This fall—supposedly October—Jason Reitman’s behind-the-scenes film about the first episode of Saturday Night Live is supposed to be released (using qualifiers because like A Complete Unknown, this film was just shooting earlier this spring, and that is a very tight turnaround). It’s called Saturday Night, it’s directed by Reitman and written by Reitman and his Ghostbusters collaborator Gil Kenan, and the first look is featured in Vanity Fair. Certainly, the casting looks very on point.
Gabriel LaBelle, who broke out starring as Steven Spielberg’s avatar in The Fabelmans, stars as Lorne Michaels, with Rachel Sennott starring as Rosie Shuster, Lorne’s comedy partner and first wife, who was also a writer on SNL during its early years.
The rest of the cast includes:
- Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd
- Lamore Morris as Garrett Morris
- Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase (I love that they didn’t cast a big name for Chevy, LOL forever)
- Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner
- Cooper Hoffman as Dick Ebersole
- Matt Wood as John Belushi
- Kim Matula as Jane Curtain
- Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman
- Nicholas Braun as Andy Kaufman AND Jim Henson
- Finn Wolfhard as “NBC page”
- JK Simmons as Milton Berle
- Kaia Gerber as Jacqueline Carlin
- Willem Dafoe as David Tebet, an NBC exec
- Matthew Rhys as George Carlin, who hosted the premiere episode
That is a healthy mix of names you’ve heard and relative newcomers. It would have been SO easy to stack a movie about SNL with nothing but blockbuster names, but this cast list makes me think Reitman and casting director John Papsidera were truly looking for the actors who can evoke the now legendary starting lineup of SNL, and not names that just look good on the poster.
In the Vanity Fair feature, Reitman describes the film as a “comedy-thriller” that is shot in real time in the 90 minutes leading up to air on October 11, 1975. I actually love this. Too many biopics—and this is a biopic, of Lorne Michaels and his TV baby—try to do too much, try to cover the span of a whole life or a major event, when often, I think taking just one small piece of the puzzle and focusing on it is much more effective. I like that they’re focusing on just the runup to the first episode. Tell us about Lorne, and Rosie, and everyone else, and tell us about SNL by showing us what it took to get that first episode on the air. It’s already well documented, but it’s one thing to read about that chaos, another to see it. We can never go back in time, but we can make movies about it.
That also means, though, that Saturday Night is a show-your-work movie, because it’s a movie about the work. I know this is already Lainey’s favorite film of the year, between her love for SNL and the showing of work. Saturday Night is rumored to be in the TIFF lineup, which makes sense as Lorne Michaels is a proud Canadian. We should hear soon, we’re just a month away from TIFF. We should also be getting a trailer soon, too, since we’re now in the 90-day window for an October release. I’m tempted to be cynical about an SNL movie from Jason Reitman—who has been more miss than hit lately—but honestly, they had me “ticking clock scenario”. I kind of can’t wait to see Saturday Night.
