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Tue 19 August 2025 19:45, UK
Bill Hader has slowly grown into one of the most respected voices in comedy. Having graduated from the school of Saturday Night Live, the dedicated cultural vulture has some of the finest taste in the business.
If you were a fan of Hader’s time on SNL, this vision of a learned lover of all things comedy will have surely shone through. Not only was he one of the most obvious when corpsing at the material written by his co-stars, but he also used his expert knowledge to bring out some of the show’s most ludicrous impressions.
As able to mimic Vincent Price as he is Vince Vaughn, Hader’s deadpan delivery and encyclopaedic cultural knowledge made him a perfect fit for the late night sketch show. It was only a matter of time before the fledgling star would burst forth from the NBC nest to fly out on his own, becoming a welcomed additon to the Hollywood roledex, a place cemented by his performance in generational comedy Super Bad.
Hader was, therefore, a natural selection for Criterion as they went looking for movie lovers to pick out the movies they believe everybody has to see. To add credence to our claim of Hader being one of the more well-versed members of the Hollywood contingent, he didn’t just pick the ten movies requested, he added an extra four, to make it a round 14.
Included in the list is a tie at the top for legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, nods to the smoky greatness of Max Ophuls, a tip of the hat to Scorsese favourite Jean-Pierre Melville and another wink toward “the apex of cool” in Hader’s book, Jim Jarmusch. However, in the plethora of classic pieces of cinema there was only three movies you might consider a comedy.
The first is the kind of pick you might expect from Hader, as he selects the satirical sophistication of Sullivan’s Travels a 1941 production that pokes fun at the movie industry and which Hader calls: “My favourite Preston Sturges movie. I love how you can never guess where this story is headed. Then, when the ending and the message reveal themselves, it’s hilarious, ironic, and moving.”
The next two picks are perhaps a little more in line. One of the most revered comedies of all time, Monty Python’s Life of Brian, felt like it was destined to be included on any list Hader would write. A comedian who erupts within the absurd, Hader’s affection for the movie begins with his connection to his father: “The hardest I ever saw my dad laugh is when it cuts to the Sermon on the Mount and the camera slowly zooms back to reveal a huge crowd of people listening and finally settles on Terry Jones, playing Brian’s mother, at the very back, and he shouts ‘Speak up!’”
For Hader, it is simply, “one of the best comedies ever.”
Likewise, there is a whole generation who were seemingly enamoured with Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap, the original mockumentary and the movie so good it got a sequel decades later. For Hader, it was a formative experience: “I first saw This Is Spinal Tap when I was seven or eight, and it totally changed my life. This was comedy. This was how you performed comedy. It gave me a leg up at an early age.”
Bill Hader is a culture vulture of the highest order, but the star is still human. And, like all of us, though we may grow palates of sophistication or find a certain sweetness in the bitterness of life as we age, the truth is, our favourite tastes usually come from our childhood, and for Hader, comedy is the perfect place to enjoy those delights.
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