Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night” tells a David and Goliath tale. Except that David in this case is a diminutive Jewish comedy writer from Canada named Lorne Michaels (born Lorne Lipowitz) and Goliath is Johnny Carson.
The fast-paced, deliriously enjoyable movie all takes place in one night, the hours before the first episode of “Saturday Night Live,” now an unparalleled institution, but then a half-baked idea. The whole thing was built to fail, a way for TV execs to keep that late-night Saturday spot for Johnny Carson re-runs. Based on a true story, the drama has of course been amped up and condensed — but many of the characters and tales in the movie are based on facts and anecdotes that Reitman and his co-writer Gil Kenan learned while working on the movie.
“The Fabelmans” star Gabriel Labelle makes for an excellent Michaels here, as he similarly did while playing a fictionalized version of Spielberg in that earlier film — both times embodying a Jewish genius on the brink of greatness. In “Saturday Night,” he’s a man with an unerring vision walking among the carnage of big egos, unfinished sets and the smoke of producers with literal fake blood sprayed over his shirt. And still, he comes out a victor.
Watching this movie, I’m also struck by the many Jewish geniuses around him, some that never made it to the spotlight, some that did and have been since forgotten, and some that are now iconic. The movie is full of reminders of how these creatives shaped TV comedy forever, and the way they are embedded with the Jewish American culture of New York City.
In one scene, producer Dave Tebet, played by the perfectly cast Willem Dafoe, tries to lure Cory Michael Smith’s Chevy Chase with the possibility of being Carson’s replacement. He is, after all, a “handsome funny gentile,” and that, in show business, “means something.” It’s that kind of polished idealized all-American vision that “Saturday Night” was going up against, made up of a rag-tag team of comedians and comedy writers, many Jewish and one Black (Lamorne Morris plays a scene-stealing Garrett Morris that left me jonesing for more).
Half of SNL’s first writing room was Jewish, and we get to meet many of these comedy writers, like Rosie Shuster, played by Rachel Sennott (in one of her many Jewish roles, despite not being Jewish herself). Shuster, the daughter of Canadian Jewish comic Frank Shuster, was Michaels’ high school sweetheart and eventual first wife. Her father took Michaels under his wing as a mentor of sorts, helping him hone his skills in the Shuster home, where comedy was king. Rosie and Michaels were on and off in their relationship, but comedy — and being able to show off their chops in a show like “Saturday Night” — was always their mutual dream. Sennott is confident and brilliant as Shuster, finally getting the credit she deserves. We see her wrangle John Belushi into wearing a bee suit for the first recurring SNL sketch, “The Killer Bees,” one that she created with another Jewish female writer on staff, Anne Beatts, who makes a few delightful appearances in the movie played by Leander Suleiman.
Yet it’s in one writer in particular that we see a direct connection between SNL and the Borscht Belt, where so much of Jewish American comedy culture stems from. In a fantastical scene, Michaels walks into a bar and sees a character played by Brad Garrett who is credited simply as “Borscht Belt comedian” do some stand-up. At the bar is Alan Zweibel, played by Jewish actor Josh Brener, who has a binder full of jokes that he sold to the comedian. Zweibel shows Michaels his material, and he takes him under his wing to write for the show. A joke that he writes about stamps even makes it into that first episode. Zweibel’s story is so Jewish New York — he came up working in a deli in Queens, writing jokes on deli paper.
Tracy Letts plays writer Jewish Herb Sargent in the film, bantering with Chase, predicting a lonely but successful future for him and boasting about his multiple Emmys and having dated Gloria Steinem. We see writer Al Franken (Taylor Gray) test unhinged sketch ideas. As Chase jokes in a room full of NBC affiliates, “If you want to meet Black people, go to Harlem. And if you want to meet Jews, go to our writers’ room.”
Two other Jewish legends who became part of SNL history make their way into the movie — Billy Crystal, played by a charming Nicholas Podany, who is there in hopes of making it into that first episode only to have his number cut for refusing to shorten it, a story very much based on fact. Then there’s Andy Kaufman played by Nicholas Braun, who lip-synchs to “Mighty Mouse” during that meeting with the NBC affiliates. Both became very different cultural icons, in part thanks to the show.
In this fever dream of a movie, we get a visit from ghosts of television past: Milton Berle aka “Mr. Television,” played by a very diverting J. K. Simmons (the movie has the same anxious feeling as another one of Simmon’s hits, “Whiplash”). Berle wasn’t there that night in 1975 when SNL premiered, but the conversation he has with Chase is reminiscent of one he had with Michaels four years later when he hosted the show. Berle, born Mendel Berlinger in Philadelphia, believed that he was still Mr. Television, and that he would be the one remembered when the show went into obscurity — that his hammy and sometimes racist humor would blow away the crowd. But in reality, Berle’s episode was a flop. It doesn’t seem far-fetched to say that without Berle there would be no SNL, but by the time the show aired, the sun had already set on the type of comedy that Berle had become famous for. Still, this ode to a Jewish comedy TV legend makes the movie richer. A scene in which Berle flashes Chase and his girlfriend with his long-talked about penis echoes a similar moment that happened before a 1979 episode, when Zweibel talked to Berle about writing jokes about his member, only to have him pull it out in front of him and Gilda Radner, who happened to walk into the room.
Speaking of Radner, the movie doesn’t feel like it does as much justice to the Jewish female members of the cast, or really, aside from Shuster, to any women involved in those early days of SNL. Larraine Newman, played by Emily Fairn, has a couple of charming moments. Ella Hunt’s Gilda Radner jokes about being a “bagel looking for lox.” We get to see a pretty endearing scene in which the two play the Hard Hats. But they all seem to exist more in service of the male characters than they do as complex comedy trailblazers all on their own. In a way, the movie echoes that spirit of chauvinism that we know existed behind the scenes of the show, which feels unfortunate.
Shuster’s character, to an extent, falls into that rubric. Rosie, often in the background of the scenes with Lorne, feels like the hidden giant in the room, managing every ego and crisis with deft hands. She’s a woman catering and managing the egos of men. But her character is also incredibly arresting and powerful in a way that Newman and Radner don’t seem to be — they pale in comparison to Smith’s Chase and Matt Wood’s John Belushi. At the end of the movie, her Jewish maiden name appears in the credits as a way to take ownership of her own career and identity.
Despite its flaw, “Saturday Night” is an ode to Shuster’s pivotal role in this iconic show that we all fell in love with, and to the many Jewish comedy legends that came out of Studio 8H. Reitman and Kenan remind us how much richness they’ve all brought to our lives thanks to that not-so-secret Jewish American weapon — laughter.