Saturday Night premiered at this year’s Telluride Film Festival to great acclaim and fanfare. It has since been released to theaters and is now available on home video. It is the story of the 90 minutes before the first episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975. Directed by celebrated filmmaker Jason Reitman and edited by his previous collaborators, Nathan Orloff and Shane Reid. It is a whirlwind ride that takes you into the frenetic pace of Lorne Michaels making comedy history with the show that would become the gold standard for comedy for the next 50 years and beyond. Editors, Orloff and Reid recently spoke to Immersive via Zoom.
[This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.]
Are both of you fans of Saturday Night Live… Is it something you watched when you were young?
Nathan: I grew up watching it as my first foray into adult comedy and my parents reluctantly permitted me to stay up with them in the nineties. I vividly remember just it being the first piece of comedy that my parents and I both liked to watch together and that meant a lot to me.
Shane: I was born after the show started obviously, but up to now it’s amazing how probably 90% of my comedic identity and what I’ve ingested as a pop culture stemmed from that show, stemmed from those actors and those creations. I was keenly aware of this first cast and I remember buying the DVD of the first season when they came out. At some point, they were starting to release them before we could stream them. It’s incredible how much Saturday Night Live has been a part of our life, my life since I was born.
So let us talk about how each of you got involved with this film.
Nathan: I read the script a long time ago. Jason’s talked about it publicly, that the early concept of this movie was sort of conceived as one shot. I remember reading the script and Jason wanted my opinion. They’re like, alright, as an editor, what would you cut? Just they wanted to re-edit the script so that it was as tight as possible and whatnot. And then over the years, it became like I think Jason saw the opportunity of the film to have edits.
Shane: I met Jason doing an Apple ad that he and Ivan Reitman had directed together. I got to know Ivan because Jason was doing press for Afterlife, which Nathan also cut. Ivan unfortunately passed not too long after that. I helped Jason put together a short film about Ivan’s life for his memorial service. That’s how we got to know each other and create something and it was really beautiful. I remember the first lunch that we had where he was like, okay, well what’s next and what are you doing? He started talking about the Saturday Night Live film and I was like, “You could not be telling me about a project that I could not imagine being a part of more so to find myself in this moment from that lunch is pretty bewildering to me.”
That’s incredible. So both of you have worked with Jason before?
Nathan: I’ve worked with him since Tully.
How has that relationship evolved over the years? Do you find he has to tell you less or was he very specific with what he wanted for this movie? It sounds like he had an initial idea, but then when he started working with you guys that evolved a bit.
Nathan: It’s interesting to look at the balance of how much he empowers us as editors and artists to bring what we think would work best for the film. But also to get in Jason’s head of what he’s going after and then trust his vision.
Shane: I remember there being a time in the edit too, where we were all pretty good with a certain section of the film. I think it was more around the beginning of the film. Nathan and I and our music editor, Chris Newlin, had a few more ideas in us and we talked amongst ourselves and presented some ideas to him. I remember in that moment he stopped and he was like, “I feel like an incredible amount of gratitude to the people in this room who are continuing to push on their own accord because they care.”
Tell me about working with Jon Batiste and his incredible score, which propels this film.
Nathan: The score was recorded live on set, which was wild. And we had an assembly of the scene on my laptop and Jason and I would show Jon the assembly. He would tell his band to play this thing and we’d sit and watch this free concert and it would be like he’d do a 10-minute chunk where he’d build up, he’d come down, he’d climax, he’d do all these different improvised variants and we did that for two nights straight. The cast got wind of it and by the second night the entire cast was there just listening and it was an incredibly beautiful experience. It was all on top of each other.
What were the challenges with this project? Was it always envisioned as a 90-minute running time?
Shane: It always existed as 90 minutes. The challenge was that you were moving at a certain speed with a certain tempo and you also wanted to give each character their moments and to allow the audience to settle into something. The delicate balance of pacing and rhythm and restructuring little moments of the script or what was shot to keep you on this roller coaster.
Any specific sequence in the film that’s a favorite?
Nathan: “Nothing from Nothing” is a montage with Billy Preston singing (played by Jon Batiste) at the end and we always looked at that sequence as the candy that the audience got after hopefully enjoying but also suffering through the anxiety of the previous 90 minutes. This was everybody coming together. The idea is that you watch that scene and you hopefully are smiling ear to ear the entire time.
Looking at this on the other end, what are your guys’ thoughts?
Shane: I can’t believe that I am lucky enough to be etched in some part of Saturday Night Live history. I never thought I would be, I don’t live in New York. I was not a writer on the show, I was not a performer on the show. It’s a sort of benchmark that very few people ever get to meet. So to be gifted the opportunity to work in this world and to handle these characters the way we did, I think for me, that’s my takeaway. I’m proud of the film and very grateful to Jason and Gil and everyone who conceived of it and brought it into existence.
Nathan: Every film you work on is a learning experience on how to cut that film. You’re never a better editor to cut that movie until you wrapped that movie. This film, even though it was short, was incredibly dense, just as dense as every other film I’ve worked on that posted as long as 18 months. This has been an incredibly fulfilling artistic experience, both working with Shane and with Jason. I’m proud and I enjoy watching this movie again and again.
Saturday Night is now available to buy or rent and in theaters.
