Starring: Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt, Dylan O’Brien, Emily Fairn, Matt Wood, Lamorne Morris, Kim Matula, Finn Wolfhard, Nicholas Braun, Cooper Hoffman, Andrew Barth Feldman, Willem Dafoe, Matthew Rhys, J.K. Simmons
OUR RATING: ★★★☆☆
Story: Bio-comedy drama directed by Jason Reitman and written by Gil Kenan and Reitman. Saturday Night (2024) is based on the true story of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live, when at 11:30pm on October 11, 1975, a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers changed television, and culture, forever.
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Top Fun Chaotic Quotes from Saturday Night
Lorne Michaels: Look, my name is Lorne Michaels. I’m the producer of Saturday Night.
Security Guard: The whole night?
Lorne Michaels: Yeah. The whole night!
Lorne Michaels: Did anyone ask Edison what a light bulb was before he harnessed electricity?
Dick Ebersol: Who are you in the metaphor?
Andy Kaufman: The light bulb?
Lorne Michaels: We can’t expect people to recognize something they’ve never seen before.
Chevy Chase: Am I still in the show?
Lorne Michaels: [as Chase falls] Jesus Christ.
Chevy Chase: Sorry. Tripped over my p**is.
Jacqueline Carlin: Chevy can’t help if people are responding to his face.
Chevy Chase: I mean, I could, but I won’t.
Jim Henson: I don’t think the writers on the seventeenth floor speak Muppet.
Dan Aykroyd: Oh, don’t be alarmed. You’re dealing with a fully qualified male strumpet.
Lorne Michaels: [referring to Belushi] He’s better than Brando. He’s more important even. He’ll be studied.
Rosie Shuster: They will study his liver.
Lorne Michaels: Rose, must you turn him into a bee?
Rosie Shuster: I am not turning him into a bee. He is a man in a bee costume. There is a difference.
Rosie Shuster: Lorne, we’re married, but I’m not your wife.
Chevy Chase: Jesus, you guys look like the cast of “Godfather” if it was shot in Alabama.
Chevy Chase: That’s a hell of a ten-gallon hat. You look like you’re ready for a date with livestock.
Michael O’Donoghue: Television is merely a lava lamp with slightly better audio. Colored beads to fascinate the animal.
Chevy Chase: Where am I going from here?
Herb Sargent: Well, I don’t know, Chevy. I never got a shoulder tap. I just made a fortune and won a few Emmys, slept with Gloria Steinem.
Chevy Chase: Two out of three ain’t bad.
Herb Sargent: My instinct is that the American people are going to fall in love with you. You’ll be obscenely overpaid for pratfalls and cute jokes. You’ll waste away most of your life with purchased company, and then eventually you’ll self-medicate with booze, and hookers, and h***in. I imagine you’ll die alone, falling out of a hotel room window in Stockholm.
Chevy Chase: Jesus. I can’t wait.
Gilda Radner: Oh, I’m just a bagel looking for lox. I’m a parrot with nothing to squawk.
Michael O’Donoghue: [referring to the Muppets] I just can’t write for those little hairy facecloths.
Michael O’Donoghue: I’d rather butt-f*** cancer than make these changes.
Dick Ebersol: If we don’t know what the show is, Lorne, what the f*** are we doing here?
Lorne Michaels: I know the ingredients, just not the amounts.
Dick Ebersol: Lorne, what does that mean?
Lorne Michaels: I’m the producer of “NBC’s Saturday Night”, and you just hit a man with a Tony.
Security Guard: I’ve hit plenty of Tonys.
Garrett Morris: I’m just here to play, the butler, the shoeshine guy, and the pimp.
George Carlin: F*** you, everyone! F*** you. F*** you. I’ve definitely f***ed you.
Lorne Michaels: [referring to Belushi] Someone get him a pen. Don’t let him use it as a straw.
Jim Henson: Can you please remind your crew not to leave the Muppets in compromising positions?
Dave Tebet: [to Lorne] I just heard that your writers were stoned, your actors were physically assaulting each other, the sound system was down, and a fire broke out earlier.
Dan Aykroyd: Make no mistake about it, that stick’s probably stronger than a bull elephant. But listen, we’re all a little freaked out, so why don’t you come out, and we can check on your face, make sure it’s not inside out, okay?
Garrett Morris: Why did you hire me?
Lorne Michaels: You were cheap.
Garrett Morris: Really?
Lorne Michaels: I’m being ironical, Garrett.
Dan Aykroyd: John’s an anarchist and an Illinois alpha male.
Dan Aykroyd: See, boss, you and I, if we were to enter this space, we’d be like 15th century peasants walking into the Vatican, but Belushi’s a whole other animal. He’s a skeptic and a sinner.
Chevy Chase: This old man, he used to be an institution. Now he needs one.
Milton Berle: If you want my comeback, you’re going to have to scrape it off the back of your mom’s teeth.
George Carlin: [referring to the script] I’d just love to know where the humor is. It’s like a Spruce Goose. It’s a lot of wood and no liftoff.
Michael O’Donoghue: [to Carlin] You see, these are scenes that revolve around acting. And that must feel foreign when you’re a ponytailed vulture feeding off the corpse of Lenny Bruce.
Lorne Michaels: NBC is lucky to have something as relevant as this show.
Dick Ebersol: Lorne, they don’t even want it.
Lorne Michaels: That’s logical, Dick. That’s why they’re paying us all to be here.
Dick Ebersol: [to Lorne] They built a show that was guaranteed to fail. I mean, Lorne, ninety minutes of live television by a group of twenty year-olds, who have never made anything. Do you ever stop and wonder why they said yes? A counterculture show starring total unknowns with zero narrative, and even less structure. Are you that f***ing arrogant that you never even question this?!
Lorne Michaels: Art is but a measure of sacrifice and tears.
Jim Henson: I know what people say when they see a man with his arm up a Muppet. But this isn’t just kids stuff. I believe deep in my heart that there is room for high-stakes puppetry on grown-up TV.
Gilda Radner: You ever have nostalgia for a moment while you’re still in it? I mean, like you’re in the moment, but you’re also looking back on it. Like right now I’m here, but I’m also thinking about this moment twenty years from now.
Lorne Michaels: You on the show or not?
John Belushi: The one where I get to dress up like a giant, grotesque bee? I don’t know. Let me ask my childhood dreams.
Lorne Michaels: I’m going to head back up. We have a show to put on, and I’d like to be there when I get fired.
Dave Tebet: Look around, Lorne. You haven’t locked a script. Your actors are missing. Your crew is in open rebellion.
Lorne Michaels: [to Tebet] Don’t tell me that you’ve been doing this so long that you can’t even recognize the potential for greatness when it’s right in front of your face.
Lorne Michaels: It’s everything you think is going to happen when you move to the city. That’s our show. That’s “Saturday Night”.
Chevy Chase: Live from New York, it’s “Saturday Night”!