Saturday Night
Saturday Night
Saturday Night: Nicholas Podany is somewhat shy to confess this, but that was When Harry Met Sally’s first time for him, watched as he prepared himself to audition for the role of Billy Crystal in it.
Podany was going out for Jason Retiman’s Saturday Night (in theaters this weekend in limited release before opening wider on Oct 11.) It is told in real-time, and it follows the 90 insane minutes leading up to the first episode of “Saturday Night Live” filmed in 1975.
Podany had studied at Julliard and appeared on Broadway previously playing the title character in Harry Potter and The Cursed Child. He first tried out for the role of Dan Aykroyd who was then a performer at SNL. For this self-tape, he did his own version of Aykroyd’s “Super Bass-o-Matic” sketch where he put a bass into a blender.
Podany later received an invitation to audition for Lorne Michaels from casting director and got another callback – but not as Michaels. Instead, they sent him pages from the script with lines for a young Crystal to read.
Crystal, who was still relatively new to stand-up and in his twenties at the time, was booked for the first episode of Saturday Night Live. His performance was however cut off from airing, because for an already overcrowded show the routine he did became too long as it involved him being in Africa on a safari where he says it sounded like footsteps whenever someone crunched a bag of potato chips (Crystal would perform it again for audiences many times including on Comic Relief TV specials that he hosted with Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg).
Podany went through something different before getting into the audition- He watch Crystal’s opening monologue during his hosting SNL appearance in 1980 (“He’s in great leather pants.”), and The apex of rom-coms indeed , which everyone loves – When Harry Met Sally. After slightly researching about Crystal, Podany wondered: “Can I do this voice?”
Despite the month being June, Podany thought he could get away with wearing an oversized sweater to his audition after having just seen autumnal standby When Harry Met Sally. Reitman states that “He comes in, and does this Billy Crystal that’s just dead on.”
We’re like, “Wow, you must be a huge Billy Crystal fan,’ says John [Papsidera, Saturday Night casting director]. And he says, ‘No I just watched a bunch of videos of them over the weekend.’”
“I embarrassingly said that the before this the only exposure I’d had to him previously was Monsters Inc.,” recalls Podany, citing the Pixar film in which Crystal played Mike Wazowski, a small one-eyed creature.
If you are interest to know how to do a Crystal impression then it is as simple as this: “You take all of the bass-iness out of your voice and just put it in here,” says the actor, pointing to his nose and sinuses. “And put a New York dialect on it.”
In normal circumstances Podany’s ability to mimic Crystal would be at best an obscure party trick; however for Saturday Night it help him win his biggest movie role yet.
That was Jason communicating to me via email at lightning speed, saying “Hey it’s Jason. Don’t do research on the character, you already have it. You are as good as you are.” According to Podany, “It took me like two days like okay, I’m really not gonna do any research, really. And then I did every amount of research.”
He viewed Crystal’s interviews in Johnny Carson and ABC sitcom Soap. He saw films directed by Crystal and listened to his autobiographical audiobook Still Follin’ Em. “Check out my Letterboxd. It will blow your mind away.” Jokes Podany.
The research was useful since despite the film’s tight running time, the cast had room for improvisations. “We would just kind of throw ideas out there,” says Podany which is a ballsy thing to do when you’re shooting on 16 millimeter [film].” However, Jason trusted us and then he would pull us back if we went too far.
Podany recalls growing up during the Andy Samberg SNL era when he made digital shorts with his comedy group Lonely Island and Tina Fey satirized Sarah Palin’s ability to see Russia from her house.
The actor’s view of the show changed when he saw a note from Reitman on the cover of the script. Podany recalls, “Yes, this is the story about SNL beginnings but it is also a narrative about what young people are capable in terms of resetting culture.”
Saturday Night Live is a true ensemble, with Michaels as its beating heart and characters in crisis such as Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Jim Henson taking turns being highlight.
With little screen time available to him, Saturday Night showed Crystal experience one of his greatest rejections up to that point in his life. However, just some few years laters and he started a career that would see him become an icon of comedy, a movie star as well as former Oscar host.
“He was a sub around that time, still and this was his big chance,” Podany explains. “You see Billy Crystal with a really very sad ending. He doesn’t get a ‘full circle’ finale. I would love it if people saw that and said to themselves, ‘wow, he probably thought that was the end of his career.
The world is giving me the middle finger so I’m going to give myself the middle finger back.’ What I want more than anything is for people to watch [Saturday Night] and realize they can’t quit. You hear no so often — Billy Crystal has just been told an all-out no — but you just keep going.”
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- Genre: Comedy, Drama, Thriller
- Country: United States
- Director: Jason Reitman
- Cast: Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith
