The A-Listers Talk About Saturday Night (2024)
From the couple who see a lot of movies because they have AMC A-List.
Patrick: Taylor, thanks for going to see Saturday Night with me! If you don't mind, I'd like to kick this one off. When George Carlin, one of the greatest comics to ever live and the first host of the show then-called NBC's Saturday Night, died in 2008, I was already a comedy-obsessed, budding SNL historian at ten years old. Not long after his passing, they reran that premiere episode and I, an established weekly viewer (I still am), was transfixed by what played on my television. It was familiar, it was SNL, and I knew most of the faces, but it was so different. I've probably rewatched that episode 20 times since, constantly going back to it again and again, studying it like the Rosetta Stone of sketch comedy. Needless to say, I was fully prepared for whatever Jason Reitman's new film, Saturday Night, threw at me.
Taylor: And my knowledge coming into this was...limited, to say the least. I've never seen that first episode, nor have I seen many full episodes pre-the 2010s when I first discovered SNL. My main interaction before becoming an adult and making it weekly viewing was watching miscellaneous clips on YouTube. I've picked things up in the years we've been together, but I'm certainly no historian, and so I went into this ready (and hoping!) to learn something. To hear the story and experience it the way it actually happened. While I think it definitely captured the energy, you'll have to be my fact-checker on the sequence of events.
Patrick: Let's start with some things we liked, of which there are plenty. Some of these performance are spot-on. Cory Michael Smith totally understands what made Chevy so great and so terrible (I love Chevy Chase and you can't stop me!), Dylan O'Brien reminds us what made Danny Aykroyd so funny, and I think that I too would've fallen in love with Gilda Radner if she was like the way Ella Hunt plays her in this movie.
Taylor: And on top of the great impressions, you get just plain good performances. Rachel Sennott is a riot as always (though maybe a wee bit too contemporary for this period piece), Lamorne Morris never misses and I find him truly captivating to watch, and you have pinch-hits from greats like Willem Dafoe, J.K. Simmons, and of course, a personal favorite, Brad Garrett! It's pretty difficult to be bored with almost any of these performances.
Patrick: Well...I'm not exactly sure if Gabriel LaBelle can carry a movie, but there's a pretty good chance that it's the character of Lorne Michaels that can't carry a movie. I do like, however, how he's depicted as this burning artist. He has ideas and he has friends and now he's got 11:30p on Saturday nights and damn it, he wants to make something great. We don't usually think of Lorne in that way. And maybe that's because, well, the movie takes a few liberties with what exactly happened on October 11th, 1975...
Taylor: Should the movie hinge on him? I'm not sure. Should the movie hinge on that exact idea and feeling? Absolutely. Jason Reitman and I may disagree on the best path to convey those things, but I don't think his instinct was wrong. With so many of these original players still alive and well, I really did have high hopes for a totally accurate portrayal. Take a few liberties for comedic moments and build tension, sure, but I'm a little disappointed in the other liberties taken.
Patrick: George Carlin cared more about the fact that they wanted him to wear a suit than he did about how funny the cast was, he was just there to do his thing and didn't want to do theirs, no hard feelings. Chevy Chase and John Belushi never got into a fistfight - Chevy's iconic fight was with Bill Murray, years later. And the idea that Andy Kaufman's Mighty Mouse bit single-handedly saved the show from being replaced by Carson reruns is completely laughable.
Taylor: It's a shame because this night is so iconic that I don't think it needed anything added to it. We would understand the stakes and the hope and the fear without frills. But, alas. I don't want to complain about a movie that I, at the end of the day, genuinely enjoyed. Excellent tension. Excellent one-shots. Excellent performances. It's a good movie. It's a decent biography.
Patrick: I get it, it's a movie, it's based on a true story, not a true story. But I feel like that's different in Remember the Titans when exact conversations and details haven't been documented the same way, when Denzil is just doing Denzil and not a Herman Boone impression, when all that matters is the underdog story. Here, we know everything about that night from books and books, we have actors like Smith and O'Brien and Kim Matula and Emily Fairn doing these pitch-perfect impressions, and we all know how it ends: the show goes on the air. And speaking of blue balls! (The movie speaks of blue balls.) I wanted to see them do the show after all that! Give me a three-hour movie with all this crap and then show me some of the sketches! Don't pretend like "The Wolverines" was the best thing they did that night. I want to see The Bees!
Taylor: I knew the movie ended with them going on air, not really being on air (or at least not for long), and STILL I got frustrated! More behind-the-scenes? A bonus sketch? I just wanted something. This movie's existence feels like a no-brainer. It should exist. But... I hope it's existence doesn't deter someone from trying their own hand sometime at SNL lore. I feel like there's more to be shown and explored!
Patrick: What's the next edition of the A-Listers going to be, you ask? Gladiator? Wicked? Glicked? Kraven the Hunter? We don't know! But we will let you know as soon as we do!
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