50 ‘Saturday Night Live’ Catchphrases We Say Now
1985 “That’s the ticket” More
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A Guide to “Saturday Night” and the Real Players at the Start of ‘S.N.L.’
With so many players involved in Jason Reitman’s new movie about “S.N.L.,” here’s a guide to the real-life personalities.It’s easy to get lost watching “Saturday Night”: Jason Reitman’s new film drops us backstage at a moment of maximum confusion — 90 minutes before the 1975 debut of a new NBC show called “Saturday Night.” At the center of all the hubbub is creator-producer Lorne Michaels (played by Gabriel LaBelle), who’s been the one constant at “S.N.L.” over most of the show’s 50 seasons. But what about all the other characters rushing about, wringing their hands over whether this show will actually make it to air? Here’s a guide:The Original CastCHEVY CHASE AND GARRETT MORRIS These members of the original cast, known as the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, were hired as writers, not actors. Chase (played by Cory Michael Smith) had written for Alan King and the Smothers Brothers. As the anchor for “Weekend Update,” Chase, a master of mugging and pratfalls, became the show’s first breakout star and left in 1976 to embark on a film career. (He would return to guest host in 1978, when he reportedly got into fisticuffs with Bill Murray, the cast member who replaced him.)Morris (Lamorne Morris, no relation) was a Broadway performer and a playwright with no improv or sketch comedy background. He was underused but became known for his impersonations of Sammy Davis Jr. and Tina Turner, as well as for yelling on “Weekend Update” (as the News for the Hard of Hearing interpreter). After the show, he stuck with TV comedy, appearing on sitcoms like “Martin,” “The Jamie Foxx Show” and “2 Broke Girls.”Garrett Morris (played by Lamorne Morris, no relation, right) didn’t have a sketch comedy background when he started on “Saturday Night Live.”GILDA RADNER, JANE CURTAIN AND LARAINE NEWMAN The movie doesn’t try very hard to differentiate among the show’s female cast members — Gilda Radner, who died in 1989, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman. But the three women had very distinct styles. Radner (Ella Hunt), a former member of Second City in Toronto, was the first performer Michaels signed and soon became a star beloved for her fragile, goofy style and characters like Roseanne Roseannadanna. It was her advocacy for fellow Second City veteran and ex-boyfriend Dan Aykroyd that persuaded Michaels to hire him.Newman (Emily Fairn), a founding member of the Los Angeles improv troupe the Groundlings, knew Michaels from working together on a Lily Tomlin special. Her character Sherry the Valley Girl helped kick off a national fad mocking Southern California mall-speak. Newman’s expertise with accents and dialects paved the way for a post-“S.N.L.” career as a voice artist.Curtin (Kim Matula), a member of the Boston improv group the Proposition, was one of the last cast members hired. She was often presented as the foil to more outrageous characters and helped ground many a sketch. As the first female anchor of “Weekend Update,” she was called upon to weather Aykroyd’s contemptuous catchphrase, “Jane, you ignorant slut.” After “S.N.L.,” Curtin became a sitcom star (“Kate & Allie,” “3rd Rock From the Sun”).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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‘Saturday Night’ Review: Live TV at Its Mildest
When it debuted 50 years ago, “S.N.L.” was chaotic, rangy, even offensive. But nothing’s wild or crazy in Jason Reitman’s fictional reimagining of its first episode.Movies about tectonic cultural shifts tend to be too neat and tidy, too frictionless. “Saturday Night,” the director Jason Reitman’s fictional reimagining of the debut of “Saturday Night Live,” is a nice, safe movie about a revolution. Busily plotted and sporadically funny, it is a backstage look at the night a gang of comics whom most of the world had never heard of began taking over TVs across the country. It was a comedy home invasion on a national scale, and it was glorious (when it didn’t suck).The movie, written by Reitman and Gil Kenan, has a straightforward conceit. It opens at on Oct. 11, 1975, the night that the show, then called “NBC’s Saturday Night,” is scheduled to debut. (The name was changed in 1977.) In just 90 minutes — ticktock — the show will go live if the performers, writers, crew, network suits and some guy named Lorne can get it together in time. A lot of money, reputations and possibly bright futures are riding on the show, but with its deadline looming, it still seems underbaked and, from some vantage points, overly abstract.To convey that premiere and what it portended, Reitman both sticks to the historical record and embellishes it, building momentum by zeroing in on some mini-crisis amid rapid edits, swish pans and rushing bodies. Everything and everyone at 30 Rockefeller Plaza runs too fast or seems immobilized, with characters either in frenetic motion or huddling in pools of flop sweat. As the minutes pass, Reitman periodically cuts to a clock onscreen or someone calls out the time; at one point, a set designer, Leo Yoshimura (Abraham Hsu), slowly begins installing bricks on the stage of Studio 8H, each brick an emblem of the show’s parts sliding into place.In a (real) 1975 news release, NBC called the show “a new concept in late-night programming.” The network wanted a replacement for weekend reruns of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” and this venture was going to be a comedy show with sketches, musical guests, short films and the Muppets. But it was unclear what it was, maybe even to those behind the scenes. That much seems obvious when an NBC executive, Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), asks the show’s creator-producer, Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), if he knows what it is. The straight-faced Lorne responds with an amusing, self-aggrandizing analogy involving Edison, the lightbulb and electricity. Who are you in this metaphor, the baffled exec asks.Lorne doesn’t answer, but the movie does by making him its focus. The character is less interesting than his surroundings — he’s more a blurry place holder than a fully realized personality — but whether here or there, Lorne is the center of this storm. He’s the hub, the visionary, the guy who can see past the chaos. Sure, there’s his wife, the writer Rosie Shuster (a tart Rachel Sennott); the host, George Carlin (Matthew Rhys); and a creepy suit, Dave Tebet (Willem Dafoe, in by far the funniest turn). But the star is Lorne because even genius apparently needs a boss.So, hi Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Jane Curtin (Kim Matula), Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn), Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris, no relation) and John Belushi (Matt Wood). It’s nice to see them, so it’s too bad that only a few of the actors playing the main cast — and only the men — manage to register. That’s the case even when Reitman gestures at the show’s gender problems, as in a peek at a still-funny sketch about female construction workers learning how to harass a guy in short shorts. It’s Dan’s squirmy embarrassment, and how he then wags his rump, that makes it work.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
