48/24
Dan Aykroyd was the only original SNL cast member to read the script
Story
At 11:30 PM on October 11, 1975, a rabid mob of young comedians and writers changed the television set permanently. Find out what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live (1975). Matt Wood plays John Belushi on Saturday Night Live, see the rest of the cast and their real-life counterparts.
In reality, he came right away
As the show begins, they have John Belushi entering the frame 39 seconds late through the door. Lorne Michaels: Look, my name is Lorne Michaels, I’m a producer on “Saturday Night.” Doorman: All night? Lorne Michaels: [sarcastically] Yeah, all night.
Ixoo “Chickenweed” ChawzWritten by Don Cento and Performed by Martin Garner
the film opens with a quote from Lorne Michaels: “The show doesn’t go on because it’s done, it goes on because it’s 11:30.” Appeared in Eddie Murphy, The Black King of Hollywood (2023). Saturday Night has some entertaining scenes and moments, and even the first half or so is pretty engaging, as this boilerplate biopic about the night of the first SNL (exactly 90 minutes, because the movie shows us the clock, err I’ll get back). to that), and Lorne Michaels got into every bit of chaos he had before him with a show he wasn’t even entirely sure what it was going to be.
through the history of modern comedy and pop culture and television as a medium
Smith as Chevy Chase (perhaps the most interesting character in terms of how other characters like Milton Berle set him up and treat him) and the guy playing Dan Aykroyd are probably the best and most interesting. Reitman has that problem that biopic directors sometimes face – and in his case, he probably knew one or two of these guys when he was in diapers – where this feeling that this subject is SO important and what happened in this case would reverberate. well, we *do* get it, especially after you told it all the first time (and by the third fourth or fifth time I lost count in the last third of this, especially everything with the Willem Dafoe character (he’s trying his best, but this guy is like many others here a one note joke), and two, if you happen to be in with just a very casual admiration of Saturday Night Live, it can feel all the more exciting never watched an entire episode of that 70’s show (probably many of you haven’t either, let’s be honest, I know I didn’t see any until the DVDs came out a few years ago) and not only was I impressed, but I found portrayals like John Belushi totally crude and downright insulting to Jim Henson, I get it too because unlike Chase, we don’t fully understand (outside of the Weekend Update moment, inevitably) what Belushi had as a mad comic genius in him, so he comes across as a rancid lump of human (no shade to actor Matt Wood), and when it gets to skate at Rockefeller Center (in October, duh), Reitman has settled into a sentimentality that’s just rubbish and unimpressive.
– and building real character dynamics that are hit or miss
If you feel the feeling coming from the last few parts of this I understand because it’s easy to drink since it comes after Reitman has already shaped and molded so much history into this one night OMG-athon so some may need a release. I found that in these moments where Reitman and company look at this story with “Wow This Was Groundbreaking You Guys” the glasses take away from what really works here, which is showing the smaller moments and processes – again, showing us how shocked and confronted people could have had bts and the myriad problems of making tv in 1975 instead of telling us.
