Jason Reitmans Saturday Night Movie Trailer Teases Behind-the-Scenes Chaos at SNL
Asif Reporter
The first episode of Saturday Night Live was not easy as it is depicted in the trailer of the new movie by Jason Reitman about the creation of the NBC show.
The first trailer for Saturday Night was released by Sony Pictures before the movie’s release on October 11. Reitman directed the feature that captures the events that preceded the first live broadcast of SNL which was on October 11, 1975.
The trailer shows the events that occurred in the last 90 minutes before the beginning of that very first episode. This includes a scene where the character of Lorne Michaels, the creator of the show, portrayed by Gabriel LaBelle, has a heated confrontation with NBC executive Dick Ebersol, played by Cooper Hoffman.
In the footage, Ebersol says, “Lorne, 90 minutes of live television by a group of 20-year-olds who have never made anything? Do you every stop and wonder why they said yes [to] a counterculture show starring total unknowns, with zero narrative and even less structure? They want you to fail. ”
This makes Lorne reply, “We just have to make it to air. ”
The script was written by Reitman and Gil Kenan based on interviews with living cast, writers and crew about the launch of the show that is now in its 49th season. Kenan Reitman, Jason Blumenfeld, and Peter Rice are the producers of the movie previously titled SNL 1975. The executive producers are Erica Mills and JoAnn Perritano.
The cast of SNL’s first season is Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Matt Wood as John Belushi, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman and Kim Matula as Jane Curtin.
Other castmembers are Willem Dafoe as David Tebet, Nicholas Braun as Jim Henson, Matthew Rhys as George Carlin, Kaia Gerber as Jacqueline Carlin, J. K. Simmons as Milton Berle, Jon Batiste as Billy Preston, Andrew Barth Feldman as Neil Levy, Naomi McPherson as Janis Ian and Finn Wolfhard as an NBC page.
In a recent article for Vanity Fair, LaBelle — who stars in The Fabelmans — explained his approach to portraying Michaels. The actor pointed out that Michaels began SNL at the age of 30, and he is now 80 and still working on the show for 50 years, and nobody knows what to do when they begin.
