Saturday Night Behind The Scenes

Live from New York, it's Saturday Night! President of Trojan Horse Home Security, I broke into your home this evening to show you and your family just how vulnerable you are to crime. This is a film about a group of sort of ragtag underdog comedians and believers and who try against sort of various different factors to put together a show that had never been done before and pulled it off, sort of, and started this incredible tradition that we still have. Lauren, I'm gonna go check out the cut on your dad, you wanna see? We're standing in the presence of a prophet, a man with a vision, and I want you to take that vision through anyone who gets in your way. Jason, like, really, really had a plan, like, in an amazing way. Like, he blocked all of everything with stand-ins before we came to shoot, and, like, it's such a good feeling. You were sort of saying this earlier, but you, like, walk on set, there's all these people, it's like, you're like, well, fuck, this is gonna be chaotic, and then it's, like, not, and you're like, huh, who planned this? And it's like, Jason. But that was such an amazing thing to feel like, oh, he has a vision, he has a plan, and he's guiding us all, and, yeah, it was really great. What, you're our guest, also bassoons? I think the two of them did a great job with the script, it's, it feels very, it doesn't feel, like, linear, it doesn't feel structured, it doesn't feel necessarily like a movie, it's kind of a mess in a way that you want it to feel, so I think they did a really good job of accomplishing that, that can be easier said than done when applying that to a screenplay, and you really, you do need to structure it, it can't actually be a mess, but it needs to feel chaotic when it comes off the page, and I think they did that really well. And Jason's just, I mean, he's a really, this is a beast of a thing to be wrangling, it's a lot of cast, it's a lot of moving parts, shooting on film, you know, and we're doing it in a pretty short amount of days, too, I think it's just about 35. For tonight, it's pretty legendary. At the end of the day, I would bring the band on the 30 Rock set that was built, and we record, and I would remember the energy of certain moments, I would think about certain themes that Jason and I had developed, like the clave is representative of the clock, there's certain musical allegories of the ticking of time and the movement of the city around this production, and certain themes for certain characters, and envisioning how those things could come together, and then instrumentally, having a hat tip to vaudeville, because Saturday Night Live is the apex of a vaudeville show, it's the development of it in the future at the highest level, so we have all these things that we're developing at once, and I have to envision, and then Jason then envisions, and we go back and forth, feedback loop, and the musicians are just there, they're kind of a part of this brain trust that Jason and I have, but they don't know what's going on, so I have to communicate to them something that they can't see, and they're not reading, or there's no real instruction other than in the moment, what I'm dictating to them, so you have to have great musicians that trust that you're telling them to do something that makes sense, even if they don't know how the pieces fit together. that had, they did a whole boot camp for the people playing crew members of that SNL 1975, and so at all times in every scene, you'll have a costume person flying through camera with a rack of costumes that are yet to be finished, and a camera that's actually recording in the way that it would, you can see it in black and white as you're panning through, it's carnage, it's wild, I've never been on a project of this scale that is also this chaotic. As you watch Saturday Night, I want you to remember that every day of shooting, by three in the morning, there was a group of hundreds of people putting the actors through hair, makeup, costume, we had to prepare 80 speaking roles, 80 background actors to fill this room and make it come to life the way you see it on screen. I hope people take away the power of youth movements to go with your instinct and create the thing that you want to see in the world, even if it doesn't exist yet, even if everybody thinks it's going to fail, nobody knows what you have within yourself other than you. Sometimes you don't even really know what you have, but you're the only person that can decipher the clues and come up with the solution. I think this is a great testament to that. What, 40 plus years later, it's still going as such a legacy. So I think that's a great inspiring thing to be a part of. Every person in this cast is so incredibly talented and also so lovely, and every new name that I heard and you kind of go down the call sheet and you're just like, how am I listed amongst these people? And seeing everyone's take on their characters has been so exciting. And just like watching what Corey has done with Chevy and, you know, I mean everyone really, but I've been working the most closely with Corey, and it's just been very exciting to see people really take ownership of their characters and feel the freedom to play around in that. Can't you see talent when it's standing inches from your face? What do you think he's going to do? Embarrass us with some half-rat donkey show? Hey, I heard he doesn't like the beef muscle. Do you know anything about that? It's not a costume, bro. Well, we can see that. No, you can just clean. We're recording. Oh, yeah. Well, they will study these limits. Lauren! I'm working on it. Yeah, A4 and book it. Important man. Thank you, Andy. So, big night. That being said, I am getting calls from upstairs about a final script. You know, they're wondering what the hell the show is, Lauren. It's fine. They'll know when they see it. When you start to look at the history of SNL, it is a wonder that it ever made it to air. They had everything against them, and, you know, a network that actively really wanted to just show Johnny Carson reruns on Saturday night. But like anyone who changes culture, there are obstacles. There is a gauntlet. And this group of young writers and young actors had to rip television out of the hands of the previous generation to change comedy as we know it. Do you know what the show is? Don't be ridiculous. Of course I do. Oh, have you had dinner, Andy? Yes, I have ice cream. Terrific. Thank you. And pancake. Perfect. I'm not a dashboard ornament. No, you're adorable, is what you are. And all that fur. Every girl is going to want to squeeze you. I am a trained professional. It's a film that should be seen in the theaters, because all films should be seen in the theaters, first of all. Go to the theaters. And secondly, I mean, this, you know, it's going to be, this movie is going to feel like such a cool throwback, you know? And I mean, now, I guess going to the movies is sort of starting to feel throwback, which is interesting. But, you know, it's going to be, it's shot on film. It's the 70s. It's SNL. It's going to be, you know, it's going to feel really big and alive and fun and quick pace. It's never going to slow down, you know? And that's a fun hour and a half to go see in the theater. There he is, the star of the show. Come on, Rosie, not the fucking bees. That's going to be a wild night. Come on, let's go. It's going to be amazing.