Saturday Night
Dreadful Jason Reitman exercise in Lorne Michaels hero-worship.
Saturday Night (2024). Grade: D
Did you know that Christopher Guest was a cast member on Saturday Night Live? How about his Spinal Tap co-stars Harry Shearer and Michael McKean? How about Documentary Now co-creators Fred Armisen and Bill Hader? Or Janeane Garofalo, Gilbert Gottfried, Laura Kightlinger, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Laurie Metcalf, Martin Short, Sarah Silverman, JOAN CUSACK? What kind of show has JOAN CUSACK on it without your remembering?
Saturday Night Live. That’s what kind of show. And that’s not even mentioning the people you DO remember from the show who were so much better in other things later. Julia Sweeney’s stage performance “Letting Go of God,” or Nora Dunn’s great small part in Miami Blues, Jane Curtin in Third Rock From the Sun and Jules… the list goes on and on.
An absolutely essential read is this 2023 article by Seth Simons, “Who’s Afraid of Lorne Michaels?” It talks about how much of a kingmaker Michaels is in the American comedy world: “For those who attain it, an upper-class life awaits: fame, wealth, adoring fans, the freedom to make the art they wish to make, and to make it with their friends and peers, even if it’s not very good. All they have to do to earn this freedom is devote their lives to one strange and powerful man.”
That strange man is played by Gabriel LaBelle here, and the way he’s written, he’s infinitely patient, interested in everyone, indifferent to stress, and given to moments of profound musing on the nature of art and culture and inspiration. Well, per Simons, the real Michaels’s “modus operandi is to remain distant and cold (to use Bob Odenkirk’s words in that book) toward the people under him, meticulously withholding praise to the point that they’ll do whatever it takes to earn his approval.”
That’s certainly one way to get people to work 90 hour weeks for you; or to get them to accept you having complete control over their careers, both during and after the time they’re on your show. But it’s not a way to produce great comedy.
I realize some people enjoy SNL today, or enjoyed the original cast, or some/many/a few of the iterations in between. That’s great for those who do! Everyone’s sense of humor differs. I personally think the funniest stand-up I’ve ever heard isn’t even stand-up at all; it’s Steve Goodman ad-libbing some musical numbers during a concert.
And if you enjoy the current show, or one of the former versions, you might enjoy this movie. The whole cast is, at least, doing their best. Check it out, if you like, and don’t read my griping! Come back tomorrow. Today will have a lot of gripe.
It was a relief, for me, to first hear and then see Robert Wuhl as one of the TV directors in the control room; because Robert Wuhl is simply a goofy, silly guy. He’s not given anything funny to do here — almost nobody is — but he’s got a funny vibe to him, always has.
Most of this cast are not funny people. They’re not bad actors. But they’re not funny. Another who immediately zings as funny is Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris (no relation, although the two do know each other). I popped over to the younger Morris’s Wiki page, and yep, sure enough, he’s got a comedy background. When he’s interacting with Jon Batiste, they actually seem like they’re enjoying each other’s company.
The rest of the time, everyone’s directed to zip around a constantly-moving camera and play their hardest at “freewheeling fun.” (What Harry Shearer described as “a highly complex, highly political hierarchical organization masquerading as a college dorm.”) For pete’s sakes, we’re even shown Gilda Radner and Lorraine Newman skipping giddily like eight-year-olds at a Flower Festival. (Ella Hunt and Emily Fairn, both appropriately very pretty — this cast is full of very attractive people.)
I’m genuinely angry with director/co-writer Jason Reitman for how he wastes the enormous talents of Rachel Sennott here. She’s given a few expository lines that sort-of express frustration at how Michaels, her husband, is reluctant to share credit… but mostly, she’s there to sigh and accept it as the price of his Vision. Ugh. If this is the first thing you’ve seen Sennott in, you may not realize how very funny she is — and a dang fine actor, besides. Go watch 2020’s Shiva Baby. Then you’ll also be mad that this movie took several weeks of Sennott’s time. Oh well, she’s young, she’ll do much more.
Reitman’s directed some critically-praised films written by Diablo Cody (who used to write for the Minneapolis City Pages); I haven’t gotten around to seeing those yet. I have seen Reitman’s Up in the Air, which has one of George Clooney’s very best performances. But, rewatching it last year, I was struck by how cruelly and coldly the movie treats a late plot twist involving Vera Farmiga; it basically makes her a heartless bitch, with no warning whatsoever as to why. And the whole thing’s full of life-affirming messages about how, in a time of economic stress for many, we should be grateful for the Things That Matter, like family. I’m sure Jason Reitman is grateful for his family. His dad being a rich famous director probably helped him be one, too.
Reitman here is encouraging most of his young cast to do vocal/physical impressions of the well-known comics they’re playing. It’s a terrible idea. You’re focused on how close the impression is. Very close, in some cases; Nicholas Podany as Billy Crystal, Dylan O’Brien as Dan Ackroyd, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase. But that means you’re not watching these people play human characters. You’re judging their mimicry skills.
And while, from what we know now, it’s probably pretty fair to show Chase as an egomaniacal jerk, why is that treatment reserved, mostly, for him? Why does the movie show John Belushi as a tortured artist, instead of someone who threw fits about doing sketches written by women? (Jane Curtin has said, quite kindly, that this was probably because Belushi wasn’t himself by that point, because of his addiction issues.) Why does the movie show Jim Henson as a humorless twerp? Jim Henson had more talent in one arm than Lorne Michaels ever deserved.
Two actors who don’t bother trying to be mimics are the strongest performers in the movie. Willem Dafoe is hissing, imposing starkness itself as NBC talent-handler David Tebet. I have no idea what the real Tebet was like, and it doesn’t matter.1 Dafoe plays him as a figure malevolently thrilled with his own power; someone who’ll gladly butter you up with praise while planning to knife you in the spine the second it suits his interest to do so. Rather like the descriptions I’ve read of Lorne Michaels, in fact. Dafoe has been shining in big parts and small ones since as long as I can remember. He’s one of the very best.
And J.K. Simmons is a gleeful horrid wizard as Milton Berle. In this case, we’re not seeing Berle with the benefit of post-1975 hindsight. Berle was a meanie, and even in 1975, everyone knew it. Rod Serling wrote a teleplay based on Berle-as-monster in 1957. (It’s not a terrible script, but it has a terrible performance in the 1957 version, don’t see it.) Simmons is absolutely charged up with sleaze, and so aggressively slimy, he’s a damn hoot. When we see him doing a lecherous dance number with some young lovelies, he basically explodes how tepid the rest of this movie is. Simmons doesn’t need Reitman to give him anything interesting to do, he can just do it himself. I wished there was 15 minutes more of him and about 100 minutes less of everything else.
What Simmons and Dafoe do here suggest a far more interesting way this movie could have been structured; say something like Aaron Sorkin’s script for Steve Jobs. (Which some would argue is too easy on Jobs, but at least it’s less worshipful than this is of Michaels.) In Steve Jobs, we’re shown three different “performances,” three different times across multiple years where everyone is scrambling right before the introduction of a new computer product. It shows the way Jobs would use people, and how that impacted his own relationships and the others’ careers.
That could have been interesting for Saturday Night; say, depict the first program in 1975, and two or three different programs later. Ones that showed how SNL famously downplayed minority voices and women; ones that showed how Michaels loved making rightwing politicians seem “relatable.” (Feckin’ Steve Forbes was a host! And FAR WORSE politicians since.) Or how Michaels would treat any of his stars when they bucked him or tried asserting their independence. That might be an interesting movie, and you wouldn’t even have had to make it a hatchet job; Steve Jobs wasn’t.
I assumed this was produced by NBC or by Michaels; it’s not. In one of the disc’s special features (which autoplayed after we finished this, I certainly wouldn’t have chosen to cue it up), we see Reitman saying how he’s fascinated by the moments when genius appears in the world, or words to that effect. Good grief. He really believes it. OK.
For anybody who wants to see a far better, far more human depiction of what it’s like to scramble together a live comedy performance, you should see Don’t Think Twice, a terrific 2016 movie written/directed by Mike Birbiglia. It’s got Keenan-Michael Key, Kate Miccuci, Gillian Jacobs in it; don’t you already want to watch that more than this? It’s about people doing improv, and how challenging it can be, how rewarding when it comes together, how disappointing the careers of most comedians end up being — all that effort and all those years that can go nowhere, or hang on one lucky break. Like the lucky break of getting to be on SNL. Which happens in that movie. And it’s a bitterweet moment, to put it mildly.
Seth Simons closes his article with a story about a comedian whose wife was devastated that he’d be uprooting their new family to go from L.A. to N.Y. for SNL. ‘“I was like, ‘I know this is hard for us right now, but this is how I feed us for the rest of our marriage,’” he recalled. “‘Even if I flame out spectacularly, even if I f**k everything up for us, even if I become an absolute piece of s**t, from now on it’ll say SNL in the corner of my poster, and some people will come to my show” … “Even if I ruin our lives, I’ll always be able to feed us,” the T**** impressionist told his wife. “Because that’s what SNL does.”’
Look, I’ve enjoyed a few things from SNL over the years, and I’m grateful for a few wonderful writers/performers the show has helped give opportunities to; I’m also grateful for much of what The Kids in the Hall did, both on that Michaels-produced program and afterwards. (Especially afterwards.) Ultimately, I don’t think those good things outweigh the bad ways that Michaels has treated people, and the vile politicians he attempted to humanize, and the horrible lowest-common-denominator comedy that’s been, by far, the most popular impact of the show. My idea of hell is being forced to watch an endless marathon of Adam Sandler skits.
And those good things definitely don’t warrant the loving depiction of Michaels in this movie.
Incidentally, SNL is responsible for one more crime against quality; an SNL management changeup resulted in NBC canceling The Midnight Special, which was on from 1972-1981. Midnight Special was a weekly music show that had some comedy acts on it, but mostly featured musical performances, and most of those were filmed for real, not with a band lip-synching to the record as was common at the time. Just look at this partial list of musicians who appeared on the show! It’s one heckuva list. You can get The Midnight Special on DVD at your library, and many great clips are on YouTube as well. Go find a few! You’ll be glad you did. I’ll even start you off:
I should say, it doesn’t matter in terms of THIS movie. Of course it matters if the way the role’s written is unfair, and bothers Tebet’s living friends/family. I don’t know if it’s fair or not.