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Before the film began, my buddy Erik and I ran down a list of good and bad Saturday Night Live-based films. On the good side, we came up with The Blues Brothers, Wayne’s World 1&2, Stuart Saves His Family,…Coneheads? We stayed iffy on that one. On the bad side, we had A Night At The Roxbury, Superstar, and It’s Pat: The Movie,…Coneheads? Maybe. Any more?
Erik pointed at the blank screen.
“Pending.”
“I’ll wait and see,” I said. “I won’t be quick to judge, not this time.”

Behind us, Roger Ebert took his seat and Dann Gire, film critic for the Chicago Daily Herald, took his. The mix-up in the screening room—flip-flopping this screening with Lost Souls--put everyone in a bad mood that morning. Nobody wanted to watch this. However, Dann described Lost Souls as “Rosemary’s Aborted Baby,” so at this point, one could ask, which would be the lesser of two evils?

The film began and I sank down into my seat. Not having been familiar with this character, a smooth-talking 70s blaxploitation pimp-like radio talkshow host named Leon Phelps who advises all his listeners to do it doggy-style in order to save their relationships, made me laugh a little at the beginning as it got going. However, after the scene involving him getting caught with a married woman whose husband drops everything in order to masturbate to some porno on TV, I knew it would be a looooooong morning.

Erik told me prior to showtime that the movie would only last about 85 minutes.
“Ten minutes longer than It’s Pat,” I said.

I stuck through it anyway, watching as the writers missed their opportunities with having this character go from station to station (country, lite rock, Christian). I watched as the predictable relationship grew between him and his beautiful loyal producer. After about 10 minutes, I knew where it would go. On top of that, it went places where it shouldn’t have.

After about 30 minutes, I started daydreaming to myself. How the hell am I going to work out the second act on my screenplay? I thought. I glanced back up at the screen. A vigilante group got together to hunt down Meadows’ character to kill him. They broke out into a West Side Story-like dance number. Cute, but clearly everyone involved with the movie put all their effort into that one scene and forgot about the rest. The vigilante should have gone after SNL producer Lorne Michaels.

Then, the real pain set in. I had to pee, and bad. I hate to resort to bathroom humor in a serious news column such as this, but I feel it may be the only way I can really convey to you the pain of sitting through this film. You know how when you really have to go and you know you can’t until a certain time comes up, and you’re holding it and holding it, and time just takes forever to move? You know that feeling? Well, I had that experience. I felt like I shouldn’t get up in the middle of a movie and come back, not at a private press screening, not with Ebert on one side and Gire on the other, like two bald eagles watching over me. No, that wouldn’t be fair. It would probably be considered unprofessional, too.

So, I stuck it out. I let it build up inside me. For a while, I thought, “What if I let loose the Kraken right here in the screening room? That would be a Titan worth remembering.” But, I didn’t. After the 1-hour mark, I just wrote endlessly in my notebook, “END! END! END!”

After the 1 hour, 15 minute mark, I just wanted to scream to the main character, “JUST LEARN YOUR F***ING LESSON ALREADLY AND LET US OUT OF HERE!!!” But it just wouldn’t happen. Had we been the victim of a self-indulgent Director’s Cut? No way could this movie be only 85 minutes.

The credits finally rolled. Everybody in the room looked depressed. The bathroom had already been occupied, probably by Jonathan Rosenbaum. Erik and I waited patiently for the elevator doors to open while Ebert and Gire got into a bizarre conversation about how many movies have the phrase “Thumbs up” in them.

I finally relieved myself in the bathroom of a pizza place. “That was worth waiting for,” I said to Erik. Kind of like when the credits roll at the end of an excruciatingly painful film experience.

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originally posted: 02/18/01 04:02:35
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