I think the scene between Gilda and Belushi at the Ice Rink is probably my favorite. It was our first night shooting, so to be having this moment in my life where I’m shooting with a director that I have admired since I was a kid playing a comedic icon and shooting at the Rockefeller Ice Rink. I feel like Jason and Gil Kenan captured Gilda’s voice in that monologue.
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.
“I think for Bob, it has always been, what really gets him going is figuring out a way to do something in traditional storytelling. Perhaps it can turn into making Fords and Chevys. You can be on the factory line, and you can make a hit movie. But to get him going, to get him excited about a project, I think he has to see something in it that pushes him and what he does to another level.”
Contact is a tremendous movie. 27 years after its release, Robert Zemeckis’ film remains awe-inspiring. The Carl Sagan adaptation is emotionally, intellectually, and viscerally engaging science-fiction. It’s the full-package. For cinematographer Don Burgess, it is the most challenging film he’s shot. Which is saying a lot considering he just made Here with Zemeckis, in which the two explore the passage of time from one angle.
The Saturday Night trailer teases a promising new comedy from Jason Reitman (Young Adult).
