The movie that changed Pete Davidson’s life and why it means so much to him: “It’s my fantasy”
In an era where it feels like the famous star factory of Saturday Night Live has slowed down, Pete Davidson’s stint between 2014 and 2022 made him a household name. It’s also not done him any harm to have dated every single famous woman alive since he rose to fame.
Like many of his SNL forerunners, Davidson has been able to convert success on the small screen into a big-screen career, starting with a brief cameo in Trainwreck in 2015 before landing his first starring role in the coming-of-age comedy Big Time Adolescence, which he also executive-produced, and since then, he’s done funny movies, scary movies, superhero movies, kids’ movies, movies where he’s voiced a giant dog; you name it, Petey has done it.
He’s clearly a fan of cinema, but there’s one movie in particular that holds a special place in his heart, revealing his love for the 2000 sci-fi movie Frequency, while on the This Past Weekend podcast with Theo Von, which went beyond being complimentary of the film itself and was more about the circumstances in which he first encountered it.
“It was 2002, and my grandma, for Christmas, got me the Frequency VHS or DVD,” he recalled, “She was like, ‘You’re going to love this movie’. I watched it, and I was just like, ‘Why would she give it to me?’ It was not a movie at eight years old, six months after my dad died, that I was prepared to see, but it’s literally the Pete Davidson fantasy.”
Frequency revolves around a rare solar event that interferes with radio technology on Earth, where NYPD cop John, played by Jim Caviezel, discovers that he can now communicate with his father Frank, played by Dennis Quaid, 30 years in the past.
Frank, a firefighter, died in a tragic accident when his son was very young, and John thinks that he can use this miracle to warn his dad and prevent him from dying, but as is always the case in these sorts of movies, interfering with the past has grave consequences for the present.
As anyone who knows anything about Davidson will tell you, his father, Scott Davidson, was also a firefighter who died during the September 11th terrorist attacks when the building he was in collapsed. This is partly why the comedian was condemned for appearing at the controversial Riyadh Comedy Festival, as the Saudi Arabian regime has been heavily linked to the 9/11 incident.
All of this explains why Frequency was so traumatic to a young Davidson, but also why he holds it in such high regard now. It’s possible that watching a movie character in a similar position to himself helped him work through some of his trauma, with Davidson admitting that he still scours eBay sometimes looking for old CB radios.
“It’s my fantasy right there,” he said, “Or at least let me remake it”. The movie was adapted into a TV show in 2016, but was cancelled after one season, so if Davidson is serious about remaking it as a feature film, it seems like the door is wide open.
