'Saturday Night' Director Jason Reitman Reacts The First Ever SNL

Connect with Deadline online! https://www.facebook.com/deadline/ https://twitter.com/DEADLINE https://www.instagram.com/deadline/

Transcript

00:00Right after Juno my agent asked me, what do you want to do next and my answer was

00:04I had two dreams when I was a kid. One was to direct movies, the other was to be

00:08a writer for Saturday Night Live and he called Lorne and they let me do a one

00:12week writing gig in 2008 and it was one of the greatest weeks of my life.

00:16Well you know for the first time in my life I had to try to do your job and it

00:19was really intimidating. I became a journalist and my writing partner Gil

00:23Kennan and I tried to interview everyone we could find that was alive in the

00:26building that night. Every living actor, every living writer, Lorne himself, NBC

00:31Pages, members of Billy Preston's band, anyone who could give us insight to what

00:34it felt like on October 11th 1975. Lorne has not seen the movie yet. I have no

00:40idea if he'll ever tell me his reaction because he's a cryptic person but

00:45obviously he was the first person I ever reached out to. I've been speaking to him

00:49throughout this process. Lorne is someone who has always looked forward. I think

00:53it's part of his genius. From the moment one when he made this show, he would

00:57finish an episode and he would just put it behind him and he would think about

01:00what's next. I think it's the reason that someone at his age who's been doing this

01:04show for 50 years is constantly evolving. If you think about the fact that he had

01:08already created this show three, four times over before Lonely Island showed

01:12up or Please Don't Destroy shows up. You know he reinvents what is comedy every

01:17five to ten years and it's because he is never looking in the rearview mirror so

01:22I think we'd all be honored. We will all be honored when he watches it but that

01:28will be on Lorne's time.