There’s nothing quite like working on Saturday Night Live. That’s a recurring theme you hear from current and former members of the cast and crew. They tend to talk about it with a mix of reverence and trauma, like it was a dangerous mountain they climbed. They’ll flippantly run down how it was stressful and overwhelming and demoralizing, but they’ll also speak about the highs like they’re amongst their greatest memories and accomplishments. It’s very different from how Hollywood insiders speak about other jobs, and it only took Jason Reitman one week to get that.
The Oscar nominated director of Up In The Air and Juno apparently told his agent he grew up wanting to write for the show; so, his agent called longtime showrunner Lorne Michaels, who invited him to guest write for a week. He jumped at the chance, and gleefully did it all. He wrote until 4 in the morning, stressed while his sketch was being performed at the table read and anxiously waited to hear if it would make the show. Reflecting about it ahead of a screening for his new SNL based movie Saturday Night, he compared the experience to being a “test pilot” or a “heroin addict.” You can read a portion of his quote below, per Deadline…
I told (my agent) I had two dreams as a kid. I wanted to direct movies and write for Saturday Night Live. And he actually reached out to Lorne Michaels and said ‘Is there any chance you’d let him guest write for a week?’ And Lorne Michaels said, ‘Sure, he can come to space camp.’ And I did. It was one of the greatest weeks of my life. I got to write a Tuesday night overnight until like 4 in the morning and on Wednesday. I got to hear my sketch read at the table read. And then later on Wednesday, I got to live through that moment, this is real, the head writer comes out of the office and just like a high school play, pins a piece of paper on the wall and that’s how you find out if your sketch made it and is gonna go to Saturday night. And I remember this feeling, this adrenaline of Saturday night, the 90 minutes leading into the episode going live, how extraordinary it felt. It’s like a level of adrenaline usually reserved for like test pilots and heroin addicts.
All those feelings never fully left Reitman, and he spent a long time trying to figure out if he could translate them into a project. He eventually settled on Saturday Night, which chronicles the 90 minutes leading up to the show’s premiere in 1975. By all accounts, the first screening of the movie went very well, and SNL fans are stoked to able to see it when it hits theaters on October 11th.
Fortunately, we all won’t have to wait that long for the real show to come back. SNL will return for its landmark 50th season on September 28th, and fans are pumped about what surprises could be in store. We know former cast member Maya Rudolph will be making recurring appearances to play Vice President Kamala Harris, and we’ll be getting a three hour special to celebrate the anniversary in February. Exactly who might show up or what we might see is anyone’s guess, but as Reitman would tell you, that uncertainty is what makes the show so special.
