James Franco's Insider-y SNL Doc Saturday Night Bows at Tribeca

Franco vaguely acknowledged this reality -- and how Saturday Night depicts it-- in the Q&A as well. "Sketches bomb at the table," he said on stage at the Directors Guild Theater, joined by current SNL stars Will Forte, Kenan Thompson and Jenny Slate. "It happens. It was just a weird turn of events that Casey was no longer on the show, so it shows huge graciousness on her part to allow us to still put that in. I showed it to her and everything, and she really likes the doc. She said, 'I cherish it because it really shows what my life was really like on that show.' So I think she appreciates that."

"And her journey for that week?" Forte added. "Everybody's had that week. So they just happened to catch her week. As I said earlier, it was comfortable to let him in, but I don't know that I would feel that in my first or second year. The show is a way different experience. I was sh*tting my pants every second of every day. But yeah: It's a very common experience, what she went through. It just happened to be her week."

Yet taken at face value, Saturday Night also raises some hard questions about the sociology of SNL. To be honest, this place looks and feels like kind of a sausage party -- a white sausage party. Thompson briefly alluded to sending headshots and tapes before finally getting The Call when SNL "needed a new black guy"; Franco said Kristen Wiig was not as available as she might have been otherwise because she was "moving or something." (Slate was reticent about the matter.) Not wanting to rely too heavily on one perspective on one week in the life of a 35-year-old sketch-comedy show, I did ask Franco if he thought Saturday Night reflected any unusual imbalances behind the scenes.

"I really just tried to be as observational as possible," he said. "There's something of the process; like, you hear Lorne in that room say, 'Is there enough Will in this episode?' We had a little bit of that. But also, I felt like if I imposed too much of that control, it'll be too manipulated to what I want. [...] I love Casey, and I love Wiig. I knew them probably as well as I knew Will. It's just the way it turned out that week. Like they'll tell you, some weeks you're in it a lot, some weeks you aren't. So it's really just the way it turned out. I really didn't want to impose too much design on it. I had the week schedule, and I had certain sketches. I really picked -- and I had pieces of them throughout -- not because this was a closer friend of mine or because he was a white man. It's just the way it fell into place."

Got it. So when can you see Saturday Night? Good question. Franco all but disqualified HBO as a potential buyer because of the NBC connection; an NBC Universal sister network like Bravo is probably a higher likelihood. A limited theatrical release isn't out of the question, either; considering the hundreds of folks turned away from today's screening, I'd say there's an audience. Developing...

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