Jason Reitman (“Ghostbusters: Afterlife”) has used his “Wayback Machine” to take us back to a seminal point in television entertainment – the point at which a form of popular entertainment that was rooted in vaudeville, the stage, and accepted mores of behavior and language was replaced by a free-wheeling, irreverent approach. In other words, the birth of “Saturday Night Live.”
We are given a rollicking, back-stage, intimate view of the machinations as ego driven performers, hide-bound stage hand unions, missing script pages, electrical catastrophes, and establishment managers at NBC all seem to conspire against creator and producer Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle – “The Fabelmans”) durng the last 90 minutes before the program debuted live on Oct. 11, 1975.
Why refer to the “Wayback Machine” instead of some other sort of time machine? You may recall that this device was the tool used by cartoon characters Mr. Peabody (a cartoon dog) and his pet boy Sherman (a cartoon boy) to visit imaginary happenings loosely based on reality in the distant past. And that sums up exactly what Reitman has given us. The bones of those exciting minutes are there, and we become fully immersed in the excitement, edge-of your-seat anxiety, and general mayhem of the time, but the details are modifed, invented, or re-arranged to fit that enjoyable narrative.
Perhaps the most infamous of the imaginary episodes is a confrontation between Milton Berle (played by JK Simmons) and Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith). Berle supposedly whips out his “member” while engaging is a duel of witty insults with Chase. Berle walks off the clear winner and Chase is “chasened,” at least for a while. This never happened. In fact, Berle wasn’t even present that night, although he did guest on SNL years later. Instead, according to director Reitman, this scene illustrated the conflict between the old and passing approach to American television and the upcoming edgy replacement. It also served to deflate Chase’s arrogance. However, since Berle walks away triumphant, I don’t really see the triumph of new vs old.
Despite such flight of fantasy, or perhaps because of them, the movie is enjoyable. All the familiar faces are here: Chevy Chase, who makes arrogance an art form; John Belushi (Matt Wood – “Sunset Park”), a prickly, difficult character who considered himself on the level of Marlon Brando; Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris – “New Girl”), who laments to everyone who will listen about why he is there at all; and Dan Ackroyd (Dylan O’Brien – “Ponyboi”) who comes off as a wisecracking, sex maniac, but otherwise normal person. Sadly, the ladies, Jane Curtin (Kim Matula – “Tapawingo”), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt – “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”) and Loraine Newman (Emily Fairn – “Black Nirror”), aren’t given as much to do or nearly as much film time.
Kudos to the steady-cam operators who made their way through the jungle of people, props, doors, etc. to capture the frantic nature of those 90 minutes, and to the editor who cut it all together.
Great finish with the credits running and the SNL theme playing in all its jazzy glory.
This is a fun ride – but see it twice to catch all the frenetic detail.
Runtime: One hour, 49 minutes
Availability: Netflix and other streaming services
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