Bill Hader Reveals the Only 2 Movies He Rewatches Every Year
Bill Hader has seen a lot of movies — and he remembers them.
After directing Barry and making the leap from SNL comedian to serious filmmaker, his taste in cinema got a lot of attention. But when it comes to the movies he actually watches every year, he keeps it simple: Jaws and Waiting for Guffman.
First up: Spielberg's Jaws. Hader watches it every 4th of July, like clockwork.
"It has everything you'd want in a movie," he said. "It's what we'll show the aliens when they land: ‘This is called a movie.'"
He's not wrong. The shark, the suspense, the ridiculous behind-the-scenes production chaos — it's all there. Jaws basically invented the summer blockbuster, and it still works better than most modern thrillers 50 years later. Hader's been obsessed with it for decades, and he never misses his annual rewatch.
His other pick is Waiting for Guffman, the 1996 Christopher Guest mockumentary about a small-town theatre troupe dreaming of Broadway. Hader's not casual about it, either:
"I watch this once a year. Everyone in this movie is perfect. Every performance is beyond inspired. Watch the DVD extras to see Parker Posey's character's audition. It's genius."
The cast — Christopher Guest, Parker Posey, Catherine O'Hara, Fred Willard — is stacked, and the movie walks a perfect line between hilarious and weirdly touching. It's also one of the most accurate things ever made about trying (and failing) to make art in front of people.
So that's it. Hader doesn't make a big fuss out of ranking movies or curating an obscure list. Just Jaws and Guffman — one about a man-eating shark, the other about a doomed musical in Missouri. Both about persistence. Both, apparently, perfect.