Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night takes place in the 90 minutes before the first episode of Saturday Night Live. Golden Globe nominee Gabriel LaBelle leads the most star-studded cast of the year as Lorne Michaels on a mission to break new ground and reinvent live TV. If the crew of soon-to-be icons can make it on air in time.
The film has a frenetic energy that convincingly places you in the middle of the iconic Studio 8H at 30 Rock, watching as the pieces come together, in some cases brick by brick.
Enter production designer Jess Gonchor. You see, LaBelle and co aren’t ripping their way through NBC’s beloved home base in New York. They are on a soundstage in Atlanta, inside a 40,000-square-foot, two-story recreation of the 1975 SNL pilot.
Here, in an interview with InSession Film Awards Editor Jess Gonchor details the painstaking recreation that allowed us to travel back in time.
