Director Jason Reitman and cinematographer Eric Steelberg have made nine features together since partnering on “ Juno ” in 2007, but their roots go back even further. They met as teenagers and collaborated on several short films and commercials, establishing a vocabulary that they continue to build and rely on. “To talk about how Eric and I start a conversation about a movie, you have to start with us at 15 years old,” Reitman told IndieWire.
“It starts with us taking our baby steps and making all of our mistakes together as kids.” Reitman and Steelberg’s latest film , “ Saturday Night ” (now available to download or rent), provided the filmmakers with an opportunity to recapture their youthful energy while applying all that they had learned in the intervening years. The movie tells the story of the cast and crew of “Saturday Night Live” overcoming one obstacle after another on opening night in 1975 to make television history, and it was a feeling Reitman could relate to and wanted to capture on film.
“‘Saturday Night’ is a love letter to creation,” Reitman said. “It’s about watching a hundred people try to pull together a show at the last second, and in many ways what we’re recreating is how we felt making our first short films and commercials. That sense of being young people on set who don’t know exactly what they’re doing but bond because they have the same goal in mind.
They don’t know how to achieve it yet. They don’t even kno.
