Aug.31, 1998 - Toronto Sun

'Roxbury' boys join the club

Chris Kattan and Will Farrell are the latest comics to turn SNL skit into a movie

By JIM SLOTEK Toronto Sun

How out of control is this movie-based-on-a-Saturday Night Live skit craze?

We talked with Chris Kattan and Will Farrell last week, who were here promoting A Night At The Roxbury, the film about their loser-guys-at-the-dance club Saturday Night Live bit.

Farrell, in fact was already in Toronto, filming Superstar, based on Molly Shannon's SNL character, Mary Katherine Gallagher.

Add those two films to It's Pat, Stuart Smalley, The Coneheads, The Blues Brothers and Blues Brothers 2000, Wayne's World I & II -- and add in all those Farley/Spade and Adam Sandler movies that are based on its personae.

As an icebreaker, I thanked Kattan and Farrell for diverting funds that might otherwise have gone to produce a Goat Boy movie.

They groaned.

"They joke about it," Farrell says, "but believe it or not, no one (at SNL) ever really writes something and says 'Hey, y'know? I think there's a movie in this bit.' It doesn't happen."

As it happens, the Roxbury Boy sketches seemed the least likely to spin off into a movie -- consisting as they have of two dance lizards who never spoke (Kattan and Farrell) and a dance-lizard guest star (Tom Hanks, Jim Carrey, Alec Baldwin, etc.) spending two minutes going from club to club, getting turned down for dances, their heads bobbing whiplash-like to the mindless dance tune, What Is Love, by Haddaway.

"The fact that the guys don't talk on TV was great for the movie," says Kattan. "It's a clean slate, you can bring whatever backstory you want with it."

The backstory in A Night At The Roxbury, which is scheduled to open in early October, is that the two goons are brothers, Steve and Doug Butabi, sons of a silk-flower store owner. Their dream is to someday be allowed inside the real-life L.A. club The Roxbury owned by Elie Samaha, the real-life entrepreneur who's married to movie babe Tia Carrere.

Their dream comes true when their delivery truck is in a fender bender with Richard Grieco's sports car and Grieco gets them into the club to avoid a lawsuit.

The skit was born a few years ago when Kattan and Farrell, old friends from their days in the L.A. comedy troupe The Groundlings, were at a club with some friends. That's where they saw a guy at the bar trying desperately to look cool.

"He was going to the beat," says Farrell. "He just wanted to dance and be part of it, and nobody would have any of it."

"He had the attitude," adds Kattan. "Drink in hand, smiling, checking the room. There was something desperate about it."

From that vision came "these guys everyone sees at a club. They never score with women. Yet they don't stop."

With a greenlight from SNL boss Lorne Michaels, they researched the scene, hanging with Samaha, and creating a spoof of him in clubowner Zedir, played by Chazz Palminteri. "He's odd," says Farrell of Samaha, "very serious about clubs, then you'll talk about serious things and he'll laugh them off."

Then they got a taste of the real thing, in a research tour of hot night clubs where only "the list" could speak to your worth as a human being.

"Remember that place in New York," Farrell says to Kattan. "Remember 'You go talk to the list?' "

"We were told we were all cleared, and then they wouldn't let us in. The doorman was like 'Talk to the list'," Kattan adds.

"'The list isn't talking!' " Farrell continues. "He had this whole lingo. It was fun to watch people where you knew that their whole life is waiting for Thursday, Friday and Saturday."

"Although, it's pretty sad, I mean underneath," Kattan adds.

For their part, Kattan and Farrell are waiting for Sept. 28, the launch of the next SNL season with guest host Cameron Diaz. Kattan hints he's done next to nothing on his four-month break. "Let's see, I'm sitting, talking to you right now. I'm buying clothes. I wrote, and caught up with my life."

He also sat in with the Groundlings, trying his hand at alternative standup.

And between takes on Superstar, Farrell did improv at the Rivoli with co-star Harland Williams and Janeane Garofalo. "It's not something I do a lot of," he says of the onstage stuff. "Harland and Janeane feel like they have to do it about once a week wherever they are. But I'm less committed to it."