Jason Reitman has Saturday Night Live in his blood. The Canadian-American filmmaker, who turns 47 next month, is two years younger than the show, which made its debut on October 11, 1975. But there are baby photos of him on the set of Animal House (1978), a movie that was produced by his father, Ivan Reitman, who died in 2022, and starred John Belushi, the first of countless SNL players to make the leap to Hollywood. Jason grew up around SNL legends Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, who became movie stars under Ivan’s direction in hits ranging from Meatballs (1979) to Ghostbusters (1984). “I had two dreams as a kid,” Reitman recalls. “To direct movies and be a writer for Saturday Night Live.”
Both came true. At the age of 31, right after seeing his sophomore feature, Juno, win an Oscar for Diablo Cody’s screenplay – and receive three other nominations including for Best Picture and Best Director – he spent a week as a guest writer for SNL, which he looks back on as “one of the most thrilling weeks of my life.”
Now, Reitman sees his boyhood dreams come full circle with the release of Saturday Night, a year ahead of SNL’s 50th anniversary. The film, which he directed and co-wrote, unfolds entirely during the 90 minutes of real-time chaos before SNL’s inaugural episode goes to air in the NBC studio at Rockefeller Center. It’s an exhilarating ride and, even though we know the ending, there’s clockwork suspense as everything conspires against it – from the ticking time bomb of Belushi’s manic temperament to a Church Lady-like network censor and NBC bosses plotting to bury the show.
Saturday Night is also an incredible feat of directing. Shot verité-style on 16 mm film, it mirrors the anarchic energy of the show with an agile ensemble of 75 actors portraying its cast and crew. Like their characters, most aren’t famous faces yet. And among those who are – aside from J.K. Simmons portraying Milton Berle as showboating sexual predator – you might not recognize Matthew Rhys (The Americans) as an irascible George Carlin, or Nicholas Braun (Succession) popping up as both provocateur Andy Kauffman and Muppeteer Jim Henson. Like the SNL troupe, the film’s actors are engaged in a team sport where everyone has a supporting role. The action is anchored by two deft performers playing the Canadian couple at the heart of the story – a pensive Gabriel Labelle (The Fablemans) as 29-year-old SNL creator Lorne Michaels, and a sharp-witted Rachel Sennott (Bottoms) as his wife, SNL writer Rosie Shuster.
With Saturday Night, Jason Reitman has pulled off the most ambitious film of his career, which ranges from the backhanded satire of Thank You For Smoking (2005) to his family-business sequel Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021). It also affirms his place as Canada’s heir to the American comedy legacy fathered by Lorne Michaels and Ivan Reitman.
Reitman lives in Los Angeles with his 18-year-old daughter, Josie, and I interviewed him the day after they attended Saturday Night’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
JASON REITMAN: (as he walks into the hotel room): My daughter’s texting me, saying, “I need to go to Tim Hortons. I need Timbits before I leave.” That lets me know I did a decent job as a dad.
ZOOMER: Well, you’ve done a more than decent job as a director with Saturday Night. I walked into this film in fear, because it could have gone wrong in so many ways. Now I just wonder how you did it. Was making the film as chaotic as making Saturday Night Live?
JR: No, it was film. You can always yell cut and go again. But we wanted to capture the energy as much as possible. I mean, the set was definitely designed in a way so that things could be instinctual and things could feel improvised, and accidents can happen.
ZOOMER: Even with the acting?
JR: Oh, 100 per cent, and in more than one way. You got a guy like Lamorne Morris [cast as SNL’s Garrett Morris, no relation] who is just going to improvise dialogue and make your movie better. Lines like, “I’m going to put this away – this is illegal,” and he puts the cocaine in his pocket. That’s improvised. Just like on SNL, when you have a brilliant comedian, you let them go. But also this is a movie where you have dozens of actors working simultaneously all the time, all miked in one scene simultaneously. There’s the foreground actors doing the written dialog, but everyone beyond that is doing their own work. And they’ve been encouraged, like – “Make this room feel alive. You know what we were trying to get. You can talk. Just keep it cooking.”
ZOOMER: You’ve never done anything like this before. You’ve said it goes back to a boyhood dream.
JR: Yeah. It’s two things just happening. One is being obsessed with the early ‘70s movies – in particular the work of Michael Richie (The Candidate, Bad News Bears). Simultaneously, the childhood dream to be a writer at Saturday Night Live was my version of “could-I-play-in-the-NHL?”
ZOOMER: Do you remember seeing Saturday night for the first time, or how old were you?
JR: I was really young, probably eight. I remember watching it and thinking, “This must be something special they do once a year, like the Oscars or the Super Bowl,” and my dad explained, “No, they do this every Saturday.” And I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that this is going to happen every Saturday and every Saturday would be unique.
ZOOMER: How far back does this project go? Was your dad alive when you came up with it?
JR: It’s the last script of mine that my dad read. He was skeptical at first when I told him I want to make a movie about the opening night of Saturday Night Live. Probably because he grew up around it and was a part of that scene so much. Then he read the script and just said, “You have to make this.”
ZOOMER: How did the idea originate?
JR: After being on the floor at SNL and feeling the energy of what it’s like as it goes live, I needed to find a way to capture this in a movie. I’ve also been obsessed with real-time movies, like Victoria, a German movie that I’ve watched a bunch of times [a 2015 crime thriller shot in a single continuous take]. I love watching a character in real time going from start to finish. Then one day it just hit me – “Oh, opening night, that’s it!” I would tell people I want to do an SNL movie and they would go, “Uh, okay.” And then I’d say, “It’s the 90 minutes leading to showtime – “Live from New York . . .” – and they would go, “Oh, got it! Great.”
ZOOMER: It seems a lot of research went into the script.
JR: Yeah. It’s the first time I tried to do your job, and it was really fucking hard. My writing partner and I interviewed every living person we could find. And that’s Lorne, that’s Dick Ebersol. That’s every writer, every actor, the production designer Leo Yoshimura, Paul Schaffer, Howard Shore, NBC pages, members of Billy Preston’s band – everyone we could get a hold of. And we had to learn how to do interviews, which as it turned out I had no idea how to do. I didn’t even know how to record them – “Do I have to ask you if I can record you before I press the button?”
ZOOMER: I pressed the button before you walked into the room.
JR: Oh, there you go. I didn’t know any of this. And even doing interviews, if they’re on a train of thought, how to remember to come back to the question I wanted and are they telling me the truth right now? Because that completely contradicts the thing this other thing someone said, and do I call them on it or just go with it . . . and then after the fact having hours and hours of interviews and trying to weave a version of the truth based on all these flawed memories.
ZOOMER: Did you make stuff up?
JR: It’s not about making stuff up. It’s moving things in time. Things that happen months before the show goes live and define how it came together. And things like the idea of the Julia Child sketch, which happens seasons later. Everything gets compressed into a 90-minute period. The purpose is not to make a documentary, but a narrative film that allows the audience to feel what it was like to be there. As long as that is the tuning fork, then you’re holding true.
ZOOMER: I can’t imagine Lorne Michaels not wanting to take a proprietary interest in this.
JR: No, Lorne’s a guy who has zero rearview mirror. All he ever thinks about is who’s the next host, what are we doing next Saturday? And you can see that in the show. There’s a reason why the show’s been great for 50 years – he never stopped once to talk about legacy. He says he’s never read any of the books about the show, and he doesn’t want to talk about the past. He wants to talk about what they’re doing next.
ZOOMER: Has he seen the movie?
JR: Not yet. He’s heard about how well it’s played at festivals, and he’s sent very sweet notes congratulating me.
ZOOMER: What about Dan Aykroyd?
JR: Dan was supposed to be there last night but he was shooting and couldn’t make it. But Chevy [Chase] has seen the movie. And Billy Crystal, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris . . .
Rosie Schuster was there last night. That was a thrill because she was one of my favourite interviews.
ZOOMER: You really made her a linchpin in a show that was notoriously not very gender-equitable.
JR: People say that, so I know exactly what you’re talking about. But interestingly, the writing staff was originally 50/50 men and women, and the cast was almost 50/50 men and women.
ZOOMER: Why did you choose to make Rosie so prominent?
JR: A few things. She made us laugh more than anyone else. Her brain is a bullet train. There are just things she would say that caught Gil and I off guard. And I find Lorne and Rosie’s relationship to be profound. Romantic relationships onscreen are often so binary. People fall in love, they fall out of love. Lorne and Rosie were two people who were married and seeing other people. Their marriage is in the midst of separating, but not at any given speed. And they recognize why each other are brilliant. They recognize why together they are better creatively. Why was Rosie at the show? She was the best writer that Lorne knew and their relationship had evolved since meeting as kids. And that was really important to me because it’s a movie about the 1970s where you have a generation who is challenging everything, not just comedy. They’re challenging the status quo in every way. And I think Lorne and Rosie are challenging what it means to be a married couple.
ZOOMER: There are so many things going on in this film. You want to see it a second time because you know that while you’re watching this part of the screen, there’s something going on in another part of the screen. But if you can pull back, above all what is this film about?
JR: It’s hard to nail it down to one thing, but it’s about those moments where one generation rips the culture out of the last generation’s hands. And no generation wants things to change. The next generation forces it to happen every time. It’s exciting to see that happen live on screen. And it’s about the camaraderie of comedy. It’s hard to portray how comedy is created and how violent and aggressive and joyful it is simultaneously. I grew up watching comedy happen in real time, and I wanted to portray that. And it’s about “The Show Must Go On.”
ZOOMER: Lorne and your dad, these two Canadians, were the reigning kings of comedy in TV and film respectively for years. What does their legacy mean to you? And what’s the next revolution, the next SNL?
JR: Lorne and my dad were two Jewish kids from Toronto, who each had visions they could only articulate by creating things. And they created brilliant work that is culturally defining. Every day someone comes to talk to me about something in my dad’s work that has affected them, and I can see what a profound impact he’s had. Every generation thinks that the cast from when they were in high school is the greatest SNL cast of all time. That is the power of Lorne Michaels.
What’s the next revolution? What’s insane is that Lorne has had the wherewithal to always be thinking forward. The fact that the Mike Myers generation and Adam Sandler generation and Will Ferrell generation, and Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon, are as revolutionary and as reflective of culture as the originals is what makes it insane. The fact that The Lonely Island [comedy trio] can do Dick in The Box [with Justin Timberlake] and that’s as important comedically and culturally as work from Season One. Or these new Please Don’t Destroy guys doing the current version of that. Lorne is 80 years old and he’s producing a show that reflects culture in real time, and he is still not talking about his legacy.
I don’t know where that comes from, inside.
ZOOMER: Speaking of legacy, do you ever think of doing a documentary on your dad?
JR: It’s interesting. I feel like I did that when I made my Ghostbusters movie. All I thought about was, what did my dad feel like when he was making the original film? And I made that film for him as much as anything . . . Maybe. His story is fascinating.
ZOOMER: Sons seek approval from their fathers, especially if they follow in their footsteps. Did you ever get the approval you’re were looking for from your dad.
JR: Yeah, more than once. I was really lucky. My dad was tough. Don’t get me wrong. Ask anyone who worked on his crew, they’ll tell you. And he inspired a fire in me for things I probably didn’t appreciate as a teenager. But I’m really appreciative now. Being the son of someone successful is tricky, and I didn’t realize how hard that work was until I became a dad myself. It’s hard to push your kid to work hard. My father really pushed me, and I’m so grateful for it. His pride in me meant everything.
Saturday Night opens in select theatres on Sept. 27 before expanding on Oct. 4 and then opening nationwide on Oct. 11.
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