Review:
"Live From New York!
Release Date: June 12, 2015
Rating: Not Rated Running Time: 82 minutes Timed to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, director Bao Nguyen’s engaging documentary Live from New York! serves as the CliffsNotes version of Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller’s exhaustingly researched oral history of the venerable TV sketch show. Realizing it’s impossible to cram 40 years of highs and lows into an 82-minute documentary, Nguyen focuses on what has kept SNL in the national consciousness since 1975. Lorne Michaels recalls how he created the show and assembled the first cast that, to this day, is still considered the best to perform on the stage of NBC’s Studio 8H. From there, Nguyen explores the show’s immediate political and cultural impact, Michaels’ 1980 exit and the disastrous season that followed, the show’s return to prominence and relevance in the wake of Michaels’ 1985 return, and the show’s importance to the Big Apple, which was never more evident than in the aftermath of 9/11. Nguyen also turns his attention to the show’s ability to skewer the politics of the day—hello Dana Carvey’s George Bush and Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin—and the recent headlines Michaels garnered for his struggles to diversify the cast. While Nguyen delves into some of the show’s backstage politics, specifically tackling rumors that the female cast members and writers were not treated as equally as their male counterparts, he doesn’t have any time to go into any of the off-the-air spates between cast members. So Chevy Chase, who provides invaluable anecdotes about the show’s launch and inaugural season, is let off the hook for his alleged diva behavior during and after his run on the show. The best insights come from Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who discusses how she was misused and objectified during her three non-Michaels seasons on SNL. Louis-Dreyfuss' presence, though, makes the absence of Michael's predecessors all the more glaring. While Michaels is without doubt the face of SNL, it would have been nice to hear from the much-maligned Jean Doumanian, who lasted through the horrendous 1980 season that almost killed the show, and Dick Ebersol, the NBC executive who conceived SNL with Michaels and presided over the Eddie Murphy era and assembled the 1984 all-star cast led by Billy Crystal and Martin Short. Doumanian and Ebersol sharing their thoughts on trying to fill his shoes would have given a fresh perspective on a well-worn story. Not that there's much new ground for Nguyen to cover. Live From New York! presents the rise and fall and rise of SNL as we already know it. But there's nothing like hearing from some of the talented people who were there to make comedy history. Robert Sims Aired: June 11, 2015 Web site: http://www.livefromnewyorkmovie.com/ |
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