Vanity Fair shares some exclusive images of the upcoming film about the fateful night when network television changed forever.
Vanity Fair has now given us our first look at the new Jason Reitman film Saturday Night. Saturday Night will take a look at the original premiere show of Saturday Night Live in 1975 right as it would change the plane of television. Reitman says, “The whole movie is the story of people trying to figure out what their identity is on the show. The story we tell is the moment each of these comedians find the way they coalesce as a group, which I think is the reason the show eventually was the success that it is.” Some of the plots covered in the film involve NBC executive David Tebet deciding whether the show is ready for live air and aspiring comic Billy Crystal getting the crushing news of being cut right before the show. Reitman explains, “The way it’s always told is that he took the train back home and got there just in time to tell his family not to watch. This is a movie where the villain is time. It’s like our Sauron. Our Darth Vader is a clock, and you feel its presence at all times. And Billy loses to the clock.”
Jason Reitman directs Saturday Night and co-wrote the screenplay with Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire director Gil Kenan. Saturday Night explores the evening of October 11, 1975, when “a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers changed television forever. SNL 1975 is the true story of what happened behind the scenes that night in the moments leading up to the first broadcast of NBC’s Saturday Night Live. It depicts the chaos and magic of a revolution that almost wasn’t, counting down the minutes in real-time to the infamous words, ‘Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!’”
Reitman and Kenan cobble together much of the script by pulling information from 30 original sources. Reitman says, “We interviewed everyone we could find that was alive from opening night. Every living cast member, every living writer, people from the art department, costumes, hair and makeup, NBC pages, members of Billy Preston’s band—I mean, anyone we could find.”
Reitman’s aim was to tell the story from nearly everyone’s viewpoint, not just the stars. “This is about not only the first seven actors, but the writers, the art department, and everybody who came together at the last second to change television. What was so unusual about this show was not only that it was live, but the format was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. You had sketch comedy, you had two musical guests, you had a live band, you had stand-up comedians, you had Andy Kaufman, you had the Muppets, you had a film by Albert Brooks….”
