The 15-second performance Bill Hader called the greatest he’d ever seen: “There’s a commitment”
Actors don’t necessarily need a huge amount of screentime to make an impact, something that Bill Hader knows, since maximising his minutes was the launchpad for the career he has today.
While it’s easy to say that Saturday Night Live is a cheat code for a comedian to springboard toward mainstream success, it takes a special kind of talent to make it. Thanks to his eight-year stretch that spanned more than 150 episodes, Hader made it clear that there were plenty of strings to his bow.
It would have been easy to write him off as an impressions guy, since he’s obviously very good at imitating other people, but he still notched three Primetime Emmy nominations for his performances, with his sharp mind and smart writing ensuring that nobody saw him as SNL‘s one-trick pony.
When he made the jump into movies, he continued making the most of his screen time by stealing scenes in supporting roles in films like Superbad, Hot Rod, Tropic Thunder, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, so he’s keenly aware that a performer doesn’t need to take top billing or deliver a lengthy monologue to make their part in any production a memorable one.
With that in mind, it’s fitting that when Hader was asked to name his favourite performance by anyone in anything, he opted for one that’s so short it barely even qualifies as a cameo. Technically, Michael Palin played multiple parts in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, but for the Barry creator, his ‘Boring Prophet’ takes the cake.
“He’s this sheepish guy with crazy hair,” he recalled to Backstage. “And all these people are doing fire and brimstone, and he’s this little guy with a soft voice going, ‘There shall, in that time, be rumours of things going astray’. He’s not playing it funny. He’s just playing it like, ‘This is what this guy thinks’. He’s only onscreen for maybe 15 seconds, but it makes me cry laughing every time.”
Palin’s character only speaks a handful of sentences, which barely reached 100 words, and it was more than enough for Hader to call it the greatest performance he’d ever seen. There’s making the most of scant screen time, and then there’s being so memorable that an actor who’d make their name in short-form comedy will die on the hill that it’s a work of cinematic excellence.
“There’s a commitment,” Hader explained. “You find the reality of that character with this guy. This is what he thinks people need to know.” Life of Brian is lauded as one of the finest comedies ever made, but how many people would say that Palin’s ‘Boring Prophet’ is the best character in a film that’s overflowing with leading parts, bit-part players, and background operators capable of splitting viewers at the sides?
Hader would, and it explains a lot. After all, once he debuted on Saturday Night Live, his mindset was to leave a mark, regardless of whether he was given 30 seconds or five minutes. With a helping hand from Monty Python, it seems fair to say that he did.
