Saturday Night

Tensions run high as producer Lorne Michaels, and his eclectic and irreverent troupe of young writers and comedians, rush to prepare for the very first broadcast of "Saturday Night Live" on Saturday night at 11:30 on Oct. 11, 1975.

A very dramatized, smooshed-together string of well-known anecdotes, famous moments, and dramatic recreations, featuring a wildly divergent range of celebrity impersonations, all presented in a breathless burst of veneration, but out-of-order, and not necessarily when, or even how any of it actually happened, Saturday Night is mostly too high on its own farts. As a film, it’s just too enamored with the idea of placing its own version of its own legend up on a pedestal of its own design for it to even fairly be called a story, let alone a good one.

That Saturday Night couldn’t even be bothered to accurately replicate this very famous photo, when it could’ve done so easily, should tell you everything you need to know about this movie.

On Saturday night, October 11th, 1975, producer Lorne Michaels is desperately trying to herd the cats that are the cast and crew of his new show, Saturday Night Live. Having been warned by his boss, Dick Ebersol, that NBC executive David Tebet has very little faith in the whole production, and worse, that NBC is prepared to replay an old episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in the 11:30 time-slot if it looks like Saturday Night Live is not going to work out, Micheals is worried that the show he’s worked so hard on won’t even make it to air.

Meanwhile, young comics Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtain, Dan Aykroyd, Laraine Newman, and John Belushi, along with George Carlin, Jim Henson, Andy Kaufman, Billy Crystal, Al Franken, and all the rest of the writers, crew members, pages, and various hanger-ons, are pure chaos in the warren of hallways and dressing rooms backstage at the famous Studio 8H on the 8th floor of 30 Rock in New York City as they figure out exactly what kind of show this is going to be. And all of this is happening while the old world of comedy and television production, including Milton Berle and Johnny Carson, do their best to just shit all over everything.

But finally, as the audience arrives, and everything is ready to go, David Tebet allows the show to proceed. Writer Michael O'Donoghue and John Belushi perform the "Wolverines" sketch, and at the end of it, Chevy Chase enters, looks to the camera, and announces for the very first time…

"Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!"

A near-mythological second-hand retelling of the storied first night of that well-known comedic institution, Saturday Night Live, the plot is basically an extended series of “the show must go on” moments.

Positively dripping with a pervasive rose-colored nostalgia, filled to the brim and overflowing with a seemingly never-ending string of references to famous sketches and stars, I was reminded of the old 1940s looney tunes cartoon where caricatures of classic Hollywood stars would take turns saying their catchphrases. Similarly, this sentimentality-soaked Boomer vanity project–about a fairytale version of a time when they were still rebels, man, and weren’t yet actively ruining the country, while greedily clinging to the reins of power, and effectively destroying the planet for the generations to come–is really nothing but a litany of hazy “hey... ’member this... ’member this?” memories, all presented as if they're being mumbled at you by some aging relative you don't know, while you're stuck at a family reunion.

I know I’m being snarky, but this is the film’s entire problem.

Because the plot is basically a kind of twist on the classic bedroom farce, but on cocaine, as Lorne Micheals stumbles around 30 Rock from one chaotic problem to another, and there’s simply too many characters involved. Worse yet, they're all people who we seemingly are supposed to recognize immediately, and they're all running around wildly, talking too fast, at the same time, and all while re-enacting moments that it also seems like we're supposed to recognize. I get that all of this is supposed to communicate to us, the audience, the feeling of the creative mayhem that was the backstage production of the show, but it mostly comes off like “Inside Baseball: Saturday Night Live." It's mostly just... noise. I feel like this whole film would've benefited if, whenever one of the myriad characters showed up on screen, their names would've popped up too, perhaps with some fun context, because then we'd all know for certain which specific older famous person it is that this newer famous person is pretending to be. This would have been especially helpful when the newer famous person in question doesn't quite look or sound anything like the older famous person they're pretending to be.

And because we’re constantly hopping from little moment to little moment as we follow Lorne Michaels around backstage and up and down stairs, there’s no time for an actual story to develop beyond “will the show be allowed to air?” This is a problem because it's obviously something that we already know the answer to, so why be worried about anything? I guess we’re supposed to be too busy enjoying the trip down memory lane to notice that this is basically just the cinematic equivalent of a decent cover-band playing songs that are mostly unobjectionable.

To make a long story short, I was bored.

But then again, this shouldn't surprise me. After all, it's a movie about Saturday Night Live, the most boring "comedy" show ever.

I’ll admit it, there’s definitely a big part of me that absolutely fucking hates Saturday Night Live at this point. I hate its staid comedy, the way it immediately runs-into-the-ground any catch phrase the audience seems to like, and of course, its ceaseless promotion of both sider-ism. I hate it so much. That there would then be this film lionizing a blatantly fantasy retelling of a time when this safe, middle of the road, past-its-sell-by-date institution was once considered “revolutionary” ...it fucking sickens me. And that it uses Johnny Carson and Milton Berle as the face of the enemy, as representatives of out-of-touch, unfunny comedy that lacks the daring and danger that this new show has, all while the modern Saturday Night Live is now the out-of-touch, unfunny enemy of daring, dangerous comedy, it drives me insane!

The wine-tasting, sweater-tied-around-the-shoulders, Miata-driving audacity!

That this boring ass handjob of a movie dares to recount the Milton Berle "big dick" anecdote, but does it as a completely made up moment between Uncle Milty and Chevy Chase, as if those two assholes aren’t the exact same kind of comedian, just born decades and eras of comedy apart, and that it does so while seemingly unaware of this fact… I just hate it so much.

Flames… on the side of my face, as the kids say.

Much like late night talk shows, I don’t know why anyone still watches Saturday Night Live, with its milquetoast centrist safe for the whole family comedy. It hasn’t been consistently funny for decades. Besides, when it does manage to be actually funny, the skit is online the next day, so… I don’t know why people still bother to even watch it "live."

But they do. To each their own, I suppose.

Given my extreme distaste for the subject matter, I also don’t know why I bothered watching a dramatized “history” of Saturday Night Live’s very first episode in the first place, and I especially don’t know why I kept watching it when it became clear that it was going to center on that bougie unfunny centrist fuck Lorne Michaels…

But I did. I guess there's no accounting for good decisions on my part either.

Saturday Night is waste of time, an overly nostalgic and dull bit of masturbation, too unwilling to stop tooting it's own horn to bother having anything approaching an actual story, and I regret everything.