Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Sony Pictures
Saturday Night has a compelling concept: Instead of a film tracking the history of Saturday Night Live, which is celebrating its 50th season this year, it's a crazed behind-the-scenes comedy chronicling the night before the first episode ever aired, Oct. 11, 1975.
Directed by Jason Reitman, who wrote the screenplay with Gil Kenan, the film is a zany whirlwind depicting the chaos, cast drama, and production issues on a night where anything you could imagine going wrong does. That whirlwind, however, does an enormous disservice: The film completely fails comedy legend Gilda Radner.
Radner made an immediate impact on Saturday Night Live with her now iconic characters Roseanne Roseannadanna, Lisa Loopner, and Emily Litella, and memorable impersonations of celebrities like Lucille Ball and Patti Smith. She even won an Emmy in 1978 for her work on the show. When Rolling Stone ranked every cast member in the show’s history, she placed ninth, with the magazine praising that “Radner was the prototype for the brainy city girl with a bundle of neuroses.” Watching Saturday Night, however, you’d be forgiven for thinking she wasn’t even a cast member.
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