Sony Pictures’ Saturday Night is set back in 1975, when on October 11th,
SNL creator Lorne Michaels struggled to get the first show to air. Surrounded by production complications, unruly comedians and skeptical NBC network executives, Michaels pushed forward in the 90 minutes leading up to air time, never entirely certain if the show would come together in time.
Saturday Night was directed by Jason Reitman (
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,
Juno,
Thank You For Smoking), who shares writing credits with Gil Kenan. Gabriel LaBelle portrays Lorne Michaels, with Dylan O’Brien (Dan Aykroyd), Kim Matula (Jane Curtin), Cory Michael Smith (Chevy Chase), Nicholas Braun (Jim Henson & Andy Kaufman), Matt Wood (John Belushi) and Ella Hunt (Gilda Radner) representing early cast members. Willem Dafoe plays NBC executive David Tebet, who ultimately makes the decision on whether the show will air or not.
Reitman called on director of photography Eric Steelberg, along with editors Nathan Orloff and Shane Reid to complete the project, and recently spoke with Post about the challenges of realizing his vision.
Jason, how far back does the idea for this film go?
“I got to be a guest writer at Saturday Night Live, and while I was there, it was that sense of adrenaline, of being on the floor right before it went live. I thought, one day, I really want to capture this in a movie. Some time thereafter that, at some point, I finally went, ‘Oh! Opening night. That’s it!’”
There must have been a lot of cooperation with Lorne Michaels to make this happen?
“I reached out to Lorne early on, just (to tell) him what I was going to write — to get his blessing. And I think he was just happy that it wasn’t a movie about 50 years of SNL history — that it was a very specific concept about 90 minutes till showtime. We would chat every once in a while. After that, we interviewed him (and) every living person we could find who was in the building on October 11th. Every writer, every actor, crew, people, NBC pages, Dick Ebersol…From that, we got this collection of memories that all contradicted each other, but we tried to weave them together into this 90-minute story of what it feels like to be at SNL right before they go live.”
You’ve worked with cinematographer Eric Steelberg in the past on many films and I would imagine you’ve shot on film in the past. Tell us about shooting 16mm?
“That was great! The last time Eric and I shot 16, we were 16! We had shot 35mm on a bunch of films, and we had flirted with shooting 16 on The Front Runner. We did that seven years ago and we just thought the grain structure would be perfect for this film. We always wanted the audience to feel as though they had just gotten dropped into the 1970s. And the truth is that the film stocks have gotten so good that 35 now is so pristine, and 16 almost looks like 35. I feel like if you look at 16 now, it looks like 35 from the ‘70s.”
What was the time frame for production and post?
“It’s crazy because we were shooting only a few months ago, and we recreated the entire eighth and ninth floor of Rockefeller Center in Atlanta. Our production designer Jess Gonchor (is) brilliant, and did movies with the Coens, did No Country for Old Man. He got the original blueprints of Rockefeller Center. We interviewed Eugene Lee, the original production designer for SNL. He shared a lot of documents about how they created sets for the show. The key was not only rebuilding it, but making it lived in, because when the kids moved into 8H, that stage had been used for decades of variety shows…All these stagehands and lighting technicians, cable wranglers, they had been working on that stage for decades, so it felt very lived in.”
This all came together in 2024?
“Yeah, (though) we started building the stage in December.”
How many weeks of shooting did you have allocated?
“Very few days. It was a 30-day shoot.”
What was the dailies and editing process? Did you have time to review footage?
“I work with two editors - Nathan and Shane - and Nathan would be on-set with me every, single day. We set up a place for him to cut on-set and he would edit on-set, and we’d review while we were shooting. That way we can always talk about whether we got this right (or) need to get something again. We have a VTR, so we can always take clips out of the VTR and put them into the Avid and actually cut really rough video clips inside the edit, and just see if they’re working.”
How did the editing get split up?
“Shane was still finishing Deadpool & Wolverine, while Nathan was on-set doing the on-set editing. Then, once we got to post, they worked very hand-in-hand. They’re both brilliant editors and they came up with great ideas. It’s a very choreographed movie, so a lot of the time the individual shots could go on for minutes. But these concepts, like how we break up time? Putting up the timestamps. Getting inside Lorne’s head. What does it feel like in Lorne’s head? These are the kinds of things, as well as the music edit, which (were) really critical on this film…I think people often think editing is only visual. They think about editing as simply cutting from one shot to another shot. And the truth is, on a film like this, we had 80 speaking parts, and often many of them were mic’d at the same time. We had days where Steve Morrow, our production mixer, would have 58 mics going simultaneously — so many mics that you needed a second mixing board just to keep track of all the sound. The entire stage was built with microphones built into the set so that he had ambience mics everywhere. You could have literally 40 people logged, and a band, so when I think about what the editors are doing — yes, there’s the visual cut of the film, but if you looked at our Avid, (there are) a few video layers, but then there’s audio layers just going down into Hades. It’s the sound edit of the film that is so complicated.”
Can you talk about Jon Batiste's role as the composer and on-camera talent?
“Jon is such an instinctual musician. We talked a lot about how the score needed to match the energy and the live-ness of the original show. We did something that we’ve never done before, which is Jon, who was already acting in the movie, when he would wrap, he’d get back into his street clothes, and then Nathan would bring his laptop out and show him a rough cut of a scene. Literally, from the moment he looked at it, he would turn around and point at musician and say, ‘All right, we need to start on G, go to A, go to a B, come back to the G.’ And he would point to a percussionist and go, ‘I want you to go tick, tick, tick, tick...’ And then he would mouth out the rhythms and they would all start playing. He would change things and get on the piano or get on the drums. The whole score was improvised, live, on-set, and recorded live, so the final score you’re hearing in the movie is something that Jon is creating in realtime after watching the rough edits of the movie.”
You mentioned the choreography of the scenes and camera work. Is there a scene that concerned you because of all that was involved. Maybe the one where Lorne comes out of the elevator?
“It’s funny, but I never think of it as tough. For me, it brings me more joy than anything. We wanted the audience to feel like a person wandering through 8H while all this chaos is happening, and every time the camera swivels, it’s like you’re just looking around, trying to catch something with your eyes and your ears. And I’ve worked with Matt Moriarty, the camera operator, for a few films. He’s one of the best in the world. He’s extraordinary. We built the stage early on purpose, so that we could shoot the movie twice — once with stand ins and once with the real actors. The process of doing 'one-ers' like that would start with walking it through just with the stand ins, and then adding anyone else we could find from the production office...Then, finally, we go for real casting, and we get to the point where we have the entire background actors there. With that one, we did a day that was just rehearsal. Then we start shooting the next day. You don’t really get the take you like until lunch basically. You have to get used to the fact that the first time you watch a take, it’s going to be a mess. You’re going to miss all kinds of things…The joy is watching the dance finally come together — that take where it finally all lands and everybody cheers at the end because it’s like magic.”
I understand there were no greenscreen effects? Are there VFX that the audience wouldn’t be aware of?
“There’s only a few visual effects in the movie, and the most important one is moving the minute hand on clocks every once in a while, because the audience is so keenly aware of what time it is. We would have to move the minute hand literally two minutes or three minutes in one direction or another.”
Do you have anything lined up for next year?
“Honestly, it’s been a nonstop run of two Ghostbusters movies and SNL. I think it’s time to breathe.”