Titanic would seem like one of those movies that’s impossible to spoil: the luxury liner marketed as unsinkable sinks. End of story, roll credits. But Bill Hader found a way to do it as an act of revenge against a group of sorority girls who kept making fun of him.
It’s probably not surprising that noted film buff Bill Hader had a job as a movie theater usher. And it was in one Tempe, Arizona theater that he came head-to-head with a difficult group of college girls that wouldn’t stop making fun of him for looking like Charles Manson. As he recently recounted on Netflix’s Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney, “They were in the doorway and I was going, ‘Hey, guys. Can you guys move?’ They were making fun of me. They said I looked like Charles Manson. Which I kinda did. I had a little bowtie on and cummerbund, and I was like, ‘Hey guys, please move.’ And they were like, ‘No.’” Even today Hader just can’t get a break…
So what did Bill Hader do? Found a way to ruin the next 195 minutes for them. “So when they went in, as I tore the tickets, I was like, ‘Enjoy the movie. The boat sinks at the end. Leo dies.’ And they were like, ‘No, he doesn’t.’ I go, ‘Yeah, you think he’s asleep. But he’s frozen.’ And that showed them.” Hader was subsequently fired.
OK, this is undoubtedly a boss move from Bill Hader. Nobody wants to have a movie spoiled, but there he is making peanuts and sweeping popcorn, only to be ridiculed by a group of moviegoers. He didn’t need it and he acted accordingly, so good on him. But this was just what Hader needed, as he would soon find himself working as a production assistant on movies like The Scorpion King, Spider-Man and Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy. A handful of years later, he’d land Saturday Night Live, staying on the show for eight seasons. So, no, the customer isn’t always right.
Outside of the story above, what is your favorite Bill Hader performance?
