Comedy fans rejoice! NBC’s long-running sketch series Saturday Night Live will be coming to Hollywood in 2022 as SNL: The Movie, says executive producer Lorne Michaels.
Astute readers may recall that this isn’t the first time SNL‘s iconic counterculture streak has graced the silver screen; individual sketches such as The Blues Brothers, Wayne’s World and more have been adapted into hugely successful feature films. However, Michaels says, this is the first time SNL‘s complete cast of characters and sketches will appear in a film at once, reflecting a comedy legacy spanning nearly fifty years. Wow!
“We thought it could be interesting to see them all together going on an adventure,” says Michaels. “The writers had a lot of fun toying with the characters and how they might react to each other. Like, what would happen if Gilly met the Church Lady? What if Stefan met the Making Copies guy? The funny ideas basically just kept coming, and they’ll all be in the movie.”
To helm the film, which will be undeniably massive in budget and conceptual scope, Michaels tapped a newcomer: 22-year old Matt Ellin, who recently graduated from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts with a Bachelors in Contemporary Music. “I think Matt has some great ideas,” says Michaels. “They do not know very much about directing movies, but they do know a lot about movies, and that alone is pretty important to me. Because I do not really know anything about movies. I know a lot about TV shows. SNL is a TV show, which is why I am able to direct all of the episodes. But I thought, hey, this is a movie. I’d better get someone who knows about movies to direct it. And Matt does, and I think they’ll do a great job. And if they don’t do a great job, we are going to have very big problems.”
Meanwhile, Ellin is anticipating their directorial debut with fervor. “I got a call from Lorne Michaels and I thought maybe there was some mistake,” they say. “I have never directed a movie in my life. I would definitely like to, but I don’t think this is really an ideal first feature for me, because it is an official adaptation of a beloved and iconic show that has been around for something like forty-seven years, and also it is the first movie in film history with a budget of a milliard [one thousand x a million] dollars. NBC is offering me so much money to do this that everyone in my life will get angry and abandon me if I turn it down. I am so scared and sad. I literally don’t know how they even found out about me.”
“I found out about Matt when I was listening to the 99 Songs About Kratom album on Bandcamp, and I heard Matt playing bass on it,” says Michaels. “And then I heard All Is Not Lost on bandcamp which is Matt’s solo album. And I thought: This is the exact person I want to direct the SNL movie.” But when asked about Theophobia, Ellin’s glam rock/new wave project with Dylan Mars Greenberg, Michaels declined to comment.
So what’s the script like? “It is nonsense and it is so long,” says Ellin. “This is like a three-hour movie, and it doesn’t make fucking sense. I don’t even think a person who has directed ten movies could make this into a movie that people would want to watch. There’s like inter-dimensional travel, like a disruption of the time-space continuum, and that’s how all of the SNL characters meet. It’s a terrible idea for a movie. It is going to flop, and I am not allowed to change the script or give notes. And when it flops, Lorne Michaels and NBC will send gunmen to my house to kill me and my family. I am in crisis right now. Do you understand?”
Early press releases of the film indicate CGI will be used to bring back dead SNL cast members. Apparently some of the characters, such as It’s Pat, Stefan, and Debbie Downer, will be played by major Hollywood names like Ryan Reynolds, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Lawrence, respectively. When asked why, Michaels responded: “This is a HOLLYWOOD MOVIE. That means Hollywood actors. The actors from SNL are good but they’re for the TV show. This is a new thing called movies.” When the many SNL films featuring the original SNL cast as their characters were brought up, Michaels responded: “What? I’m sorry I can’t hear you. A bird flew by or made a weird fucking sound and I cannot hear you. I’m sorry.”
Movie Freakz 