“They want you to fail”: Go behind the scenes of the first ‘SNL’ in trailer to ‘Saturday Night’

Every Saturday at 11:30 p.m., Saturday Night Live will be on — but 49 years ago, that was impossible to imagine. 

That’s the central thrust of the new trailer to Saturday Night, director Jason Reitman‘s look back at the evening of Oct. 11, 1975: The very first night of the show that would become an icon of comedy. 

Before the curtain rose on that first show, however, there was chaos. A green, 30-year-old producer named Lorne Michaels had to convince a skeptical, even hostile, NBC that he had what it took to control a rowdy cast of comedic talent, including John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner and Garrett Morris, and somehow pull off a live, 90-minute comedy show. 

Cooper Hoffman plays Dick Ebersol, then the young producer of late-night programming for the network. “You ever wonder why they said yes? They want you to fail!” he tells Gabriel LaBelle‘s Michaels. 

In addition to the volatile combination of Matt Wood as Belushi, Ella Hunt as Radner and particularly Cory Michael Smith as an egomaniacal Chase, backstage that night was a fiery George Carlin (Matthew Rhys) and a confused Jim Henson (Nicholas Braun), who laments some of the comics left Big Bird hanged in effigy outside the Muppets creator’s dressing room. 

Dylan O’Brien stars as Dan Aykroyd, whose last name was unpronounceable to emcee Don Pardo (Brian Welch), and Finn Wolfhard appears as a lowly NBC page.

Willem Dafoe also appears as a network executive, who seethes at Michaels, and J.K. Simmons appears as a smug Milton Berle.

“We just have to make it to air,” Michaels insists as the clock ticks to 11:30. 

Saturday Night hits theaters on Oct. 11. 

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