Live from YouTube… it’s Saturday Night.
After months of sneak peek photos and occasional glimpses behind-the-scenes of Saturday Night, Jason Reitman’s upcoming not-quite-comedy about the premiere episode of Saturday Night Live, the very first trailer has arrived.
While details about the movie, beyond casting, have been kept to a relative minimum, the two-minute trailer makes it clear why Reitman—who directed the film and co-wrote it with Gil Kenan—told Vanity Fair that it wasn’t quite a comedy, but more of “a thriller-comedy, if you can call that a genre.”
The movie, which takes place in real time, documents the chaotic 90-minute lead-up to the very first episode of Saturday Night Live, which aired on October 11, 1975. That’s part of what we’ve been hearing about the movie all along, but what the trailer makes clear—or at least seems to hint at—is that Lorne Michaels (played by Gabriel LaBelle) is the movie’s real star.
Throughout the trailer, we see Michaels working against the clock—and against all odds—to make the first SNL happen, despite a lot of negative pushback. At one point, NBC late night head Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman) attempts to convince Michaels that they should just air the dress rehearsal and attempt the whole “live” thing when the cast and crew are ready.
“We’re 90 minutes of live television by a group of 20-year-olds who’ve never made anything,” says Hoffman’s Ebersol. “Did you ever stop and wonder why they said yes?”
The answer, according to Ebersol, is that the network wants Michaels to fail.
Saturday Night will arrive in theaters on October 11—49 years to the day that the first episode premiered. You can watch the full trailer above.
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You can already tell they’re being sticklers to detail when Paul Shaffer, not Howard Shore, is the band member featured in the trailer.
Hopefully a movie about the lead up to the first episode is better than the actual first episode.
I’ve seen every episode multiple times. The first 5 years is praised but it’s actually dog shit. It’s not much better than the next 5 years which is always trashed.