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Gallagher, the comic who reached incredible comic heights with his Sledge-o-Matic watermelon antics and clever wordplay, sunk to equally remarkable lows during the final years of his life, according to the new documentary, Gallagher.

An impressive array of comics, including Bill Burr, Howie Mandel, Bobcat Goldthwait and Carrot Top, tell the tale of a comedian who innovated like few others. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was one of the first comedians to headline a cable TV special, creating 13 visually inventive hours for Showtime. He turned those shows into videotapes rented constantly in Blockbusters and sold directly to consumers for nearly $40 a pop. Finally, he was a tireless live performer, playing 200 shows a year in large theaters. His comedy was far more clever than the Sledge-o-Matic bits suggest, with out-of-left-field insights and nimble wordplay rivaling George Carlin. He estimates that he pulled in $30 million during the 1980s — and then lost it all.

It’s hard to imagine many characters this year having a better introduction than Chevy Chase in Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night.” In the film about the first-ever “Saturday Night Live” episode on October 11, 1975, Chase all but flies onto the screen. He stumbles over a garbage can and falls flat on his face, a move that recalls one of Chase’s signature pratfalls. “Sorry, I tripped over my penis,” Chase says after getting up – a perfect button to the scene, a punchline that underscores his confidence and attitude in those early days of his career.

“I was doing pratfalls around the apartment all the time. So I felt really prepared when I went to the audition,” Chase actor Cory Michael Smith tells Gold Derby. “One of the first things I did in the room was trip over a chair for Jason, which he was very concerned about, but it worked.

Saturday Night Live (or SNL) has been in the world ever since 1975. From legendary snippets to comedy sketches, SNL has helped several iconic comedians like Conan O’Brien and Billy Crystal shape their careers.

Conan O’Brien | Credits: Gage Skidmore, licensed under Cc By-sa 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Although both people worked at different times in SNL, that did not mean their time on the live show was good. Sitting down for a recent chat, both comedians revealed that they had their fair share of stories from the show. Billy Crystal, however, had it worse.

Billy Crystal And The 1st Episode of Saturday Night Live

It was 11 October 1975 when Saturday Night Live premiered. The show featured George Carlin as the host of that night. However, it was called NBC’s Saturday Night due to copyright reasons.

Billy Crystal was just 25 years old when it happened | Credits: Castle Rock Entertainment

When comedian Billy...

Saturday Night Live, née NBC’s Saturday Night, has broken so much new ground in late-night television that in many ways, it’s shaped the industry in its own image. But who were the firsts among the firsts?

14 The First Cast Member

Big names like Chevy Chase, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd have gotten more press over the years, but Gilda Radner was the first person Lorne Michaels added to the roster. She tragically passed away in 1989.

13 The Most ‘Live From New York’s

Chevy Chase got there first, announcing the calling card after the first sketch ever aired. But Darrell Hammond would say the famous phrase the most often throughout his career, clocking in at 70 times.

12 The First Host

The structure of the show was a lot different in the beginning, but Michaels was already set on a rotating menu of hosts. The first to do it was George Carlin...

Comic and podcaster Marc Maron is calling out his peers who use their positions to drive what he terms “the new fascism” just a day after right-wing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made racist and sexist jokes at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.

Other comics also slammed Hinchcliffe who, among other things, called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”

Tweeted Michael Ian Black, “I think America just found its next Jim Breuer!”

Maron’s statement, posted in full on his Wtf With Marc Maron website and shared in part on social media, did not specifically name Hinchcliffe, but the message seems clear.

Writes Maron: “The anti-woke flank of the new fascism is being driven almost exclusively by comics, my peers. Whether or not they are self-serving or true believers in the new fascism is unimportant. They are of the movement. Whether they see themselves as acolytes or just comics doesn’t matter.

The Man in the Yellow Hat is going to have to testify before congress to get Curious George out of this bind.

We’re just days away from the divisive 2024 general election, and during this stressful time wherein prominent political figures are already launching attacks on the legitimacy of the American democratic process, the last thing we need is some more monkey business that could call the results into question. The shit-slinging that’s plagued every campaign trail in the last three presidential elections has already riled up the more extreme elements of the American voting base, and our fragile republic simply cannot suffer some rogue actor going bananas on a ballot box this close to election day.

Sadly, the formerly beloved children’s book character Curious George’s inquisitive nature doesn’t extend to the list of statutes that protect the integrity of our electoral system, as demonstrated by...

Apparently, Carlos Mencia is going to revive his career by stealing Dave Chappelle’s shtick this time.

The conversation about a comedian’s responsibility to choose their targets carefully has been going on since long before the entire comedy world knew that the Mind of Mencia host had been cribbing all of their jokes throughout his career. Mobs of protesters followed Andrew Dice Clay around throughout his heyday in the 1980s for how he repeatedly and gleefully attacked women, immigrants, racial minorities and gay people under the thin guise of humor to the point where comedy’s moral compass, George Carlin, had to step in and warn The Diceman that the same people to whom he was pandering with his “off-color” comedy probably wouldn’t love him so much if they knew he came from a Jewish family.

Enter Mencia — despite being a Honduran immigrant whose “Early Life” tab on...

Netflix has greenlit a new limited series with a pretty impressive cast, from main star Claire Danes to showrunner Howard Gordon.

The Beast In Me Everything We Know post has all the juicy details of the newest thriller mystery joining Netflix. You’ll know when the show is coming on, who will be in the cast, the plot line, and everything else about the limited series.

Be sure you’re following TV Fanatic to get updated on the latest news about The Beast In Me and every other TV show. Sign up for our email list to get this news in your inbox.

Claire Danes attends the Ulla Johnson fashion show during New York Fashion Week on September 08, 2024. (Photo by Dominik Bindl/Getty Images) What is The Beast in Me?

The Beast In Me has an impressive team attached, from the actors to various executive producers, including main actor Claire...

This article contains discussion of addiction.

2024 has been a really huge year for "Saturday Night Live," the sketch comedy institution that operates out of Studio 8 in New York City's famous 30 Rockefeller Center. With the show entering its 50th season during its September premiere -- which brought Emmy-winning "Hacks" star Jean Smart on board as a host -- and a major election this year providing plenty of material week after week, more eyes are on Lorne Michaels' 90-minute late-night show than ever. Not only that, but Jason Reitman's film "Saturday Night," which focuses on the show's humble beginnings and its messy, chaotic 1975 premiere, releases on October 11 (the anniversary of the "Saturday Night Live" series premiere). 

It feels like Michaels and company are pulling out all the stops this fall to celebrate the show -- John Mulaney (one of the most popular hosts in recent memory) will star in an upcoming episode,...

As Saturday Night Live marks a landmark season, the NBC sketch comedy show threw it back to 1975.

Celebrating the 49th anniversary of SNL‘s first broadcast, with Season 50 continuing this weekend, the show shared its original opening credit sequence Friday on social media.

“SNL premiered on October 11, 1975!” they wrote on X with the intro clip for what was then titled Saturday Night.

The lineup included George Carlin, Janis Ian, Billy Preston, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, George Coe, Michael O’Donoghue, Valri Bromfield and Andy Kaufman, with a film by Albert Brooks and Jim Henson’s Muppets.

In honor of the anniversary, Jason Reitman‘s Saturday Night premieres Friday in theaters. The film is set on Oct. 11, 1975, as a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers change television forever. Formerly titled SNL 1975, the film tells the true story of what happened...

Theaters are brimming over with an army of well-reviewed and buzzy indie films. But, in an unusual state of affairs, pretty much all of them are in wide release, meaning Terrifier 3, Piece by Piece, Saturday Night and The Apprentice, as well as animated My Hero Academia: You’re Next. Limited openings are few — a trio of quality documentaries, A24’s We Live In Time, a couple of Academy runs and a faith-based Mormon film on Brigham Young’s ascendance. There also are a half-dozen Indian films in limited to moderate release.

Starting with Kino Lorber’s doc Daytime Revolution. It opened Wednesday in 60+ theaters for a one-day event screening timed to John Lennon’s 84th birthday and now playing at NYC’s Quad Cinema. Directed by Emmy- and IDA Award-winning filmmaker Erik Nelson, and with creative consultation from Yoko Ono and Sean Ono Lennon, it chronicles the week in 1972 when...

“Saturday Night Live” kicked off a monumental season in September, and is rapidly closing in on 1,000 total episodes. But Jason Reitman’s new film “Saturday Night” specifically pays homage to the very first one.

In theaters now, “Saturday Night” tells the story of the 90 minutes immediately preceding the first ever episode of “SNL.” At the time, even creator Lorne Michaels (played by Gabriel Labelle in the movie) couldn’t quite describe what the show would be.

The cast was known as the Not Ready for Primetime Players, and was significantly smaller than it is now. But, it contained some now-legendary faces.

Here’s how you can go back and watch them make their debuts and see what the full episode was really like after you see “Saturday Night.”

When was the first episode of “SNL”?

The very first episode of the NBC series — which was only called “Saturday Night” at the time,...

It was no small feat to get “Saturday Night Live” off the ground at NBC, and as a result, the cast of “Saturday Night” is pretty huge. In many cases, the actors also look eerily similar to the people they’re playing.

Hitting theaters everywhere on Oct. 11 after a limited theatrical release in New York and Los Angeles, Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night” tells the story of the 90 minutes right before the first-ever episode of “SNL.” It’s chaotic and at the time, even Lorne Michaels couldn’t explain what the show was going to be.

Below, you’ll find the cast of “Saturday Night” alongside what their real-life counterparts looked like back then.

Sony/Getty Images Lorne Michaels (Gabriel Labelle)

Lorne Michaels is the creator and, to this day, producer of “Saturday Night Live.” He’s played in “Saturday Night” by Gabriel Labelle, who had his breakout role in Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans.

With Saturday Night opening nationwide, you might be tempted to jump on Peacock and watch the first-ever episode of Saturday Night (not yet with Live in its title). Of course it’s interesting from a historical perspective, but I rewatched the uncut DVD version to see if the actual comedy still held up. With 50 years in the show’s rear-view mirror, here’s the good and bad of that first episode from a 2024 perspective…

Good: George Carlin Stand-Up

Carlin admitted that he refused to appear in sketches, making him the only host in the show’s history to do so. Instead, he did what he did best — four separate stand-up sets interspersed throughout the show. Even though Carlin was jacked up during those monologues — “There’s one place where I can see myself grinding my jaw from the cocaine,” he said years later — you’re still catching an all-time great in his prime.

Saturday Night Live wasn’t Saturday Night Live, both literally and spiritually, when it premiered on Oct. 11, 1975. Weeks earlier, ABC had debuted a prime-time variety show called Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell. So Lorne Michaels’ late-night creation had to go by, simply, Saturday Night — the same title of the Jason Reitman film (out now) about the sketch-comedy institution’s very first telecast. But that inaugural season was different from what we think of as Saturday Night Live in ways that go much further and deeper than the name. In that first year,...

In 2008, director Jason Reitman lived his “SNL” dream.

He was fresh off the success of “Juno,” which earned Reitman a Best Director Oscar nomination and the film a Best Picture nomination. His agent reached out to Lorne Michaels and relayed Reitman’s wish — to do a guest writing stint on “Saturday Night Live.” And, incredibly, it happened.

“It was like getting to suit up for the Los Angeles Lakers for one night,” Reitman told TheWrap. He and “SNL” writer Simon Rich stayed up until four in the morning on a Tuesday night working on ideas. On Wednesday, they took their three sketch ideas to the table read. “And then later that afternoon I got to be there for the moment when they come out of Lorne’s office and pinned a piece of paper to the wall,” Reitman said. That’s when he found out that one of his sketches...

Plot: In the ninety minutes before the live airing of the first episode of Saturday Night Live, a young Lorne Michaels (Gabriel Labelle) desperately tries to keep NBC from pulling the plug while dealing with a cast, writers and crew in open rebellion.

Review: Comedy would be very different nowadays if not for Saturday Night Live‘s impact. Most noteworthy comedy film stars of the last four decades emerged from their ranks, and nearly fifty years since its premiere, it remains as vital as ever. Yet, the making of the show itself had become an almost mythological tale, with it a known fact that the young Lorne Michaels had to overcome overwhelming odds to make the show in the first place.

What Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night does is that it distills most of the big challenges Michaels had to overcome into one ninety-minute period. It’s a conceit that...

Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Jane Curtain (Kim Matula), Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), Alan Zweibel (Josh Brener) and Lorne Michaels (Gabriel Labelle) in Saturday Night.

Ah, the weekend, a time to kick back and relax after the drudgery of the nine-to-fives grind. Well, that’s the case for most of us. For the folks working at “30 Rock” in the “Big Apple” it’s truly “crunch time” Most weeks, that is. And it all started exactly 49 years ago. That’s when one of the “big three” networks (in those “prehistoric’ times before cable and streaming), the National Broadcasting Company decided to gamble on a risky concept, one that was once the “norm” nearly twenty years prior. Back in the 1950s almost everything on the tube (other than creaky old movies) was aired live. But with the advent of video tape, most of the...

At long last, our prayers have been answered — Dogma is coming to streaming, and Harvey Weinstein is slowly heading straight to hell.

In 1999, Kevin Smith, a lapsed Catholic and an iconic quirky comedy filmmaker, released what was then the biggest box office draw of his career amid controversy over its hip, idiosyncratic approach to appalling blasphemy. Dogma told the story of two homicidal fallen angels — played by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck — who attempt to take advantage of a cosmological loophole by either returning to heaven or destroying all of existence while the Christian God is trapped in a corporeal form. However, in the years since Dogma became yet another one of Smith’s cult hits, the real antagonist duo of the film proved to be far more demonic than any fallen angel: the Weinsteins.

After a decades-long rights battle with Bob and Harvey Weinstein during which Dogma fans have...

Larry David could have had a bright future as an action-comedy hero if a certain Saturday Night Live clone had survived long enough to make its own sketch-to-movie adaptations — after all, Enter The Matzoi: The Movie couldn’t have done that much worse at the box office than MacGruber.

The legendary Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm creator’s brief career in sketch comedy is best remembered for his Saturday Night Live era, during which David quit the show in a fit of rage halfway through his first and only season before returning to work the next day as if nothing had happened. David’s SNL antics formed the basis of one of the most iconic Seinfeld episodes ever with “The Revenge,” but it wasn’t David’s first memorable and slightly disastrous brush with televised sketch comedy. In his first-ever TV comedy job, David served as a staff writer and...

With Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night now out in theaters, many viewers may find themselves on the edge of their seats and wanting to see what happened in the very first episode of Saturday Night Live.

Saturday Night follows the 90 minutes leading up to SNL’s first-ever broadcast on the evening of Oct. 11, 1975, ending just before all the cast were set to go on air. Starring Gabriel Labelle, Rachel Sennott, Ella Hunt, Dylan O’Brien, Lamorne Morris, Finn Wolfhard, Nicholas Braun, Cooper Hoffman and others, the film arrived in theaters a week before the actual 50thanniversary, on which the film will be released wide.

For details about how to watch the first episode of Saturday Night Live, read on.

Where can I stream the very first episode of SNL?

Only one streaming service has all 50 seasons of Saturday Night Live available for streaming, and that is Peacock.

The inaugural sketch comedy...

Transport yourself back to a time when America had just three major television networks and a single daytime talk show was able to generate viewer numbers as high as 40 million a week — more than a fifth of the population back then. Now imagine, if you will, a broadcast climate in which a beloved fixture of afternoon TV, watched in red states and blue, would risk alienating a significant chunk of his audience by welcoming as co-hosts a celebrity couple known for their revolutionary zeal. You can almost hear the suits’ alarmed cries: “We’ll lose the housewives!”

But this actually happened in February 1972, when John Lennon and Yoko Ono — fresh from penning their human-rights protest song “Attica State,” a lament for the lives lost in the tragic prison riot and a stinging denunciation of the country’s judicial and penal systems — sat in with the affable host of The Mike Douglas Show...

In the words of George Carlin, “Just when I discovered the meaning of life, they changed it”. Now, imagine you’re Diddy, aka the founder of Bad Boy Records, dealing with more than just the usual music industry hiccups. Instead, we’re talking about a Homeland Security raid that netted over 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant from his properties in March. Yes, you heard that right—baby oil and lube.

Diddy | image: Richard Burdett, licensed under Cc By 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Now, whether you think Diddy was preparing for the world’s slipperiest Slip ‘N Slide or catering to these infamous “Freak Off” s*x parties, this situation is stranger than fiction. Let’s see what really went down with Diddy and his copious supply of baby oil.

Are Diddy’s Parties Just a Rumor? Here’s What the Lawyer Says

Diddy is reportedly in “relatively good” spirits, despite...

Saturday Night Live is back. Well, almost. The beloved sketch show returns on September 28, and Emmy winner Jean Smart will be making her debut as host. As the promo for the season 50 premiere shows, though, Smart will have a lot to compete with.

Saturday Night Live is celebrating five decades on the air, and the show is going to have to juggle new and vital guests, while at the same time looking back and honoring the legends that came before. It's something the show hilariously reckons with, courtesy of Smart's comedic timing.

Jean Smart gets overshadowed by old SNL clips

The promo starts off wistful and soft, with Jean Smart walking down the halls of the SNL offices. She stops and looks at photos of past generations on the wall. The promo then intercuts clips of people like George Carlin, Steve Martin, and the countless other hosts who have left their mark.

Jean Smart is excited to kick of “Saturday Night Live” Season 50 as a first-time host — she just wants a little more of it to be about her.

In a newly released promo for the gig on Wednesday, the “Hacks” Emmy winner grows increasingly frustrated that she’s promoting “50 years of laughs” and walk-down-memory-lane clips instead of focusing on her.

“Can we make this a little bit more about me?” she shouts from the Studio 8H stage. Instead, editors behind the one-minute NBC ad resort to cutting her off before she can get a full thought out.

“You’re not actually going to show a clip from every sea–,” she manages to get out between quick cuts of Dan Aykroyd, George Carlin, Eddie Murphy, Gilda Radner and others.

“You cut me off, and that’s kind of ru–,” she says next before resorting to a shout: “Knock it off already, all right?...

One of the original concepts for Saturday Night Live was to have a series of rotating hosts that included iconic stand-up comedians George Carlin, Lily Tomlin and Richard Pryor. What happened to that plan? “Perhaps I poisoned the well a little,” Carlin wrote in his book Last Words. “I certainly was full of cocaine. (Though I was far from the only one.)”

What else did Carlin do to sour NBC on having the comic as a semi-regular?

Honestly, Carlin doesn’t recall all of the details. Journalist Bob Woodward said someone had to break down Carlin’s hotel room door because he was so coked up. Did it actually happen? “I don’t remember,” he confessed. “It may be true. Maybe I went missing the day before or after the show, crashed after being up all week.”

One thing Carlin does remember is refusing to participate in any comedy sketches...

In general, I don’t have a problem when movies based on actual events fudge the facts. Filmmakers should be allowed some leeway when trying to craft a compelling story, and besides: If they make things up, you can always research the true story to find out what’s been exaggerated or left out. It’s hardly a mortal sin.

But in the case of Saturday Night, the backstage comedy-drama that follows a young Lorne Michaels (Gabriel Labelle) in the 90 minutes before the launch of his new variety show Saturday Night — it would later be renamed Saturday Night Live — it’s a history so many people think they know. There have been multiple books about SNL’s early days, as well as countless interviews over the years from the show’s many cast members. To be a fan of SNL is to be obsessive about its legacy, conversant in all...

The legend of the early years of Saturday Night Live is that performers and writers churned out 90 minutes of live comedy each week fueled by cocaine and other substances.

Okay, it’s more than legend. Writer Tom Schiller called pot “an inspirational tool” in those early seasons, according to Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night. George Carlin admitted coke had him “in another world” on the show’s debut in 1975. Dan Aykroyd once read this joke on Weekend Update: “This just in from the National Drug Abuse Association: Cocaine and heroin do not mix. If you must snort, don’t shoot.”

Did Lorne Michaels simply turn a blind eye while all of this was happening on his watch? That’s what Lesley Stahl wanted to know when she interviewed him for 60 Minutes back in 2004. A lot of that interview ended up on the cutting room floor,...

To the joy of comedy fans, and the horror of families who were just looking for a nice cartoon about jazz-playing felines, the 2005 documentary The Aristocrats delved into the history of the notoriously filthy joke about a family pitching a vulgar stage show to a talent agent. While we all know the punchline — “The Aristocrats!” — it’s the uniquely grotesque nuances of each comedian’s version that makes the movie so interesting.

The Aristocrats featured interviews with some of the biggest names in comedy — from Chris Rock, to Sarah Silverman, to George Carlin. Also Carrot Top. But the most memorable version of the joke was probably the one told by the late Gilbert Gottfried. Note: The clip is not safe for work, unless you work in the talent agency from the joke.

One celebrity you won’t see in the movie is Chevy Chase, which is odd because Chase is...

Jason Reitman’s SNL origin story, Saturday Night, hasn’t even hit movie theaters yet, but it’s already sparking an explosion of online opinions. Most recently, Muppet devotees have been wading into the discourse, due to the film’s depiction of Jim Henson, as played by Cousin Greg from Succession, who, confusingly, also plays Andy Kaufman in the film.

Over on the Muppets subreddit, fans have been responding to a recent Slate article that makes mention of the film’s “dismissive” treatment of Henson. One user noted that this news is “disappointing if true.” Another Muppet fan pointed out that “it makes no one look good to treat Muppets as badly as (the SNL cast and crew) apparently did. Good biopics should capture the magic of their target.”

But others defended the film, suggesting that the “Muppet SNL skits are probably the worst thing Henson ever did,” and reminding...

Though he was arguably the single most influential stand-up comedian in history, George Carlin’s inimitable talents only ever translated perfectly onto the silver screen one time — but thank Lady God that Hollywood got it right, even if it was just once.

I mean this with no disrespect to the sizable fandom of the Bill & Ted film franchise, nor do I intentionally invoke the ire of the oldheads who miss when big-budget production companies like Universal Pictures made comedies like Car Wash. Hell, even Tarzan II has its apologists, and I’m not interested in upsetting all four of them and their favorite shitty movie.

When it comes to Carlin, comedy fans tend to get testy, and he’s had plenty of passable performances in other movies that hold a special place in people’s hearts, and I’m not trying to take that away from anyone. But when you...

A film about the creation of Saturday Night Live seems incredibly indulgent on paper. Still, in the hands of a filmmaker like Jason Reitman, whose father had such a connection to people from SNL, we could rely on it at least being sincere. While Saturday Night is certainly an exercise in style over substance, it is well-made and well-performed enough to win viewers over.

Saturday Night Review

Saturday Night takes audiences behind the scenes of the first-ever episode of Saturday Night Live, recorded on October 11, 1975, as creator Lorne Michaels struggles to make sure everything in the soon-to-be legendary sketch comedy show goes off without a hitch. The movie’s conceit is that it plays out in real time, following the final hour and a half before the show goes live, creating an incredibly immersive experience.

Because of its real-time structure, Saturday Night turns into something resembling a race-against-the-clock thriller. Even...

Noting the recent trend of Ben Affleck’s “Air,” Matt Johnson’s “Blackberry,” Eva Longoria’s “Flamin’ Hot,” and, though perhaps a bit on the silly side, Jerry Seinfeld’s “Unfrosted,” there seems to be an increasing market for stories about consumer goods and marketing. Deadline announced Wednesday that the latest to get in the act are Judd Apatow and Steven Spielberg with a picture called “Cola Wars,” all about the rivalry between Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

“Cola Wars,” which Spielberg will produce and Apatow will direct, is written by Jason Shuman and Ben Queen. Shuman is best known for co-creating the series “Acapulco” on Apple TV + and was an executive producer on “Winning Time,” another nostalgia-soaked based-on-reality project about the peak years of the Los Angeles Lakers. Queen’s credits include “Cars 2” and “Cars 3.” The project is set up at Sony.

The story of “Cola Wars,” much like “Air,...

“Can satire save the Republic?”

— May 2017 cover story of The Atlantic featuring Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump

“Mad TV would have done a Barron Trump School Shooter skit the week after Columbine. Donald would show up in a diaper having sex with Ivanka.”

— Redacted podcaster

Saturday Night Live means many things to many people. In its recent There’s a Cheeto in the Damn White House era, the show’s adopted a level of self-importance and, frankly, smug ruling-class unfunniness that’s made it somewhat of a punching bag for the dispossessed young left. But go back: the rot has been pretty present for a while, as evidenced by Aaron Sorkin’s short-lived series maudit Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a Bush-era fantasy where every week a group of overpaid TV writers and comedians seemingly were able to get evangelical America to put a gun in their mouth through the...

Jason Reitman’s upcoming real-time film Saturday Night is set to dramatise the events leading up to SNL's first ever show. Trailer here.

Last month, we got the news that Saturday Night, the making-of story behind one of the most successful variety shows in US history, is heading for an 11th October release date in the US, and we also got an introductory trailer to go along with it.

While we still don’t yet now when Saturday Night will be hitting the UK, we do have a full trailer to check out ahead of the film’s arrival.

Starring The Fabelmans breakout Gabriel Labelle as the show’s famed producer, Lorne Michaels, the film reportedly revolves around the 90 minutes before the first broadcast of Michaels’ comedy darling, Saturday Night Live.

The cast for this one is something to behold. As well as the aformentioned Gabriel Labelle, we get Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd,...

Jason Reitman has described Saturday Night as a “comedy thriller” and said that the villain of the movie is time itself. It’s easy to see what he means in the new trailer for the film that depicts the chaotic premiere night of the comedy institution Saturday Night Live. The trailer, newly released by Sony, showcases more of the incredible recreations at Studio 8H, housed at the famous 30 Rockefeller Plaza, along with the cast of the film emulating that ragtag group of soon-to-be over-the-night comedy sensations.

In the new Saturday Night trailer, Labelle’s Lorne Michaels scrambles to get his show on the road in the face of impending failure. Between battling Rockafella Center security, being at odds with Mbc programming higher-up David Tebet (Willem Dafoe), and trying to keep his cast from killing each other, Michaels faces an uphill battle of wills to launch what eventually becomes an institution among television programming.

Sony is ramping up its award campaign plans for filmmaker Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night Live movie, a dramatic recreation of the 90 minutes leading up to the iconic NBC show’s first episode in the mid-1970s.

The studio announced late Thursday that it will release Saturday Night in select theaters on Sept. 27 in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto, followed by another expansion on Oct. 4. It will then open nationwide on Oct. 22 as originally planned.

The move gives Sony and the filmmakers a chance to use word of mouth to build anticipation for the movie, which was one of the most buzzed-about titles at the Telluride Film Festival, which is considered ground zero for assessing the awards landscape.

It’s stuff of legend how showrunner Lorne Michael and an insanely talented troupe of young comedians and writers changed television — and culture — forever. Reitman directed from a script he co-wrote with Gil Kenan.

Sony and Columbia Pictures are expanding their release rollout for Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night.”

The film, which was previously scheduled to solely release wide on Oct. 11, 2024, is now getting a three-step platform release. It will first land exclusively in L.A., N.Y. and Toronto on Sept. 27, followed by a limited release on Oct. 4 and a wide release on Oct. 11.

Set in 1975, the film depicts the chaotic 90 minutes leading up to the premiere of NBC’s long-running sketch show, “Saturday Night Live.” It boasts a large ensemble cast, including “The Fablemans” breakout Gabriel Labelle as Lorne Michaels, Rachel Sennott as Rosie Shuster, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Matt Wood as John Belushi, Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris and Nicholas Braun in dual roles as Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson.

“Saturday Night” premiered to a packed house at the Telluride Film Festival on Sept.

On October 11, 1975, George Carlin hosted the first Saturday Night Live. Lorne Michaels introduced the show to the masses, and over 50 years later, the series is going strong. It has launched some of the most notable comedians in history, like Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell, and Tina Fey.

With Lorne Michael getting older, the biggest question is, who could take over for him? We explore the four comedians who we think could take over the popular series and keep it going for generations to come.

Read More: Saturday Night movie reviews suggest the film lives up to its source material

When looking over the mass amounts of comedians who have come from Saturday Night Live, it wasn’t easy to narrow the list down to a select few. But when you look at who has been there the longest or who has returned even years after breaking away, the list condenses slightly.

One of the buzziest films of the 2024 Telluride Film Festival has been the upcoming Sony feature based on the first ever live performance of the pop culture staple “Saturday Night Live.” What no one saw coming was that one of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players, Bill Murray, would introduce the film alongside director Jason Reitman, who were both welcomed with a standing ovation of massively supportive fans and industry insiders.

At 11:30pm on October 11, 1975, a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers changed television and pop culture forever. “Saturday Night” is based on the true story of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of what was originally called “NBC’s Saturday Night” (because a competing show with Howard Cosell had the “Saturday Night Live” title). Full of humor, chaos, and the magic of a revolution that almost wasn’t,...

Live from Telluride, it’s Saturday Night! Appropriately enough, Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night debuted on, well, Saturday Night at the Telluride Film Festival. For fans of SNL, this is one of the most anticipated films of the year and, judging by the initial reactions, it could now be in the Oscars discussion.

Check out some of the first reactions below:

Saturday Night just blew the roof off #Telluride. One of Jason Reitman’s best films! Perfectly captures the chaotic energy, camaraderie & backstage shenanigans of putting together the first SNL in real-time. Crisp editing, long takes, a witty script with big laughs and a… pic.twitter.com/NvBB1iZ3eN

— Matt Neglia @Telluride (@NextBestPicture) September 1, 2024

The sneaky #Telluride programmers waited till Saturday night to share Jason Reitman's Saturday Night, and it's been the highlight of my festival so far: a crowd-pleasing re-creation of SNL's first episode that gets the daunting casting challenge right.

A new documentary, Daytime Revolution, will look at all that went into John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s legendary weeklong 1972 residency as guests on The Mike Douglas Show — the most-watched daytime talk show at the time — and its impact. A trailer shows how the couple used the opportunity to discuss radical politics in addition to performing music. The picture opens in theaters on Oct. 9.

“What would you like to talk about this week, John?” Douglas asks the former Beatle at one moment. “Love, peace, communication, drugs, anything,” Lennon replied. The couple handpicked their fellow guests,...

Matthew Rhys is joining Claire Danes in the upcoming Netflix limited series “Beast in Me.”

The mystery thriller, which comes from creator and writer Gabe Rotter, showrunner Howard Gordon and 20th Television, follows Danes as acclaimed author Aggie Wiggs, who has been unable to write since the tragic death of her young son.

But she finds an unlikely subject for a new book in the house next door, which is bought by Nile Jarvis (Rhys), a famed and formidable real estate mogul who was once the prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance. At once horrified and fascinated by this man, Aggie finds herself compulsively hunting for the truth – chasing his demons while fleeing her own – in a game of cat and mouse that might turn deadly.

In addition to Gordon and Rotter (“The X-Files”), the series is executive produced by Danes, writer Daniel Pearle (“American Crime Story”) and director Antonio Campos.

We will update this article throughout the season, along with all our predictions, so make sure to keep checking IndieWire for the latest news from the 2024 Emmys race. The nomination round of voting takes place from June 13 to June 24, with the official Emmy nominations announced Wednesday, July 17. Afterwards, final voting commences on August 15 and ends the night of August 26. The 76th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards are set to take place on Sunday, September 15, and air live on ABC at 8:00 p.m. Et/ 5:00 p.m. Pt.

Click on for more of our previous thoughts on what to expect at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards.

The State of the Race

The Emmy nominations for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special were definitely more predictable than their counterparts on the series end. Most of the projects recognized fit the mold of what has won recently, with one nominee “Girls State” even being...

Exclusive: Emmy Award winner Matthew Rhys has joined the cast of Netflix’s The Beast in Me, the mystery thriller project, created, written and executive-produced by Gabe Rotter. He joins previously announced Claire Danes who, in addition to starring, will also EP.

In The Beast In Me, since the tragic death of her young son, acclaimed author Aggie Wiggs (Danes) has receded from public life, unable to write, a ghost of her former self. But she finds an unlikely subject for a new book when the house next door is bought by Nile Jarvis (Rhys), a famed and formidable real estate mogul who was once the prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance.

At once horrified and fascinated by this man, Aggie finds herself compulsively hunting for the truth – chasing his demons while fleeing her own – in a game of cat and mouse that might turn deadly.

Within Group Therapy’s opening moments, clips from top comedians reveal the struggles often beneath humor’s surface. Statistics on isolation and anguish roll as George Carlin matter-of-factly states society’s failures supporting mental wellness.

We then meet the film’s subjects: Tig Notaro opens up after battling cancer and grief. Gary Gulman discusses depression leading to suicidal thoughts and institutionalization, though medication now helps. Mike Birbiglia speaks of nearly three decades of therapy and loss impacting his craft. Nicole Byer and London Hughes face industry racism and body insecurity.

Director Neil Berkeley brilliantly pairs frank interviews with these risk-takers and others with Neil Patrick Harris’s group therapy, moderated with empathy. Laughter remains, but now shines light on shadows many brave souls face, creating joy for others.

We watch personal discovery and authenticity battles, themes resonating as performers showcase how life influences acts. Through it all, we glimpse challenges...

In today’s politically touchy country, “woke” has become just another four-letter divisive reference to people who are attentive to important societal issues. But if that’s the case, it can be argued that “Hacks” is TV’s most socially conscious, dare we say, “woke,” series on air.

The Jean Smart-lead Max comedy has broached topics like sexuality, mortality, aging, bullying, and on and on, usually subtly and reasonably within the structure of the show, not hitting viewers over the head with opinions. One story that went a little deeper in Season 3 dealt with Ava and Deborah talking about climate change, a topic the series’ creators thought was too important not to confront.

“Sometimes the biggest challenge to writing ‘Hacks’ is compartmentalizing the fact that the world is literally on fire,” Lucia Aniello tells Variety. “Our country, we’re burning in many different ways. Sometimes it’s hard to ignore that,...

Three years after “Boys State” won the Emmy for Best Documentary Special, its first companion film, “Girls State,” is competing for the same honor. While it has solid potential to directly follow “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” as the third Apple TV+ special to take this prize, it will have to stand out from a crowd of strong contenders, including the same platform’s “Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces.”

Unlike most Primetime Emmys, Best Documentary Special is a non-competitive area award that is bestowed upon any nominee that earns the approval of 90% of the members of the TV academy’s documentary peer group. This means that the five programs in the 2024 lineup are not vying for a single trophy and could all potentially prevail. However, if no nominees hit said 90% threshold, only the highest-rated one will win.

In order to determine which of this year’s nominees...

The official trailer for “Saturday Night,” the feature film adaptation about a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers who changed television – and culture – forever, has been released. The film tells the true story of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of “Saturday Night Live.”

Some familiar faces appearing in the film include Kim Matula, best known for her portrayal as Hope Logan on “The Bold and the Beautiful,” playing Weekend Update reporter Jane Curtin, “Teen Wolf” star Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner and Matthew Rhys as George Carlin. Nicholas Braun plays a double role as Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman, Cory Michael Smith is Chevy Chase, Matt Wood takes on the role of John Belushi, and finally, Gabriel Labelle plays the show’s executive producer and creator, Lorne Michaels.

Directed by...

The chaotic first night of Saturday Night Live — and how the show was almost dead-on-arrival — is the focus of the upcoming “thriller-comedy” Saturday Night, which depicts the hours leading up to the premiere broadcast.

“At 11:30pm on October 11, 1975, a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers changed television – and culture – forever,” Sony Pictures Entertainment said in the film’s synopsis.

“Saturday Night is based on the true story of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live. Full of humor,...