24/14
Story
At 11:30 pm
on October 11, 1975, a wild crew of young comedians and writers changed television forever. Discover what went on behind the scenes in the 90 minutes before the premiere of Saturday Night Live (1975). Matt Wood plays John Belushi on “Saturday Night.” Check out the rest of the cast and his real-life co-stars. Dan Aykroyd was the only member of the original SNL cast to read the script.
In fact, he immediately joined
While the show is airing, John Belushi walks into the picture through a door 39 seconds late. Lorne Michaels: Look, my name is Lorne Michaels, I’m the producer of “Saturday Night.” Bouncer: All night? Lorne Michaels: [sarcastically] Yeah, all night… The film opens with a quote from Lorne Michaels: “The show doesn’t go on because it’s finished, it goes on because it’s 11:30.” Featured in Eddie Murphy, Le Roi Noir d’Hollywood (2023).
The actors chosen to impersonate the first cast are on point and do a great job, really embodying something that will undoubtedly have big shoes to fill
Ixoo “Chickenweed” ChawzWritten by Don Cento and Martin GarnerPresented by Don Cento and Martin Garner We are presented with the film taking place in “real time” as the hour and a half long film counts down the final 90 minutes before the first episode of “Saturday Night Live” (then called “Saturday Night”) airs. We are invited to witness and peek behind the scenes as we immerse ourselves in the chaos of this magical Hollywood version of the beginning of an iconic TV show. Longtime SNL fans will enjoy seeing the many, many Easter egg references to SNL’s most famous and beloved sketches, most of which would have been nonexistent and ready-made before the original airing. The pacing and action is frenetic as one disaster after another unfolds while the hundreds of little cogs it takes to make something like SNL try to come together in a way that works and produces a serviceable show when the curtain goes up.
They are extremely fun to watch and carry most of the film with a lot of humor
But I fear that Lorne Michaels was either miscast or poorly written, because as our main focus in this whirlwind of frustratingly inept management, he’s devolved into such an irritating amateur idiot that we keep waiting and waiting and waiting to see the occasion, and he never really does. He barely manages to convey his vision of the show in gentle human words and wanders from fire to fire, never really putting one out and immediately forgetting it when he moves on to the next. When the first show is canceled, it’s largely because everyone else went on without it and pulled it off anyway. I also irrationally hate his face and the little look he makes when something goes wrong; it’s like an overworked, irritable child smelling something bad.
A visit from the ghost of SNL past
This film is a fun and nostalgic tribute to the imagination. But it is definitely NOT a biographical recreation of what really happened, and should not be viewed as such. This is largely a fan film, and other viewers will find it a fluke and will likely google the above sketches afterwards.
