One sequence from a pretty unassuming documentary has already emerged as one of the most memorable movie moments of 2025. For most filmmakers, a documentary about the history of musical guests onSaturday Night Liveto commemorate its 50 years on the air would be an easy assignment. Just slap some clips together and gather whatever talking head interviews were available, and let the show’s legacy do the rest of the work. But this wasn’t the case forSNLvet Oz Rodriguez and musician-turned-filmmaker Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, directors ofLadies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music, streaming on Peacock.
At least, not for the first seven and a half minutes of the movie. While the rest of the film does turn into a fairly conventional (though still highly entertaining) documentary, the directors open the film with a delirious musical mashup, giddily throwing 50 years ofSNLmusical guests together in all sorts of unexpected combinations. As far as a thesis statement goes, it sums up the legendary sketch show’s influence on modern music in ways that no interview ever could.
SNL’s Musical Mix
SNLreleasedall sorts of supplementary contentin the lead-up to its 50th anniversary special, and any self-produced content is, by nature, going to tout the show’s importance in popular culture.So it is withLadies & Gentlemen…,which posits thatSNLhas been one of the driving forces in American musical culture for half a century. The way Thompson and Rodriguez lay it out, it’s hard to argue. The film bounces around fromSNL’sscrappy early days, giving platforms to punk, hip-hop, jazz, and even avant-garde musicians, many of whom had never appeared on national TV before, to its later years as a pop tastemaking platform.
It touches on some of the show’s most notorious musical moments, from Sinéad O’Connor’s legendary protest to Ashlee Simpson’s lip-sync blunder, as well as influential musical sketches like the Lonely Island’s many Digital Shorts. A segment about the show’s hip-hop influence is especially poignant, detailing the very first performance by a rap group on TV, when The Funky Four + 1 More performed in 1981.
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Thompson is best known as the drummer for the hip-hop collective The Roots, who have been releasing acclaimed albums since the ’90s and have become better known as the house band forThe Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallonin recent years.He’s known to have an encyclopedic musical mind, and the opening of the film blazes along with an exhilarating rhythm fitting of a drummer and DJ. It finds a common rhythm between all sorts of disparate guests, linking their sets together in split screen to create collaborations that probably nobody else could have imagined. There’s not likely to be any other place where Busta Rhymes, TLC, and acclaimed vocalist Bobby McFerrin would ever appear together, but Thompson and Rodriguez make it make perfect sense.
The sequence sums upSNL’smusical legacy arguably better than the rest of the film. Music has been a big part of the show’s DNA since the very beginning, when Billy Preston and his band rocked Studio 8H in the series' premiere (as also recently dramatized inJason Reitman’sSaturday Night). The mashup’s fun juxtapositions show the staggering variety of artists that have played on the show’s stage over the years, from all across the musical spectrum. The film argues thatSNLhas basically been a living catalog of American music since its inception, and the intro makes that abundantly clear.
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Ladies & Gentlemen…isn’t Thompson’s first time helming a music documentary. That would be2021’sSummer of Soul,which reintroduced the world to the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, a free concert series featuring another unbelievable array of legendary artists. The whole thing was recorded at the time, but nobody was interested in turning the footage into a movie, and it sat unused for decades.Thompson was able to unearth the original footage and use it to tell the story of the festival, combining it with interviews from artists who played there and several people who saw it firsthand.
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Much like hisSNLmovie, it’s an exhilarating document of its subject, showcasing his gifts for rhythm and editing musical moments for maximum impact. Hopefully, someday they’ll release the unedited footage, because the film only whets the appetite for the full performances.
SNLis great, but Thompson is a generational talent, and approaches his films with a musical ear and a deep understanding of the people who make a life making music; his documentaries are one of a kind.
Saturday Night Live
