Live From New York, It's a Review of Saturday Night!
Can these yahoos put on a tv show nobody's seen before by 11:30?
Oh my gosh! I know those guys!
That's the the plot. We come into the film at 10:01 pm and follow the currently great and powerful Lorne Michaels as a kid in his 20s trying to create the very first Saturday Night Live in 1975. If you've never seen Saturday Night Live before, that would be strange because it's been on NBC at 11:30 for 49 years. It's a show that all Americans have likely seen before in its good years, bad years, and unbelievable years. It may not be your favorite program, but it tries different sketches every week to become one.
How good Saturday Night Live is has been a constant topic of conversation for my entire life. Eddie Murphy was part of the cast in the early 80s, and my parents gave up on the show once he left to do 48 Hours and Beverly Hills Cop. My friends in the 90s wouldn't stop doing Hanz and Franz impressions. They just wanted to "Pump (clap!) you up!" I remember getting into a conversation with someone about whether Adam Sandler or Phil Hartman was funnier. Saturday Night Live is an institution. It has been filled with generational talents for years, so seeing the drama required to make the very first episode way back in '75 is a real treat as long as you're into a group of space cadets having a terrible time.
What kind of "generational talents?"
You only get a "handsome" asshole like Chevy Chase once a generation.
Generational talents are people you like, people you hate, but remain, people you know by reputation if nothing else. They are types like:
Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith): Someone I never knew people thought of as “handsome.”
Andy Kaufman (Nicolas Braun): Maestro of documentaries about his mad comedic style.
Jim Henson (also Nicolas Braun): The Lover, the Dreamer, and Kermit the Frog.
George Carlin (Matthew Rhys): 70’s coke problems and everything.
Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt): A TV Walk of Famer, who married 60s Willy Wonka and died in 1989.
Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O'Brien): Without him, there would be no Ghostbusters and that world would suck.
John Belushi (Matt Wood): A man with a difficult story and an actor brother that no one likes.
Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris. No relation.): Jamie Foxx’s uncle on The Jamie Foxx Show.
Jane Curtain (Kim Matula): Great on Third Rock From The Son but I stayed up late to watch Kate & Allie
Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn): A long career as an actress before settling into voice acting for just about every animated show you’ve seen.
That doesn't even begin to cover all the talent in the film. Willem Dafoe, J.K. Simmons, Jon Batiste, and a host of others are there as well. There's even someone doing a Johnny Carson impression in this film. It takes talented people to make a movie about more talented people no matter what era they hail from.
Should I Go See Saturday Night?
Absolutely!
You don’t have to be a kid who used to watch classic SNL episodes on Nick at Nite like me to enjoy this either. Watching Lorne Michaels do his best to put together something "avant-garde" for the folks at home is fun no matter where you’re from. It's also fun to see how many people are constantly yelling at Lorne the entire time. In Saturday Night, Michaels has 90 minutes to create something that television has never seen, and he'll hire almost anyone he sees something in to make that dream a reality. This madcap and zany attitude is the lynchpin of many careers of the best in the business.
We didn't get any Eddie Murphy or Richard Pryor scenes in this movie, but we did get the playwright Garret Morris sound-checking with a song about killing all the white people he sees that all the white people clapped along with. We did get Billy Preston (Jon Batiste) giving Garrett Morris some drugs that he carried around until John Belushi stole from him and did them in Morris' face. We didn't get to see a lot of muppet action, but we got to see a doe-eyed Jim Henson requesting pages to perform his part of the show and doing his best not to say bad words.
"Mah Nà Mah Nà" indeed, fake Jim Henson.
Without Saturday Night Live we wouldn't have a Wayne's World, Blues Brothers, or A Night At The Roxbury. We wouldn't have Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, or 18 seasons of Kenan Thompson. We wouldn’t even have Tina Fey! Our entire entertainment culture would be different, and I doubt it would be better. Everything would just be a lot more straight-laced and boring if Lorne Michaels wasn't able to show SATURDAY NIGHT to David Tebet (Willem Dafoe), the head of NBC on that fateful night in 1975.
Saturday Night helped me believe in comedy again. I hope it does the same thing for you.
