Warning! This post contains spoilers for Saturday night
Jason Reitman Saturday night is currently in theaters, a movie based on the real-life events and anecdotes around the 90 minutes before the first episode of Saturday Night Live. This includes a striking phone call producer Lorne Michaels received from The Tonight Show Johnny Carson, one that was quite threatening. However, Carson’s real feelings about SNL was quite different from the one depicted in the new movie.
While dodging NBC executives like David Tebet (played by Willem Dafoe) who want to pull the plug before the first episode airs, Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) receives a call from Johnny Carson himself in Burbank, California. With a lack of support, Carson even becomes threatening to Michaels ahead of that Saturday night Movie’s ending, which finally hangs up The Tonight Show Boss to deal with the next crisis before the air time. That said, Johnny Carson’s true feelings about Saturday Night Live In real life was something different.
Saturday Night Live was created because of Johnny Carson’s dispute with NBC
It was created as a solution
actually, Saturday night was created and greenlit to resolve an ongoing dispute between Carson and NBC. No more missing reruns of The Tonight Show To air on the weekends, Carson instead wanted to do his show three nights a week and have the reruns on the remaining two days, allowing him to have more time off. how so Saturday Night Live was created as a means to fill the newly opened weekend slot.
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Instead of losing revenue to local stations, NBC decided to create its own programming for Saturday night, therefore turning to Lorne Michaels and the creation of a new live variety show. This way, Carson could have his reruns on the weekends as he wanted. As such, to suggest that Carson wanted Saturday Night Live To outright fail is far too simple and largely untrue.
Johnny Carson spoke to Lorne Michaels, but not the way Saturday night showed it
The real story is quite different
Per Entertainment WeeklyCarson did meet with Lorne Michaels. However, it was not through a phone call just before the premiere of the show as seen in Reitman Saturday night. instead, Carson and Michaels reportedly met weeks earlier, agreeing not to book guests at the same time.
moreover, It was reported that Lorne repeatedly asked Carson to guest-host on Saturday Night Live. While the “king of late night” never ended up hosting SNLIt is evident that Carson was not nearly as negative towards the show as the movie makes him out to be. That said, things have changed over time as well SNL Established itself and gained popularity after its premiere.
Is “The Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson openly hostile over “SNL”?
Skeptical, but not threatening
Rather than being unsupportive and threatening before the show even airs, James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales’ book Life from New York Claims that Carson is simply skeptical of the show and whether it would be a success. However, he gradually grew up”Openly appalled by some of his more outrageous gags.” But that was only after Saturday night Live Was on the air for quite some time. The feud before the first episode goes live looks to be nothing more than fiction for the sake of Saturday night Overall narrative and added entertainment value.
Saturday night Now playing in theaters.