Jason Reitman probably knows better than most what it’s like to be around comedians. As the son of Ivan Reitman, the director of such works as Stripes, Ghostbusters, Meatballs and the producer of National Lampoon’s Animal House, Jason was hanging around as a child with many of the primary cast members of what would become Saturday Night Live. He has also directed Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd. As a child he was an extra in Ghostbusters II, Dave, Kindergarten Cop and many more. He is known for his collaborations with Diablo Cody. 

Saturday Night chronicles the chaos of the first episode in 1975 of what would later become the defining comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live. 

Nadine Whitney asked him about his process, his favorite people, and what he loves about making impossible things happen. 

Jason Reitman: This is Jason. Hi!

Nadine Whitney: Jason, hi! Or should I say “Hey, bud”, because you’re Canadian and you’re filming the legacy of another great Canadian, Lorne Michaels (played by Gabriel LaBelle). Obviously, a lot of people are going to ask you this – through your dad and other folks you grew up around many of the talents from Saturday Night Live. Is it difficult separating your personal feelings for them and putting them on camera as characters who are completely unprepared for what’s about to happen? 

Jason Reitman: It’s a really interesting question, and it’s funny, in particular with Dan Aykroyd, who, as you know, I’ve been making these Ghostbusters movies with. I feel like I have such a strong relationship with Dan who is now 70 years old, so it’s really tricky sometimes to wind back the clock and think of him as a 23-year-old who did not know what was ahead of him. 

I remember I asked Dan. I said, “What were you thinking the opening night?” Dan is the rare person. He can tell you exactly what he was thinking. Dan said, “You know, I thought, I’ve got a snowplow waiting for me in Toronto, so I’ve still got a job.” 

I think that’s what it was like for a lot of them. I think they were aware of how talented and how gifted they were, and what kind of chemistry they had and how special that was, but they had no sense of whether or not it would catch and whether audiences would receive it. So, I think they were all taken by surprise. I think what they felt, and what it feels like when you’re actually in 8H, when you’re in that room, the rest of the world disappears. 

If you ask people on the show all the time, what they’ll say is they feel like they’re doing a show for an audience that’s inside the stage. They’re not thinking about the American public. They’re not going to see people watching on television and that feels true to that environment. 

It feels there’s something special that Lorne created. It’s this safe, immersive world where you figure it out; you forget about time, you forget about everything else you don’t know whether it’s day or night. You just create. They were doing it on the fly.

Nadine Whitney: There are aspects, of course, in Saturday Night that are, by necessity, fictional. Certain things didn’t happen in the timeline you’ve presented in the film, and certain sketches weren’t shown on the first night. But the way that you’ve put it together, with the incredible chaos of like: “Okay, this is out, this is in, this is out, this is in. We need this writer now. Hey! there’s Paul Schaffer from David Letterman.” 

I didn’t realize how many people were milling in the background who would later be hugely popular. This was what was going on at the time the first musical guests were people like Janis Ian, and George Carlin (Matthew Rhys) was locked away in his dressing room taking drugs.

Jason Reitman: I’ll tell you, it’s interesting that it’s so funny, because I know you brought up that I grew up around Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase, but that’s not what I think of when I think of my childhood. When I think of my childhood, what I think of is I grew up on the trucks. I grew up on set. I grew up around the camera people and the sound people and the makeup and hair people and the special effects people. What I grew up around was a crew who every morning would wake up at the crack of dawn and try to pull off something that no one had ever done before. 

They would try to tell some unusual piece of storytelling. I watched on a daily basis people struggle with creativity, because that’s what it is. Every day you try something, it doesn’t work, and then you find a way to come together. 

I remember the first time I heard about Saturday Night Live and I watched an episode, I asked my father, Ivan, “How often do they do this?” Because I thought this was once a year, like Christmas or the Super Bowl. He told me, “They do this every week” That’s when I fell in love with it. When I realized that there was a group of people that every Tuesday started with nothing, and by Saturday, they had a show. 

So, what I wanted to create was something where the audience feels like they were part of the crew. I wanted to create an immersive experience. In which the audience felt like they were part of the cast and the crew of the opening night of Saturday Night Live. There wasn’t the traditional introduction to each character. The movie was not going to ease you into what was happening. You were going to get thrown in. It’s the night of, and you’re meeting thirty people. You don’t know who they are yet. You’re gonna have to figure it out as you go. The music’s pounding, the camera’s moving, and everything’s on the fly, and it feels hyper immersive and hyper real, and by the end of it, you’re gonna feel like one of the people throwing down the bricks. 

That was the challenge of writing the script. That was the challenge of making the movie, and the joy of it has been watching people get caught up in a film where they know what’s gonna happen, like Titanic goes down and we know the show goes on the air. But somehow, they still get caught up in the energy of what it feels like when you are moments away from going live. That was the great storytelling challenge, and then the joy of pulling it off.

Nadine Whitney: They all pulled it off so imperfectly perfectly. I was stressed. I was thinking how are they going to make this happen? I was also thinking, “Why is everyone being so mean to Jim Henson?”

Jason Reitman: It’s really funny, Jim Henson really stood out. They didn’t get along with him. I think that’s part of what I found so interesting about it, is that Jim Henson is arguably the biggest genius on that show that night and will have the biggest cultural impact of any person on that show. And yet, sometimes it’s not a right fit. One of the interesting things about making this film is watching what will become a dozen household names challenge each other, push and pull each other to create something great. And sadly, Jim Henson just takes the bullets, the poor thing. 

Nadine Whitney: You’ve got Nicholas Braun playing Jim Henson and playing Andy Kaufman. That’s a great doubling of roles. He is so good, and believably so, as both people.

Jason Reitman: I’m so proud of him. We threw that at him at the last second, because Benny Safdie was originally going to play Andy Kaufman. 

Nadine Whitney: That would have been a great fit.

Jason Reitman: I know, but Benny’s film got a green light. He had to go direct. And it just hit us. It was like, well, you can play more than one character on Saturday Night Live. Wouldn’t it be interesting if you know, there was all these little subtle ways that we’re doubling SNL in that were emulating the show itself. Not only in the way that we created this, but structurally. The fact that there’s a musical performance one third in, and two thirds the way in, and there’s a weekend update in the middle, like we’re doing little things that are making nods to SNL. We thought, oh, one actor playing two characters is kind of an interesting nod to how they did that.

Nadine Whitney:Who is your favorite Saturday Night Live person?

Jason Reitman: The funny thing is I can give you the easy answers, which are like, “Oh, I mean, I love Will Ferrell and, you know, and I love Adam Sandler, and I love Steve Martin or…” But it’s the crew. It’s the people who put on the show. Because what they do is extraordinary. On Wednesday night they’re given sketches and overnight, Wednesday night, they’re building the sets. They’re making the costumes. The camera work and lighting rigs start. They’re rehearsing, beginning on Thursday and Friday. They’re building the show live. I grew up wanting to be someone on the trucks. I wanted to be one of the people who makes things. 

Nadine Whitney: And you do! You’re a director, you’re a writer, you’re a genius on your own level. Young Adult, The Front Runner, Tully, Juno, Up in the Air, Thank You for Smoking. I could go on, but I think you know the films you’ve made. I don’t need to tell you (laughing).

Jason Reitman: With Saturday Night for the first time, I wanted to make a comedy, but I also wanted to make a thriller. I think when people think comedy, sadly, they usually are never thinking about the filmmaking and the structure. When they talk about drama, they talk about craft, when they talk about comedy, they talk about the laughs. I wanted to make a comedy that was a thriller, a comedy was craft, a comedy where every person on the crew had to kind of level up their game to pull off this feat. I’m just so proud of my crew and cast.

Nadine Whitney: I think you should be. I think, too, Ivan would be absolutely thrilled by the film. 

Just a final note. Matt Wood, where has he been all our lives?

Jason Reitman: I know! There’s an actor who knew from day one. People asked, “When are you gonna play John Belushi?” Like, this is just like destiny.

Saturday Night is a 2024 biographical comedy drama film directed by Jason Reitman about the night of the 1975 premiere of NBC’s Saturday Night, later known as Saturday Night Live. The film stars an ensemble cast portraying the various Saturday Night cast and crew, led by Gabriel LaBelle as the show’s creator and producer, Lorne Michaels. Rachel Sennott as Rosie Shuster. Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase. Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner. Dylan O’Brien as Dan Ackroyd. Matt Wood as John Belushi. Cooper Hoffman as Dick Ebersol.  Nicholas Braun as Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman. J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle. Nicholas Podany as Billy Crystal. Tommy Dewey as Michael O’Donoghue. Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman. Jon Baptiste as Billy Preston. Kim Matula as Jane Curtain. Willem Dafoe as David Tebet. Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris. Abraham Hsu as Leo Yoshimura Andrew Bath Feldman as Neil Levy. Tracy Letts as Herb Sargent. Taylor Grey, Kaia Gerber, Paul Rust, Matthew Rhys, Finn Wolfhard and many more also feature.

Nickel Boys directed by RaMell Ross, based on Colson Whitehead’s award-winning novel has been garnering laurels already with Ross being awarded best director at The Gotham Awards and Brandon Wilson being awarded best breakthrough talent there, also.

Nickel Boys is based on a real reformatory school which began operating during the Jim Crow segregation years where young Black men were horrifically abused and murdered. Ethan Herisse stars as Elwood Curtis, a young man from Tallahassee who, on the eve of going to college, is arrested and sent to The Nickel Academy in Florida where he meets Jack Turner from Houston, played by Brandon Wilson. It is a film that spans decades and the ongoing systemic violence committed on the minds, bodies, and cultural consciousness of Black Americans. 

Nadine Whitney had the immense honor of speaking to Ethan and Brandon about their work and the importance and impact of the film.

Nadine Whitney: Hello, hello, you beautiful, beautiful men. I was profoundly moved by Nickel Boys. Many people are discovering RaMell Ross’ singular vision and his unique way to deliver narrative cinema. 

I first wanted to ask you about learning about the notion of shared identity, which is something that begins to merge between the two characters, Elwood and Turner.

How much of that was brought through the different points of view RaMell Ross made you experience through the filming of the piece. From their meeting at The Nickel Academy both characters teach each other different things. Turner teaches about class and economics. Elwood opens Turner’s eyes to the literature, the beautiful, civil rights, and hope. They have a different sense of what it is like being a young Black man in America at the time, but a sense that informs each other. 

Ethan Herisse: Oh, there’s so many layers to that emotionally. RaMell had talked to us about Colson Whitehead’s book and Colson’s perspective of seeing himself as both Turner and Elwood. RaMell, in a similar way, when he was writing the film with Joslyn Barnes said that he was viewing himself as both of these characters speaking through different perspectives. Getting to play those and experience Turner’s and Elwood’s relationship. From the moment they meet their worlds depend on one another. 

And as you’re saying, the way they challenge each other, their differing ideas because they’re clashing and trying to fix the other person or teach the other person. And when they let go of that and they, I mean more so Elwood with for Turner because he kind of can crack his shell a little bit and show him at the world can be so much bigger. 

From that point on Turner can’t live without Elwood, which is why he, I mean, there’s not really a choice, is motivated and why he comes and stays with him in the sweat box because I don’t think Turner could survive anymore without Elwood in his life. 

Brandon Wilson: Elwood won’t be surviving without Turner in that moment anymore, either.

Ethan Herisse: There’s so much the idea of the shared. Even the way film was shot. It invites you into the experience through these boys’ eyes after they share the identity of both of them and gets you immersed in this world so much more directly and intimately. Aunjanue had some way of describing it, but I’ve forgotten how she put it.

Nadine Whitney: Speaking of Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, her performance as Hattie (Elwood’s grandmother) is extraordinary. You can feel when Turner is held by her, it’s like the first time he’s been held by anyone for most of his life. What was it like acting with her?

Ethan Herisse: Yeah, yeah. She’s mind-blowing. Oh, this is my second time working with her. [The first was Ava DuVernay’s mini-series When They See Us]. I was so fortunate to have experienced that.  

Then this time around with me being Elwood I was always with camera as it’s the point of view when we were working together. I was able to watch her act while also, you know, being present with her. And it’s really incredible how she is able to bring the best out of who she is performing with because of her presence. You there is no way that you can be in a moment and in a scene with her and you would not be pulled in and not be engaged and be affected by what’s happening. 

I was not stunned by how amazing she was, but I was stunned how that even in those moments, in every moment where I was, you know, off camera it felt like nothing else mattered. There wasn’t ever anything around us, in that it felt as though she was speaking directly to me and pouring all of those words and emotions into me. 

It takes a really talented and special individual to do something like that and to effect people in that way and that’s speaking as a person who was there on set with her. But for her to also be to be able to captivate everyone. I started watching her on screen in the movie and because she’s looking directly the camera, anyone sitting in the audience knows exactly what I’m saying. You experience everything. You are fully pulled into the moments because of her. 

You are feeling that love that she is pouring into Elwood and into Turner. and into that hug because it’s being played right to you as an audience member. So, it’s an incredible feat and she’s fantastic. 

Nadine Whitney: Brandon, how did you feel working with her? 

Brandon Wilson: Equally blown away, this is my first time working with her and I remember there was a moment where I felt I hadn’t met Aunjanue until a few months ago. Because what she was asked to do in the film, I think it’s different than what me and Ethan were asked to do in the film. 

She was I think very much alone in a lot of her exploration. I can’t speak for her process, but it felt like she was very much in her own zone in when we were filming, so yeah, I never felt like I actually met her until recently.

But to get to still witness her was… yeah (breathes out in appreciation). I remember talking to Ethan in some of the first days when I first came in, and I think because of this kind of an aloneness that she had to live in, I felt so separate from her.

The first scenes that we had that I talked to Ethan, and I was like, “I don’t I feel like I’m here. Do I have any scenes with her? It doesn’t even matter if I’m there.”

I was just talking so flippantly and just with disregard, but I’m fortunate to have that safe space. To say silly things and the to regret them because very quickly I got so much. I saw who she was actually and just how powerful she was and getting to watch her more and I would just get pulled in more and more. I remember then I came back to Ethan later, I was like my bad. I said something stupid. (Both laughing)

Nadine Whitney: I’d like to talk to about working with the director of photography Jomo Fray. He has a radical and distinctive eye, and you get to actually wear that eye. What was it like wearing this point of view, this empathetic humanistic point of view as an actor.

Brandon Wilson: We got really close to Jomo. I mean, sometimes we were physically wearing this point of view. Sometimes Ethan would wear the camera on his chest or sometimes I would have the thing that Daveed Diggs was in and the cameras behind the head. 

Ethan Herisse: But a lot of times it would be Jomo still controlling the camera and we would just be very, very close to his back. Because of that and also because of the way he shot it and the way RaMell shot it – he talks about like having to find what our eyes actually do and like what it actually is to live in our bodies. Because when we trade places and Turner becomes our eyes, but we remain present with Elwood. It gave us the opportunity to become so much closer that with the cinematographer and the camera operators than maybe would have ever had if there was filming some just more traditional way. 

Nadine Whitney: Jomo is a visual poet. I know this is ridiculous. I’m talking to you, the stars, and I’m rattling on about the cinematography.

Ethan Herisse: We share your excitement about Jomo. He just won an award for the film from the New York Film Critics Circle. So, go Jomo!

Nadine Whitney: What would you like to say about the film? What would you like audiences to take away from it? 

Ethan Herisse: I say something about the film, and I will make you (points to Brandon) talk about the audience. 

Brandon Wilson: It’s the same pressure! (laughing).

Ethan Herisse: What I have to say about the film is that it’s really special to have had an experience like we did on set when we were making it. Where it was filled with a lot of love and joy and we really got to dive into this new experience. Into the beauty of collaboration. Then to be able to see it and see that all of what we experienced on the set everything that I described reflected in the movie.  So, you’re able to feel that and experience that.

Furthermore, to be on this journey where we are able to talk about it and it is being acknowledged and we get to celebrate it. It’s a true privilege to be a part of something that was as special as a movie like Nickel Boys. 

I can’t say you dream about something like this, because I honestly, I feel like you don’t see something like this coming. But I feel like you know when something is good, and that was the feeling throughout the whole process of making the film that we were doing something good.

I just want to continue to share Nickel Boys with as many people as possible because I think it’s an experience that everyone should dive into. 

Brandon Wilson: We have talked about RaMell and how RaMell is very much very still on this idea of wanting to give the Nickel Boys more life and the story of the boys the Dozier School more life. When stories like these come to light rather than the boys remaining statistics or just being remembered for their deaths. I think something Aunjanue was talking about was the way the film was shot. She would discuss when people tell her that the film is hard. 

I would also like to add that this film is so beautiful. It does in that way as well show you that these boys, even though they’re going through something so dark, that there is life. When Elwood looks up at a tree or is looking at a leaf in his hand, there’s still so much awe and wonder that is universal to all humans. That awe still exists in a person who’s going through a terrible situation. I hope people recognize that as well. 

Nadine Whitney: It is profoundly beautiful, and that’s part of the pain, I think, too, is to see how both Turner and Elwood see each other. Life and its possibilities; the small and the large and the eternal and to know that for some their lights were ended.

So, thank you very much for your time. I really haven’t seen a film like it and it’s extraordinary and you are both extraordinary people. 

Ethan Herisse: Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.