Relax, It’s Just the Trailer: Saturday Night
Sometimes two-and-a-half minutes of footage is all you need to decide if Nicholas Braun has officially ruined your childhood. Or instead… LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT! Let’s discuss.
‘Tis the season for movies made just for me. Between Gladiator II: This Time with Sharks and A Complete Unknown striking the most righteous chord through my soul, I am very psyched for the rest of the movie year. And yet, those weren’t enough because now we (but really I) also get Saturday Night:
When this movie was first announced in May of 2023, I remember thinking some combination: Why? Who wants this? Will everyone be in it? Who’s playing Belushi? Oh no, Jason Reitman is directing. How in the WORLD is Universal (of NBC/Universal) not producing this!?
The show, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary the same day as the movie’s release in October, is unlike anything else we’ve ever had on TV and has launched more careers than probably every other American show combined. But again… why?
After seeing the trailer, the answer is clear: this movie, which depicts the 90 minutes leading up to the first episode of SNL, is going to be utter chaos depicted by an absolutely stacked cast of young talent and old legends. We have:
- Rachel Sennott as original cast member Rosie Shuster
- Lamorne Morris as other original cast member Garrett Morris
- Cooper Hoffman as legendary NBC producer Dick Ebersol
- Some guy I’ve never heard of absolutely nailing Chevy Chase’s exuberant dickishness (literally and figuratively)
- Some other guy I’ve never heard of as Belushi (he seems to be doing great)
- Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd (a statement I certainly never that I’d write)
- Both JK Simmons and Willam Defoe as old men that I imagine will be foils to the youth
- Finn Wolfhard as an unnamed NBC page
- And Matthew Rhys as the first episode’s guest host, George Carlin
That is a lot to process, but I really want to focus on two people in this film.
Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels
Don’t fact check me on this, but LaBelle might be the greatest Canadian since Michaels, so it only seems fitting that he would pay him in this movie. On the one hand, it would be nice to see LaBelle get away from playing famed media tycoons after first breaking into Hollywood as a teenage Steven Spielberg stand-in in The Fabelmans. On the other, he absolutely stole Snack Shack and I’m really just psyched to see him in anything.
Between his nervous twitchiness, diminutive size, and relentless determination displayed in the trailer, the movie is going to ride on LaBelle’s ability to make us care about the creative vision of a guy who we already knowing will go on to run the show for half a century. Still, I like his chances.
Nicholas Braun as Andy Kaufman… and Jim Henson?
This is some delulu shit right here. Did someone back out? Did Braun simply suggest he take both parts? How on Earth did this happen? It’s one thing to attempt to depict one of the most idiosyncratic comedians of all time at the height of his powers (just ask Jim Carey, who might’ve actually lost his mind while depicting Kaufman in Man on the Moon - great REM song, decent non-REM movie), but it’s a whole other to do while also playing an absolute genius in Jim Henson right before the entire world knew it to be true (the Big Bird joke is, I will happily admit, very good).
Me rn ^
Side note: Saturday Night takes place in 1975, six years after the premier of Sesame Street, which had already become one of the biggest TV shows on the planet. However, Henson was still having trouble convincing any network to let him make an adult-focused show, so Michaels let him create some puppets for his show in the meantime – which were essentially despised by every other person involved on what became SNL. My god, this is gonna be an experience.
Does this story have a wide-enough appeal to attract older viewers who remember when SNL premiered, while also pulling in younger moviegoers who might lack the connection to the show, but will be intrigued by the inclusion of Sennot, O’Brien, and Wolfhard? Who’s to say? All I know is Kaia Gerber manages to keep a straight face while the guy playing Chevy Chase makes a joke about tripping on his own dick after he crashes into a trash can and that’s pretty impressive in its own right.
