Director Jason Reitman, along with cast members Ella Hunt, Dylan O'Brien, Lamorne Morris, Cory Michael Smith, Gabriel LaBelle & Rachel Sennott discuss the film 'Saturday Night.' They talk about the challenges behind portraying comedy legends like Dan Aykryod, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner & Lorne Michaels during the very first 'Saturday Night Live' broadcast.
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00:00Gilda was the fairy dust and Garrett is looking for his identity.
00:04Chevy is a ego that needs to be humbled.
00:07Ackroyd is this genius that's like filtering a fire hose through a straw.
00:12Each one had like one thing to focus on. That was their journey.
00:30A counterculture show starring total unknowns with zero narrative and even less structure.
00:39So, SNL has such a long, rich history.
00:41How did you decide to center the movie entirely leading up to its first show?
00:47Well, I've always been kind of enamored by these moments where moments of greatness come into the world, you know.
00:53It's like that Peter Jackson documentary about the Beatles.
00:56What was it like when certain songs were written?
00:58And Saturday Night Live is beyond a cultural institution.
01:02It's the birthplace for, you know, a countless number of the greatest comedians the last 50 years.
01:07Not to mention musicians, entertainers, writers.
01:10And I always wondered what would it have been like to be in that room as they counted down to going live.
01:19And I know you conducted interviews with cast members, people who were there that night.
01:24Was there one piece that you felt most shaped the story that you learned while you were talking to those people?
01:29Yeah, it was oddly the bricks. The bricks were the thing.
01:33I remember reading about the fact that they put bricks down on the eighth floor of this building.
01:37And when you would never do that, it's as though you laid, you know, a real wood floor inside here.
01:43It makes no sense. And that obsession with getting the details right,
01:47that obsession with it feeling like a real night in New York City,
01:50and the fact that they were putting these bricks down together in the hours leading up,
01:56I had this moment of realizing the cohesiveness of how everyone came together.
02:00And I was like, that's what I want this movie to be.
02:02And that's how I want to make it.
02:05So for the cast, what kind of research did you do in your roles?
02:09And if you are playing someone who's alive, were you able to talk to them?
02:13Rachel, if you want to start. Yeah.
02:15So I play Rosie Schuster and I got to talk to her.
02:19And she's amazing. Like, we were talking about this before, but like, she's so fucking cool.
02:25Like, she's under pressure. And like, I am not like that at all.
02:32I feel like I am like anxious and I freak out very easily.
02:37And so I heard her. Everyone go, no, not at all.
02:45You're so chill, man. Remember, you were so relaxed on set.
02:50You're like a picture of calm. Yeah.
02:53It's really convincing, everyone. I think you're right.
02:55But she was just talking to her on the phone and hearing her like,
03:02laugh about all these like crazy memories and whatever.
03:05I was like, oh my God, like that's such a like,
03:09such an amazing thing to step into is like all this chaos is happening around you.
03:14And you're like, OK, I don't care, you know, like, fuck it.
03:19So that was sort of my research.
03:21And it was so much fun to get to step into that and play that.
03:25Such a departure.
03:31The transformation.
03:34I felt very lucky I got to speak to one of Gilda's key collaborators and close friends,
03:42Alan Zweibel. Alan and Gilda wrote Roseanne, Roseanne Adana together.
03:48Their partnership in writing was like so fiery and so like loving and friendship
03:54and getting Alan's window into Gilda and also seeing, you know,
04:01how best friends share a sensibility sometimes.
04:04Like there were things in Alan's composure in the way that Alan communicated with him.
04:09Yeah. That I thought about in playing Gilda.
04:12Oh, wow. It was, he's magic.
04:15I'm kind of in love with Alan right now. But yeah, that was something that I did.
04:21Oh, wow.
04:25No, I wanted to talk to Lauren initially in prep,
04:30but Jason didn't think that was a good idea.
04:32And it took a bit to mourn that a little bit.
04:35To mourn the lack of Lauren?
04:37Exactly. Exactly. And that was great.
04:41But no, I just read books and interviews and, you know, the internet is very abundant with things.
04:49But no, I met him. He was very lovely.
04:53He, as like giving us his blessing due to the movie, he invited us to SNL.
04:58Josh Brolin was hosting and we met him in his office right afterwards.
05:02And it was very lovely, very brief.
05:05But it was it was interesting because it's like my idea of Lauren was him in his 20s.
05:09And here's a 79 year old man.
05:12And it was very comforting.
05:15So that like right before filming to kind of have that.
05:18Oh, I didn't have to meet him and I didn't have to try to figure him out in the present because he's a different man.
05:26I think one of the really special things about this movie and one of the things that Jason was really clear about with us as soon as we got going was that we were trying to capture the spirit of this moment in time and the essence of these people at this moment in time.
05:41And so it was kind of freeing and that we didn't have to think about them 10 years later or even them once they'd been affected by fame.
05:50Yeah, yeah, yeah.
05:50Like it's this really precious.
05:52This is before they had agents.
05:54Yeah, cast members.
05:56But no, it was cool.
05:57We were like we were we were representing them.
06:00We're not recreating them.
06:02That wasn't the thing.
06:03But it was the first screen tests and first being on set and seeing everybody in their wardrobe.
06:08It was like, oh, my God, these are like superheroes or like Shakespearean characters that everyone is familiar with that.
06:16We're getting the honor to show our interpretation of how did you.
06:21Yeah.
06:21What did you do?
06:22How did you prep Dylan?
06:23Dylan, his voice is insane in this movie.
06:29How did you do it?
06:30Orchestrate that?
06:31Yeah, we just need to know.
06:33I did not do a lot.
06:40So in that way, you followed Jason's direction.
06:45Yes, I was the only one who did the homework by not doing the homework.
06:48The homework was don't prep.
06:50You already know how to do this because the end of the day, the idea is to capture one piece of essence of the character.
06:57You can't actually replicate a person, you know, 100 percent and particularly in an ensemble this big.
07:02So it was about one part of the essence of somebody.
07:06How do you bring that to life?
07:07And more so, how do you get along as a group?
07:09And that's what was so cool about this cast is that from day one, they made the building feel alive.
07:16Meanwhile, I was actually working from a place of utter fear and terror that I would ruin my career trying to do this.
07:23So I.
07:24Are you serious?
07:26Yeah, one thousand percent.
07:27Yeah, I watched compulsively only Chevy Chase for a couple of months.
07:32But the thing that I the thing that I actually was most nervous about, you know, you can like watch someone.
07:38There's so much out there of Chevy like I could watch and I could try to embody what he's doing and replicate that.
07:45But what we don't know and what you spend a lot of time in in this film is watching these people not performing, but living.
07:52And so it's like, oh, wow, what is that person like?
07:54You know, in Chevy's case, he gets embarrassed a bit.
07:57And I'm like, yeah, but I don't know what Chevy looks like in a really vulnerable state.
08:01And then I I was watching interviews with him and there's some great Dick Cavett interviews.
08:07But his first time on Johnny Carson, he comes out and he's really nervous.
08:12He's this young guy, really nervous.
08:16And Johnny asks him a question and he answers with.
08:21I do and it has nothing to do with the question and everyone pauses and Johnny laughs in his face suddenly and everyone is just laughing at Chevy and he's like flustered and Johnny's like, let me tell you, this is going to work.
08:35I want to ask you a question and you're going to answer in relation to that question.
08:41And he goes, yeah.
08:42And I was like, oh, my God, that's like that's it.
08:46So it was like finding these little nuggets where you can actually see like, oh, that's Chevy humiliated and I can use that.
08:53Jason explained it to me.
08:55You know, part of his reasoning for not wanting you to to speak to said person you're playing is because we really want to embody the energy of what they were going through on that particular day.
09:07And so I remember speaking with Garrett and against Jason's.
09:13But I knew I love how much they listen.
09:15Yeah, no, no. This was an accident.
09:17You were present. I spoke to him first.
09:19Oh, yeah, I was trying to contact him personally, directly.
09:25But Garrett was going through it.
09:27Garrett was going through similar things that I find myself going through in my career.
09:31So it's kind of easy to relate to that fish out of water feeling to being the first of something, you know what I mean?
09:38And to kind of really, you know, to have a select group of people that that are skilled at a particular thing and you feel like you're coming in with your own brand of whatever and you don't know how it fits into this puzzle.
09:52And so, you know, with the backdrop of, you know, post civil rights and all those things, Garrett was going through a lot more than just having to perform.
10:01And so I wanted to make sure that that's actually what Garrett was feeling.
10:06And Jason was spot on with his writing.
10:10And so it made a lot of sense for me.
10:12And against Jason's will, I'm very grateful that I did what I had to do.
10:17When you say don't prepare, I know everyone's going to prepare so much.
10:21And I'm just trying to get them to hold back to a certain extent.
10:25That was really generous.
10:26I know that the movie is set before the rest of the first season unfolds.
10:30But did you guys watch that in prep?
10:32And how do you feel like the first season of SNL holds up?
10:35I actually made the mistake of going, OK, so the one thing I know I'm definitely not going to do, the one way I'm going to like follow Jason's advice is I'm not going to watch any of the first season of SNL.
10:49And then we get to like two days before shooting and we're in cast camp.
10:54I'll let someone else explain the idea.
10:56We didn't have trailers.
10:57We had a big common area with 70s furniture and ping pong and board games and old records.
11:04And we all had our own dressing rooms that were all specifically designed and catered for our characters personalities, which was really cool.
11:11But everyone was always together on set and off set.
11:14Well, OK, so I came in and the first season was playing and there was this clip of Gilda that I'd never seen before.
11:20And I was like, oh, my God, help me.
11:24I was really I was like at a roadblock with her.
11:27And this this video of her being a fireman on.
11:31And I was like, oh, thank you.
11:34Thank goodness.
11:35So that's my little.
11:35It was kind of weird, though.
11:37Yeah. On the TV.
11:38There's just the first season on a loop on like every day would be the same episodes.
11:42I just filter throughout the day.
11:44And eventually we would like to change it to something and then we'd come back from set and then it would be back on the first season of SNL.
11:50Is that you?
11:51Yeah, no, I say put it on.
11:54I wanted to be 1970s television in general that you guys were watching while you're there.
11:58The best thing is the photos of you playing ping pong in your be out.
12:03But Gilda was the fairy dust and Garrett is looking for his identity.
12:08Chevy is a ego that needs to be humbled.
12:11Ackroyd is this genius that's like filtering a fire hose through a straw.
12:16Each one had like one thing to focus on.
12:20That was their journey.
12:22Awesome.
12:23Well, sorry to have to wrap so quickly, but thank you guys for being here.
12:26It's great talking to you.