Lorne is such a genius, he saw what people of that era were drawn to and he moved that to TV. That required fighting an ancient system that did not know at all what he was talking about. That’s why we have Saturday Night Live, and it was some of the most culturally impactful entertainment we’ve ever experienced.
I think the fear was that it was going to be so chaotic that they over-prepared to the extent that they were ready. The days were pretty tight, and the chaos worked. So to the extent a day felt a little off or things were difficult, I think it probably felt that way in 1975, trying to get a show ready in an hour and a half, and in that way, you could just kind of lean into it and use it.
When we first started prep in Atlanta, Dan Aykroyd was there with Jason and they were doing a pickup shot on the Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. So I’m in my office and all of a sudden Jason comes in with Dan in front of this big model. We asked him questions about how accurate was this set we built. Jason posted it on his Instagram. It was wild to get that sort of validation in a way. It was really fun getting his feedback.
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.
Jon was improvising a lot of this with his musicians. It’s very inherent as everything was orally passed along where you play and hear things rather than have written down music and it’s all done by mouth and in your ears. It was really interesting to sit through and process. That became what Jason wanted to use and there’s this raw edge to it that makes it super unique.
The Saturday Night trailer teases a promising new comedy from Jason Reitman (Young Adult).
