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Michael Cieply: Waiting For ‘Saturday Night,’ The Jason Reitman Dramedy About Comedy
After a dim half-year on the grown-up film front, the just-scheduled opening of Jason Reitman's 'Saturday Night' brings a dramedy about comedy.
And almost everything the Saturday Night crowd did—satire, sketch humor, recurring characters, pratfalls, topical stuff, transgressive behavior, musical interludes, whatever—had been done often, and sometimes better, by someone who came before. The litany of predecessors, on screen and off, is long: Jack Paar, Steve Allen, Dick Cavett, Johnny Carson, Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Shelly Berman, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Bill Cosby, Sonny and Cher, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, The Smothers Brothers, Tom Lehrer, Woody Allen, Don Rickles, Rich Little, Dick Gregory, Lily Tomlin, Phyllis Diller, Jackie Gleason, ad infinitum. Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In –with Tomlin, Ruth Buzzi, Goldie Hawn, Henry Gibson, Arte Johnson, Tiny Tim, Jo Anne Worley, Eileen Brennan and more—had forged a star troupe arguably as bright as SNL’s Aykroyd, Chase, Newman, Murray, Radner, Curtin, Morris et al.
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