Connor’s signature reminded me - wasn’t Mike Meyer going to make a movie featuring his artsy German TV show host, Dieter? I LOVED that character! I haven’t heard anything more for awhile. What’s the scoop? And would you like to touch my monkey?
For those of you in a mad scramble to find me:
Last I heard, Meyers backed out because the script sucked big time. He & production company where suing each other over it, nothing got resolved, project was scrapped. I don’t know what became of the lawsuits though.
Gee, I can’t possibly imagine how a movie based that skit could possibly be bad…
:rolleyes:
On. Based ON that skit. Why am I so stupid?!?
::pounds fist on forehead::
Isn’t Rereshing to finally see a SNL alum willing to forgo spinning their Barely-funny-enough-for-a-ten-minute-skit character into a feature length film?
So whats the list look like now?
The Ladies Man
Superstar
Night at the Roxbury
It’s Pat
Waynes World (there were 2, right?)
Am I missing any?
Several.
Blues Brothers, Stuart Smalley, Coneheads, etc…
Her are a couple more:
Stuart Saves his Family (Was that the name of it?)
The Coneheads
I do like it when characters from the show appear as cameos in movies. The dad in So I Married an axe Murderer was in a few SNL sketches. That was a good movie, but then Meyers tends to choose his projects very carefully it seems. Especially after Wayne’s World(2).
Gad, that Stuart Smalley movie. Ugh!
I saw Stuart Saves his Parents on a cross country flight. For about half an hour I watched this trainwreck of a film thinking to myself “geez, this is supposed to be a comedy, isn’t it? Maybe the first twenty minutes are setting us up for a big joke.”
Yep, the joke was on us alright.
As I recalled, Myers had a fit of Sanity, and used a clause in the contract to get out of the deal. Universal, unwilling to save face and eager to embarras themselves with Yet Another Unfunny SNL Skit On The Movie Screen, sued him for $20 million, hoping to force him to make a awful movie. He refused. If I recall the ending, Someone stepped in to arbitrate a amicable ending to the mess, with Deiter going to the wastecan and Myers doing another movie for them in the future.
SNL skits turned into movies:
Stuart Smalley sucks beyond explanation.
The Pat skit was awesome. The movie wasn’t. BTW, whatever happened to Julia Sweeney?
Never liked Dieter. Wayne’s World was a huge pile of dogshit, as is everything Mike Myers does. An exception must be made for Austin Powers, which was hilarious.
Coneheads: don’t have to watch it to know it sucks.
Still waiting for a Chris Rock / Adam Sandler movie. That could potentially dethrone Scary Movie as the best comedy EVER.
Yoda or Yogurt? A dilemma for the ages.
A somewhat unusual tale. Mike Meyer was hired to perform in a movie based on his Dieter character and as one of the clauses of his contract had script approval. The studio presumedly didn’t think this would be an issue, because Meyer was also hired to write the script. But as it turned out, Meyer the actor decided that Meyer the screenwriter wasn’t capable of producing an adequate script for the project and withdrew from the deal. The studio which hadn’t anticipated this (although to be fair, who would have?) had already proceeded with a sizable amount of financial commitment to the picture and sued Meyer for pulling out. Meyer countersued, pointing out that he had not violated his contract and it wasn’t his fault if the studio had jumped the gun. Eventually, third parties negotiated a settlement.
Too bad that wasn’t based on a SNL skit, so it is disqualified.
As for Chris Rock, he is hilarious but I can’t think of one of his skits that I would want to see a whole movie about.
Coming Attractions has one of the most extensive collections of news about new movies. Their page on Dieter details the whole sordid history of the movie, including the final settlement as reported by Reuters:
I don’t share their editorial enthusiasm for a movie based on Sprockets, but they’re one fo the beter resources around for this sort of thing.
Coneheads was actually pretty amusing. It had one or two clunky spots but was well worth the rental.