Film review: Saturday Night

A producer is off his head after accidentally taking more hallucinogens than he expected. The intended monologue reader, legendary comedian George Carlin, is being a dick about what he’s been asked to do, then seizes up after taking more cocaine than is sensible. Moreso if you’re about to go on live TV across America, even if it is in the middle of the night.

One piece of key talent, John Belushi, won’t sign his contract to be on the show. Which is less pressing than the fact that he’s got pissed off at having to dress as a bee and have a shave, and has vanished. He’s also had a fight with Chevy Chase.

Upstairs, an enthusiastic and puritanical TV compliance officer is using her formidable red pen on the script, asking the meanings of terms like “golden shower” and “clam diving”. In response to her raft of suggested edits, the lead writer sets fire to the notes and informs her that “I would rather butt-fuck cancer than make these changes.”

In the corridors there is a llama that can't be fully explained, other than “it’s funnier than a donkey”. Nobody has any idea of what’s actually going in the show. A fire’s broken out, and a lighting rig has just almost killed half a dozen people.

All this and a million other problems, and Saturday Night isn’t even live yet.

The way Saturday Night – the film – tells it, October 11, 1975 was both the worst and best day of Lorne Michaels’ life. Aged 30, having made his bones in radio, the novice producer had been given a shot at making a late night comedy show for U.S. TV behemoth NBC, a fresh take on the live entertainment show format featuring hip new comedians and musicians, a youthful shake-up, an injection of rock'n'roll spirit. Fifty years on, SNL is one of the most famous and influential things American TV has ever broadcast. It launched the careers of John Belushi and Chevy Chase as well as countless others including Wayne’s World/Austin Powers legend Mike Myers, Brooklyn Nine-Nine's Andy Samberg, and the late Phil 'Troy McLure' Hartman and Chris Farley. On its first night, it was a shitshow.

Jason Reitman's movie tells the story of the hour and a half leading up to showtime, as Lorne (Gabriel LaBelle) wrestles with all of the above and more. Amid the chaos, he learns he’s a pawn for TV exec David Tebet (Willem Dafoe), who wants the show to fail in order to solidify the reputation of late night Goliath Johnny Carson, refusing to commit to the broadcast until the final second.

Did all this happen? Not necessarily, or not necessarily like this, or not necessarily on this day. It was, though, historians agree, chaos. It’s this that’s viscerally captured here, as Lorne starts the evening as a devil-may-care operator, happy to vibe off the madness, becoming more and more stressed as everything goes wrong. Shaky, fast-cam and constant, anxious jazz pull you into the action, making your jaw tense with the irritation of it all.

In true SNL fashion, it’s very funny, it’s occasionally very weird, often near the knuckle, and the impressions are dynamite: Chevy Chase is a funny arsehole; Dan Ackroyd (Dylan O’Brien) is as dry as a biscuit in the desert; Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt) is underused but brilliant in her moments. Jim Henson (Nicholas Braunis, who also plays Andy Kaufman) is done as a kind, dopey hippie, concerned that other staff are being crude about what he does with his puppets, and that they've strung up Big Bird by his neck. The difference between the new zoo arriving in town and the old guard is perfectly pitched by JK Simmons’ bit as Milton ‘Mr TV’ Berle, played as such an obnoxious bag of shit he actually manages to out-cuss Chevy Chase.

As the genesis story of one of American telly’s greatest triumphs, Saturday Night prints the legend rather than the strict truth. But as an (albeit romanticised) picture of quite how different this new show was, the difficulties defining it till it was out, and the insanity of getting all of its ducks in a row and ready to go, it’s a LOLsome, stressful, fun ride.

Verdict: 3/5

Saturday Night is in cinemas now via Sony Pictures.

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