In October of 1975, most of the popular shows on television looked backward. The country was emerging from the chaos of the Vietnam War, the fall of the Nixon administration, economic misery, and civil rights protests. It should not be a surprise that the most watched shows were things like Laverne and Shirley, Happy Days, and the Waltons — misty-eyed nostalgia for the fun of the malt shop, the slapstick antics of the gals at the bottling plant, and the family bliss of the good ol’ Depression days. There were some controversial shows as well. A few groundbreaking comedies–All in the Family, MASH, Maude, and Mary Tyler Moore–all pushed the envelope in different ways. But more shows yearned for simpler times.
This was the environment in which Lorne Michaels pitched the idea of Saturday Night Live to NBC executives. The movie Saturday Night describes those precarious ninety minutes before the show first went on the air, when maybe it still might not have made it to the air. It’s a suspense-filled narrative, as Michaels (Gabriel Labelle) struggles with technical problems, network pressures, friction among the cast, too much content, and an impending sense of doom. If you’re under forty, you’ll find the behind-the-scenes narrative fascinating and wonder how the chuckleheads ever got this thing in front of the American public. But if you’re old enough to remember the times, you’ll find it holds a mirror up to what those times were really like. Some of the reviews which have criticized the movie as too mild were clearly written by those who don’t remember. I do.
So let me break it down for you: the movie, the reviews, the days of the mid-1970s, and, as an extra bonus, my Top Ten Saturday Night Live Moments of the past 50 years.
Anarchy and Sentiment
To me, the movie works on multiple evels. First, filming the movie in real time in those minutes before it went on the air creates an interesting tension. It’s a fun approach, which only a few movies (High Noon famously) have tried and successfully achieved. Secondly, while there have been many SNL retrospectives, none have really described the chaos of trying to actually put it in front of cameras. SNL has always been unique as a hybrid of comedy-variety, with writers only having a week to prepare, under the anything-can-happen conditions of live presentations. It’s always been crazy to think that they could manage to do it at all, which is why parts of the show over the years have been fresh and hilarious but other parts stale or just bombing. That’s live TV.
Jason Reitman’s directing choices emphasize the frenetic nature of what it would have been like, with the camera wobbling around Lorne Michaels as he tries to herd squirrels. Sets fall apart, actors wander off, and writers fight with the censor. Willem Dafoe shows up as an NBC executive who claims he intends to pull the plug; the whole thing was only a way for the network to squeeze Johnny Carson in salary negotiations. There is even a literal smoke-filled room where Michaels must schmooze the affiliates.
An especially smart choice is that Reitman displays this frenzied environment for the first half, where you suspect they might just fail, then in the second part, you see what SNL was up against. You see what comedy and variety looked like in 1975. And it’s horrifying. You start praying for Lorne Michaels to achieve this miracle and get this show full of weirdos–whatever it would turn out to be–on the air.
Critics Looking for Something Else
Several of the reviews of Saturday Night have panned the movie. The New York Times says that it’s too “frictionless,” not wild and crazy enough. Others echo that criticism of mildness and argue over whether this or that person does a good impression of the original actor. (I agree, some do and some don’t.) Some critics point out that Jason Reitman, son of director Ivan Reitman, was responsible for many of the recent Ghostbuster reboots which were, in a word, terrible. But punishing Reitman for those movies in a review of this film is pretty darn unfair.
The primary problem with the reviews is that those writers–who I am guessing are younger than fifty–were expecting something else. In particular, they seem to be looking for a clip show, a series of the funny skits that made SNL famous. They want to see Roseanne Roseannadanna and the Land Shark skit. The movie does not recreate those the sketches, except for a couple of bits in rehearsal, i.e. “I will feed your fingertips to the wolverines…” simply to explain why network execs would have thought What the hell is this? The movie, I will agree, does not tell you what SNL was all about. That’s not its premise.
Arguably, the movie isn’t even really a comedy, not in that sense. It’s not zany or slapstick. It’s primarily ironic. For example, Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien) repeatedly hits on his female co-stars and writers, as they all wait for the show to begin. The cast then rehearse a sketch where the women play construction workers practicing how to harass men, and Aykroyd’s character is supposed to parade in front of them in short shorts as they hoot and shout. He keeps complaining his shorts are too short and is embarrassed to even rehearse, completely oblivious to how those women felt when he was breathing on their necks five minutes earlier. That’s not wild and crazy funny, just flipping ironically hilarious for those of us who remember those days.
To a 21st century audience raised on SNL, the movie probably feels a lot tamer than what the show has since become. But it had to start somewhere. Where the movie succeeds the most is not in showing the “bits” that became famous, but in showing how it was trying to contrast with what really was there.
And what was there, at the time, is hard to imagine.
The Opinions of this Revolution Do Not Reflect the ….
Earlier that same year, at the Academy Awards, the anti-war film Hearts and Minds won Best Documentary. In their acceptance speech, the filmmakers praised the “liberation” of the country now that American troops had left. The host of the Oscars, Bob Hope, was incensed. He and Frank Sinatra held a hasty conference backstage, and Sinatra emerged to read a disclaimer: “We are sorry…[that political commentary]…had to take place.” Hope ran the Oscars for more than decades with that kind of an iron fist. Those who ran Hollywood at the time had a certain mindset. A few years earlier, when Marlon Brando sent out an indigenous woman to refuse his Oscar for The Godfather, John Wayne tried to drag her off the stage.
This is what TV was like in 1975. The most popular show in America centered on a racist bigot who would mouth ethnic slurs while those around him tut-tutted and explained to him the error of his ways. Archie Bunker would get his comeuppance or have a kind of “teachable moment,” yet the controversial topics discussed still revolved around his reaction to them.
Despite the introduction of a few shows that centered around single women or Black families, most of TV was still white and male. Even the high-profile shows praised for their innovation. MASH–white. Mary Tyler Moore’s show–white. Bob Newhart, Carol Burnett, Maude–even the shows that were considered edgy were white. People today would have a hard time understanding that it was a big deal in 1968 when Diahann Carroll starred in Julia, simply because the show centered on a Black woman. When Nichelle Nichols wanted to quit Star Trek to pursue her Broadway career in 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told her she had to stay because it was so important for people to see a competent Black woman on television. Ethnicity, even in 1975, meant Toma, an Italian-American detective.
And it wasn’t easy for women either. Mary Tyler Moore was constantly sexually harassed. Laverne and Shirley, constantly sexually harassed. TV referred often to “chasing the secretary around the desk.” The rare funny female comic was Phyllis Diller, who had to create a persona and act built around her supposedly-ugly appearance. Comedy was curated by older white men. Milton Berle was revered as a kind of god. (My wife told me she was “triggered” by a scene of one of the Borscht-belt old male comics telling an ugly wife joke.)
The revolution of the TV show SNL was not just the hilarity that ensued when the cast and writers worked their magic. Saturday Night, the movie is not just about the random, wild and crazy humor that emerged in some skits. The movie is about the difficulty at the time of airing new ideas, some which satirized the public’s yearning for nostalgia and simpler times. The Smothers Brothers couldn’t make it as a show because the politically-themed skits were pulled by the network and what remained was too bland to be funny. Carol Burnett was successful by steering clear of controversy and excelling at movie parodies. There was nothing like SNL when it came along.
The Top Ten All Time Best SNL Skits
Out of my own nostalgia for Saturday Night Live, I will end this review with my list of favorite sketches, which the movie does not do. I’m cheating by saying “top ten” because technically I would have to review all the skits–maybe in a spreadsheet–and then rank them etc. I didn’t do that. This is a list of the ones that immediately spring to mind. I know it won’t match your list, so feel free to make your own list (and send me a comment on it). I was going to post video links for all of them, but it would make this post too big. You can googletube that for yourself.) I’ll just include the one of Bill Murray as a lounge singer.
- Julia Child, “Save the Liver!” (Dan Aykroyd, 1975–they refer to it in the SN movie, though they don’t do the line).
- “Cheesburgie…cheesburgie…No Coke, Pepsi” the burger joint (1975, John Belushi, my wife’s suggestion.)
- Emily Litella, “What’s all this about making Puerto Rico a steak?” (Gilda Radner, 1977)
- Bill Murray’s lounge lizard (1977) singing lyrics to “Star Wars” … (Murray was on our flight from Venice to JFK last month, so we saw him retrieving his luggage from our carousel…squeeee.)
- “I’m not that strong a swimmer…we can only touch the pool with the bottoms of our feet,” Synchronized Swimming hopefuls (1984, Martin Short and Harry Shearer).
- “I hate it when that happens” the security guards (1985, Billy Crystal).
- “Was he not tall?” Ed Grimley fantasizing about getting on Wheel of Fortune. (Martin Short, 1985) Also check out Grimley with a Tina Turner cameo where she dances to his triangle playing.
- “Outta Ammo!” Admiral Stockdale, (Dana Carvey, 1992) Arguably, might have influenced the presidential election… hard to say.
- “Switch with me….” George W. Bush (Will Forte, 2004)
- “I can see Russia from my house!” Sara Palin (Tina Fey, 2008) Also, arguably, might have influenced the presidential election…
- “Fix! It!” Kenan Thompson (2008)
- “The New York Times says ‘Not right now’!” Mindy Louise-Grayson (Kristen Wiig, 2009-2010; for those old enough to remember Kitty Carlisle…)
- “I wanted a pickle” Celebrity Jeopardy (2009, Tom Hanks)
Man, was that twelve, not ten? There are too many others. I didn’t even get to Will Ferrell’s Harry Caray, What’s Up with that?, Black Jeopardy (more Tom Hanks), or the genius of Theodoric of York. Next time, I’ll do the Top Fifty.
The movie Saturday Night is not a clips show. You can curate your own clip show from the past fifty years. And the reason you can do that is because all those guys in October of 1975 got this thing in front of us.
More Cowbell!
How did I forget that!! OMG Yes! Classic Will Ferrell.
Minor correction – “I hate it when that happens” is two construction workers sitting on a high beam.
“Oh sure, I just didn’t want it enough.” Amy Pohler as Hilary Clinton, post 2016 election.
And “SHEETCAKE!” Tina Fey, also post 2016 election.