Why So Blu?

Saturday Night (Blu-ray Review)

At the time of its first episode, Saturday Night Live was being set up to fail.  The whole story leading up to the live premiere was lore, retold times over. Chaos, musical performances, improv… it was an insane proposition in 1975.  Now here we are on the eve of the 50^th Anniversary of SNL, and the film Saturday Night presents the whole evening leading up to that iconic phrase “Live from New York, It’s Saturday Night!”Read more about Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, and see if those crazy 90 minutes pre-premiere are movie worthy.

Film:

At 11:30pm on October 11, 1975, a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers changed television – and culture – forever. Directed by Jason Reitman and written by Gil Kenan & Reitman, Saturday Night 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. Full of humor, chaos, and the magic of a revolution that almost wasn’t, we count down the minutes in real time until we hear those famous words…

Saturday Night starts on the move.  The film runs at a near-exact time up against the events leading up to the opening of the first episode of Saturday Night Live. The actors are moving, the camera is moving and there’s very little time to stand still in the film.  The enigmatic and passionate Lorne Michaels is trying to hold the show together.  His cast is either enthusiastic, nervous, confused or totally dropped out.  The network brass wants the show to bomb, with a re-run of Johnny Carson ready to play should the show fail at any point. As we come to know in the movies, things do not look good for Lorne or his special show.

As we delve deep into the labyrinth like world of the studio, we hear Billy Preston’s band warming up, or we see John Belushi tuning out.  We witness the hunger of Gilda Radner and Jane Curtin and the cockiness of Chevy Chase.  There’s an everyman quality to Dan Aykroyd, and a philosophical curiosity in Garrett Morris.  Each cast member shows their stuff before a camera even focuses on their performances.  We even get a beautiful serenade of “At Seventeen” by Janis Ian!

Did I mention we’re also witness to network heads toying with Lorne Michaels, a cocky (pun intended) Milton Berle, a llama on the loose, someone hazing Jim Henson, and a super frustrated George Carlin. Oh! And Billy Crystal and Valri Bromfeld hoping to get a moment on-screen.  The one sane thread in turn turns out to be Andy Kaufman, waiting patiently for his time to rehearse and perform.

The idea of chaos is the focal point of Saturday Night. There is not a moment of doubt that things will go OK.  The history is that the show was successful and still is on the air 50 years later, so of course it was! It’s the insanity of this first show.  Rehearsing helped, costume fittings too.  We have so many musical guests, a comedian with some stand up moments to do, a puppeteer, and some other lesser-known comedians hoping for a moment on TV to get some exposure.  Somewhere in there you’ve got to fit in a short film from Albert Brooks and somehow try not to piss off anyone who could tell you to go to hell if they don’t like your show.

Saturday Night spends its whole runtime working through each moment.  There is constant percussive music going on, and I never heard a moment of clear dialogue.  People talk and sing over one another.  The few moments where we are hearing dialogue clearly, it’s typically rehearsal or one very astute reading of Chevy Chase direct from Milton Berle.

Seeing some of these actors (far too many to mention here individually) embody the actors and comedians we’ve come to know over the years is a spectacle itself.  Some of the actors get lost and look so close to whom they’re playing it’s eerie.  When those comparisons don’t match up so well, you still get passionate work from all involved.  The direction by Jason Reitman, who shot the film with 16mm cameras, is sound and the camera work is busy and nimble.  There are long shots and quick cuts to equal effect and a sound design that is made to keep things crazy but also not hard to follow.

Saturday Night came out quietly and surprisingly had very little marketing.  The film is full of new talented young actors and was clearly a film made by Reitman with a lot of respect for the show and the first cast that exploded on NBC in 1975.  The authenticity shines through in the film.  There is nothing that feels artificial or faked.  The movie moves in a way that is like lightning, tearing through each moment until the credits roll.  We don’t need to see the episode now; we’ve been through the journey already.

Video

Encoding: MPEG-4/AVC

Resolution: HD (1080P)

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Layers: BD-50

HDR: N/A

Clarity/Detail: Saturday Night carries a look of its 1975 vintage.  The film was shot on 16mm cameras and mastered at 4K, giving the film a completely old-school look, without sacrificing detail or depth at all. Textures and healthy grain make things look beautifully 70’s.

Depth: Filming in close on characters and with a lot of fluid movement, the overall depth aesthetic is given plenty of respect, with nice detail even in more shadowy moments.

Black Levels: Black levels are excellent, and the film spends a lot of time in backstage lighting or outside at night. There is no crush, and even when things border on being a little too dark, there is always detail present.

Color Reproduction: The color palette is inherently 70’s, with browns, reds, oranges, and some drab greens being the most prevalent.  A pesky Bee costume gives the pop of yellow to the film and sets look accurate to their intended re-creation.

Flesh Tones: Skin tones look natural and very correct to the time period.

Noise/Artifacts: Grain is evident but complimentary.

Audio:

Audio Format(s): English DTS-HD MA 5.1, French DTS-HD MA 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, English, French and Spanish Descrptive Audio 2.0

Subtitles:  English SDH, Spanish, French

Dynamics: Dialogue and score heavy, the film is filled with overlapping dialogue and moments of bombastic music.  The mix feels deliberate and despite some struggle to hear things clearly, somehow you haven’t missed a thing.

Height: N/A

Low-Frequency Extension: Music makes bass a commanding presence as Jon Batiste’s score bangs and clangs along.

Surround Sound Presentation: The studio and its catacombs of rooms are full of echo and with the amount of people flying by on screen there is always something going on in the surrounds, be it a sound effect, someone speaking, echo, or loud noise to draw the attention elsewhere.

Dialogue Reproduction: Dialogue overlaps with music and other dialogue.  It’s sometimes hard to hear but I feel like that’s on purpose, giving more chaos to the already chaotic experience.

Extras:

Saturday Night comes to Blu-ray with a digital code and slipcover.  There are a few extras here, with a 16-minute making of, an audio commentary, and some shorts filmed in 8mm. Finally, a suite of cast members discussing their parts, which are all very short.

Special Features:

• Audio Commentary with Jason Reitman
• The Making of the Movie of the Show that Almost Never Made It (16 min.)
• The Look of Saturday Night (2 min.)
• Super 8 from Stuido 8H (5 min.)
• Creating Comedy Icons (11 min total)
• Jon Batiste: Scoring Live (1 min.)
• Sony Previews

Summary:

Saturday Night is a wild film showing the insanity of the events leading up to the first episode of SNL. This is a perfect preface to binging all 50 seasons of the show, and an excellent tribute to Lorne Michaels’ vision of the show, and the hard work that the cast, crew and guests all went through to make this show the indispensable piece of pop culture it is.  Jason Reitman gets all the parts just right, and even if the film is a touch imperfect, the small gripes are overshadowed by the excellent casting, great performances and the lovingly filmed cinematography. This is a must-see for fans of the show, and a new artifact in making a great small film that could’ve been huge if it was marketed correctly.

Get your copy of Saturday Night HERE