careers. Maybe he (and his production) doesn’t get to be given the wide-eyed dreamer role?
There’s a scene in “Family Guy,” of all sources, where the Griffins are facing death and Peter confesses that he never liked “The Godfather.” His reasoning? “It insists upon itself.” And while that’s a joke unto itself and a bunch of pretentious hand waving, that’s all I could think of while watching “Saturday Night.” Reitman’s film boldly declares that the revolution WAS televised almost 50 years ago with Lorne Michaels’ experimental show. And while SNL has certainly made an impact in the world of pop culture and comedy, in TV shows and filmmaking, and even in how people think of certain politicians and national events, one can’t help that it all feels way too self-important. And if SNL is as vital as Reitman clearly believes it is, then “Saturday Night” should not be filled with shallow impressions of characters but actually fleshed out people that stir real emotions within the audience, not just “hah — I recognize that reference.” Reitman and company have chosen to print the legend, one that purports Michaels and crew were visionary revolutionaries, and in doing so, “Saturday Night” does a great disservice to the truth and to their own movie.
3 / 5 Stars
Starring: 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, Jon Batiste, Willem Dafoe, J.K. Simmons
Directed by: Jason Reitman
