What 'Saturday Night' gets right and wrong about the late-night sketch comedy show's chaotic first broadcast --[Reported by Umva mag]

"Saturday Night" doesn't get too deep into the specifics of the contract dispute, but the real Belushi also refused to sign the document until minutes before the show started.

Per Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad's oral history book "Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live," the original cast members were going to be signed to "identical five-year contracts" that entailed getting paid between $25,000 and $30,000 during their first season. It was considered a measly amount and Belushi wasn't in favor of it.

In "Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests," written by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, manager Bernie Brillstein recalled lying to Belushi to get him to sign the contract.

"I just happened to walk by at the time, and I didn't really know John well at all," Brillstein said. "I couldn't believe NBC in its stupidity was pressuring him at such a time. So John said to me, 'Should I sign this contract?' and I said, 'Of course you should sign this contract.' He said, 'Why?' I said, 'Because I wrote it' — which, by the way, wasn't true. But I knew I had to get him to sign it."

Brillstein, who was managing Michaels, said that Belushi agreed to sign the contract if he decided to manage him too.

"I swear to God, it was five minutes before showtime," Brillstein recalled.

Early in the movie, a llama arrives at the studio because Michaels preferred that animal over a donkey for a segment.

The aforementioned books make no mention of a llama being present backstage on the night of the series premiere. The llama's inclusion in the film is most likely a nod to a long-running joke.

Fans who have tuned in to the sketch comedy series for years know that when the camera goes backstage, there's usually a llama, a showgirl, or someone dressed like Abraham Lincoln loitering in the hallway for no logical reason.

According to Vanity Fair, former writer and Weekend Update anchor Seth Meyers popularized this gag during his time on the show. But even further back, Eric Idle might have been responsible for the running joke when he hosted the show in the '70s.

"We don't know why we do it anymore," production designer Eugene Lee told VF in 2016. "We get a script [set] in the hallway, so we call the prop department and say, 'Order up a llama.' Sometimes it's the wrong llama — it has the wrong color. We send it back."

Reitman told USA Today that the actors weren't in the middle of a lighting rig mishap, but there was a different equipment disaster that occurred.

"The story we heard was that their famous camera crane, the so-called Chapman Crane that someone would actually ride, lost its brakes and plowed through the set," he said.

Additionally, cowriter Gil Kenan told the Los Angeles Times that the sofa did catch fire on premiere night and got replaced by one from the writers' room.

"That is all stuff we got from the interviews," Kenan said.

In "Saturday Night," Chevy Chase (played by Cory Michael Smith) takes over as the anchor after Michaels botches his line readings and looks visibly awkward in front of the camera.

But in real life, Chase was already set to be the "Weekend Update" anchor prior to the series premiere night.

In a 2014 interview with Deadline, Michaels said that he participated in the sketch's "earliest presentation."

"But as we got closer to the air show, I began to realize that I didn't think I could be the person who cut other people's pieces and left my own in," Michaels said. "So I gave 'Weekend Update' to Chevy, who was not a cast member, but a writer at the time."

Michaels and some of the cast members, including Chase, had a screen test on September 17, 1975, to run through the material and see how it translated on camera. During that screen test, Chase read the jokes for the "Weekend Update" and nailed it.

Rosie Shuster, a writer on the show in the 1970s and 1980s, was married to Michaels from 1967 to 1980. By the time "SNL" started, they had already worked together on other shows. In the movie, Shuster (played by Rachel Sennott) describes their love story in an unromantic way and says Michaels was like a stray dog who followed her around.

This isn't too different from Shuster and Michaels' real-life relationship. The pair were childhood friends who met while living in the same Toronto neighborhood. Shuster's dad, Frank Shuster, was part of the comedy duo Wayne and Shuster and ended up being a mentor to Michaels.

"Lorne Michaels arrived in my life before puberty, let's put it that way," Shuster recalled in "Live From New York."

Shuster said that Michaels "observed me from the sidelines."

"And I guess he was struck by my mojo, or whatever, and he basically started following me around," she said. "We were inseparable after that."

In the movie, Aykroyd (played by Dylan O'Brien) flirts with Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn), who gets jealous when she sees him acting chummy with Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt). In another scene, Aykroyd flirts with Shuster, who is still Michaels' wife at that point (a minor plot point throughout the film is whether Shuster wants to use her maiden name or married name in the episode credits).

In reality, Shuster and Michaels weren't together by the time "SNL" premiered. But legally, they were still married.

"I wasn't actually in a couple with Lorne when the show started; that's the real folly of all of it," Shuster said in the "Live from New York" oral history book. "But I never really actually got divorced from him, I don't think, until like 1980 or something. I just didn't want to deal with that. And so I didn't."

Aykroyd shared similar comments, saying that it was "over" between Shuster and Michaels by the time he got involved with her.

"They might have been married in name and all that, but he was seeing other people," Aykroyd said of Michaels. "There was definitely separation there."

As the movie alludes to, Aykroyd also had a relationship with Radner, but this happened prior to "SNL."

"I was in love with her," Aykroyd said in the "Live From New York" oral history. "But that was in the early days of Second City in Canada. Our romance was finished by the time 'Saturday Night Live' happened. We were friends, lovers, then friends again. By the time we came to New York, we weren't involved by any means."

In the same book, Newman said that she "had a thing with Danny for a while."

"He was just adorable and irresistible and we had a lot of fun," she said.

"I was talking to Dan's daughters, and we were joking, actually, about the amount of women that Dan slept with at 'SNL,'" Reitman told The Hollywood Reporter.

Chase has a tense interaction with Berle, known as Mr. Television, when he finds the legendary star (played by J.K. Simmons) sitting on a couch and flirting with his fiancée, Jacqueline Carlin (Kaia Gerber).

The two men take digs at each other, with Berle telling Chase that he's not a star and won't be remembered. Then, Berle unzips his pants to brag about his penis.

Although Berle, who died in 2002, wasn't around for the premiere of "SNL," his actions in that scene are on par with stories that cast and crew members have shared about him.

In "Live From New York," comedy writer Alan Zweibel said that Berle was known as "the guy with the big dick, one of the biggest in show business." Zweibel also claimed that Berle opened his bathrobe to show off his penis to him while in his dressing room at "SNL."

"Milton used to pull his penis out in front of everybody," Reitman told Entertainment Weekly. "I personally know multiple people that Milton's pulled his dick out in front of."

The director also explained why "Saturday Night" included the Berle scene even though it didn't happen on premiere night.

"We're not egregiously rewriting history," he said. "It's not as though Milton Berle was a guy who was a saint. We're using a guy who did this all the time, and now we're choosing to use it in a moment that propels the story."

Berle, who had a reputation for being difficult to work with, hosted the show during season four and was regarded as one the worst hosts ever.

"Saturday Night" takes some creative liberties in integrating comedy writer Alan Zweibel into the film, but the way he was hired is largely accurate.

In the movie, prior to the broadcast, Michaels steps out for a breather and goes to a bar, where he meets Zweibel, a deli boy and aspiring comedy writer (played by Josh Brener) who has a notebook with thousands of jokes written inside. Impressed with his talent, Michaels hires him on the spot.

This is mostly in line with reality, but the timing of when Michaels discovered Zweibel is different.

In real life, Michaels met Zweibel at the comedy club Catch A Rising Star way before the premiere of "SNL," when Michaels was scouring clubs for writers and actors. In "Live From New York," Zweibel recalled coming off the stage from a lackluster set one night, only for Michaels to call him "the worst comedian I've ever seen in my life."

Still, Michaels told Zweibel that his material wasn't terrible and he asked to see more. Zweibel said he "stayed up for two days straight" compiling over 1,000 jokes and presented Michaels with the book when they had a meeting. Michaels hired him and Zweibel's post-office joke — the same one in the movie — ended up being used by Chase during the first-ever "Weekend Update."

In the movie, Morris (played by Lamorne Morris) sings a song with the lyrics "I'm gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whiteys I see," during musical guest Billy Preston's soundcheck minutes before showtime. He's met with applause from the cast and crew.

In real life, Morris performed that shotgun song not on premiere night, but during the famous "Death Row Follies" sketch later in season one. The moment was inspired by a racist song that a white woman performed on TV in the '50s. Morris replaced the slur she used with "whiteys" on "SNL."

"Saturday Night" is in theaters now.