Stars come out on snowy Denver night

The stars were out on an otherwise snowy night in Denver on Thursday as creatives from the new movie “Saturday Night” and TV star Jesse Tyler Ferguson (“Modern Family”) were making simultaneous, cross-town Denver Film Festival appearances.

The MCA Denver’s sold-out Holiday Theatre was raucous by the end of a screening of Jason Reitman’s tense comedy that imagines the 90 minutes leading up to the very first airing of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” on Oct. 11, 1975.

Reitman said he had two dreams as a kid. “One was to direct movies, and the other was to be a writer for ‘Saturday Night Live.’” So, in 2008, his agent wrote “SNL” creator Lorne Michaels and asked if Reitman could come on as a guest writer for a week. His response? “Yes, the young man can come to Space Camp.” Ashton Kutcher was the host that week.

“There’s really nothing like it on Earth,” Reitman said. “They start on Tuesday with nothing and by Saturday it is a complete, 90-minute show.” He likened the high-adrenaline experience to the frenetic energy of putting on a summer-camp talent show, “but fueled by cocaine.”

Reitman was joined in Denver by actors Gabriel LaBelle (Lorne Michaels) and Cory Michael Smith (Chevy Chase) as well as co-writer Gil Kenan. Collectively they accepted the festival’s newish 5280 Award, which honors films that rely more than most on group collaboration.

“It takes a huge village to pull something off like live TV,” said Denver Film Artistic Director Matthew Campbell, which made it all the more fitting that the film being honored for its collaboration was about a TV show made through (sometimes comically violent) collaboration. 

None of the honorees were alive when SNL debuted 50 years ago, but all of them were informed by it.

“When I grew up, my mother really regulated what my brother and I could watch on television,” Smith said. “So we couldn’t watch ‘Roseanne.’ We couldn’t watch ‘The Simpsons.’ But, ironically, we were allowed to watch ‘SNL.’” Go figure.

LaBelle, who played an aspiring 16-year-old variation on young Steven Spielberg in the Oscar-nominated The Fabelmans, looks at “SNL” as the Mount Olympus of comedies. “I grew up on the best of Will Ferrell and Chris Farley. And in fifth grade, me and my friends would perform “Spartan Cheerleaders” at recess, and it was the coolest thing ever,” he said of characters immortalized by Ferrell and Cheri Oteri.

“​​SNL,” Reitman said, will be remembered as an oral history that no one agrees upon.

“Gil (Kenan) and I interviewed every living person we could find that was in the building on October 11th, 1975 in order to write this movie,” he said. “Every living actor. Every living writer, Lorne, (writer) Rosie Schuster, (NBC Vice President) Dick Ebersol, members of the band, people in the costume department, the production design department and NBC pages – and nobody’s stories line up. And so this became a blending together of myth, legend and truth for us.”

THIRD TIME IS CHARMING

This was Reitman’s third time visiting the Denver Film Festival. The four-time Oscar nominee introduced “Juno” to the world at the 2007 Denver fest. In 2018, he accepted the annual John Cassavetes Award while showing The Front Runner, about the rise and fall of Colorado Senator Gary Hart.

Receiving the 5280 Award, he said, “means everything, because ‘Saturday Night Live’ is a show that’s put on by an ensemble both in front of the camera and behind the camera, and that’s exactly how we made this movie. Every day we had 80 actors, all working simultaneously. We really made this movie as a party.”

‘WAIT, I AM CHEVY CHASE’

The festival marked Smith’s first return to Denver since he played a lost teen pretending to be a young Mormon Elder in the Denver Center’s 2012 world premiere of the play “The Whale” – the same story that landed Brendan Fraser an Oscar last year in its celebrated film adaptation. Smith reprised the role in the play’s 2017 New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons. Darren Aronofsky, who directed the film, saw the play and decided on the spot to make it into a film.

”Sam Hunter, who wrote the play, is a good friend and an incredible talent,” Smith said. “So I was really thrilled for him that the play finally became a film, because it took a decade.

“I have really fond memories of doing ‘The Whale’ in Denver. It was really early in my career, and it was a really formative experience for me.”

As for playing the legendary Chevy Chase, I had to ask about one of the most talked-about scenes in the film. Chase and soon-to-be comedy icon John Belushi (played by Matt Wood) come to blows just before showtime and have to be pulled apart. That fight never happened in real life, but Reitman included it as kind of an homage to a real fight Chase famously had with Bill Murray in Season 2.

“That was a good one,” Smith said of the scene. “Before you do something like that, you want to make sure the other person’s comfortable with it. And Matt was like, ‘Go for it.’ So we really went at it – and I think it was helpful to have a little bit of backstage violence.”

SQUIBB KICK

At age 22, LaBelle already has portrayed two definitive, living pop-culture icons in Michaels and (essentially) Spielberg. Next up is Ilya ‘Dutch’ Lichtenstein, who faces five years in prison for a 2016 crypto hack worth an estimated $4.5 billion. What’s up with being so real?

“Isn’t that hilarious?” he said. “I never expected to do that, but I guess I’m developing a niche.

“I do think there’s definitely a rubric of ‘rightness’ that you have to get down when you play a real person. There are people who know them, who spend time with them, and you don’t want to disappoint – especially the person you are portraying. But ultimately, it’s the script, and I just have to tell that story.”

PLAY IT AGAIN, GABRIEL

LaBelle was sporting a baseball hat with the name June Squibb across the top. He picked it up at the actor’s 95th birthday party on Sunday on L.A. There’s chatter that Squibb will become the oldest nominee in Oscar history for her work in “Thelma.” 

SCREENING OF THE DAY

While there are plenty of big events coming up on Sunday, the official “Closing Night” screening is “September 5,” with star Ben Chaplin present to receive one of Denver Film’s two Excellence in Acting Awards. The film follows the ABC broadcasters who were forced to shift from sports reporting to live coverage of the Israeli athletes taken hostage at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics.  While Peter Sarsgaard plays the legendary TV executive Roone Arledge Chaplin plays ABC Sports exec Marvin Bader, John Magaro plays his producer and Benjamin Walker plays ABC News correspondent Peter Jennings, Jim McKay (“They’re All Gone”) plays Jim McKay – he’s shown throughout in actual archival footage. The massacre changed the Olympics and TV news forever, and this film is right in the thick of all the Oscar buzz. 7 p.m. Saturday at the Holiday Theater. Chaplin’s post-screening talk will be moderated by Daniel D’Addario of Variety.

MORE EXCELLENCE IN ACTING

Marianne Jean-Baptiste, star of “Hard Truths,” will also receive Denver Film’s Excellence in Acting Award following a 1 p.m. screening at the Denver Botanic Gardens. Jean-Baptiste already has earned several nominations for her performance as Pansy, a tormented woman prone to raging tirades against anyone who looks her way. This film marks the fierce return of legendary director Mike Leigh after six years away, and his reunion with Jean-Baptiste, who appeared in his “Secrets and Lies” in 1996. This one takes audiences into the most enduring of human mysteries: Family. The post-screening talk led by Richard Lawson and Rebecca Ford is being recorded for Vanity Fair’s “Little Gold Men” podcast.

OFF THE BEATEN PATH

What happens when you stumble across the body of your uncle? That’s the launchpad for Rungano Nyoni’s “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,” a Zambian film that shows, as the relative is being buried, family secrets are being unearthed. “This film is a follow-up to ‘I’m Not a Witch,’ which we featured in the festival a few years back,” said Denver Film Artistic Director Matthew Campbell. “I would say this is a darkly comedic drama that takes a fascinating look at family dynamics.” 6:30 p.m. Saturday and 4:15 p.m. Sunday at the Sie FilmCenter.

IF YOU LIKE IT DARK

“Toxic,” featuring a cast of non-actors, is a hard-edged Lithuanian drama that observes two 13-year-old aspiring models from a bleak industrial town as they put their bodies through hell — and their souls through something darker still. “And of course, it’s basically a scam,” said Campbell. Everything gets wrapped together in a very aptly titled ‘Toxic’ mess.” This debut feature from director Saulė Bliuvaitė won the 2024 Golden Leopard, the top prize at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. 7 p.m. Saturday at the Sie FilmCenter.

INFORMATION AND TICKETS

Go to denverfilm.org

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