Chevy Chase Told Jason Reitman That He Should Be ‘Embarrassed’ of ‘Saturday Night’

Saturday Night was mostly shut out of the Golden Globe nominations, with the exception of Gabriel LaBelle. The young actor is nominated for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy after succeeding in the daunting task of making us care about Lorne Michaels for 90 minutes. 

But even though its chances of being nominated for Best Picture at the upcoming Academy Awards is roughly the same as Madame Web’s at this point, director Jason Reitman is still working hard to promote the film. 

Reitman’s latest interview was on David Spade and Dana Carvey’s Fly on the Wall podcast. Having worked at SNL, Carvey and Spade obviously responded to Saturday Night differently than the average moviegoer, confirming that Reitman captured the “crazy, chaotic spirit” of the behind-the-scenes workings of the show and praising him for nailing “Lorne’s obsession.”

They also asked about how the real-life SNL-ers depicted in the film responded to it. “I’ve done two movies about real people, and this is what inevitably happens. You interview the original person; all they want to know is who’s going to play them, and if they’re attractive, and how tall they are,” Reitman explained. “And then they watch the movie, and they just can’t figure it out. Like, there’s just silence after. They’re just freaked out by it. They’re freaked out by watching themselves. It’s emotional.”

Reitman singled out a few stars who had positive reactions to Saturday Night: “Billy (Crystal) was really into it. Laraine (Newman) loved it,” and he also noted that Garrett Morris was very impressed by Lamorne Morris’ performance.

But what of the notoriously prickly Chevy Chase? Despite coming off pretty well in the movie, Chase didn’t exactly heap praise on Reitman.

“Chevy loves to say the thing you're not supposed to say,” Carvey pointed out, prompting Reitman to recall that, as the son of a comedy legend, he’s known Chase for his “entire life” and arranged a special screening for the star to attend. 

“Chevy comes in to watch the movie, and he is there with (his wife) Jayni and they watch the film, and he’s in the group, and he comes up to me after and he pats me on the shoulder and goes: ‘Well, you should be embarrassed.’”

“What an exact Chevy thing — you couldn’t even write it better,” Spade responded. 

“He knows that’s funny,” Carvey added, “like, ‘Okay, what’s the roughest thing you could say to a director in that moment?’”

Reitman appreciated that it was a funny line, but was still clearly somewhat ticked off. “I’m trying to balance it, because, in my head, I know, ‘Alright, I’m getting my own Chevy Chase moment that’s 1,000 percent only for me right now.’ And from a comedy point-of-view that’s really pure, and that’s kind of cool,” Reitman reasoned. “But also, I just spent like two years of my life recreating this moment (in time) and trying to capture Chevy perfectly, and also even in (his) ego, find the humanity and give him a moment to be loved — no, none of that shit played. He’s not talking about that stuff.”

Perhaps Reitman should direct a movie about the making of Community as payback.