Folks keep asking me if I've seen the new movie about the launch of Saturday Night Live and if so, what I think of it. I haven't seen it and since I'm not leaving my house much these days, I probably won't see it until it's streaming on some channel to which I subscribe. (And to answer another question which some have asked: No, I haven't discussed it with Laraine Newman either.)
Some of my friends have seen it and loved it. Others have had a very different reaction. I'll make up my own mind when I see it. But among the subset of friends who didn't like it is my longtime pal Marc Wielage, who knows darn near everything about television production and he wrote the following. I thought it made enough interesting points that you might be interested in what he had to say. Remember, these are Marc's views, not Mark's…
Somebody asked me elsewhere what I thought about the Jason Reitman's Saturday Night movie. I had a lot of problems with it. [Be warned — long post.]
1) To me, what he really created was a Saturday Night Live's Greatest Hits movie, rather than the story of how a gang of creative comedians, sketch actors, and writers came together to create a very important and influential late-night comedy show that has lasted 50 years. It was just an excuse to shoehorn in dozens of unrelated SNL bits and moments ("Save the Liver," etc.), almost all of which didn't happen anywhere near 1975. In fact, you can very truthfully say that the first October 1975 episode was very atypical; it took them 4 or 5 episodes before they "found their voice" in figuring out how the show would be constructed, week after week.
2) there are so many anachronisms in the film, I don't know where to start. Milton Berle would not have been in the building doing an NBC special on October 11th, 1975, because all the technicians would have been on overtime. He would've taped it in Burbank on Monday-Friday, 9AM-6PM, when people actually worked a regular shift.
3) They depicted a lot of real-life character conflicts that I don't believe happened on that day. True, Michael O'Donoghue had said on more than one occasion that "George Carlin was a pony-tailed vulture feeding in the corpse of Lenny Bruce," but I don't believe for one minute that he'd ever say it to his face, let alone an hour before showtime. Lorne Michaels was a very controlled, calm presence 99% of the time: he would never tear down a bulletin board and kick it into the hallway, as depicted in the movie.
4) lots of stuff was jammed into the movie that just never happened: the NBC union technicians were very good, and nobody would drop a heavy light onto the stage floor. (For one thing, the lights are double-secured in the grid with a chain, and if they fell, the chain would stop them from hitting a person or the floor.) The movie acts like many of the cast & crew were meeting for the first time on that Saturday night, when the truth is that they had been rehearsing for weeks together. The "Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute" sketch didn't appear until 1979, so again, it's completely false to pretend it was ever rehearsed in 1975. The "French Chef / Save the Liver!" sketch didn't appear until late 1978, so it would have been impossible for Lorne Michaels to be doused with fake blood on the 1975 opening show. Lorne Michaels never would have had to smash the glass of NBC's door in order to get into the building. They hire a random lighting director at the last minute because of malfunctions in the show? Wouldn't happen. The movie shows Belushi being 15 seconds late at entering for the first sketch ("Wolverines"), but if you look at the actual video for the show, he's right there in the first 5 seconds.
5) there's technical mistakes that bothered me: when they stop a VTR to look at a shot, it shows a still frame. Nope, we didn't have that capability for at least 5 more years, when the industry changed from old 2" quad tape to newer 1" helical tape. The NBC cameras were the correct RCA TK-44B's, but in the movie they're labeled "Studio 8H" on the side instead of "NBC Color," which is how NBC identified their cameras for most of the 1970s and 1980s. (My guess is there may have been a trademark problem using the NBC Peacock logo.) When they show the 2" VTRs in a room with actors, the VTRs make very little noise; in real life, they whine like a bandsaw and you have to yell if you're standing right next to them. There's much ado made of somebody insisting that a real brick floor be constructed in Studio 8H…but that never happened, because they need the entire surface of the floor to be perfectly smooth to roll the cameras and sets around. There's no need to use real bricks on TV — fake bricks look just as real from 3 feet away.
6) there was some amazing casting: Cory Michael Smith as "Chevy Chase" doesn't look that much like Chevy, but he certainly captured his arrogant, funny, obnoxious attitude; Lamorne Morris was perfect as "Garret Morris," so much that I couldn't distinguish the two from a line-up; and I laughed that the same guy who played Jim Henson (Nicholas Braun) also played Andy Kaufman — and I doubt that anybody noticed, because his performance was perfect. Gabriel LaBelle as "Lorne Michaels" was a bit more of a stretch, because he's only 25 and the real Lorne was already 31 by the time the show premiered. J.K. Simmons was perfect as the pontificating Milton Berle. But there was also some terrible casting: singer Janis Ian was only 24 years old in late 1975, and the actress playing her looked a lot older. Also, the guy they hired to play Paul Shaffer looked like he was about 40, but in real life, he was only 26. I also think the women (Gilda, Laraine, Jane) were almost interchangeable, to the point where they had to use their names in conversation so you'd know who they were supposed to be.
7) there was also incompetent writing: NBC staff announcer Don Pardo was a consummate professional who wouldn't be caught dead mispronouncing any names (as depicted in the movie). They showed a knock-down/drag-out fight between Chevy Chase and John Belushi, but the truth is their rivalry didn't build to a head for another year. They were friends at this point, and in fact, Chevy had lobbied for Belushi to be on the show (since they had both been on the National Lampoon Radio Hour in the previous years). They wouldn't wait until 30 minutes before air time to hand Jim Henson the Muppets sketch script — this would've been rehearsed 19 times over the previous few days. (But it is true that Michael O'Donoghue detested the Muppets and resented them being on the show; they exited a few months later.)
8) there's a bizarre moment where Lorne Michaels attempts to do the "Weekend Update" news himself — Michaels had actually done sketch comedy in Canada in the past few years — but at the last minute, he stops and hands the script to Chevy and says, "you know, I think you'd be better doing the news than I would." Actually, Chevy in real life says he rehearsed the news for five days prior to the live show. But it's true that Lorne thought for a day or two that maybe he should do it, but quickly realized Chevy was a better choice. The movie constantly reinforces the cast's abject terror at being on live TV in front of millions of people; but Jane Curtin says, "We rehearsed all the sketches for that first show dozens of times before Saturday, so we were all actually pretty relaxed and comfortable on opening night."
9) a lot of stuff that just plain never happened: they never "ran into" Milton Berle in the studio the night of the first show. It's true that Milton was a guest on the show in 1979, but that was 4 years after the first episode. And it is true that Berle was very obnoxious, displayed his endowment to some of the cast & crew, and was difficult to the point where Michaels ruled that that episode should "never be re-runned." (It was later included on the DVD boxed set and streaming episodes.) Also, John Belushi never walked off the show just before air time. It's true there were some nights where he was out of it or blitzed on drugs, but he always got it together and made it on the air — it's a completely false moment that never happened. (It's also true that Belushi hesitated before signing his network contract, but it wasn't as dramatic as depicted in the movie.)
10) there's a constant threat by NBC executive Dick Ebersol to run a Tonight Show rerun in place of the Saturday Night premiere, because the show is falling apart so badly up until 11:30PM. At one point, Carson himself calls the network and chides Michaels, almost daring him to fail…when the reality is that Carson wanted a new late night show on Saturday nights so his own variety show wouldn't be over-extended. I also think that generally, Carson was a fairly classy guy who wouldn't taunt people this way…at least, not before opening night. (Carson did bitterly complain to NBC by the 1980s, when SNL started making fun of him on the air.) What was more frequently done is they'd cue up a dress rehearsal tape and run it in sync with the live show, so in case there was a disaster (set falling over, actor unable to make it to the stage), they'd cut to the tape for that one sketch. And I don't think that ever happened, at least on the East coast live feed.
So to me…it's a terrible movie. If you're going to make a dramatic film about a real-life historical TV event, the rule is make it accurate, make it real, and don't shove in a lot of "cool stuff" just for the sake of making it funny. The real drama of the show was in the writers' room, it was in all the sketches that got thrown out right before air time, and the disappointment of the actors and writers who didn't get to get on the air. (We see a little of that with Billy Crystal, who famously was cut from the show and walked off, because he felt they had disrespected him.)
This is Mark with a "k" again. Without commenting on the quality of the film, I agree with most of Marc's points. I do seem to recall Don Pardo making a few on-air gaffes over the years in spite of his centuries of announcing. I doubt Johnny Carson made the alleged call but I also know that Carson was pissed at a number of things about SNL, starting with the fact that he'd been assured the new series wouldn't tap into the pool of guests who frequented The Tonight Show and then they went and got George Carlin to be the first host.
Things like the wrong logo on the cameras doesn't bother me. False dramatic content might. I've seen a lot of films like W.C. Fields and Me and Stan & Ollie that departed wildly from the true stories when the true stories would have been more interesting. Anyway, I'll see it one of these days with the hopes it'll be wonderful. I pretty much hope that any movie I spend the time (and maybe the cash) to see will be wonderful. I'm sometimes disappointed.