Jason Reitman Defends ‘Saturday Night’s Portrayal of Jim Henson

Likely killing any chances of “Lorne Michaels” joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night isn’t doing so well at the box office. In its first wide release weekend, the Saturday Night Live biopic opened in seventh place, behind movies like Joker: Folie à Deux and Terrifier 3. Had Reitman opted for a revisionist ending in which Chevy Chase dons a clown costume and goes on a killing spree in Studio 8H, maybe it would have done a little better. 

At least original cast member Dan Aykroyd seems to have enjoyed the movie — although he did somehow manage to turn his capsule review into a plug for his vodka company.

You can’t blame the tepid reception of Saturday Night on Reitman’s lack of hustle, the director has been aggressively promoting the film in countless interviews over the past several weeks. Recently, he sat down with Den of Geek to discuss the movie, and one of his answers suggests that he may have caught wind of the fact that some people aren’t so thrilled about one particular storyline.

Back in September, I wrote about my personal displeasure with the movie’s depiction of Jim Henson, and it became a whole thing. Since the movie’s been out, others have similarly expressed disappointment in the fact that Saturday Night needlessly dunks on the guy who made all of our childhoods magical.

So when asked about Henson, Reitman seemingly felt the need to preface his response by extolling the Muppet creator’s virtues. “It’s funny because, obviously Jim Henson is brilliant and has touched all of our lives,” Reitman noted, “(but) he was not a good fit at Saturday Night Live. They just didn’t get along. (Co-writer) Gil Kenan and I immediately knew we wanted Nic Braun to play Jim Henson. We knew that was exactly the right sense of humor.”

But Henson not being a good fit at SNL doesn’t excuse Reitman for forcing him into the role of the square, whose presence in the movie is limited to that of comic relief. We’re repeatedly asked to laugh at Henson (as the audience I saw the film with did). Sure, the movie isn’t about Henson, as some of the film’s defenders have pointed out, however, making him the butt of jokes was a calculated creative decision. Reitman just as easily could have attempted to mine the creative mismatch between Henson and SNL for tension, or even drama. Instead he opted to use the Henson character to relieve tension, which presumably is what prompted the less-than-flattering portrayal. 

The Henson issue isn’t the movie’s biggest misstep (it arguably shirks SNL’s female cast members, for one thing), but it just feels so wildly unnecessary and contrived. And the problem with Reitman’s line of reasoning is that the movie offers not even the slightest hint that Henson is “brilliant” and will go on to touch all of our lives. If someone were to watch this movie with no prior knowledge of its subjects, they would likely assume that the “Jim Henson” character was some loser who was permanently left in the dust by the comedic superiority of the SNL gang. 

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