On Wednesday night the director of Saturday Night accepted an award for his film from Argentina ‘s Mar Del Plata International Film Festival on a very special day for the South American nation.
Jason Reitman received the Astor Piazzolla Award for Best Writing for his drama Saturday Night Live. In October 1975, Reitman directed the film and wrote it with Gil Kenan, a co-recipient of the award. Reitman attended the 39th edition of the Mar Del Plata Awards last November, but left the coastal Argentine city when the awards were announced.
The screenwriting award presentation took place at the residence of the Argentine Consul General in Los Angeles, with Mar Del Plata Film Festival co-artistic director Gabriel Lerman and filmmaker Fede [Alien: Romulus] providing the formal honors.
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“I’m honored to be here with one of the few men in this business who has better hair than me,” Reitman joked, acknowledging Álvarez’s impressive chevelure. “And [he’s] a better shot.”
“Fede, how many nominations did Foreign [Romulus] get?” Reitman asked his fellow filmmaker.
“I lost count,” Álvarez replied. “You lose count.”
“Two? Is it three?” Reitman continued.
“Oscars?” Alvarez said. “It was one.”
“Was that one?” Reitman said, joking: “That was one more than Saturday Night got.”
The reception and awards presentation coincided with Argentina’s Independence Day, marking the 209th anniversary of the country’s separation from Spain.
“This is an incredible honor,” Reitman told the assembled crowd, which included the consul’s general, Maria Monacci, the consul’s wife, and entertainment industry notables. “And most importantly, happy independence day.”
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In addition to serving as artistic director of the Mar Plata International Film Festival, alongside Jorge Stamadianos, Lerman is a journalist who writes for publications in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and other parts of Latin America. He has been a Golden Globe voter since 2004 and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the HFPA’s Successor Voting Organization.
“Gabriel and I have known each other for a long time, and this is a city that draws people—Los Angeles—people gravitate here. Some people gravitate just because they want to be near fame, but some people come here because they love movies,” Reitman noted. “And Gabriel came here because he loves movies. And when you meet someone who loves movies as much as you do, you immediately feel like you’ve found someone you’ve been looking for since high school.”
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Referencing his appearance at the 39th Edition of Mar del Plata, Reitman said, “I was there with a film called Saturday Night, which is about the opening night of Saturday Night Live , which is about a group of young people who came together to make a show that had never been done before. And when I got to Mar del Plata, what I found was a group of young filmmakers who felt exactly the same way, and they were kids, and they loved movies. And after the movies, they would take me to this bowling alley and get really drunk. And then they would talk about movies until the sun came up. And it reminded me of exactly the kind of community I was looking for when I was a kid.”
“It was my first time in Argentina,” Reitman commented. “I fell in love with your country. I can’t wait to go back. And I had the most incredible experience down there.”
The 40th anniversary edition of Mar del Plata will take place from November 6th to 16th. Whether he’s there for the 40th or it takes Reitman a few more years to return to the festival, you can expect to see him with a Sharpie in hand. This refers to an anecdote he shared from his experience last year.
“One morning, I get a text from Gabriel, and he says, ‘They want you to put your name in concrete here.’ I said, ‘What?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, it’s similar to Mann’s Chinese.’ And I just thought, are you sure they want mine ?” “Yeah, they want you to do that.” Now, I’ve never done this before,” Reitman said. “When you’re writing, it’s a lot harder than you think. And I’m not practiced at it, but this will be permanent. It’s on the floor. You know when you’re writing a birthday card and you start writing letters, but it’s too long? And you want to have it, and there’s no space. That’s it. So, if you don’t know it’s me, there’s no way to know who signed it.”
He concluded, “So maybe one day you’ll come back with a sharpness, and I’ll fill in the rest.”
