2015 Tribeca Film Festival Premieres Live from New York!

The Beacon was completely packed with movers, shakers and regular people without that many SNL cast members in attendance. The most noticeable presence was SNL’s latest cast member Leslie Jones, who pretty much stole the movie with her candid and controversial “Weekend Update” appearance. 

Despite stealing the title from the 2002 James Miller-Tom Shales book, the documentary is a separate entity, which astonishingly is able to cover a lot of territory within a surprisingly short amount of time. Much of the focus is on the original Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time-Players, for obvious reasons, but Nguyen has gotten interviews from castanets and hosts from all points during the show’s 40 years, which help to elaborate on some of the points he’s trying to make. In that sense, the film is fairly thorough in terms of dealing with the different obstacles the show has had to face over the years, including claims of sexism and racism.  

It does gloss over any of the tension between members of the original cast and it barely mentions John Belushi (or the fact that he and Chris Farley passed away at the height of their fame from drug use). These oversights make it seem like Nguyen might have felt beholden to Lorne Michaels or NBC to only paint the show in a positive light, and the absence of any negatives is flagrant.

There aren’t a ton of groundbreaking revelations either–none actually–and if you’ve read the book of the same name or watched the show for any length of time, you will already be familiar with a lot of the sketches and personalities. But again, Nguyen finds a way to edit the bit together to create a surprisingly entertaining film if you’re not going into it hoping to be enlightened.

Minutes after the end of the film, rapper Ludacris came out to perform a couple songs, and while he put on a good show, it seemed like an odd choice because–while he did host the show back in 2006–he appears nowhere in the movie at all. 

Afterwards, people walked the 9 to 10 blocks to the esteemed Tavern on the Green in Central Park for the after-party where the most notable celebrity was former mayor Rudy Guiliani, who appeared in the movie during the pivotal first episode of the show following the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001.