What’s True and What’s Made Up?

Saturday Night Live has been an institution on late-night television for half a century. Although it’s endured through some fallow periods, it’s remained remarkably relevant and funny for most of that time. And the longer SNL remains a fixture on NBC’s schedule, the larger its original cast looms in our collective pop culture memories.

The exploits of that cast — Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtain, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, and Gilda Radner — in their earliest days are the subject of the film Saturday Night. Directed by Jason Reitman (Juno, Ghostbusters: Afterlife), the film tells the story of the 90 minutes prior to the very first taping of Saturday Night Live (which was called NBC’s Saturday Night in those days), as series creator Lorne Michaels (played by The Fabelmans’ Gabriel LaBelle) struggles to juggle a nervous network, inadequate studio facilities, and that talented but tempestuous cast’s needs and quirks, all while fighting to get his vision for a new kind of late-night comedy series onto the airwaves.

As depicted in Saturday Night, a lot happens (and goes horribly wrong) in the hour and a half before SNL made its fateful debut. Crew members quit, cast members nearly get killed, and NBC almost cancels the show completely. Sometimes, it seems like it couldn’t all possibly be true.

That’s because it isn’t! Reitman’s film condenses a lot of events that happened throughout the development of SNL into a single night. (It also invents a few things completely.) Below is a list of ten of the more outlandish moments in the movie, along with the true stories behind them, culled from a few of the non-fiction books about Saturday Night Live’s illustrious history.

READ MORE: Our Full Saturday Night Review Is Here