Speaker 1: Willing wave.
Speaker 2: Why from the Lord.
Speaker 3: It's Sunday Night, NBC's Saturday Night.
Speaker 2: Starring George Carlin.
Speaker 1: With Genesee and that Billy Kriston.
Speaker 2: Who I found my Albert Brooks, Jim Henson's Puppets good
Speaker 2: not already Prime Prime Player. I'm comedian Ballery Bronfield and Moldy.
Speaker 4: Ladies and gen.
Speaker 5: Colen.
Speaker 4: Wow, it's great to be hosting midnight Viewing here in
Speaker 4: New York City. I'm father alone. Oh, I guess we're
Speaker 4: gonna take some questions from the audience. Yes, so you sir,
Speaker 4: Good evening. That's right, Welcome to Midnight Viewing. Special crossover
Speaker 4: episode with the Culture Cast The Evening. Oh yeah, Christatio
Speaker 4: is the host of that show, and he's here to
Speaker 4: talk Saturday Night Live with us here. How are you doing, Chris?
Speaker 1: You could just refer to me as Satan if you'd.
Speaker 4: Like Satan in the Dana Carvey sense, or in the
Speaker 4: John Loves.
Speaker 1: In the Michael O'donniere's.
Speaker 4: The true devil, the best, the true.
Speaker 1: Devil, the best kind of devil, the true, the truest
Speaker 1: of true devils. I believe, at least in this movie
Speaker 1: is approximation.
Speaker 4: That's right tonight, we're talking about Saturday Night. It's the
Speaker 4: new feature film. Hey, by the way, today is October
Speaker 4: the eleventh. This is the forty ninth anniversary of the
Speaker 4: premiere of Saturday Night Alive. That we're talking about Saturday Night,
Speaker 4: and we're talking about the film Saturday Night, directed by
Speaker 4: Jason Rightman, written by Jason Rightman and Gil Keenan, starring
Speaker 4: a whole bunch of actors.
Speaker 1: Statements have been made. It's an ensemble cast, folks, Jesus.
Speaker 4: Ain't it a rather huge ensemble cast headed by young
Speaker 4: Steven Spielberg as Lauren Michaels. This is a chronicle of
Speaker 4: the ninety minutes leading up to the very first broadcast
Speaker 4: of Saturday Night Live on October the eleventh, nineteen seventy five. Okay,
Speaker 4: let's see.
Speaker 1: If we get through one of these sketches.
Speaker 5: Sketches, let me come right. Okay, we go again.
Speaker 1: At My name is Lord Michaels. I'm the producer and
Speaker 1: creator of Saturday Night. We're excited because there's never been
Speaker 1: a television show like this.
Speaker 5: Okay, but what kind of show is it?
Speaker 1: Warren?
Speaker 4: Do you even know what the show is?
Speaker 1: Did anyone ask Edison what a light bulb was before
Speaker 1: you harness electricity?
Speaker 2: Who are you in the metaphor? Yubby Chase killed the
Speaker 2: redner Dad?
Speaker 4: I how the fuck do you pronounce this?
Speaker 6: Really?
Speaker 4: These can't be the right size.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, they should be a little bit smaller.
Speaker 2: Taxn rehearsal and no weekend up days.
Speaker 1: Good telem me. How long have you been standing there?
Speaker 1: Long enough?
Speaker 4: And I want you to fail? They're betting on it.
Speaker 2: That's logical, Vic, That's why the pang is all to
Speaker 2: be here. NBC makes more money playing ruins of the
Speaker 2: Tonight Show. I mean, we're ninety minutes of live television.
Speaker 2: I grow was twenty year olds who've never made anything.
Speaker 4: Okay, so this is this is this is a bit.
Speaker 1: I don't get half the ship that they do.
Speaker 4: You haven't locked the script.
Speaker 1: Your actors I'm missing.
Speaker 3: Have you seen John Belushi?
Speaker 1: Your crew is an open rebellion? Is christ your kids
Speaker 1: signed for ready for prime Time? Never went down to
Speaker 1: the eight floor? Now what is this?
Speaker 5: I'm pretty exciting.
Speaker 1: We need to let the audience say, oh, you don't.
Speaker 2: Opening.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be able to protect you. You just
Speaker 1: have to make it. Dair, Why.
Speaker 2: The writers tied a belt around Big Bird's neck and
Speaker 2: hung him from my dressing room door.
Speaker 4: Hey you heard about it, big bird, So sorry, not
Speaker 4: erotic asphyxiation.
Speaker 5: Who knew?
Speaker 4: Now? That is the conceit of the movie. It is.
Speaker 4: It is shot in real time. It is starts from
Speaker 4: ten PM and ends at eleven thirty with the first
Speaker 4: sketch of center and live going live. Okay, So that
Speaker 4: is the structure for their film. The conceit. The idea
Speaker 4: here is that we are going to get how frenetic
Speaker 4: and how frenzied and how crazy it is putting together
Speaker 4: a live broadcast on network Televisionright, We're suppose we're meant
Speaker 4: to feel what it's like from these characters' point of view.
Speaker 4: So what he's done is going to take the ninety
Speaker 4: minutes and use this as a historical framing device. This
Speaker 4: is what it was like beforehand. But it's a movie.
Speaker 4: So we're going to take facts and events and characters
Speaker 4: are going to combine. Then we're going to bring them
Speaker 4: in from earlier than they actually occurred, or we're going
Speaker 4: to pull them in from previous weeks and compacted into
Speaker 4: this one sort of bonkers evening. I full disclosure. Am
Speaker 4: a Saturday Night fucking fanatic, have been. I've seen every
Speaker 4: episode of Saturday Night Live. I've read everything about Sunday
Speaker 4: Night Live. I've seen episodes multiple times, seasons multiple times.
Speaker 4: I have my favorite cast, but I have multiple favorite casts,
Speaker 4: and this particular period of Saturday Live is the one
Speaker 4: that I was most fascinated with my entire life. So
Speaker 4: I'm coming at it from an expert point of view.
Speaker 4: So I knew the movie was never going to satisfy
Speaker 4: me just in its conception, but I am correct. But
Speaker 4: there was plenty two that I did enjoy about the movie.
Speaker 4: But I'm curious to someone who is a lot younger
Speaker 4: than me, who is not as obsessive with me as me,
Speaker 4: who's probably you've watched plenty of Sunday Night Live. I'm
Speaker 4: assuming Chris.
Speaker 1: Hold on a second, Hold on a second, I am
Speaker 1: as obsessive as you are.
Speaker 5: Is not.
Speaker 1: I'm not obsessive about Saturday Night Live. I point my
Speaker 1: in other directions. As it were, It's funny. I actually
Speaker 1: had to think about it, and I didn't have to
Speaker 1: think too hard because as someone who likes SNL a
Speaker 1: fair amount and who grew up with the DVDs and vhs.
Speaker 1: Is of the best of Dana Carvey, best of Adam Sandler,
Speaker 1: best of best of Christopher Walking, Jesus Christ that he
Speaker 1: was not a star of SNL, he was a guest
Speaker 1: host and he got his own best of DVD. That's again,
Speaker 1: these are the things I grew up with, and I again,
Speaker 1: we're part of the things that were formative for me.
Speaker 1: So I like SNL a fair amount. I've never gone
Speaker 1: and read the Oral History books or either of the books,
Speaker 1: and I don't know why, because I have Live from
Speaker 1: New York on my bookshelf and I've had it for
Speaker 1: a while, at least two or three years, and I
Speaker 1: went through a spate of time where I literally read
Speaker 1: two hundred books in the span of two years. And
Speaker 1: I don't know why I didn't read that one, because
Speaker 1: I read play of other things, including the Oral History
Speaker 1: of Star Trek, the Oral History of the Sopranos, the
Speaker 1: Oral History of Star Trek's two fucking books on top
Speaker 1: of everything else, Like I could have spared one.
Speaker 4: Even more given the number of Star Treks that there are. Well, yeah,
Speaker 4: original series.
Speaker 1: I I the first book is TOS and the second
Speaker 1: book is TNG.
Speaker 4: Okay, then they can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's written by the guys who did the
Speaker 1: oral history of the Sopranos as well, Sepinwall and I
Speaker 1: forget the other guy's name, but our dear friend Mike
Speaker 1: White has had Alan Seppenwall, I believe on his show
Speaker 1: a couple of times, or at least the maybe if
Speaker 1: it's not him, it's the other guys. Anyways, I digress.
Speaker 1: I know enough about SNL. I wouldn't say, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a neophyte like you, but I'm definitely someone who
Speaker 1: appreciates the history behind it. This time and a Place
Speaker 1: obviously has a very special place in my heart as
Speaker 1: someone who if you've never listened to a thing I've
Speaker 1: done before, let me clue you in. Fletch is probably
Speaker 1: one of my favorite movies, and most things Chevy Chase
Speaker 1: has done are things that I can at least tolerate
Speaker 1: because of his involvement.
Speaker 4: You do itally this podcast.
Speaker 1: I would say, I literally co host a goddamn Chevy
Speaker 1: Chase podcast. And that's not for any particular reason other
Speaker 1: than the fact that again you could. It's not you
Speaker 1: have to really hold my feet to the fire to
Speaker 1: watch a Chevy Chase movie. He's a specific kind of
Speaker 1: comedian that a specific kind of person resonates with, and
Speaker 1: that's not a small group of people. This movie cuts
Speaker 1: to the core of that a little bit. But I
Speaker 1: also think this movie misses the fucking point in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. And it's fine, we'll get to what
Speaker 1: we get to it. I again, I'm not I'm I
Speaker 1: think I'm not the audience for this movie anymore than
Speaker 1: you are. I know more about this than the movie
Speaker 1: thinks I know about this, if that makes sense. Like
Speaker 1: you said, it's recontextualizing things, doing things that aren't happening
Speaker 1: in that order, and other things. And also I don't know,
Speaker 1: they're just there's a lot of stuff going on in
Speaker 1: this movie. That's It's a Jason Rightman movie at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, and that's that's a big thing
Speaker 1: about this movie in particular. So I'm curious, as someone
Speaker 1: who is not the die hard, hardcore fan, what did
Speaker 1: you think of this movie to now turn that turn
Speaker 1: that oil? What is it? I forget what she says
Speaker 1: to him and Hannah in the fucking Silence of Lambs,
Speaker 1: but turn it on yourself. Now, tell me about Saturday
Speaker 1: Night twenty twenty four of the film.
Speaker 4: It should be called Friday Night because the majority of
Speaker 4: the events chronicled in the film. Okay, I should just
Speaker 4: say that I'm now attacking the movie specifically on facts
Speaker 4: as they occur, right objectively.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I get it.
Speaker 4: Okay, Friday Night there was a big dress rehearsal. It
Speaker 4: was a complete and utter disaster. Like the show ran
Speaker 4: three hours. They did a long breakdown afterwards. Lauren Michaels
Speaker 4: gave notes to everybody, which they immediately abolished afterwards because
Speaker 4: it was like such a punishing ordeal to sit there
Speaker 4: and listen to him for an hour talk specifically to
Speaker 4: everyone what they did wrong. It was by then they
Speaker 4: had already put in the new soundboard because they knew
Speaker 4: full they were having rock acts on and that one
Speaker 4: mic wasn't going to suffice. Milton Berle did not show
Speaker 4: up anywhere near the studio eight h He would eventually
Speaker 4: host Saturday Night Live. A lot of the interactions with
Speaker 4: Milton Burle would actually occur just months later. Okay, we'll
Speaker 4: get back to milty.
Speaker 1: JK. Simmons was in Thank You for Smoking? Can I
Speaker 1: point that out? Yeah? The Jason rightman players are here.
Speaker 4: Folks, They sure are. And I do know that by
Speaker 4: six am on that Saturday that the bricks were laid.
Speaker 4: I know that twelve stage hands were very fucking furious
Speaker 4: because they had to cut all those bricks and lay
Speaker 4: them out for the set. Obviously none of the union
Speaker 4: guys were going to help them. That's true, but it's again,
Speaker 4: the movie is about Friday Night, not Saturday Night. Most
Speaker 4: of the problems that are being discussed on Saturday Night
Speaker 4: were not problems by then. Here's what actually happened in
Speaker 4: the movie. That actually happened on the day of John
Speaker 4: Belushi signed his contract right before they went on there.
Speaker 4: I think that's it.
Speaker 1: But where was Jim Henson and all of us? Where
Speaker 1: was Jim Henson and all of this? Father Malone? That's
Speaker 1: the question that everyone's asking in Saturday Night twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: Did you think the.
Speaker 1: Guy who plays Andy Kaufman is also Jim Henson? Yes,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm not. I'm being Facetiousky itself is the
Speaker 1: gang good job moving.
Speaker 4: That is a good gang, and it's Nicholas Braun, and
Speaker 4: I think he does a good job with both. I
Speaker 4: think I think it is a pretty good Andy Kaufman,
Speaker 4: except he's seven feet tall. So I kept it kept
Speaker 4: I kept going, who is this giant playing Andy Kauffman?
Speaker 4: Every time I saw him, every time he was close up,
Speaker 4: I was fine, But standing next to anybody else, that
Speaker 4: was why have him be that tall? Just have him
Speaker 4: stand anyway? What did you think of their tank on
Speaker 4: Jim Henson? I'm not saying the performance. The performance was fine.
Speaker 4: It was a bit of a caricature. It was a
Speaker 4: bit of a impression.
Speaker 1: What did I think of the of the characterization the
Speaker 1: magical white Man of the movie? Is that what you're
Speaker 1: asking is that? What are you asking me of? Why
Speaker 1: is Jim Henson the magical white Man of the movie.
Speaker 1: It's so fucking bizarre. Can I say it's just fucking bizarre? Please?
Speaker 1: If they make a Jim Henson movie, which I believe
Speaker 1: they are, can we not have this shit be the
Speaker 1: Jim Henson character, because it's fucking strange that he's this
Speaker 1: movie's like shaman character. Not but he's just a stoner,
Speaker 1: but not a stoner, you know what.
Speaker 4: I would like it if he was the shaman character
Speaker 4: and he was like spreading good vibes in here, but
Speaker 4: he's more of a sood.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean a shaman like that.
Speaker 4: He's a gentle subject of ridicule, I think, and I
Speaker 4: think they want to be more vicious, honestly, and I
Speaker 4: bet and I bet at the time they were more vicious.
Speaker 4: Can you imagine the actual things Michael o'donnahu was saying
Speaker 4: about the Muppets?
Speaker 1: Oh man, isn't that the best part of the.
Speaker 4: Movie, Michael o'donah here. Yeah, yeah, let's just talk Michael o'donia.
Speaker 4: This is one of those things where having a working
Speaker 4: knowledge of everything involved is a benefit, because as soon
Speaker 4: as they cut to that guy, I'm like, oh, hey,
Speaker 4: here's Michael o'donnia Everyone here is. Everyone resembles who they're
Speaker 4: playing enough that that really works. The cast in general
Speaker 4: really works in this movie. But that guy in particular.
Speaker 1: Tommy Dewey from Casual.
Speaker 4: I've never seen him. If I hadn't no where he's from.
Speaker 4: This is the second interpretation of Michael o'donna here I've
Speaker 4: now seen. There was a movie a couple of years
Speaker 4: ago as Netflix film a Feudal in Stupid Gesture, where
Speaker 4: Thomas Lennon played Michael O'donahue and he did a great
Speaker 4: Michael O'DONNAU, but everyone was a little bit amped up
Speaker 4: in their performances there. I think this is more like
Speaker 4: who that guy actually was.
Speaker 1: I think you love him though I do.
Speaker 4: Actually no, I do as well.
Speaker 1: He's like comedy Dan O'Bannon.
Speaker 4: He really is what.
Speaker 1: A thorny motherfucker.
Speaker 4: I bet he was a nightmare to be around.
Speaker 1: But hey, we talked about it last year on my
Speaker 1: show Because of You. We talked about mister Mike's Mondo video,
Speaker 1: which is pretty fucking I believe the term Prickley was
Speaker 1: used plenty of times in relation to that, and I
Speaker 1: would say this movie nails what I perceived to be
Speaker 1: when doing the research then about the man that he
Speaker 1: was and the things that he was writing. That is
Speaker 1: the person that he was to the end. Look at
Speaker 1: his Wikipedia pictures him holding a or I guess his
Speaker 1: IMDb pictures him holding a fucking chef's knife, like the
Speaker 1: when he says to the woman in this movie, you
Speaker 1: can just call me Satan and say, yeah, I resonate
Speaker 1: with this guy more than I resonate with anybody else
Speaker 1: in the movie.
Speaker 4: For the most part, the rest of the cast, they
Speaker 4: either resemble the person so fucking much that there's no
Speaker 4: question that they don't need to have a performance or
Speaker 4: they get there, they get the characterization of them. They
Speaker 4: they're some sort of mannerism or vocal pattern. Like the
Speaker 4: guy doing dan akright doesn't look a thing like dan aykright.
Speaker 1: But if you signed Dylan O'Brien does not look like
Speaker 1: dan Akroight at all.
Speaker 4: It's not a mustache on somebody to give him a
Speaker 4: shaggy en a haircut back then and you get him
Speaker 4: speaking the way this guy is speaking, then that's dan akright.
Speaker 1: You know what he looks like. He looks like dan
Speaker 1: akrod through the AI lens of sexy. What if dan
Speaker 1: Akrid was like, hey, I'm not saying dan Akward is
Speaker 1: not a good looking guy, but if dan Ackroyd were
Speaker 1: like the episode of The Simpsons where Moe gets his
Speaker 1: face smashed and he becomes like sexy Mo, it's like
Speaker 1: that sexy dan akright.
Speaker 4: It's the biopic version of dan akright.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody's sexy in this movie. But I'll tell you, man,
Speaker 1: look Lemon name Morris as Garrett Morris. Are you just
Speaker 1: Garrett Morris?
Speaker 4: It's really it's yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: I literally, I'm like, are you just Garrett Morris, Like,
Speaker 1: what the actual flying fuck?
Speaker 4: It's a bit eerie. And Matt Wood and certain shots
Speaker 4: as John Belushia, I'm just like, that's John beluci In.
Speaker 1: Then yeah, Like some of those profile shots are just like, yep,
Speaker 1: there he is. That's yep, yep. Can I say, though,
Speaker 1: Gabriel LaBelle, are you making a are you now making
Speaker 1: a cottage industry of just playing like the names of
Speaker 1: show business? Even Spielberg, Yeah, okay, really good.
Speaker 4: Lauren Michaels, though, doesn't didn't play into the fucking impressions
Speaker 4: that we've been getting of lovable doctor evil Lorne Michaels.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's the thing. The one character in the
Speaker 1: movie I wasn't really clear on the characterization was the
Speaker 1: Lorne Michaels character because the movie doesn't It doesn't that
Speaker 1: the movie doesn't take a stand on it. It's just
Speaker 1: the movie paints him very romantically.
Speaker 4: Oh it's which.
Speaker 1: I get, and at the end of the movie gets
Speaker 1: me where him and what he's having it out with
Speaker 1: Willem Dafoe. That got me straight up, like it got
Speaker 1: me in my being as a creative and I think
Speaker 1: anybody watching the movie would probably feel the same way.
Speaker 1: But that's the fucking point because the movie's manipoly manipulating
Speaker 1: you pretty hard at that point. But I think it works,
Speaker 1: and I think it's because of his performance. But it's
Speaker 1: very romantic, like very fucking rose tinted glasses. I've got
Speaker 1: to assume.
Speaker 4: His No, his performance I think is spot on, actually.
Speaker 1: But I'm talking more to it the movies portrayal of him,
Speaker 1: not his portrayal, but like the movie's character, I guess,
Speaker 1: not even characterization. The way the movie has him playthings
Speaker 1: out is very romantic. His portrayal, I'm assuming, is very
Speaker 1: spot on, just everybody else's. Is Nobody sticks out in
Speaker 1: this movie as that's not a good even JK. Simmons,
Speaker 1: who like you said, there's no reason Milton Burrow's in
Speaker 1: this even he's like not doing a bad version of that.
Speaker 1: It's decent enough, doesn't stick out, and it's the one
Speaker 1: thing that might have stuck out, like a thirteen stick.
Speaker 4: Now he's doing a good Milton Burrow. That's all fine.
Speaker 4: Everyone's doing a good job. And the Milton Berle character
Speaker 4: is there because it eventually would happen. But it's there
Speaker 4: to hammer home one of the themes of this movie,
Speaker 4: which is the old Guard not only not understanding what
Speaker 4: these kids are up to, but actively trying to suppress them.
Speaker 4: You mentioned the Willing Defaux character. He's playing Dave Tebbett,
Speaker 4: who was a NBC executive. One of the subplots of
Speaker 4: the movie. We'll deal with the cast as they come up,
Speaker 4: but one of the subplots in the movie is that
Speaker 4: the affiliates are there, and you have to win over
Speaker 4: the affiliates if you want to get your show into
Speaker 4: every market. We have these we have literally a room
Speaker 4: full of fifty white men smoking old drink and martinz
Speaker 4: eating prime ribs, like this cartoon mob that just like
Speaker 4: wanders around, like to show up and put the pressure on.
Speaker 4: And of course this is something that did not occur. Yes,
Speaker 4: you have to go meet the affiliates and you have
Speaker 4: to do a meet and greet and all that kind
Speaker 4: of thing, and it did happen. It happened weeks before.
Speaker 4: This movie is about the weeks leading up to Saturday
Speaker 4: Night Live. And that's fine. Again, they're compressing it all,
Speaker 4: but like that some plot, in particular the having to
Speaker 4: convince the suits what are the suits doing there at
Speaker 4: ten pm on a Saturday night, those guys would be
Speaker 4: out getting laid.
Speaker 1: Does anyone have a camera?
Speaker 4: Cooper hoff Philip Seymour Hoffman's son as Dick Eversoll, who
Speaker 4: does a good job that Dick Eversol got kicked around
Speaker 4: a lot, I think by the SNL folk because he
Speaker 4: was the suit, but he was their suit, and he
Speaker 4: was dealing with the actual suits, and he kept the
Speaker 4: show on the air when it very well could have died.
Speaker 4: And I thought Cooper Hoffin did a really good job
Speaker 4: in that part.
Speaker 1: That was the other thing I wanted to mention here
Speaker 1: speaking of Dick Eversoll, Dick Eversol is also intimately involved
Speaker 1: in another person's life that has now become under the microscope,
Speaker 1: at least, and not in a positive way the way
Speaker 1: Lorn Michael's life has been. Dick Eversol and Vince McMahon
Speaker 1: a very close good friends, and Dick Eversoll was instrumental
Speaker 1: in WrestleMania becoming thing in a lot of ways. And
Speaker 1: Dick Ebersol and Vince McMahon launched the XFL in the
Speaker 1: nineties together. So that's a thing. And I'm actually in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. This movie reminds me of what
Speaker 1: you would do if you were telling the ninety minutes
Speaker 1: before WrestleMania story, where you have Cindy Lauper show up
Speaker 1: and Liberachi show up and fucking mister t Schope. Okay,
Speaker 1: And I think, here, can me speak broadly about this?
Speaker 1: And then and I get again, I think all of
Speaker 1: the things we've had an issue with, just speak broadly
Speaker 1: about this for a moment. I think the thousand yard
Speaker 1: view problem of this movie is it is the most
Speaker 1: goddamn generic and obvious way to tell this story, and
Speaker 1: it feels so fucking lazy that I can't believe Jason
Speaker 1: Wrightman and Gil Keenan wrote it, because they're both better
Speaker 1: writers than this. And I say that with absolute love
Speaker 1: in my heart for the things that both of them
Speaker 1: have worked on, because Thank You for Smoking is a
Speaker 1: movie that I hold very near and dear to my
Speaker 1: heart for a lot of reasons, because I think it's
Speaker 1: the best thing Aaron Eckhart has ever done, and I
Speaker 1: think it's a movie that I think has aged rather well,
Speaker 1: especially given the way things are now, even though when
Speaker 1: the movie was made things are the same. But I'm
Speaker 1: surprised that the little that like, the little that they
Speaker 1: inject into this movie that really works, feels not enough
Speaker 1: because it works so well that they it feels like
Speaker 1: they just didn't do it enough. They needed three or
Speaker 1: four more passes on this to amp it up. Because
Speaker 1: it's just two broad strokes. It's not enough. It's just
Speaker 1: not enough. This is almost it's almost like a condensed
Speaker 1: mini series. This should have been a thing on HBO.
Speaker 1: And these things cost about the same either way, So
Speaker 1: why would you do it as a movie. Why wouldn't
Speaker 1: you just do it as a mini series?
Speaker 4: The problem with the movie ultimately for me, is that
Speaker 4: they locked themselves into this framework of the ninety minutes.
Speaker 4: They're going to replicate the ninety minutes that SNL is
Speaker 4: on air doing it live. They're going to try to
Speaker 4: give you the sensation of what it's like leading up
Speaker 4: to a live and they think that innovation will carry
Speaker 4: over and paper over the problems with the script, which
Speaker 4: is mainly that these are fascinating human beings that have
Speaker 4: been thrown into like sitcom like scenarios just so we
Speaker 4: can amp up the drama of this ninety minutes. You've
Speaker 4: mentioned a mini series how about two hours. Give me
Speaker 4: fucking another half an hour with any of these characters.
Speaker 4: I want to know what Gilda Radner was thinking. What's funny?
Speaker 4: I watched a like several behind the scenes electronic press
Speaker 4: kit type of stuff, right, and they were interviewing Ella Hunt,
Speaker 4: who plays Gilda Radner, who is English by the way,
Speaker 4: and so she's talking about her character and putting on
Speaker 4: the wig and how excited it was. And intersperse between
Speaker 4: her interview, they're showing her clips from the movie. And
Speaker 4: I realized by the end of her segment, they've shown
Speaker 4: every clip of Gilda in the movie in her electronic presket.
Speaker 4: Every line of dialogue speaks was in there. And that's
Speaker 4: not cool. Man. When we take time to show Milton
Speaker 4: Burrell doing a routine on a made up variety show,
Speaker 4: so we can hammer home once again that old Hollywood
Speaker 4: doesn't want this to happen. And here's the thing that
Speaker 4: they don't factor in. There's a h There was a
Speaker 4: There was an NBC executive named Herb Schlosser, right, who
Speaker 4: was above everybody, certainly above Dave Tebbitt. Right. He loved
Speaker 4: the show. Anytime there was an actual problem, they would
Speaker 4: go to Herb Schlosser and you go, I'll take care
Speaker 4: of this, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: There's one line in the movie that kind of speaks
Speaker 1: to that, where they go, somebody's paying for this, somebody
Speaker 1: is giving us money for some reason. And it's like,
Speaker 1: there's that, there is that essentially that that paying lip
Speaker 1: service to that which is the reality of this situation,
Speaker 1: Like these assholes aren't clearly making any decisions in reality
Speaker 1: they weren't. But the movie has to have why sort
Speaker 1: of villain quote unquote because it's a movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and who needs it? Who cares the pressure of
Speaker 4: putting a show together without a bunch of mean old
Speaker 4: men saying you're going to fail? Is enough. That's the
Speaker 4: way you want to go. If you want to do
Speaker 4: the actual ninety minutes leading up to Saturday Night Live,
Speaker 4: talk to everybody again, every recollection of Actually Happened? Give
Speaker 4: me those fucking ninety minutes. Don't give me a lighting
Speaker 4: package dropping in, don't spill bricks onto the stage, nearly
Speaker 4: crippling George Carlin. Why is George Carlin's hair one shade,
Speaker 4: beard another shade?
Speaker 1: Matthew Reese, what were they thinking? Man?
Speaker 4: He think it does a good job.
Speaker 1: Yes, I don't know. I'm such I love George Carlin
Speaker 1: so much that I think it's his version of Carlin's fine.
Speaker 4: It's fine Carlo coked out of his skull when he
Speaker 4: was on the side of the life. He fully copped
Speaker 4: on this sort of behavior, so I appreciate the characterization
Speaker 4: of him here. But but yeah, why I was just
Speaker 4: thrown off by his hair being lighter than his beard.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what what Matthew Reese kind of
Speaker 1: looked like with that hair and beard combo. He looked
Speaker 1: like Larry David in that movie where the inventor gets
Speaker 1: his invention stolen by John Hamm. He looks like that,
Speaker 1: and it was just like, kept throwing me off. I
Speaker 1: was like, is that Larry David also speaking to looking
Speaker 1: like speaking to looking like someone else? You think it
Speaker 1: was really easy for Willem Dafoe to film this and
Speaker 1: Beetlejuice at the same time and not have to change
Speaker 1: his hairstyle because he literally looks like his character from Beetlejuice,
Speaker 1: just without the fucked up side of his head. Even
Speaker 1: the hairstyle is the same everything in the wild. I
Speaker 1: was like, man, this must have been the easiest double
Speaker 1: day of his life. He's great enough from one.
Speaker 4: I gotta tell you because I know who Dave Tebbitt
Speaker 4: is and I know his feelings towards done and alive,
Speaker 4: and he was a prick like he assigned their unit
Speaker 4: production manager who was like the financial person. That was
Speaker 4: the real struggle on the show. It was always fighting
Speaker 4: about money. Here's how good Willem Dafoe is. Early on,
Speaker 4: he's on the elevator trying with There's a scene with
Speaker 4: him and Lorne Michaels and Chevy Chase and Michael O'donaghuo
Speaker 4: after they've met the affiliates for the first time, where
Speaker 4: he's pumping up Lorne Michaels and trying to tell him
Speaker 4: to do the best show, to push all the boundaries
Speaker 4: to fucking rock the world. And I believed him. So
Speaker 4: that's good because I know David Tebbitt didn't actually want
Speaker 4: that to happen. He was perfectly at ease letting Saturday
Speaker 4: Night Live fail so that they could replace it with
Speaker 4: reruns of Carson. That's another thing that was a that's
Speaker 4: going on dramatically here, and another thing that had already occurred,
Speaker 4: like any fight with anybody, and Carson was perfectly happy
Speaker 4: having a new show as long as they weren't stepping
Speaker 4: on his toes, so long as they weren't running a
Speaker 4: rerun on Saturday Night, which is NBC had been running
Speaker 4: reruns of The Tonight Show on Saturday Night, and Carson
Speaker 4: thought it was he was becoming too overexposed, so he
Speaker 4: wanted to go in there. But it's cheaper for NBC
Speaker 4: to run reruns of something than have to produce a
Speaker 4: whole new thing, So they were perfectly at ease to
Speaker 4: let Set Live Die are NBC's Saturday Night, as was
Speaker 4: known at the time. But we don't need those villains here,
Speaker 4: all those all.
Speaker 1: That don't get I don't get it. Actually, let me
Speaker 1: phrase it. It's not that I don't get it. I
Speaker 1: just don't understand why it was needed. It's like in
Speaker 1: so many movies now, like why do we need love
Speaker 1: interests anymore? In a lot of movies that we've moved
Speaker 1: past that as a storytelling device that's needed anymore. We
Speaker 1: can make an action movie without a love interest, we
Speaker 1: can make a comedic film without a love interest, we
Speaker 1: can make a horror movie without a love interest. And
Speaker 1: we should be able to make biopics without stereotypes of
Speaker 1: real people, because again, the this is five minute research
Speaker 1: versions of the characters. Really, especially with someone like Chevy Chase.
Speaker 4: Oh it's good, not Chevy. I love Chevy. He's my
Speaker 4: favorite part of the movie.
Speaker 1: I like Chevy. But again it's again it's we're just
Speaker 1: talking about what everybody knows about Chevy Chase and not
Speaker 1: really going any further than that, which.
Speaker 4: In the context of this movie, Chevy comes off I
Speaker 4: think not necessarily nuanced. I didn't learn one goddamn thing
Speaker 4: about Chevy Chase at all, but I can imagine that
Speaker 4: he was exactly like this, Oh yeah, totally in the
Speaker 4: context of saying ninety minutes leading up to the start
Speaker 4: of a television show, I imagine this is the Chevy Chase
Speaker 4: you would experience. I know we're not going to get
Speaker 4: anything under the surface of them, but he comes off
Speaker 4: the best as far as i'm.
Speaker 1: Which is weird given what essentially is the real life
Speaker 1: reality of what most people would have known and do
Speaker 1: know now about.
Speaker 4: Chevy Chase, which is here's the thing, Herb.
Speaker 1: He's not the one who would come off the best
Speaker 1: in any room for the most part, never Unfortunately, never.
Speaker 4: Herb Sergeant was one of the writers on this show,
Speaker 4: and he was a veteran. There's a scene in this
Speaker 4: movie that actually did occur on the day, but it
Speaker 4: took place at a bar instead of at the desk,
Speaker 4: where Chevy was like, what's gonna happen to me? I'm
Speaker 4: going to be a big star in Herb Sergeant. Herb
Speaker 4: Sergeant basically did say, I figure you're just gonna end
Speaker 4: up on a talk show, which chevy Chase eventually did
Speaker 4: have his own talk show, which failed. So that was
Speaker 4: a bit precient.
Speaker 1: But the Chevy Chase show a thing that actually existed
Speaker 1: in the reality of our world, and who the fuck
Speaker 1: thought that was a good idea.
Speaker 4: But what I love about that scene is it gives
Speaker 4: us what we fully expect from Chevy Chase, which is
Speaker 4: the sort of arrogance and self centeredness and egotism. And
Speaker 4: then Herb Sargeant takes him to task for it, and
Speaker 4: his reaction is I can't wait, Like I think you
Speaker 4: might eventually commit suicide, like jumping out of a billion Oh,
Speaker 4: I can't wait for that.
Speaker 1: That's gonna be a good day.
Speaker 4: That is so Chevy Chase Man and Corey Michael Smith.
Speaker 4: I believe who was the Riddler on Gotham. He looks
Speaker 4: facially enough like Chase, but again, it's the mannerisms, and
Speaker 4: it's the fucking vocalisms. It's just it's it does.
Speaker 1: The falling down, he does the prat falls.
Speaker 4: Not only that, but the way he I don't know, man,
Speaker 4: it's pretty good. It's pretty good. I'll tell you when
Speaker 4: I believed him the most is chevy Chase when he
Speaker 4: stands up and ground Belushi and pins him up against
Speaker 4: the wall. That physicality there that I believe from Chevy Chase,
Speaker 4: because everyone loves to talk about that. There was eventually
Speaker 4: a fistfight between chevy Chase and Bill Murray a couple
Speaker 4: of seasons into the show Go to Arn't you surprise?
Speaker 1: Bill Murray wasn't in this movie.
Speaker 4: No no, no, obviously not because he wasn't part of.
Speaker 1: The first No but you, But no. I'm more speaking
Speaker 1: to the we're just gonna throw shit in here that
Speaker 1: we know that people who know that this didn't happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 4: What I'm surprised is they didn't have him like in
Speaker 4: the background, going maybe next time, Billy.
Speaker 1: No, Yeah, like with this kid Bill in the audience.
Speaker 1: He's coming out. He's a real coming up kid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the fucking they didn't have an Anakin moment in the
Speaker 1: movie with Bill Murray. Yeah, was surprised that was not
Speaker 1: in this movie.
Speaker 4: Yes, because there are moments from the future in this movie.
Speaker 4: At one point, o'donnah was sitting at a desk with
Speaker 4: Franken and Davis and Al. Franken is eating from a
Speaker 4: box of Colon blow cereal, which is a parody commercial
Speaker 4: that Phil Hartman did in eighty eight or eighty nine.
Speaker 1: Ye, and hey, did Lorne Michael see himself in the future.
Speaker 1: I guess that's what that scene is where he's like
Speaker 1: staring at the old bald Man. Yeah, but again, it's
Speaker 1: more speaking to the futurisms of the movie, including the
Speaker 1: Gilda Radner knows She's gonna die scene, which was just, oh,
Speaker 1: my god, movie, we get it, we know, but my god,
Speaker 1: I can see myself twenty years from No Fun.
Speaker 4: And Okay, here's a characterization that did not work for
Speaker 4: me as far as giving us the surface of what
Speaker 4: we expect. They portrayed mluci as this feral animal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he looked like Wolverine from the side from time
Speaker 1: to time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, and we get occasional glimpses of what probably
Speaker 4: he was actually like, but like when he's on the
Speaker 4: ice skating rink, which again didn't happen that night.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but it's a good moment if you're gonna
Speaker 1: include me, it is a good moment. They take that
Speaker 1: one and it works.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I will say that the movie kind of
Speaker 4: comes off like Birdman. It's almost like they're trying to
Speaker 4: do the one continuous take, but they don't adhere to it.
Speaker 4: They don't make it a point of it. But the
Speaker 4: camera is constantly moving from scent to scent, from back,
Speaker 4: backstage to four ground whatever.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: But we'll on occasions slow down for about thirty seconds
Speaker 4: to two minutes where we'll have moments where we spend
Speaker 4: with the cast and it's always like a pairing from
Speaker 4: the cast where.
Speaker 1: It does have that weird glow and haze to it.
Speaker 4: But she like not in sixteen millimeter. Good for them
Speaker 4: because it does feel like nineteen seventy five New York
Speaker 4: City like that. I appreciate. There Again, a lot that
Speaker 4: I like in this movie, But in these scenes, these
Speaker 4: sort of two hand or scenes with there's Garrett Morris
Speaker 4: and Jane Curtin have a scene together where she just
Speaker 4: basically does what Jane Curtin did or did best, but
Speaker 4: as a performer, like she does a skit. There are
Speaker 4: so many times where we slow down to meet one
Speaker 4: of our characters and they're just doing bits, and that
Speaker 4: drives me crazy. I want to know, first of all,
Speaker 4: I want to know what Garrett Morris thought beyond what
Speaker 4: am I doing here? Because that would be his hit,
Speaker 4: that would be his refrain for the entirety of Saturday
Speaker 4: Night Live, because they were constantly underutilizing him. And I
Speaker 4: get that they're putting that in here, but he just
Speaker 4: keeps hammering that home. So that's his fucking character arc
Speaker 4: for the movie is I don't know why I'm here.
Speaker 4: Jane Kurtin is just being the character she plays and
Speaker 4: the fucking skits that she's doing for some reason, like
Speaker 4: that's what we're supposed to take away from her. Lorraine
Speaker 4: Newman is apparently very wounded that she's not the only
Speaker 4: target of dan Aykroyd's affections. That's her character arc for
Speaker 4: this fucking movie. Uh CHAMPI A gets an actual character arc. Danny,
Speaker 4: I don't know what his fucking character arc is other
Speaker 4: than talking people down from drugs and fucking and how
Speaker 4: many times did he do that in the ninety minutes
Speaker 4: before fucking air? And yeah, yeah twice and can.
Speaker 1: I and I guess look you'll Keenan and Jason Reightman
Speaker 1: are also being very clever in that the structure of
Speaker 1: the movie somewhat tries to reflect a episode of SNL
Speaker 1: two right, literally two musical performances in the movie as well. Again,
Speaker 1: and then we have those scenes that feel like, again
Speaker 1: there are these two hander scenes between characters, but again
Speaker 1: it feels like it could be a segment on SNL
Speaker 1: in terms of it being like, this is a thing
Speaker 1: that happens, and then we move on and it affects
Speaker 1: literally nothing else and the rest of the goddamn movie.
Speaker 1: I think, ultimately is the problem with the movie is
Speaker 1: there's no interconnectivity with anything, and the characters are just
Speaker 1: a stereotype of the person we know, which does no
Speaker 1: heavy lifting. This was not one magical evening, because holy shit,
Speaker 1: all these things can't happen in one night. That's too
Speaker 1: magical of an evening, even for SNL. That's why movies
Speaker 1: are fictional, because you can make a movie like, Oh
Speaker 1: my God, after Hours, that's one magical evening. But that's
Speaker 1: fucking fictional. This movie's trying to be that in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. Oh all these things happen in one night,
Speaker 1: isn't that fucking nuts?
Speaker 4: Here's the thing I'm gonna keep saying this. They've hamstrung
Speaker 4: themselves by locking this nine ninety minute beforehand? Yeah time frame?
Speaker 4: Am I supposed to believe that? Literally ten minutes before airtime?
Speaker 4: Lorne Michaels met Alan Zoy Bell in a fucking bar
Speaker 4: pumping out jokes for a Boris Belt comedian. Are you
Speaker 4: kidding me? Did that work for you even dramatically? I'm
Speaker 4: sure you did, as far as you knew that actually happened.
Speaker 4: What did that do for you dramatically in the story
Speaker 4: that they were telling.
Speaker 1: As far as I knew, I know, it did not happen.
Speaker 1: It did not happen that way.
Speaker 4: It did seem like that they were foundering and they
Speaker 4: suddenly they like, we needed jokes, and then suddenly Zibell
Speaker 4: comes and saves the day.
Speaker 1: That's the way it happened in real life, right, I know,
Speaker 1: nothing about reality? What is reality?
Speaker 4: That the reality is? Alan Zwibell fucking turned in his
Speaker 4: book when word went out that they were hiring writers
Speaker 4: for Sign Out Live, and they read his fucking jokes,
Speaker 4: including the prostitute joke gets on the air in the
Speaker 4: first episode, and they hired him and he became like
Speaker 4: one of the best fucking comedy writers in television. That's
Speaker 4: what happened. What was like, why are Jason right? Why
Speaker 4: are you doing these things? Why are these sitcom like
Speaker 4: moments like crammed in here?
Speaker 1: You think you would want to represent these people better
Speaker 1: given your direct relation in contact with them. But hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, uh Nicholas Podeny, the kid doing the
Speaker 1: Billy Crystal's pretty good man, not Billy Crystal's fucking wild.
Speaker 1: I honestly, close your eyes and tell me that's not
Speaker 1: just Billy Crystal. Somehow that kid just opens his mouth
Speaker 1: and Billy Crystal's voice comes out. It's really good. And
Speaker 1: if you showed it to anybody and asked you to
Speaker 1: ask them to tell you who that was, there's no
Speaker 1: question who that is. Even if you don't tell them
Speaker 1: it's Billy Christal, it's Billy Crystal. Clearly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for those of you who don't know, I haven't
Speaker 4: seen the movie yet. Okay, leading up to the premitive
Speaker 4: sentate life, Lorden Michael's overbooked. Obviously, you want to have
Speaker 4: too much matim than too little, and so they booked
Speaker 4: three stand up comedians, George Carlin who was the host,
Speaker 4: Valerie Bromfield, and Billy Crystal. That's what didn't happen ten
Speaker 4: minutes before the show. It happened that night, but not anyway.
Speaker 4: Billy Crystal had a routine that was six minutes long.
Speaker 4: Valeri Bromfeldt had a six minute routine. They were each
Speaker 4: told that they had to cut it down to two minutes.
Speaker 4: Valeri Bromfeldt stay. Billy Crystal's people made him leave, and
Speaker 4: that was a regret. It is my understanding that when
Speaker 4: you're watching the movie, if you see anyone with a
Speaker 4: script in their hand, those are photocopies of one of
Speaker 4: the original scripts from Saturday Night Live, which was provided
Speaker 4: to them by Billy Crystal, who was the only one
Speaker 4: who still had his script because he took his home
Speaker 4: with him that night.
Speaker 1: Ain't it weird how life works out that way?
Speaker 4: It is? And this scene represents to me another thing
Speaker 4: that we need to talk about in the movie, which is,
Speaker 4: first of all, if I'm in a scenario where anyone
Speaker 4: starts doing a skit to me, I'm going to get
Speaker 4: up and leave real life.
Speaker 1: But you're doing a bit. You don't want to do
Speaker 1: a bit.
Speaker 4: Right now, my god, don't put there's bits in it.
Speaker 1: There's bits in their skits, right, there's bits in their skits.
Speaker 1: Bits are organic. Skits is some shit that you had
Speaker 1: in your fucking back pockets.
Speaker 4: A bit as yeah, a bit as a joke. A
Speaker 4: skit is a fucking miming sort of performance. And then
Speaker 4: a sketch is what sat in life is trying to achieve. Bill,
Speaker 4: Crystal Harry is doing doing a skit, and it drives
Speaker 4: me crazy, and it leads to a greater conversation, I believe,
Speaker 4: which is, you've chosen to make a movie about the
Speaker 4: funniest people on earth, one of the funniest shows of
Speaker 4: all time for fifty years. When did you laugh in
Speaker 4: the movie, Chris?
Speaker 1: Exactly, boy, Rhetorical questions are fun. It can be fun, folks.
Speaker 1: I didn't. And again it's because you know it's a biopic,
Speaker 1: which means no fun can be had by anyone other
Speaker 1: than again, like it was a good dramatic film, but
Speaker 1: why is this story being told that way?
Speaker 5: Why?
Speaker 1: You know what it reminds me of. It's like they
Speaker 1: took the last ten minutes of Ghostbusters Afterlife and turned
Speaker 1: it into an hour and a half movie, just like
Speaker 1: this weird, fucking pastiche of things that you know and
Speaker 1: love and have heard of, but now being shown through
Speaker 1: the lens of nineteen seventy five SNL. And it's here's
Speaker 1: Chevy Chase and he knows he's gonna be a big star,
Speaker 1: and here's Dan Ackroyd. It's, yeah, like, what is this
Speaker 1: ready player one for the SNL crowd? That's what it
Speaker 1: feels like. It's just this fucking pastiche. That's why we
Speaker 1: were making the Bill Murray joke early on, because it
Speaker 1: is a surprising. There wasn't like an after post credit
Speaker 1: scene with Bill Murray. Hey, Lauren, there's this new comedian
Speaker 1: we want you to talk to. His name's Bill. Bill
Speaker 1: Murray will return in Saturday Night too. That's what this
Speaker 1: movie's speaking to in a lot of ways. The you know.
Speaker 4: Okay, so there's a scene TwixT Milton Burrow and Chevy
Speaker 4: Chase where Chevy Chase had where rather Milton Burrow pulls
Speaker 4: out his huge dick. He's famous in Hollywood for having
Speaker 4: a huge dick him and Forrest Tucker. Now that did
Speaker 4: happen to Zwhy Belle Z Why Belle saw it? But
Speaker 4: it wasn't in a confrontational way. Here's what I'll say.
Speaker 4: If you're going to include Milton burrole, the only reason
Speaker 4: to do so is when he actually appeared on the show.
Speaker 4: They were doing a sketch where his character is introduced
Speaker 4: late and he did this bullshit von Villian move where
Speaker 4: he would start at the back of the stage so
Speaker 4: you'd focus on him like while the other characters are talking,
Speaker 4: and then he would walk all the way up to
Speaker 4: the front, so he's the focus no matter what is happening.
Speaker 4: And Bill Murray knew he was going to do it,
Speaker 4: so he got in the way and blocked him the
Speaker 4: entire way up. That to me is so much more
Speaker 4: of a fuck you than just a trading barbes with
Speaker 4: Chevy Chase, because they're doing it on the air in
Speaker 4: this medium that Milton Burrow like claims ownership of I
Speaker 4: get no, I get why they're doing the ninety minutes beforehand.
Speaker 4: I get the idea, but they've absolutely cut their own
Speaker 4: legs down from under themselves. Because there are so many
Speaker 4: fascinating stories about Saturday Night Live. You've just genius and
Speaker 4: most of them, and you're adding in stuff that you
Speaker 4: don't need at all. I don't know. I think this
Speaker 4: movie is a beautiful failure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't think it tries hard enough. With
Speaker 1: material that's so rich, you don't need to really try
Speaker 1: that hard to adapt it. It adapts itself, for fuck's sake.
Speaker 1: The book is an oral history. That means they just
Speaker 1: talk to the people and ask them questions, and then
Speaker 1: they turned it into a goddamn book because the narrative
Speaker 1: tells itself, for fuck's sake. That's what an oral history is.
Speaker 1: And here we have the filmic equivalent of just reading
Speaker 1: the back of a serial box and then the best
Speaker 1: hits it is and now that's SNL. You know those
Speaker 1: CDs and now those hits. It's just condense it all
Speaker 1: down into one thing. But you can't do that with
Speaker 1: something like this. This is Look, it's coming out in
Speaker 1: the fiftieth year or the year before the fiftieth year
Speaker 1: of SNL correct twenty twenty five is fifty years of SNL. No, like,
Speaker 1: this is a thing that should be a love letter
Speaker 1: to the people that love SNL, not a grimmer for
Speaker 1: people who have no fucking idea what this story is
Speaker 1: so that they can get away with inserting horseshit and
Speaker 1: trying to pass it off as happening.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that goes for both of us. I think it
Speaker 4: goes for people who don't know the history. But you
Speaker 4: give them the honest story, but then give us the
Speaker 4: honest story too. You keep mentioning the book Live from
Speaker 4: New York. The OORL has the uncensored History of Satday
Speaker 4: Night Live. That's Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller's book,
Speaker 4: and it is essential if you want to know anything
Speaker 4: about the history of Centerate Live. I definitely get it,
Speaker 4: because you're going to get it from the beginning up
Speaker 4: until the present or the present when the book came out,
Speaker 4: which was like it right twenty years ago now. But
Speaker 4: I would say this book, which is Saturday Night a
Speaker 4: Backstage History of Saturday Night Live by Doug Hill and
Speaker 4: Jeff Weingrad, is the actual book to get if you're
Speaker 4: interested in the early years of Saturday Night Live. Because
Speaker 4: they covered from seventy five to eighty five basically, so
Speaker 4: those ten years, and they get real granular, like I
Speaker 4: know as much as I know because of this book.
Speaker 4: And everyone was talking to these guys at the time,
Speaker 4: so they got a lot of the dirt and a
Speaker 4: lot of the minutia. How do I know that those
Speaker 4: bricks were late at six am the night before because
Speaker 4: of this book, because they talked to Eugene Lee and
Speaker 4: Leo Yoshimura and the stage hands who were pissed off.
Speaker 4: So I would encourage everyone to see to read those
Speaker 4: if you want a more a rounder appreciation of what
Speaker 4: actually happened. And here's another thing I want to say.
Speaker 4: You go, you decide you're making this Center in a
Speaker 4: live movie. You're going to make it in this ninety
Speaker 4: minute format, just like Center Alive. Right, that's the structure
Speaker 4: you're going to do because you're care being experimental with it, right, Okay, Now,
Speaker 4: then cast six people and have them play every fucking
Speaker 4: part because you're doing Saturday Night Live, right. You Sure
Speaker 4: you can have musical guests, and you can have other
Speaker 4: guest performers and stuff and a host, but really get
Speaker 4: six performers, dress them up like those fucking people and
Speaker 4: then have them perform every fucking role in the movie.
Speaker 4: I think if you want to go audacious and do that.
Speaker 1: That's creative. That's an idea worth getting excited about.
Speaker 4: It's no less valid than making up a bunch of
Speaker 4: shit that did not happen on the day just for
Speaker 4: dramatic effect.
Speaker 1: That's what I mean. I remember that Bob Dylan movie
Speaker 1: that had five different interpretations of Bob Dylan, and now
Speaker 1: we're just getting Timothy Shallomy as Bob Dylan. Who fucking cares.
Speaker 1: Give me a fucking break. Do something original with the
Speaker 1: fucking idea, because just telling the story linearly can be
Speaker 1: done already. That's called books. But now we're just making
Speaker 1: shit up for the sake of making shit up. If
Speaker 1: we're like you said, if we're just gonna make shit up,
Speaker 1: let's go for.
Speaker 4: It, I will say. In the movie's favorite, at least
Speaker 4: avoids the walk hard Dewey Cox's story convention of people
Speaker 4: just saying the full name of another character so we
Speaker 4: know who they are. But it does make the sort
Speaker 4: of fumble of walking past the camera moves past the
Speaker 4: page desk where two characters are saying the package should
Speaker 4: be addressed Al Franken and Tom Davis. Oh my god,
Speaker 4: that's just one step down from Hi there, John Lennon.
Speaker 4: Nice to meet you, buddy, Holly.
Speaker 1: And that's what Walk Hard took to task with biopicks
Speaker 1: in general. And this is a biopic, it just happens
Speaker 1: to be a very specific kind of biopic that normally,
Speaker 1: when done this way, doesn't fumble this Hard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you're doing anything they're doing in Walk Hard,
Speaker 4: you need to rethink it. Just don't do that. Yeah,
Speaker 4: everything is in that movie for very specific reason. It's
Speaker 4: a lesson book for biopicks on what exactly not to do.
Speaker 4: Don't do those things.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised it's not in this movie, but we're three
Speaker 1: quarters of the way there, Like having Lorne Michael's on
Speaker 1: his deathbed telling someone the story of the first Saturday
Speaker 1: Night Live, Like, I'm shocked we're not doing that. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm shocked because the movie does pretty much everything else
Speaker 1: that you would hold against biopicks. It really does. You
Speaker 1: don't want none of this, Like we have similar scenes
Speaker 1: to that, sure do.
Speaker 4: We've got the We've got Garrett Morris tempted with cocaine
Speaker 4: by by evil Preston Band that eventually Belushi sniffs off
Speaker 4: of him.
Speaker 1: You don't want none of this, Garrett Morris?
Speaker 4: The fuck? Why am I here?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Oh wow? The movie is I heard a lot
Speaker 1: about the West Coast woke liberal leftist elites, and the
Speaker 1: movie is like of the movie Three Quarters Away, just
Speaker 1: goes Garrett Morris is on SNL because he was black,
Speaker 1: apparently is what the movie wants us to think, which.
Speaker 4: Is true and just come out and fucking say it.
Speaker 4: Let me tell you one of my very earliest memories
Speaker 4: I have several, but one of them, very vividly, is
Speaker 4: Dan Ackroyd dressed as Julia Child cutting himself and blood
Speaker 4: spurting all over the kitchen, right, and my parents cackling
Speaker 4: with laughter over it. It is an incredibly formative image
Speaker 4: and moment in my young life, right, And that set
Speaker 4: up for the sketches portrayed here in this movie, that
Speaker 4: sketches from season four of Saturday Night Live. I know
Speaker 4: that because I was born in seventy three and would
Speaker 4: not have been able to see anything prior to that
Speaker 4: on television, certainly not remember it. Another moment, where why
Speaker 4: are you bringing this here into this movie? Was there
Speaker 4: not an.
Speaker 1: Fan service, like I said, Ghostbusters after.
Speaker 4: A lit so they could get him getting splashed with
Speaker 4: blood and giving up and have the Edwood moment of
Speaker 4: the movie, which is when he goes to the bar,
Speaker 4: the got to go meet Dorson Wells moment.
Speaker 1: Everybody's done this movie before. The movie just doesn't care
Speaker 1: that somebody's done it already.
Speaker 4: Beautiful things.
Speaker 1: It's not that it even doesn't care. Yeah, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna don't know. I've seen it.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to do.
Speaker 1: I've seen worse. I've seen worse biopicks, I really have.
Speaker 1: I've seen lazier biopicks. This. While this is a lazy biopic,
Speaker 1: it still has some redeeming quality because this is probably
Speaker 1: going to be the only other time that this story
Speaker 1: is told, because now they've unless somebody will to do
Speaker 1: a Chevy Chase movie or a Gilda Radner movie or
Speaker 1: a John Belushi movie.
Speaker 4: So that's the shame of it that makes it a
Speaker 4: definitive right. Yeah, That's what actually bothers me about this
Speaker 4: is because literally a six episode mini series hour long
Speaker 4: episodes could have told the story of Early Center and
Speaker 4: live in all of its crazy glory, and we would
Speaker 4: have gotten to know. I would like to have known
Speaker 4: what Gilda Radner was thinking when she moved down to
Speaker 4: New York, being alone in the city. You know what
Speaker 4: was dan Aykroyd doing? I know what he was doing,
Speaker 4: but why were we portraying some of that? That The
Speaker 4: lives of these characters are rich and crazy and fun
Speaker 4: and full. But all they wanted to hear is tell
Speaker 4: the story about Lauren Michael's fighting the man, as if
Speaker 4: we haven't lionized Lorne Michael's enough, and we're about to
Speaker 4: on a grand scale, like in just a couple of
Speaker 4: weeks is the fiftieth anniversary special where it's going to
Speaker 4: be a love fest for Laurne Michaels, and God bless
Speaker 4: Laurne Michaels. It was his vision. He did pull it together.
Speaker 4: He still has maintained it for fifty years. There's nothing
Speaker 4: like him. I just don't know that we needed a
Speaker 4: focus solely on him. I don't know that I needed
Speaker 4: to hear Rosie Schuster give me his sad, sack, bad
Speaker 4: backstory in this movie. When I came away not knowing
Speaker 4: one more thing about anyone involved in this cast or
Speaker 4: well on Loris well.
Speaker 1: On Lorne Michaels in a lot of ways feels like
Speaker 1: a cipher in the movie. Anyways, he's I mean, he's there.
Speaker 1: It's fine. But again, he's the main character of the movie.
Speaker 1: But inasmuch as there are any characters in the movie
Speaker 1: more than just lines being said to what end, nobody
Speaker 1: feels like a real character. Nobody feels like he actually about.
Speaker 4: Lauren Michaels, though you would come away knowing something about
Speaker 4: Lauren Michaels. Can you even tell me who Anne Beats
Speaker 4: was in this movie?
Speaker 1: Nope?
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly?
Speaker 1: What about Lorraine Newman?
Speaker 4: What about Lorraine Newman?
Speaker 1: Or about Jane Curtin.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know anybody anymore than I did. And
Speaker 4: maybe that's not the movie that they were making, but
Speaker 4: that's the movie that we needed.
Speaker 1: That's the movie that you wanted, and that's the movie
Speaker 1: that I wanted, and that's the movie that needed to happen,
Speaker 1: because again, SNL is a cultural touchstone for a reason.
Speaker 1: You could make a show about the creation and the
Speaker 1: writer's room of the Simpsons in the same way you're
Speaker 1: making a movie but Saturday Night Live. These are cultural
Speaker 1: touchstones for people that matter. And I would hope that
Speaker 1: if you did something similarly for a cultural touchdowne Like
Speaker 1: the Simpsons, you would give a fuck about what you're
Speaker 1: doing and actually portray it interestingly, not just as a
Speaker 1: bunch of people rattling off what we all know they're
Speaker 1: going to say. Anyways. Garrett Morris didn't know why he
Speaker 1: was there, Chevy Chase was an asshole, dan Ackroyd's a weirdo,
Speaker 1: and John Belushi was unhinged. Wow, I knew all of
Speaker 1: that ahead of time. And I think anybody who goes
Speaker 1: to watch this movie is going to anyways, because that's
Speaker 1: the other question, right oly at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: is a nineteen year old watching this movie? No? Who
Speaker 1: is watching this movie? You me people in between our
Speaker 1: age group, maybe people a little bit older than you,
Speaker 1: but probably not people much older than Maybe. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: think people much older than you would be watching this movie.
Speaker 1: Just watch sketches from SNL in a lot of ways.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you've got a Peacock subscription, dive in YouTube.
Speaker 4: All fifty seasons are available on peacock right now. Last
Speaker 4: night I watched the first episode of Centerate Live again,
Speaker 4: and it is a mess. Here's another thing that they
Speaker 4: didn't really touch on and I wish they had, which
Speaker 4: was Paul Simon was a really good friend of Louren Michaels.
Speaker 4: He hosted the second episode of Center Life. There were
Speaker 4: a bunch of very established people who were friends of
Speaker 4: Lorne Michaels, were acquaintances who also wanted to host the
Speaker 4: first episode of Senate Live, and he put them all off.
Speaker 4: And do you know why, because he knew the first
Speaker 4: episode is going to be a disastin no matter what happened.
Speaker 4: Wanted to work out all the kinks and start fresh
Speaker 4: in the second, which is exactly what they did. The
Speaker 4: show would hit its stride, by the way, with the
Speaker 4: Candice Bergen episode, which is how this movie should have ended.
Speaker 4: Just Sam, would you recommend the movie?
Speaker 1: Chris?
Speaker 4: Would you recommend people go to the theater and pay
Speaker 4: for this movie?
Speaker 1: No? I would not. Again again, that's what I was. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: what you're talking about, in a lot of ways is
Speaker 1: exactly what I'm talking about. I think it's just we're
Speaker 1: saying the same thing here, which is who is this for?
Speaker 1: And why would someone go see it? And I don't
Speaker 1: know who this movie's for, and I don't know why
Speaker 1: anyone would go and see it, because if you know
Speaker 1: enough about SNL, you're probably gonna avoid this because this
Speaker 1: is not speaking to the reality of it was. And
Speaker 1: if you don't know anything about SNL, this is not
Speaker 1: something you're going to be interested in because I just again,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's doing enough to warrant anyone who's
Speaker 1: not at least somewhat aware to come into the fold.
Speaker 1: This movie suffers from the one thing that so many
Speaker 1: other things suffer from that we've talked about in the past,
Speaker 1: which is it's making me think of other things that
Speaker 1: are actually good that aren't this, that I'd rather be watching.
Speaker 1: In this movie's case, it's sketches from SNL, which is
Speaker 1: what you're aping. Just let me watch those then with
Speaker 1: the real people, and I'll enjoy that a lot more.
Speaker 1: We talked about The Doors recently, and I have subsequently
Speaker 1: watched that movie like five more times, and I really
Speaker 1: enjoy it a lot more. And I will tell you why,
Speaker 1: because of the recreation and just creation of things of
Speaker 1: it all. Everything in between, everything in between those scenes
Speaker 1: in the movie is nothing that I not necessarily care about,
Speaker 1: but nothing I'm there for. Why would we try to
Speaker 1: recreate things that are in the world that can be
Speaker 1: consumed in a minute and a half because most again,
Speaker 1: most of the best sketches of early SNL aren't sitting
Speaker 1: at ten minutes long. They're they're not.
Speaker 4: That's Oh, actually, I'm now going to tell you to
Speaker 4: go back and watch some'm early sat in Alive, because
Speaker 4: am I The sketches are enormous, they go on. There
Speaker 4: is so much chaff in the wheat in early SNL.
Speaker 1: Maybe I wanted to give it the benefit of the day.
Speaker 4: You will you will be shocked how much bad material
Speaker 4: got on the air. But that's part of it. It's
Speaker 4: part of its history.
Speaker 1: It's part of honing the blade of what they were doing.
Speaker 1: It doesn't come out fully formed, it comes out formed enough.
Speaker 1: It's been honed and sharpened for fifty fucking years.
Speaker 4: At this point, I'd brought up the Doors movie because
Speaker 4: I think when we were talking about that, I mentioned
Speaker 4: this movie in relation to that, because that's a movie
Speaker 4: that is total garbage. It is historically all over the place,
Speaker 4: and I still fucking love it.
Speaker 1: It's faky, it's false in every way, shapen.
Speaker 4: For but I still love it for the reasons you mentioned,
Speaker 4: which is the recreation of the time and the place
Speaker 4: and the performance is going on, and all the effort,
Speaker 4: it's all paying off. It's just that the script isn't
Speaker 4: supporting it. In the filmmaking that's mostly supporting it. Here
Speaker 4: it's the same thing. And I imagine after a few
Speaker 4: years and maybe a couple more viewings of this movie,
Speaker 4: I can appreciate it the way that I appreciate the
Speaker 4: Doors movie, which is what I would recommend about the movie,
Speaker 4: which is I think all of these performances are great.
Speaker 4: I love the look of the movie. I love the
Speaker 4: recreation of aid Ah at the time. I love seeing
Speaker 4: all the old props and all the people. I loved
Speaker 4: being able to just look at a scene and look
Speaker 4: at the characters on screen and know everybody down to
Speaker 4: like stage hands, who they were, Like, I recognize Joe Disco,
Speaker 4: that's you gotta be the fanatic to recognize that guy
Speaker 4: in this fucking movie. I love all of that, and
Speaker 4: I think people should watch the movie when it's available
Speaker 4: for streaming, with a hope that they will then go
Speaker 4: read Saturday Night and Live from New York and then
Speaker 4: I recommended this movie over this movie. We already mentioned it.
Speaker 4: The Feudal and stupid gesture the Doug Kenny movie, because
Speaker 4: you're also going to get most of the characters here.
Speaker 4: Gilda Radner shows up in there, played by Jackie Tone
Speaker 4: does a I'm sorry, a much better job of Gilda Radner.
Speaker 4: There's a Belushi in there we get. We get Joel
Speaker 4: McHale Chevy Chase's coast are playing Chemmy Chase in that movie.
Speaker 4: He does a great job in that too. That movie
Speaker 4: covers a lot of.
Speaker 1: A talk show hosts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know what, we even get Lauren Michaels here,
Speaker 4: because Doug Kenny felt like Lauren Michaels basically just fucking
Speaker 4: ripped off the Lampoon Radio show and National Lampoon in
Speaker 4: general and poached all of his best talent and what
Speaker 4: made his show. They don't cover that in the legend
Speaker 4: of Laurne Michaels here, that he basically stole all the
Speaker 4: talent from other areas and slapped it into his thing.
Speaker 1: Might make Lorne Michaels the villain of the movie.
Speaker 4: God, wouldn't that have been interesting? They could have taken
Speaker 4: that stand.
Speaker 1: As opposed to romanticizing the living shit out of it,
Speaker 1: just like Steven Spielberg did with the Fableman's Oh my again,
Speaker 1: apropo given who plays Lorne Michaels.
Speaker 4: I guess if you cast that kid as Hitler, we're
Speaker 4: gonna get a sweet and fuzzy Hitler.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, who can Gabriel label play next?
Speaker 1: Who's the next titan of pop culture and or television
Speaker 1: or movies that he can play? What's waiting next? He's
Speaker 1: Matt Greening in Springfield.
Speaker 4: That's right. Fox executives are wrestling Matt Groening to the
Speaker 4: ground when some bullshit seen to let us know that
Speaker 4: there was a struggle involved.
Speaker 1: Ten minutes to the Tracy Omen show. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: here we go.
Speaker 4: I'm drawing as fast as I can.
Speaker 1: Tell me the story about the Simpsons, where is the
Speaker 1: easiest path to go? The Matt Greening story. It's so
Speaker 1: many other things, like what's the easiest route? Okay, let's
Speaker 1: just take that.
Speaker 4: And we know it should be about Schwartzwelder.
Speaker 1: Or Dan Castell, Lenetta or I don't know, Julie camp,
Speaker 1: Max Crossbrien, Phil Hartman. It's about Phil Hartman. Really, that's
Speaker 1: the story.
Speaker 4: He's the real fucking interesting guy there. Do you ever
Speaker 4: see his movie Cold Blooded with Jason Priestley and Peter Riegert.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, go see that movie. It's like this
Speaker 4: fucking amoral hitman with the sociopath who's like trying to
Speaker 4: relate to another human being, so he finds an old
Speaker 4: hit man to like to teach him how to be human.
Speaker 4: It's really good, huh.
Speaker 1: I think we had people trying to make a story
Speaker 1: that was a relatable tale of, like you said, fighting
Speaker 1: the man but failing horribly the same way someone got
Speaker 1: on stage and started cursing at people in the audience.
Speaker 1: Best intentions go only as far as people putting in
Speaker 1: the effort, and stopping yourself from saying the N word
Speaker 1: is just like stopping yourself from telling the laziest story
Speaker 1: about SNL possible. Even if they had told it from
Speaker 1: chevy Chase's point of view, wouldn't that have been a
Speaker 1: more interesting story, because given how much of a deal,
Speaker 1: given how much of a demon he has been d
Speaker 1: by everything, including doing it to himself, that's the most
Speaker 1: audacious story to take on is to tell it from
Speaker 1: chevy Chase's point of view and make him a relatable character,
Speaker 1: which would be like, that's the uphill, that's the Sissophian task,
Speaker 1: and the movie tries to do it, but it would
Speaker 1: have been really impressive if that had been the way
Speaker 1: you tell the story.
Speaker 4: Oh, they definitely did it here, Like Chevy cums as
Speaker 4: much as you can. I'm telling you, I came away
Speaker 4: loving Chevy in this movie.
Speaker 1: Is that the thing that no one, if you don't
Speaker 1: know anything about any of this, like, you'd be like,
Speaker 1: Chevy Chase is a nice guy, right, No, I.
Speaker 4: Think they think they deal with him fairly. Here is
Speaker 4: my point. But if they had what you're saying focused
Speaker 4: on Chevy's point of view from the get go and
Speaker 4: continue to deal with him fairly, show what a prick
Speaker 4: he is, and like over the course of the film
Speaker 4: we're on his side, then yeah, that would have been something. Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but again, when good intentions go only so far,
Speaker 1: when the intent stops mattering and I don't know what
Speaker 1: the intent of this movie was, if you had told
Speaker 1: it from anyone else's point of view, there might have been.
Speaker 4: A desjoy a celebration.
Speaker 1: We're going to get that in real life. To your point,
Speaker 1: we don't need a fictionalized version of it.
Speaker 4: That's so here's the thing, folks, I need you to
Speaker 4: go watch every season of Sunday Night Live, but watch
Speaker 4: the first season just for this movie. Then watch the movie,
Speaker 4: then read those books, Chris, when you're not, When you're not,
Speaker 4: this is your show too, your your culture Council. You
Speaker 4: can tell people where you're at and where to find
Speaker 4: other shit.
Speaker 1: Much to the chagrin of at least two people on
Speaker 1: the face of planet Earth. You can find everything I
Speaker 1: do over at weirdingwaymedia dot com, where yes, I am still,
Speaker 1: in fact the host of the Culture Cast, to show
Speaker 1: I do at least once a week, where we talk
Speaker 1: about movies that I have watched or I'm being asked
Speaker 1: to watch, or have given people the opportunity to watch
Speaker 1: with me, like we just did with you and I
Speaker 1: Father Malone for an entire month September, talking about a
Speaker 1: whole host of oddly biopics, and here we are talking
Speaker 1: about another one. Jesus christ Man, You're just like, hey,
Speaker 1: I know that one genre of things you probably don't
Speaker 1: really like anymore than I do. We're gonna watch a
Speaker 1: lot of them, a lot, hey man. And yeah, you
Speaker 1: noped out of another new movie Joker Folio do. But
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, it too is a biopic
Speaker 1: of a fake person, still a biopick. Those are called
Speaker 1: character studies when they're not about real people. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you can find all the musings about similar audio diversions
Speaker 1: over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. What about you, Father Malone.
Speaker 4: They're listening to Way to Hear in midnine Viewing is
Speaker 4: the show. It's on twice a week with a there's
Speaker 4: a plethora of shows. You're listening to this show. Check
Speaker 4: me out there, check me out over at HP. Who
Speaker 4: is our composer. He does all the music for Midnight
Speaker 4: Viewing and most of the weirding Way Media. He does
Speaker 4: a show called Night Mister Walters, a taxi podcast. I
Speaker 4: co host that where we take a look at the
Speaker 4: television series Taxi Go. Check that out. Midnight Viewing is,
Speaker 4: as mentioned, a proud member of the weirding Way Media group.
Speaker 4: Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight. This is
Speaker 4: an official midnight viewing. So that's the sign off.
Speaker 1: Given the Paul Shaffer look like a ghoul in the movie,
Speaker 1: it makes sense.
Speaker 4: Oh, I want to thank Michaels, I want to thank
Speaker 4: the cast. Thank you New York. How much time do
Speaker 4: we have a musical guest I want to thank you
Speaker 4: a little fights, I want to thank I want to
Speaker 4: think cold Play.
Speaker 6: They've been on seventeen times. They can't.
Speaker 4: In the
Speaker 1: Sh