October 11, 1975. A day that modified tv historical past without end.

That was the Saturday night time (stay) when a brand new sketch present first debuted on NBC. Cobbled collectively by an inexperienced group of actors, producers, and writers, lots of whom had been getting their first publicity on nationwide TV, the collection was not anticipated to be a significant success. ABC’s new present, titled Saturday Night Live, was thought-about much more promising at the time, as a result of it starred widespread broadcaster Howard Cosell.

The present was initially titled NBC’s Saturday Night. But after Cosell’s Saturday Night Live was canceled, it adopted that title as its personal — alongside the approach to turning into certainly one of the hottest and most influential tv comedies in historical past.

The fraught early days of SNL at the moment are the topic of Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, a historic dramedy about the very first airing of SNL on October 11, 1975. Because SNL continues to loom giant in popular culture — and since the present in the early days concerned such popular culture icons as John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Chevy Chase — there’s loads of curiosity each about the film, and about who’s taking part in who in it. (And, virtually as importantly, how a lot they appear to be the folks they’re taking part in.)

Below, you’ll discover 15 members of the Saturday Night, and see how they stack up with their real-life counterparts. In my opinion, most of them look fairly nice. A pair … uh, much less nice.

Saturday Night is scheduled to open in theaters on October 11 — the precise forty ninth anniversary of that very first SNL broadcast that the present is all about.

READ MORE: Every Saturday Night Live Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best