James Franco's SNL Documentary

Franco & Co. at Saturday Night screening yesterday. Was there no air conditioning at this thing?

James Franco, who has hosted SNL twice... so far, screened his documentary about the show yesterday afternoon at the TriBeca Film Festival. The actor started filming the documentary, titled Saturday Night, back in December 2008. He originally intended for it to be a 7-minute short for an NYU film project he was working on, however, he came out with a 90-minute piece, which focuses on one week at the show (a week that John Malkovich played host).

His goal was to find out "what that mysterious comedy process was," and he was granted access that likely no other NYU student would be granted. The film follows the work flow that goes in to creating one show, from the Tuesday morning pitch meeting with Lorne, to a table reading and dress rehearsal.

In a panel discussion yesterday, cast member Will Forte told the audience, "There's a lot of stuff I saw for the first time watching this documentary," and the NY Times has a lengthy list of what they learned, as an outsider. Amongst them, we find out that Doug Abeles, a “Weekend Update” writer and producer, says he sometimes finds inspiration outside his window looking at the NBC news ticker.

Franco also filmed his recent stint on General Hospital, and plans to screen the footage as part of an upcoming performance-art show at Deitch Projects.