Saturday Night: Jason Reitman's film in homage to SNL is revealed in photos

Its director also specifies its synopsis and teases its release date.

We know (finally!) more about Saturday Night. We already knew that Jason Reitman (Juno, Ghostbusters: Legacy) would direct this historical film dedicated to the creation of SNL (Saturday Night Live) in the 1970s. But we didn't know that the film would be available this fall. The filmmaker reveals to Vanity Fair that Saturday Night will be released in theaters on October 11, exactly forty-nine years after the first SNL broadcast on NBC – in the United States, anyway.

But that's not all. The American magazine also managed to get its hands on the first photos of the shoot exclusively. Enough to immerse the most nostalgic people in the atmosphere seventies the fumblings of one of the most famous shows in the world.

We discover the interpreters of all these pioneers of American television: Gabriel LaBelle in Lorne Michaels (the one to whom we really owe SNL), Dylan O'Brien in Dan Aykroyd, Matt Wood in John Belushi, Ella Hunt in Gilda Radner, Kim Matula in Jane Curtin, Emily Fairn in Laraine Newman, Rachel Sennott in Rosie Shuster, Cory Michael Smith in Chevy Chase, Kaie Gerber in Jacqueline Carlin. And then also Lamorne Morris in Garrett Morris, Nicholas Braun in Jim Henson, Matthew Rhys in George Carlin, Jon Baptise (also in charge of the film's soundtrack) in Billy PrestonAnd JK Simmons in Milton Berle.

Be careful, if Jason Reitman has chosen to pay homage to this whole band of crazy minds, Saturday Night will not be a comedy like the others. He explains in the columns of VF :

“It's a thriller-comedy, if you can call that a genre. I always describe this film as a space shuttle launch, with the main question being: 'Will they manage to get out of orbit?'”

Reitman wanted to impose his creative vision, but he did not depart from a realistic stamp, the objective of this film being to document the effervescence of those years, with all that it included drugs and genius. To do this, it was important to meet the founding members of the SNL club.

“We met Lorne…he says. He's a genius, and he has a vision that's beyond anyone else's, and beyond anyone his age. That's a lot for an actor. In this movie, everyone gets to have fun, except Gabe. [LaBelle]which must be the metronome.”

Lorne Michaels will therefore be a key character in the film. In real life, the producer has evolved a lot, going from a young man in total improvisation to a wiser old producer. And that's Bill Murray who says it, according to LaBelle:

“Everybody sees him as this fearless leader, this captain who steers the ship through the fog. When Bill Murray came back to host the show fifteen or twenty years after he left, he said to Lorne: 'Wow, you really found the right recipe to handle everything'. He started at thirty. He is now eighty and has been doing this job for five decades. Nobody knows what to do when you start.”

Saturday Night will be a tribute to Lorne Michaels and the six other pioneers of SNL, but also to all those little hands who worked in the shadows or in the light, promises Jason Reitman:

“It's not just the original seven actors, but the writers, the art department, and everyone who came together at the last second to change the face of television. What was so different about this show was not only that it was live, but that the format was unlike anything we'd ever seen before. There were sketches, two musical guests, an orchestra, comedians, Andy Kaufman, the Muppets, an Albert Brooks movie….”

Because we now know that the climax of this film will be that famous evening of October 11, 1975, which saw the very first edition of SNL air. The entire scenario thus tends towards this historical moment.

“It’s a movie where the villain is time. It’s like our Sauron. Our Darth Vader is a clock, and you feel his presence at all times,” says the director.

And the good guys? They will be all these public figures in the making:

“It's a story about people trying to find their identity through the show. The story we're telling is about each of these comedians finding a way to come together as a group, which I think is why SNL ended up being the success that it is.”

Heroes, a big baddie, and adventures: including the behind-the-scenes stories of the creation of this first show, and the suspense of whether NBC will approve it. It's Willem Dafoe who will play David Tebet, NBC's bigwig who made this decision.

Saturday Nightwith a five-star cast and a vintage atmosphere, it's coming soon, to the cinema, with always a mystery: who will play Bill Murray? If he's going to appear in the film, obviously, which is not yet certain…

Bill Murray Sets His Sights on Who (and Who) Could Play Him in the 1975 SNL Movie