Saturday Night is less a story and more a moment captured in time. And even though it’s about the first episode of Saturday Night Live, it feels representative of the show as a whole. As if Jason Reitman wanted to distill 50 years of chaos, comedy, and icon-making into a single evening behind the curtain.
As the film resolves, there are a few major themes we can point out.
Saturday Night ending explained
Brick by brick
One of Saturday Night’s many subplots involves Leo Yoshimura laying bricks on the stage to give the set a feel of real New York. Except no one will help him. Senior members of the production crew refuse to pitch in. Why? Their union doesn’t do bricklaying. But that’s just an excuse. The older guys don’t believe in Saturday Night as a concept. They tell Leo he shouldn’t bother because the show will be off the air in two weeks.
With only minutes left until the show goes to air, Leo, on his own, will never finish in time. Except, just then, the older guys finally feel motivated enough to chip in. Suddenly, finally, it all comes together, just in time to change television forever.
Chaotic stories like this will usually have some kind of metaphorical throughline that helps audiences easily conceptualize what’s going on. In the case of Saturday Night, Leo laying bricks is that throughline. He represents Lorne, and the bricks represent every person, every problem, every interested party that Lorne has had to “put in its place” leading up to the show before they go live.
For a lot of the movie, Lorne’s kind of on his own, pulled from one problem to another. By the end, after he stands up to David Tebet and speaks to what the show is, suddenly everyone starts working together. They’re no longer individuals but a team. And that’s showcased in how the older guys decide to pitch in and help Leo. Reitman parallels the bricks going into place with various problems being solved—they have a new lighting guy, the writers finally give pages to Jim Henson, the sound system works for the musical acts, they come to terms with the network censor, Lorne finally cuts the show down to size, etc. etc.
Soon after the final brick is placed, we come back to the film’s opening issue: did Belushi sign his contract? They’re live, on-air, and don’t know if Belushi will walk through the door or not. And then he does! He signed his contract, he’s part of the show, now the “final brick” is also in place. And the rest is history.
Saturday Night really conveys the feeling that it’s not a single person that makes any of this happen, not just SNL but any show, any movie, any play. It’s a team effort. Big and small. It feels like a movie is a love letter to the industry itself.
Out with the old, in with the new
Reitman loads Saturday Night with collisions between past and future. Again, going back to the bricks, one of the reasons the other production guys won’t help Leo is because they’re old school and don’t believe in whatever the show is doing.
That same sentiment manifests during the showdown between Milton Berle and Chevy Chase. Chevy’s the TV star of the future, but Berle was one of the biggest names in television history. It’s also present when Lorne has his phone call with Johnny Carson. Instead of being this great moment where this young guy receives encouragement from a legend, Carson’s actually a jerk and tries to big league Lorne and make him feel like he’ll never succeed.
This theme extends into Lorne picking up strays with potential. He fires the established lighting guy then pulls a young kid from another show. He hires the young comedy writer, Alan Zweibel, at the bar who was toiling at jokes for some older jerk. And then SNL itself replaced Johnny Carson reruns.
And the show’s very existence comes down to a judgment call by David Tebet. He could have played it safe and been traditional. Especially since he himself was older. But, instead, Tebet opts to believe in the youth movement. And that made all the difference.
There’s actually a larger societal message there, whether intended by Reitman or not. We’re in a time where people live longer than ever. And the baby boomer generation has defined American society far longer than any previous generation. It’s created a lot of conflict: politically, economically. If the previous generation denies the next one opportunities, things stagnate.
Kevin Munger, author of the book Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture, said:
We have very good data on who was in Congress for the past 250 years. I can see that the boomers started to enter the House of Representatives pretty young. By the time the median boomer was 25, the youngest you can be to serve, they already made up 10 percent of the House. The millennials have yet to reach that 10 percent mark, despite the fact that the median millennial is now 32. It’s a zero-sum game. The fact that the boomer generation is so large and powerful means that it’s a lot harder for younger generations to start the process of getting involved.
There’s a ripple effect. Because baby boomers have stayed in power longer, gen x and millennials have had less political representation. They’ve also had less opportunities for career advancement. And home purchases. All because of the status quo staying put.
So even though Saturday Night isn’t about any of that stuff and is set 50 years ago, it is. Because it taps into a universal truth. Generational tension has always existed and probably always will. The film conveys the importance of giving new voices an opportunity to speak up and speak out.
Confirmation
I was putting together the questions section below and was reading an interview Reitman gave and came across a quote that actually confirms the generational theme. Quote:
The movie is about one generation ripping television out of the hands of the other. How do you personify that? Alright, well, we’re going to have a group of young people, and then we’re going to have a group of old people. Milton Berle represents everything that television was. He’s the ghost of television past. He is vaudeville, he is radio, he is old variety shows, he is sexual harassment, he is all of these things. He will appear later on SNL and do the worst episode of all time. But for us on that night, he represents an idea, yet another barrier that these young people have to cross in order to get the show on air.
Always nice to get confirmation!
Saturday Night questions
Is Saturday Night a true story? How accurate is it?
The Los Angeles Times wrote an article about this. You can check it out here. Essentially, most of the stuff did happen. Just not necessarily in the 90 minutes leading up to the show. Some of it in the weeks leading up. Others in the weeks after. Like the bricks, for example, went in a few hours before going live, not a few minutes. The couch did catch fire, though!
Can you watch the first episode of Saturday Night Live?
If you’re like me, Saturday Night finished and you were a bit sad because you wanted to see the show. Good news! The full episode is available on Peacock. Clips are all over YouTube.
Was Andy Kaufman already popular?
Not really. SNL is what started Andy Kaufman’s rise in popularity.
Did Milton Berle really have…you know…a huge…
Turns out, people write about this. Tierney Finster did a deep dive into this very topic. Retiman also talked about it in an interview and says he personally knows people who witnessed Uncle Miltie drop trow.
Cast
- Lorne Michaels – Gabriel LaBelle
- Rosie Shuster – Rachel Sennott
- John Belushi – Matt Wood
- Chevy Chase – Cory Michael Smith
- Kaia Gerber – Jacqueline Carlin
- Gilda Radner – Ella Hunt
- Laraine Newman – Emily Fairn
- Jane Curtin – Kim Matula
- Garrett Morris – Lamorne Morris
- Dan Aykroyd – Dylan O’Brien
- Billy Crystal – Nicholas Podany
- Andy Kaufman – Nicholas Braun
- Jim Henson – Nicholas Braun
- David Tebet – Willem Dafoe
- Milton Berle – J.K. Simmons
- George Carlin – Matthew Rhys
- Billy Preston – Jon Batiste
- Janis Ian – Naomi McPherson
- Alan Zweibel – Josh Brener
- Herb Sargent – Tracy Letts
- Paul Shaffer – Paul Rust
- Leo Yoshimura – Abraham Hsu
- Johnny Caron – Jeff Witzke
- Written by – Gil Genan | Jason Reitman
- Directed by – Jason Reitman
