The two classic movies Bill Hader hates with a passion: “People want to fully destroy me”
As hard as some of the internet’s darkest corners find it to believe, it’s not obligatory to enjoy movies that are regarded as classics. Even those known for being studious cinephiles, like Bill Hader, will happily admit that certain examples of cinematic greatness aren’t to their liking, even if he’s taken flak for it.
The Saturday Night Live alumni’s favourite movie of all time is Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, which is an inoffensive choice. After all, it’s a landmark picture that unites one of the industry’s greatest directors with one of its greatest actors, but it might not even be the best movie the filmmaker made with Robert De Niro.
Some of Hader’s other choice cuts include Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Doulos, and Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby, which are all the sort of titles you’d expect from someone who knows their stuff and has been a lifelong obsessive of the moving image.
Then again, he does adore Don Knotts’ The Incredible Mr Limpet, so it’s not as if Hader is sitting on a leather armchair in a smoky room, swirling a glass of brandy around in his hands, cradling his fingers, and deciding that the only movies worth watching are the usual array of timeless masterpieces.
Horror definitely isn’t his bag, as evidenced by the fact that he barely made it halfway through Cannibal Holocaust before deciding that he couldn’t stomach any more, but 1999 was a banner year for Hader putting his foot down and deciding that, no matter what everyone else was telling him, two of the defining releases of the 20th century’s last hurrah weren’t going to get a passing grade.
“I mean, the amount of people that want to fully destroy me because I don’t like Fight Club and The Matrix,” he remarked to Collider. “I don’t like those movies. I mean, those both came out a couple of months apart, and people… their heads are going to explode that I don’t like those movies.”
Surely people haven’t randomly started yelling at Hader for no other reason than his distaste for David Fincher’s anarchic escapade and the Wachowskis’ game-changing sci-fi actioner? As it transpires, yes, they have. “I mean, red in this face, screaming at me,” he confirmed. “And I would try to be really calm and just say, ‘They didn’t do it for me.'”
“I’d go, ‘I liked Bound. I thought Bound was good,'” the three-time Primetime Emmy winner explained. “But I never got into the Matrix thing. ‘What is wrong with you?!?'” Fincher would be the first to admit that Fight Club isn’t for everyone, and it got a lot of hate at the time of its release, but The Matrix is generally more beloved.
It may have permanently altered the landscape of cinema, become the most influential movie of the late ’90s, and spawned a thousand unsuccessful imitators, but as a work of cinema, Hader doesn’t think it’s very good. Despite what the angry mob might try and tell him, that’s perfectly OK.
