Tim Meadows Says This ‘SNL’ Movie Flop ‘Slowed My Career Down’
Tim Meadows spent 10 seasons on Saturday Night Live, performing during the heyday of the SNL Movie. After the success of Blues Brothers and Wayne’s World, Lorne Michaels turned on the spigot full blast, flooding theaters with critical and commercial flops like It’s Pat, A Night at the Roxbury and Coneheads. As it turned out, extending four-minute concepts into 90-minute movies didn’t do any favors for Saturday Night Live or the movies’ stars, as Meadows knows all too well.
The comedian wrote the screenplay and starred in his own SNL movie disaster, The Ladies Man. While lisping radio host Leon Phelps was funny in small doses, the laughs didn’t translate to the big screen. “It slowed my career down,” Meadows told the New York Times. “It slowed everything down.”
Critics helped beat down Meadows’ film career prospects. “Arguably the limpest film yet spun out from a Saturday Night Live sketch,” said the New York Post. “Another cheesy, overdrawn and witless Saturday Night Live takeoff,” added the Washington Post. Roger Ebert hated it: “Desperately unfunny.”
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The flop came at a time when some of Meadows’ castmates — particularly Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell — were becoming movie stars (though not in films based on SNL sketches). Meadows says he wasn’t jealous. “I can honestly say, lie detector, I have no jealousy or anything with anybody I’ve worked with that went on to do well,” he professed. “I’m really happy, because it feels like somebody I love.”
But despite The Ladies Man career slowdown, Meadows rebounded, becoming one of SNL’s most consistently working alumni. This year alone, he has regular roles on HBO’s Peacemaker and the CBS sitcom DMV. He’s a plug-and-play comic presence, reliably funny without needing the spotlight.
Meadows is the “perfect, put-upon ‘voice of reason,” says Tina Fey, who cast her old SNL castmate as the principal in Mean Girls. “Tim has a flawless dry delivery — like Bob Newhart.”
The comic values steady work after his Ladies Man slump. He found inspiration while filming a role on The Michael Richards Show in 2000. One of his costars that week was Bill Erwin, a veteran character actor who’d regularly perform small parts in sitcoms and comedies like Home Alone and Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
“You had a long career; I’ve seen you in everything,” Meadows told Erwin.
“Yep, I’ve been around for a long time,” Erwin replied. “My secret for success? I always want to play the neighbor who comes in, says something funny and leaves,”
“That’s my hero,” Meadows said as he remembered the interaction. “I want to be that dude when I’m 70, 75 years old.”