How many SNL-inspired films have there been?
Too many.
Looking at the IMDB list…
10 based on SNL characters:
The Blues Brothers
Wayne’s World
Coneheads
Wayne’s World 2
It’s Pat
Stuart Saves His Family
A Night at the Roxbury
Blues Brothers 2000
Superstar
The Ladies’ Man
Office Space is based on the “Milton” shorts Mike Judge did that aired on SNL. Same deal with the Mr. Bill movie.
Perhaps this is better suited to Cafe Society.
Moved from GQ.
samclem GQ moderator
There are at least two others:
Mr. Saturday Night (Billy Crystal)
Bob Roberts (from a one-time sketch w. Tim Robbins)
A new magazine, Giant, ran a list of the most successful SNL movies of all time. Their criteria was loose; all the movie needed was to have a SNL cast member in the cast of the movie. The #1 biggest movie was Shrek 2 with Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy. But the #2 was Forrest Gump which “starred” Siobhan Fallon.
If you look at movies that came directly from SNL (sketches or characters), then Wayne’s World is still the most successful (again, with Mike Myers…).
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (I’m not the one who wanted to move to California):
Saturday Night Live was famous for taking a sketch that would be funny at five minutes, stretching it out to ten, and then doing essentially the same sketch six more times during the course of the season. THEN they take exactly the same sketch and pad it out to fill a sixty-minute movie, filling out the other thirty minutes with sweepings from the cutting room floor.
Now and again it worked (Wayne’s World), but WAYYYY more often, it didn’t (*It’s Pat![/])…
The Dead Zone with Christopher Walken- oddly, not funny at all. The skit was hilarious.
What?
Seriously, I would go see any movie based on a Chris Walken skit- THE CONTINENTAL, MORE COWBELL, STALK TALK.
I also really want to see Mike Myers do a Dieter movie.
Austin Powers sure seems like an SNL skit.
As does Dan Ackroyd’s NOTHING BUT TROUBLE. I’d even see a NBT II. That movie actually does amuse me tho I understand why it falls flat for other people.
Ditto for Mike Myers - not that the guy can’t be funny, but he isn’t as funny as he thinks he is. So much of his material {Austin Powers in particular} would probably be hilarious as a series of 5 minute sketches, but three ninety minute movies is pushing it. And stop it with the multiple characters - you’re not Alec Guinness {Kind Hearts And Coronets} or Peter Sellers {Dr Strangelove}. And you can’t do a Scottish accent - yes, Shrek, I’m looking at you.
There was a Dieter movie in development, but the parties in queston couldn’t get the money issues together, so the project was killed. Myers has said that there’s little hope of it being resurrected, and he’s over the idea.
I once clammored for the movie myself, but then I realized that the humor of Dieter was in its surreality, and 90 minutes of surreal wouldn’t be funny, more likely it’d be annoying and stupid.
Unless, of course, the movie was about the monkey.
Sounds like most of Mike Meyer’s movies.
I thought Myers said he wasn’t going for a specific accent, just one that sounds a little off-kilter.
The Continental was a weekly TV show in the 50s on the Dumont network. MAD did a parody of it back then.
He was contracted to do one, but couldn’t come up with a storyline that warranted a movie budget. Lawsuits were threatened, but ultimately everyone saw the wisdom of bailing on a crapfest movie while they could.
Scottish accents ARE off-kilter. Unless you were making this joke first, in which case I take my hat off.
Gilda Radner Live, her stage show at the Winter Garden Theatre (pre-CATS) was filmed.
“A little off-kilter” translates to me as “supposed to be Scottish but I’m no good at it.”
There are plenty of decent Scottish voice actors who’d have loved and deserved the part. It’s not like Myers’ name couldn’t have been crowbarred in some other way.
It was a strange story. Myers had signed a contract to write the script for and star in a Dieter movie. In what was undoubtedly considered a trivial clause, he was given script approval. Myers then decided that a Dieter movie was a bad idea so he refused to approve his own script, which killed the movie. He did return the money he had been paid but the producers had started spending other money in anticipation of making the movie. They felt this was a breach of the contract and threatened to sue Myers. Eventually a compromise was worked out where Myers agreed to work on some other projects.
Just daydreaming, but wouldn’t it have been a great idea to get Gilda Radner and Bill Murray together again as a Lisa Loobner & Stan (what that Murray’s character name?), in a “Nerds Reunited” movie. I imagine that Murray’s character became a computer multibillionaire, or is flipping hamburgers at a McDonald’s. Meanwhile, Lisa one day took off her glasses and VOILA! it turns out she was a babe. Too bad it’ll never happen. 
(Gilda, we still miss you.)