In a rare bit of scheduling serendipity, two movies about pop culture successes — the comedians behind “Saturday Night” and the star of “The Apprentice” — are currently playing in theaters around the country. Both films were screened at the recent Toronto International Film Festival.
“Saturday Night” is an ascending whirligig of a feature about the creation and first television performance of “Saturday Night Live,” the sketch program — don’t call them bits or skits — which first aired on NBC on Oct. 11, 1975. The film is a beyond-the-scenes exploration of putting on a show, not unlike what Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland did in 10 motion picture musical comedies from the 1930s and 1940s.
“The Apprentice” is a brilliantly acted movie about Donald Trump, who, although very well-known in New York City, wasn’t as familiar to the rest of America, until the success of NBC’s reality competition show, “The Apprentice,” which aired for 15 seasons. The new film offers its audience an understanding of how Trump got to the position in which he would be asked to host a program that became a major hit.
“Saturday Night” is a nuts and bolts movie. The “nuts” — and I use that word respectfully — are the show’s energetic comedy performers. The “bolts” are its hardworking writers, directors, and production crew. Leading all of them is creator and producer Lorne Michaels, a Canadian who was born, raised, and educated in Toronto. He was given the task of doing something completely different quite late on Saturday: to put on a show with sketches and music that would appeal to the counterculture generation. And do it live and in real time.
The movie, directed by Jason Reitman (born in Montreal, Canada to famed filmmaker Ivan Reitman and his wife Genevieve Robert), and co-written by Jason and Gil Kenan, succeeds greatly in showing us the goofy theatrics and slapdash mechanics that almost derailed the opening show.
The beating heart of the comic film is Michaels, who is wonderfully acted by Gabriel LaBelle. He’s essentially a wrangler of a vast array of burgeoning talent, all straining to figure out what this newfangled “SNL” is going to look like. Michael’s primary assistant is Rosie Shuster, perfectly played by Rachel Sennott.
The superbly directed movie begins with longer scenes and then everything builds with shorter and quicker takes increasing to a fever pitch until showtime. The pacing soars dramatically thanks to sharp editing by Nathan Orloff and Shane Reid.
The main cast of “Saturday Night” is exceptional. They’re playing television icons, after all, and they rise to the occasion. Dylan O’Brien as Dan Ackroyd, Kim Matula as Jane Curtin, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Matt Wood as John Belushi, and Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris (no relation) are all terrific.
Also on tap are Cooper Hoffman (actor Philip Seymour’s son) and Willem Dafoe as NBC executives Dick Ebersol and David Tebet, respectively. The entire supporting cast is up to the challenge and succeeds mightily, especially Nicholas Braun as both Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson of Muppets fame.
“Saturday Night” is top-notch entertainment.
The first hour of “The Apprentice” offers some of the best movie-making you will see this year. It stars Sebastian Stan as a thirty-something Trump learning the real estate ropes in NYC and Jeremy Strong as the vicious, secretive, hard-driving lawyer Roy Cohn, who takes Trump under his wing as his only serious adviser. The early part of the film is utterly engaging. Stan and Strong are scintillating to watch. This is because the story is rooted in truth that has been confirmed in books, newspaper and magazine articles, and television interviews.
As depicted in the movie, Trump is a bit naive as to the brutal rules for owning buildings in the region, especially in Manhattan. He’s basically a rent collector for his developer father, who was a tough realist. Praise for Donald from Fred Trump Sr. (Martin Donovan) was virtually non-existent. What son doesn’t want his dad to respect him and be proud of the work he’s doing?
The younger Trump had a dream, which was to take an abandoned hotel near Grand Central Station and turn it into a luxurious place for tourists in New York to stay. His goal was to lift the neighborhood from its miasma, and as a result help regenerate Manhattan into a major destination for visitors. In the 1970s, NYC was a mess. President Gerald Ford famously told the city to “drop dead.” To Donald’s credit, his hotel was built. It took hard work and butting heads and, according to the movie, a little bit of sexual blackmail provided by Cohn.
In the opening hour, Trump meets his first wife, Ivana (Maria Bakalova), who shares his dreams of a better city. Their love begins with a delightful comic interlude. At one point, artist Andy Warhol pops up and delivers a line that gets a genuine laugh. We’re not watching a rags-to-riches tale — Donald’s family has money, lots of it, but we are watching a darn good exploration of the gritty nature of life in a fading NYC. By this point, the movie, directed by Ali Abbasi and written by Gabriel Sherman, is a solid examination of the financial world and how “the art of the deal” — the title of Trump’s bestselling book — is all important.
Hour two is a different story. Abbasi and Sherman burrow into the seedier aspects of the mythology surrounding Donald, the Trump family’s good son. Fred Jr. (Charlie Carrick) was supposedly a major disappointment to his father. Much of this familiar material has been denied, recanted, or described as overstated. We are nowhere near Donald’s popular television show nor close to any take-no-prisoners urge for politics. We wallow in prurience because it’s attention-getting. I will only write that we see two examples of something that is rarely shown in a mainstream movie. I found it thematically unnecessary and exists only to shock those who might be shocked.
Abbasi and Sherman would have done much better by examining the Trump who surprised the world by being elected President of the United States. Trump lovers and Trump haters will probably ignore “The Apprentice.” That’s a mistake for both sides. Production-wise this is an excellent feature. Visually, the looks of the 1970s and 1980s are presented with forthright realism. The cinematography by Kasper Tuxen is perfect. This is fast-paced filmmaking on a masterful level. The supporting cast delivers the goods.
Movies exist to be discussed. Talking about an art form, even about a movie that is half flawless and half fractured, is worthwhile. It opens up other avenues of discussion. Not going means you’ll miss great acting from Stan and Strong.
Find some time to see “Saturday Night” and “The Apprentice.”