Jason Reitman’s movie about the first-ever broadcast of “Saturday Night Live” has finally received a title, and it’s a lot more fitting than you might think. The film is called “Saturday Night,” and it’s missing the word “Live” for a good reason: that part of the title didn’t actually appear in the earliest episodes of the long-running live comedy series.
That’s because, according to TIME Magazine, a new primetime series already owned the rights to the title “Saturday Night Live” when Lorne Michaels’ series was in its infancy, and its home was NBC’s rival network, ABC. “Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell” was a short-lived musical variety show starring the sports reporter with a big personality who gave it its title. The two shows premiered around the same time, and TIME’s early coverage indicates that Cosell’s show, filmed at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, was at first the more promising of the two.
In its short run, “Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell” featured up-and-comers and high profile guests like Billy Crystal, Bill Murray, Frank Sinatra, The Bay City Rollers, and John Denver. Still, the show apparently wasn’t all that great: culture writer Nathan Rabin once wrote on his blog that the series “is today fuzzily remembered for being a ‘Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip’-level failure featuring one of the biggest names in the history of sports broadcasting in a new role he was wildly unprepared for.” According to Jim Whalley’s book “Saturday Night Live, Hollywood Comedy, and American Culture,” Michaels actually dubbed his chaotic breakout comedy team “The Not Ready For Prime Time Players” as a direct reference to the ABC program’s struggle to stay relevant.
A failed ABC show originally had the SNL title
By mid-season, Cosell’s show was already over and done with, and sometime after that, NBC acquired the rights to its name. According to author Stephen Tropiano’s “Saturday Night Live FAQ,” the title change officially took effect on March 26, 1977, during a season 2 episode featuring musical guest Santana. In the meantime, the show that would ultimately become “Saturday Night Live” was called “NBC’s Saturday Night,” hence the now-iconic opening declaration: “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” These days, the line that’s shouted at the end of every cold open seems like a celebration of the weekend, a reminder that it’s a Saturday night in one of the greatest cities in the world. Back when the show started, though, it was simply an invocation of its actual title.
Reitman’s new film takes the old title because it’s set squarely in the comedy institution’s early days — or, rather, day. “Saturday Night” takes place over the course of one night, October 11, 1975, as the original cast and crew of “SNL” pull off the very first episode of the series that’s now about to enter its 50th season. The movie will follow 90 minutes of time in the lead-up to the first taping, and stars tons of funny people including Rachel Sennott, Lamorne Morris, and Andrew Barth Feldman, plus esteemed actors like J.K. Simmons and Willem Dafoe. The true story-based movie also has a meaningful release date: it’ll hit theaters on October 11, 2024, the same day of that fateful first telecast.
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