Lorne Michaels was a big lynchpin and supporter behind the scenes of Jason Reitman’s Sony movie Saturday Night about the behind-the-scenes thrills of the NBC sketch show on its first eve of air Oct. 11, 1975. However, Michaels still has yet to watch the movie.
“Lorne has not seen the movie yet,” Reitman told us at Deadline’s TIFF studio.
“I don’t know if he’ll ever tell me his reaction because he’s a cryptic person. Obviously, he was the first person I ever reached out to. I’ve been speaking to him throughout this process.”
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Tomorrow night at TIFF, Saturday Night makes its Canadian Premiere after its world premiere at Telluride, which had Bill Murray (whose on-screen persona isn’t even in the film) introducing the pic there with Reitman. No word on which SNL vets or mainstays might put in an appearance tomorrow night — including Toronto native Michaels.
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Reitman notes, “Lorne is someone who always looks forward. I think it’s part of his genius. From moment one when he made this show, he would finish an episode, and just put it behind him, and think about what’s next. It’s the reason that someone at his age, who has been doing this show for 50 years, is constantly evolving.”
“If you think about the fact that he created this show three, four times over before Lonely Island arrived, or Please Don’t Destroy shows up. He reinvents what is comedy every five to ten years and it’s because he’s never looking in the rearview mirror,” the Ghostbusters: Afterlife filmmaker adds.
“We’ll all be honored when he watches it, but that will be on Lorne’s time.”
Reitman shares that right after Juno when his agent asked about his future hopes, the filmmaker expressed that one of his dreams was to write on SNL. So, Reitman scored a week writing on the show back in 2007 which he says, “was one of the greatest weeks of my life.”
In developing the movie, Reitman and his creative partner Gil Kenan began interviewing “everyone who was alive in the building that night. Every living writer, every living actor, Lorne himself, NBC pages, members of Billy Preston’s band. Anyone who could give us insight into what it felt like on Oct. 11, 1975,” say the filmmaker.
Arriving with Reitman at Deadline’s TIFF studio, and unveiling their character process was Gabriel LaBelle (Michaels), Ella Hunt (Gilda Radner), Dylan O’Brien (Dan Aykroyd), Lamorne Morris (Garrett Morris), Cory Michael Smith (Chevy Chase) and Rachel Sennott (Rosie Schuster).
Saturday Night opens exclusively in NYC, LA and Toronto on Sept. 27 before expanding on Oct. 4, then going wide on Oct. 11.