A documentary is meant to break new ground, explore uncharted territory, or look at a familiar topic in a new light. If a documentary does none of these things, what is the point of making it? With so many retrospectives of Saturday Night Live out there already, I went into Live From New York! hoping that first-time feature director Bao Nguyen would say something unique about the comedy institution. Unfortunately, Live From New York! is an unnecessary dud that simply tells the same SNL stories over again without uncovering anything new about the forty year-old program.
Live From New York! hits on the same points as nearly every SNL retrospective does. Hey, remember when Chevy Chase fell over all those times as Gerald Ford? Remember when Dana Carvey yuked it up as George Bush? How about when Will Ferrell poked fun at George W. Bush? Or when Tina Fey did a dead-on impression of Sarah Palin? Of course you do because you’ve seen those clips dozens of times. If you notice, all the examples I used were of SNL‘s political humor. This is because Live From New York! devotes a large portion of its runtime to covering SNL‘s long history of political humor. Problem is, that is some of the most well-known SNL material, so recounting it all yet again seems like rehashing.
In addition to the political humor, you’ll see the same old clips of the first show after 9/11, Sinead O’Connor ripping up the photo of Pope John Paul II, and so on. The most interesting parts are the short segments about the band, or the writer’s room, or the hair and makeup staff, but these bits take up only a handful of minutes. Sure, we goofed on James Franco‘s long association with Tribeca last week, but at least his documentary at Tribeca 2007, Saturday Night, pulled back the curtain by looking at the production of the show during a typical week. I mean, do we really need to see more clips of Alec Baldwin — even being the dynamite host that he is — talking about how important SNL is? At one point it seems like the documentary is going in an interesting direction when it brings up SNL‘s well-documented “diversity problem”, but the who segment is dismissed with the very valid point that most of television is male and white, so singling out SNL is a bit unfair. But after that it’s right back to clips of Lorne Michaels, Steve Martin, Jimmy Fallon and the usual suspects praising SNL as the end all, be all of television (although Nguyen would’ve been wise to cut the clips of Brian Williams talking about appearing on the show considering he’s under fire recently for wanting to be more of an entertainer than a newsman). At the very least the vintage clips are funny, even though you’ve probably seen them all before.
Live From New York! is the equivalent of a victory lap for SNL‘s fortieth anniversary. The unfortunate thing about that is there is nothing particularly substantive about a victory lap. That’s the overall problem with Live From New York! — it’s essentially a cinematic “attaboy!” pat on the back. With all that has been written and said about SNL — especially in this fortieth anniversary real — was a sanctimonious, softball documentary really necessary? More importantly, why did it deserve to be the festival’s opening night film?
The real bummer is that a much better documentary about another New York City comedy institution that actually served as a precursor to SNL — Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon — was clearly passed over for the gala opening night film for this documentary instead. I’m not sure why Tribeca selected Live From New York! instead, but it was the wrong decision.
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