I know this is the third day in a row I’ve written about “Saturday Night Live,” but this serves as a followup to my review of Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night” movie on Monday. In that post, I said I wouldn’t go into all the places where Reitman used artistic license to add events that didn’t happen — or did happen, but not in the same timeline.
However, I did reveal one element that annoyed me because I know it absolutely never took place:
But I will mention a couple of sequences with JK Simmons as Milton Berle which make it seem as though Berle was rehearsing a primetime special at 30 Rock on that October night. Though Berle was such a big star in the forties and fifties that he was known as “Mr. Television,” he was old news by 1975. Yes, he still made guest appearances on sitcoms and variety shows, part of a three-decade-long contract he had with NBC, but he hadn’t done his own show for over 15 years, and there was no way he was hosting one at that point. But Reitman has Berle go to Studio 8H to see what the kids are up to and is confronted by Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), who’s not too happy seeing Berle hit on his girlfriend, and gets a verbal dressing-down from the TV veteran.
I’m not the only one bothered by this scene. On the website LateNighter, Bill Carter writes:
Berle certainly did not show up in the studio on the show’s premiere night to bray about his greatness as a comic and television legend, while berating the new show’s young cast, especially Chevy Chase, whose girlfriend Berle is depicted as creepily hitting on.
Nor was the creaky-old variety show being staged elsewhere that night, something called “The Rumpus Room,” complete with dancing girls for Berle to ogle, a real thing.
All of this seems, initially at least, both gratuitous and ludicrous to anyone familiar with the build-up to the show’s actual premiere 49 years ago (Oct 11, 1975). But almost nothing in Saturday Night is precisely as it was that opening night. Much is wildly invented.
As I said in my review, I know Reitman’s movie is not a documentary, and that he uses Berle as an example of the old-time television performers and executives for whom “SNL” was such a sea change. But the same message of disdain is made clear by the presence of Willem Dafoe as Dave Tebet (head of late night programming at NBC), sales reps from affiliates across the country who are portrayed as being in the building that night, too, plus an entirely made up last-minute phone call from Johnny Carson to Lorne Michaels.
Too bad Reitman didn’t spend as much time showcasing the talents of Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, and Laraine Newman — three legendary members of the show’s original cast — who seem included in the movie almost as an afterthought. That’s a word better used to describe Milton Berle.