The current sorry state of Saturday Night Live, a weekly comedy show so consistently, maddeningly absent of laughs that it now borders on avant garde performance art, has led many of us to look back instead. A wealth of YouTube clips swiftly reminds us how things used to be different, when A-game writing and performing would combine to make it feel like we really were watching something on the cutting edge of the medium, following through on an original mission statement written back in the mid-70s.
Jason Reitman, a writer-director whose thirst for nostalgia has trapped him in the thankless Ghostbusters universe for the last five years, understands this desire more than most, a lifelong SNL superfan who spent a week writing on the show back in 2008 after he broke out with Juno. His love for what it used to be and represent has led him to make Saturday Night, a claustrophobically contained origins story that takes us back to the first-ever episode in 1975 and the chaos that preceded it, told almost in real time.
