By Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night” scored good reviews in release, but one person offered a critique directly to the filmmaker – actor/comedian Chevy Chase.
The film depicts the stressful and eventful 90 minutes leading up to the first “Saturday Night Live” broadcast, an ensemble cast which included a young Chase played by Cory Michael Smith.
Reitman appeared on comedians David Spade and Dana Carvey’s Fly on the Wall podcast where the topic turned to the few people who can get away with roasting others – walking the fine line with a cutting joke that doesn’t dip into cruelty.
Chase came up in that talk and Carvey says: “Chevy loves to say the thing you’re not supposed to say…. to the extreme where it can go wherever it wants to go”. That is when Reitman offered an example tied to Chase’s reaction to watching “Saturday Night”:
“So, Chevy comes in to watch the movie, and he is there with [wife] Jayni and they watch the film, and he’s in the group, and he comes up to me after and he pats me on the shoulder and goes, ‘Well, you should be embarrassed’.”
Carvey adds that Chase: “knows that’s funny, like that’s the roughest thing you could say to a director in the moment, or right up there.” Reitman continued:
“I’m trying to balance it, because, in my head, I know, ‘Alright, I’m getting my own Chevy Chase moment that’s 1,000 percent only for me right now.’ And from a comedy point-of-view that’s really pure, and that’s kind of cool.
But also, I just spent like two years of my life recreating this moment and trying to capture Chevy perfectly, and also even in the ego, find the humanity and give him a moment to be loved – no, none of that s— played. He’s not talking about that stuff.”
“Saturday Night” is now available for streaming on VOD and Amazon Prime.
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