Diksha Sundriyal
Directed by Jason Reitman, ‘Saturday Night’ is a biographical comedy-drama film that focuses on the first night of the live telecast of a revolutionary TV program that would go on to become a success unlike anything seen on television. Taking place on October 11, 1975, the events of the film focus on the tensions that run high in the NBC building as Lorne Michaels tries to keep things together, from the unruly actors to the stage settings that keep going off.
On top of that is NBC’s censorship, which means that each joke and each line in the show is going to be scrutinized carefully and removed to keep in touch with the integrity of the studio’s production. The task of weeding out such things falls on Joan Carbunkle, whose presence is a huge source of frustration for the writers. Interestingly, the presence of such censors was quite common back in the day.
Joan Carbunkle Represents Real People Who Worked as Censors for Networks
Played by Catherine Curtin, Joan Carbunkle is a fictional character created to set up more tension as well as grounds for comedy in the movie. She is, however, based on real people who were employed to carefully find the words that would be found unacceptable to air on TV. As such, Joan is more of a composite that represents a larger section of people rather than bringing to life one particular person who played that role. Written by Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman, the film aims to present the chaotic behind-the-scenes of the show’s first day, but even as it tries to be as authentic and close to reality as possible, it takes creative liberties in presenting certain aspects of the story. To get a good sense of the subject material, Reitman and Kenan interviewed as many people as possible who had worked on the premiere episode in any capacity. This included the actors, the writers, and even the NBC pages at the time, as well as Lorne Michaels himself.
It was during such conversations that the writers of the film found out about the issue with the censors and how they were evaded or completely ignored. NBC was and still is a family-friendly network, and they didn’t want anything untoward spoken on TV. This led to the presence of censors, who would get rid of the words that could cause trouble for the network. The nature of their job made the censors entirely unwanted by the writers. Reportedly, the writers would try to annoy the censors or get certain phrases passed by hiding them meticulously in the material. Sometimes, it would mean finding new ways to phrase things, while other times, they would just do it to find out if the censor would even notice what they had put in between the words.
While the movie shows the writers being rather fearless about refusing to work with the censors, things have been very different in real life. Back when SNL started airing, Michaels and his writers would fight about the censored words, mostly because they didn’t want anything to be filtered down. Over the years, however, the writers often have to bend to the rules, which have gotten rather stricter over the years. At one point, Michaels talked about how they couldn’t even fight anymore as the answer was a flat-out “no.” Censorship over profanity and other words has continued since then, but there are occasions when the actors, most often guest actors, slip up. Even then, the networks censor the words, even during live telecasts. With Joan’s character, this unavoidable aspect of creating a show is brought to light.
Read More: Saturday Night: Why Does Rosie Not Use Michaels as Her Last Name?
